OJmayoMVP wrote:Kobe has been a lazy defender throughout his career, maybe not this year but for most of his career. Defense is the symbol of work ethic (especially for a superstar as they already expend energy at the offensive end), guys like Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett are light-years ahead of Kobe in work ethic due to their constant dominance at both ends (every year).
KG's defense hadn't been dominant in Minny since 2004 and before that it was slipping too. Before he left MN the radio guys on the fan were even calling him out for people overrating his defense.
Kobe's D slipped because he was used as the rover in order to stop all the penetration. Remember, we had Chucky Atkins and Smush Parker as our starting PG's for the last 3 years. When we made him the "stopper" he generally did extremely well including locking down ray Allen and VC on consecutive nights and other great performances (redd's 56 notwithstanding).
What I\'m most worried about with Kobe is his need to inform the media of his workout regime. That information appears entirely driven by image rather than ethic. The players with the best work ethics are most likely those at the end of the bench who are struggling for court-time. Nobody knows about their work-out regimes, and nobody knew about Jordan\'s regime (with Tim Grover) either which is apparently top secret even today.
Actually Jordan wrote a book talking about his workouts. I got it for my birthday when I was 10 or so. He also talked about his eating habits and soaking his feet after every game. Hell, this is a guy who publicized that he wore his NC shorts under his uniform during every game. Jordan and his media team weren't shy about sharing info about him.
"I'm sure they'll jump off the bandwagon. Then when we do get back on top, they're going to want to jump back on, and we're going to tell them there's no more room." - Kobe in March of 2005
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