Black Feet wrote:Absurd? Kobe in the early 2000's was a much better defender than Lebron is now, you're probably too young to know.
That has never been true. Kobe in the early 2000s was a very good man defender... and not really close as a help defender. Lebron's even a better defensive rebounder. There isn't a sane argument to make here. He's bigger, he's more athletic, he's better at blocking shots, he's at worst a comparable man defender, he hits the defensive boards more effectively... there isn't really an area where Kobe actually does a BETTER job than Lebron, and only a couple where he even matches up. And that's not even know, that's 5-7 years ago.
Gongxi wrote:I think that's pointless. Why not just have a 'Greatest of All-Time' list based upon, ya know, how great you were at playing basketball?
Because it escapes the point of comparing within context? "Great" doesn't necessarily refer to talent level. If it did, then Charles Barkley would be one of the 10 best players in the history of the league and no one would bat an eye over that inclusion. And Kobe would be OUT of the top 10.
And it wouldn't be a meaningful ranking system because talent is self-evident. We can all look at Kobe and even the most violent hater has to recognize that a guy who can do what Kobe can is an amazing player; there are precious few players who have managed what he has. He's one of 8 guys to drop a 30/6/5 season (he, like Elgin Baylor, Tracy McGrady, has done it once; Lebron, Wilt (!) and West twice, Jordan 5 times, Oscar 6), which is pretty damned impressive. His 05-06 season speaks for itself.
There aren't a lot of guys who really stand up to that kind of production, it's good enough to slot him top 15 on that basis, but there are still guys who've done that, or done it more often, or done more incredible things... West and Oscar both have seasons that largely overshadow what Kobe has done (Oscar especially) and they were both legitimately great players without question. Incredible talents. There are some big men who impacted the game at a much higher level in an overall sense than did Kobe because they were considerably more valuable on D and of similar value offensively.
It's hard; comparing players isn't a precise science, so we try to look at everything in context and that often means separating how good a player was from how GREAT a player he was. At some point, great players are close enough to one another that the difference in their level of ability is stylistic, or perhaps semantic. For example, there's a pretty clear separation between prime Jordan and prime Kobe, but is that same distance there between Kobe and Charles? So what separates the two MVP-winning players with incredible stats? Watching the two, it's hard to really point to anything that REALLY separates them, except that perhaps you might argue that Charles was a better passer because of what he did from the 4 in that respect and that he was a better rebounder and at his peak, wildly more efficient as a similar-volume scorer.
But does that really tell the tale? You dig into defense, you dig into relative health, you dig into how he fit in with his teammates, what he was like as a locker room presence, etc, etc, etc. You dig into what each of them achieved, how good they were relative to their competition. So much comes up.
Ultimately, all you can really point to is that Kobe was more successful in the pursuit of titles and he has more All-Star MVPs. You can say he had more range, of course, and that he relied less on athleticism and more on scoring skill, but you can also say that his shot selection was a lot worse, or that like Charles, he sometimes holds the ball too long, etc, etc. So much stuff, back and worth, whiz whip bang, you know?
At some point, you can't separate players on the basis of how good they were as players, so the human compulsion to categorize and stratify comes into play and we start comparing by the next available set of traits: accolades and team accomplishments.
