How close is SGA to Peak Kobe?

[Pelly24]

I loved Kobe, and I do think he would be better now. But the gap in their regular season performances over time just seems too big. I remember being really frustrated with Kobe clunkers and awful, awful shot selection. SGA seemingly never has off games. Like, it's very rare he won't get a Godly efficient 30 a game. I think SGA is better at peak already. But gotta dominate the postseason, though. TBH, OKC does *not* want to see the mavs in the opening round.

[Special_Puppy]

So far this is a better regular season than Kobe ever had. Of course, if we are talking about peak over longer time frames and include the playoffs then Kobe clears SGA

[Bankai]

Skill wise? Might be already there. Nostalgia makes us a little biased. But the whole NBA now is as talented as its ever been.

[Haldi]

Accolades aside, strictly hoops

you mean how close would peak sga be to kobe

only 9years removed and already the disrespect of the "old timers"

Why is it always “disrespectful” to say that today’s crop of players is better than the past’s? Especially when the reason they are better is BECAUSE of the players in the past and learning from them (everything from moves to training, regiments, time, etc, etc) and expending. I don’t understand why in this sport, people are so sour to admit it lol.

It is like this in every. Single. Sport. There isn’t a sport in the world where past players in the sport are better than the ones playing today. The only way something like this could ever happen is if that sport suddenly dropped a ton in terms of popularity in the country or world population. As we know this clearly isn’t the case with basketball as it has become more and more popular in countries all over the world, once again, BECAUSE of the heroes of the past that I grew up watching too.

There are tons of guards in the 70s, 80s, 90s that could not finish at all with their left. Most guards today, not only can finish with their left, but can almost as well as their main hand. Mark Jackson, a career assist top 5 guy and former (one time) all star, used to laugh as an announcer that in his entire career he never even attempted a left hand layup lol. And would talk about how amazing these guys are with their left.

And that’s just finishing, what about passing. The 90s Pacers were one of my favourite teams and watched a ton of games. Maybe someone can correct me but I never saw him even make a left handed pass. I see guys today that aren’t even considered ‘great passers’ to people on this forum, routinely make left handed passes that guys in the past could only dream of. I was watching some game from the denver finals 2 years ago where Jamal Murray whipped a left hand sidearm pass from the 3 point corner around defenders to a cutting gordon. And that’s a play we see once in a while nowadays, but back then…

How can anyone think that you take a player from the past that doesn’t have these things, doesn’t have a euro step, doesn’t have good outside shooting and lesser ball handling… and you give him all that and he doesn’t become WAY better lol.

Now on the flipside of that, I can admit that the post up game as quite reduced in quality, because it is not a focus of training anymore, in other words, it is not a popular(or as efficient)way to play anymore. But literally everything else in the sport has leveled up like crazy.


Imagine creating a brand new sport that NOBODY has ever played. Within 2-3 decades, the sport picks up just enough popularity that some investors decide to make a pro league. In the first decade or two there is just enough ‘good enough’ players to make 6-8 teams, hell let’s make it 10 teams. The sport becomes quite popular within a specific demographic and becomes a part of their culture. And more and more train hard at it. Figuring new moves and such based on how the current players were playing it. Some within the rules and some tip toeing around them slightly. Within another decade or 2, two such young players take over the sport at a time when the popularity wasn’t picking up enough and completely change the course of it. The sport literally blows up country wide and it becomes a prime time sensation.

In the meantime another kid was training harder than even these guys ever had, copying their every moves and inventing his own play style completely. This guy goes on to dominate the sport like we only saw when some absolute freak was dominating in its earliest days but didn’t have as much competition.

Because of this guy, the sport blows up even more across the country, but this also across the entire globe. The sport had already picked up a bit in some euro countries but now even more, and also in places like Africa and Asia, and even the great white North of Canada (sorry, as a Canadian, just wanted to make a joke).

But mostly, he teaches kids EVERY WHERE one thing above all else. He teaches them what he had, and how he did what he did. He teaches them. To. Be. Like….

The next generation of kids after train harder and harder than ever before. More and more kids of ex players get trained the right way from earlier on. Or even kids of ex semi pro players that didn’t quite make it but make sure they teach their kids the right ways. The league becomes stacked with kids that are better than pro level players were back in the day while they are still in college or even high school.

