CoffeeCakez wrote:bird is a better scorer than kobe and yet kobe won scoring title twice in his career to bird's 0? oh and im guessing bird averaged more than 35.5 ppg in a season right? what season was that?
Who cares? LeBron only won the scoring title once and he's far better than Kobe as a scorer. Averages more on much better efficiency. Neither LeBron nor Bird cared about winning the scoring title because they did far more than just score.
Furthermore, this would only be remotely important if they played in the same era and were going head to head (even then, context would matter). Bird was competing against some of the best scorers of all-time, such as a certain Michael Jordan.
the only player who you can objectively call a better scorer than kobe is michael. I don't see anyone else putting up 81 points, 4 straight 50 point games, 9 straight 40+ games (including three 50 pt games in 03). Those kind of records don't come every day and will probably never be touched for a LONG time. Not to mention kobe scored bird's career high in 3 quarters.
There are a number of players better than Kobe offensively. Malone, Kareem, Wilt, Jordan, Bird, Magic, LeBron, etc. Kobe was good at volume scoring but with low efficiency. The fact that he had high scoring games in between many games of dross doesn't save him as we are taking his whole career into account.
you can maybe argue that bird was a more efficient scorer but then you would have to factor in the competition. I've watched tapes of games in the 80s and the defense wasn't impressive at all. yes there was no hand checking but physicality =/= defense. Defenders were way more skilled in the late 90s - 2000s. not to mention the advancement of zone and help defense.
Bird had far better competition, especially at his position, than Kobe did.
Also did bird have to carry the scoring load himself while he had smush parker, chris mihm, brian cook, kwame brown as teammates? because kobe sure as hell didnt have kevin mchale and robert parish in 05-08 (his peak).
Bird turned the team into title contenders and winners on his own back before Parish and McHale became major fixtures. And he did it in an era of more competition.
so as a scorer while bird is great, kobe is simply legendary and regarding bird over kobe in scoring is a huge disservice.
as a defender its not close..kobe has 9 all time NBA 1st defensive team selections, bird has none
Kobe is an all-time great scorer, don't get me wrong, but his efficiency is woeful when you're comparing him to the greatest ever. It's often so bad that he's better passing the ball a lot of the time. Bird was a better scorer from all over the court, more efficient and when he wanted to could light it up with the best of them. Kobe's best shooting season would be Bird's 3rd worst (and the only two seasons he shot worse are the last two seasons of his career when his back could no longer function).
And I don't care if Kobe has 1st team defensive selections. He was a perimeter defender which is less valuable than Bird who tended to roam the post and bang the boards. What more, most of Kobe's selections were off reputation, he was an average-to-poor defender for half of his career. The only time Bird was that bad was when he could not walk properly.
