azuresou1 wrote:Weaknesses for every stat, going down the list at B-R:
So, your main argument is that the scorekeepers are human. Well, I guess that is also true for those who just watch games, right? Keep in mind that everyone who watches the games is way more biased than a couple of numbers.
azuresou1 wrote:hoopdata also posted something interesting in the first post of the second page, which boosts Kobe's PER.
Uh, I wrote already that his basic idea has a flaw, which leads to an even more overrating of scorers. He didn't fix the defense issue anyway, which is hardly possible, because the boxscore doesn't tell much about that besides the opponents DRtg.
azuresou1 wrote:Statistically, he had an almost nonexistent game. However, he was without a doubt the reason they won by 30. Why? Because he got a hard double the entire game, even when he didn't have the ball. He basically sat in the corner the entire game on offense, and Loyala doubled him because they didn't want him to light them up.
Well, I bet looking up his +/- numbers would have shown that pretty good. So, saying that he had statistically "nonexisting game" is rather wrong.
The point for Bryant was never that he never lead the league in one particular boxscore stat or something like this, he was never able to lead the league in any of those advanced metrics, while a lot of other players done that. Look up what Kevin Garnett 2004 did in PER, Win Shares and +/- for example (or James last season!), Bryant never was even close to something like that between 2005 and 2007.
And I don't even understand why Bryant needs to be considered the best for a particular season, he was great for the last 10 years, which is quite a great accomplishment too. Consistency is what makes great players. He was consistently one of the best players in the league (either Top3 or Top5), and this is something you can also get out of those advanced metrics. Some probably underrate him, but if there is no advanced metric which shows he is the best, you should at least think about that and try to find arguments for other players.
And while we are talking about that, the results of the GM survey are pretty interesting. In all 6 of those which are still available from 2004/05 to 2009/10 Bryant was never listed as the best candidate for winning the MVP or for starting a new franchise. He was listed three times as the player with 2nd most votes, 3 out of 12 chances! he was listed as number 2. In 3 of those 12 he didn't even receive a vote, in all other he was constantly around the 3rd place, which pretty much is on par with what I said before, a Top 3 to Top 5 player for a couple of seasons, but never the best. The players with the most votes in those respective surveys were Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal and LeBron James. That is since the 2004/05 season, and I can find a lot of arguments why those players were better in the last couple of season than Kobe Bryant (especially in 2004/05! btw).