So yeah, while I can agree there isn’t a big gap of difference between players that played like 9 years ago and today’s, when comparing players from 30-40-50 years ago, I mean it should be pretty obvious to anyone thats been watching for decades, that these guys are just out of this world compared to the players I grew up watching.

[Godymas]

in terms of his regular season performance, he's better than peak Kobe, more efficient, better defense, etc.

in terms of the playoffs, he hasn't really gotten there but individually he's been great. His team needs to mature a little.

[og15]

He's closest to a rich man's Corey Maggette

Eww, don't do that, please stop

[slick_watts]

shai's regular season this year is way better than anything kobe ever did.

since the nba merger i think other than steph or jordan, there isn't another guard who's had a better regular season than shai is having right now. maybe 2009 wade or 2008/2009 cp3. but definitely no kobe season.

[NYPiston]

Playoffs are what shape a legacy when things are relatively equal. Kobe was at least the 1B option on 5 Championship teams while SGA has only been to the 2nd round once in his career, way too early to talk about him in the same vein as Kobe.

In terms of regular season, I'd say that he's better overall than Kobe the last 2 but lets see what he does in the playoffs before putting him in the category with an all time great.

[dhsilv2]

Pretty clearly Kobe never had a regular season this good. But I think it's perfectly fine to wait and see how this translates to the post season.

[tsherkin]

I think broadly, this RS is better than anything we saw from Kobe. Bryant was extremely good, but he was never this good relative to his peers during a given season. Pretty much only fetishism over volume scoring would suggest otherwise, and even that wouldn't go too far.

More generally, though, we only have part of the picture. We need to see what SGA looks like during an extended playoff run before we can really have any serious conversation about SGA vs an established great which has the full picture. Fortunately, the bar is low if and when he actually REACHES the Finals, because that was not the finest collection of performances in Kobe's career. But prior, and especially in the Conference Finals, Kobe had some doozies, and we need to see if Shai can maintain under playoff intensity.

OP said strictly hoops. Not strictly stats.

Just because it doesn't describe something you don't like does not mean it isn't relevant.

Of course, at the same age, Bryant had three titles under his belt.

He also had Shaq leading the way.

[TFJava]

Very far away.

[SeattleJazzFan]

kobe never had a season as good as SGA these last two years. iow, peak SGA > peak Kobe and it isn't all that close.

[Pattycakes]

He's closest to a rich man's Corey Maggette

Def closer to Corey maggette than kobe Bryant. Gtfoh realgm for another disastrous take

[SkyBill40]

Most won’t admit but current SGA is better than Kobe ever was.

I'm not a fan of either but this is, undoubtedly, one of the most patently absurd comments I've ever seen on RGM. Good Christ is this hilariously bad.

[Kobe187]

Kobe was a straight up killer, let’s see how SGA performs in the playoffs, hopefully he carries the Thunder to the finals.

[dhsilv2]

Most won’t admit but current SGA is better than Kobe ever was.

I'm not a fan of either but this is, undoubtedly, one of the most patently absurd comments I've ever seen on RGM. Good Christ is this hilariously bad.

But he is. Like...I don't know how anyone could argue. Kobe never was this good in a regular season and I'm not even sure if he ever had a season like last year. We can argue if we're ready to declare it based on playoff play, but there's zero case kobe was ever this good in a season. Even defensively SGA looks to be at least as good.

[Lalouie]

Accolades aside, strictly hoops

you mean how close would peak sga be to kobe

only 9years removed and already the disrespect of the "old timers"

Why is it always “disrespectful” to say that today’s crop of players is better than the past’s? Especially when the reason they are better is BECAUSE of the players in the past and learning from them (everything from moves to training, regiments, time, etc, etc) and expending. I don’t understand why in this sport, people are so sour to admit it lol.

It is like this in every. Single. Sport. There isn’t a sport in the world where past players in the sport are better than the ones playing today. The only way something like this could ever happen is if that sport suddenly dropped a ton in terms of popularity in the country or world population. As we know this clearly isn’t the case with basketball as it has become more and more popular in countries all over the world, once again, BECAUSE of the heroes of the past that I grew up watching too.

There are tons of guards in the 70s, 80s, 90s that could not finish at all with their left. Most guards today, not only can finish with their left, but can almost as well as their main hand. Mark Jackson, a career assist top 5 guy and former (one time) all star, used to laugh as an announcer that in his entire career he never even attempted a left hand layup lol. And would talk about how amazing these guys are with their left.

