michaelm wrote:We seem to be talking at cross purposes. Jordan acceded to the triangle offense, fairly reluctantly it is said, which took the ball out of his hands and is on the record as saying he needed to become a more team oriented player for he and the Bulls to become successful, and obviously he did so.
Michelle point about Kobe and Jokic is which player a successful team can be built around, and i actually said in his title year with Murray and porter healthy he gave little sign of being a defensive liability. He has definitely been successfully targeted defensively in other seasons however, and I admit possibility this might reflect Denver being a poor organisation who didn’t continue to put the right players next to him. What deficiencies did Kobe have which told against his team when he was on well constructed teams in his prime pray tell ?.
Kobe had tunnel vision, had terrible shot selection, inconsistent on defense, and these traits became exacerbated the older he got because his athletic decline was steep.
Kobe's style of basketball, what I call, anti-fragile basketball, meaning he was a resilient player. He played the same way regardless of whether it was the regular season or the post season or whatever defense he went up against.
So the defense would adjust to Kobe, not Kobe adjusting to the defense. Which is why if you look at his playoff advanced stats and his regular season, it's almost the same.
Kobe wasn't a player that had incredible ATG that had a Lebron because he isn't a player that make routine high leverage plays but you'll never see him have a complete brainfart like in the 2010-2011 Finals because Kobe is type to shoot until he figures it out. But Kobe isn't like Jordan that is overwhelmingly athletic that he can overpower a defense with his athleticism.
Having Kobe on your team means you gonna have to live with him shooting a 3 over 3 players instead of passing it to the open man because the open man missed the last two shots Kobe passed to him.