And that’s just finishing, what about passing. The 90s Pacers were one of my favourite teams and watched a ton of games. Maybe someone can correct me but I never saw him even make a left handed pass. I see guys today that aren’t even considered ‘great passers’ to people on this forum, routinely make left handed passes that guys in the past could only dream of. I was watching some game from the denver finals 2 years ago where Jamal Murray whipped a left hand sidearm pass from the 3 point corner around defenders to a cutting gordon. And that’s a play we see once in a while nowadays, but back then…

How can anyone think that you take a player from the past that doesn’t have these things, doesn’t have a euro step, doesn’t have good outside shooting and lesser ball handling… and you give him all that and he doesn’t become WAY better lol.

Now on the flipside of that, I can admit that the post up game as quite reduced in quality, because it is not a focus of training anymore, in other words, it is not a popular(or as efficient)way to play anymore. But literally everything else in the sport has leveled up like crazy.


Imagine creating a brand new sport that NOBODY has ever played. Within 2-3 decades, the sport picks up just enough popularity that some investors decide to make a pro league. In the first decade or two there is just enough ‘good enough’ players to make 6-8 teams, hell let’s make it 10 teams. The sport becomes quite popular within a specific demographic and becomes a part of their culture. And more and more train hard at it. Figuring new moves and such based on how the current players were playing it. Some within the rules and some tip toeing around them slightly. Within another decade or 2, two such young players take over the sport at a time when the popularity wasn’t picking up enough and completely change the course of it. The sport literally blows up country wide and it becomes a prime time sensation.

In the meantime another kid was training harder than even these guys ever had, copying their every moves and inventing his own play style completely. This guy goes on to dominate the sport like we only saw when some absolute freak was dominating in its earliest days but didn’t have as much competition.

Because of this guy, the sport blows up even more across the country, but this also across the entire globe. The sport had already picked up a bit in some euro countries but now even more, and also in places like Africa and Asia, and even the great white North of Canada (sorry, as a Canadian, just wanted to make a joke).

But mostly, he teaches kids EVERY WHERE one thing above all else. He teaches them what he had, and how he did what he did. He teaches them. To. Be. Like….

The next generation of kids after train harder and harder than ever before. More and more kids of ex players get trained the right way from earlier on. Or even kids of ex semi pro players that didn’t quite make it but make sure they teach their kids the right ways. The league becomes stacked with kids that are better than pro level players were back in the day while they are still in college or even high school.

So yeah, while I can agree there isn’t a big gap of difference between players that played like 9 years ago and today’s, when comparing players from 30-40-50 years ago, I mean it should be pretty obvious to anyone thats been watching for decades, that these guys are just out of this world compared to the players I grew up watching.

if we were to ask what was kobe's goal...would it be 1) to score points, 2) develop a great work ethic, or 3)to win rings,,,it would be tough between #2 and #3.

because #2 the work ethic is his LEGACY
but his career goal was to win rings, as is with ALL goat-type players. that's how you get into the club.
well,,,sga hasn't won a thing

[Kobeskillz]

counting stats sure. I'd take Kobe any day of the week. Did more with less.

[SkyBill40]

Most won’t admit but current SGA is better than Kobe ever was.

I'm not a fan of either but this is, undoubtedly, one of the most patently absurd comments I've ever seen on RGM. Good Christ is this hilariously bad.

But he is. Like...I don't know how anyone could argue. Kobe never was this good in a regular season and I'm not even sure if he ever had a season like last year. We can argue if we're ready to declare it based on playoff play, but there's zero case kobe was ever this good in a season. Even defensively SGA looks to be at least as good.

I'm seeing it as player to player, straight up. And once SGA can match up to some of Bryant's individual hardware, only then can he be put into that conversation. Bryant was a 12 time All Defensive player and in the status for DPoY several times, so while the "eye test" might look good it's pretty moot unless SGA can get the votes to make an All-Defensive team.

Bryant may not have been as efficient in his scoring as SGA, but to say that "Kobe never was this good in a regular season" is utterly laughable.

I mean... dude. Seriously. I cannot believe this is even a thing. I'm starting to think you purposely replied to me because we have a seemingly regular pattern of disagreement.

[falcolombardi]

The wording of the question is wrong because shai is better