How would Kobe best be utilized today?

[JohnnyKILLroy]

For as smart as Kobe was all you'd have to do was show him what it takes to win 6 championships playing todays basketball and let him wreak havoc on the league in both ends.

[tsherkin]

For as smart as Kobe was all you'd have to do was show him what it takes to win 6 championships playing todays basketball and let him wreak havoc on the league in both ends.

He did buy into a lot of what Phil had to say when the team was good. And even Jordan fought with Phil over certain things (like he HAD to win the scoring title). People just forget that because he won so much, you know? Kobe would probably thrive with contemporary strategy and spacing, IMHO. And cupcake is right: getting him as many off-ball sets as you could manage per game would be wonderful for his individual efficacy.

[LockoutSeason]

Low post game is nearly gone in today's game so all his post-up touches would be either 3 pointers, drives or a mix of both.

Kobe was never a post player, he was a midrange iso player. The post touches all went to Shaq, Gasol, and Bynum.

[dhsilv2]

For everyone talking about making Kobe a point guard or high-volume PnR guy, I lean heavily in the other direction.

For me, Kobe's biggest strength was how relentless he was in terms of threatening the basket, and how much he moved defenses around due to this threat. Defenses were really scared of leaving Kobe, and devoted a ton of defensive attention to him. There was a tiny bit of Steph/Reggie to Kobe's game, that never got noticed in his era, with everyone thinking of his tough on-ball shot-making.

Where Kobe sometimes struggled was as a decision maker. His outrageous confidence as a shotmaker, meant he too often passed up great looks to create okay ones. When Kobe was doing "the Detail", breaking down footage for ESPN, you'd even see him talk about hitting the open man, while acknowledging a little bit that he could have done that more often.

Putting the ball in Kobe's hands still created pretty good offense, because he's just so talented and impossible to guard. However, use Kobe's shotmaking threat in an offensive system, and you easily create [i]great[i/] offense.

I strongly prefer putting Kobe in a system where you're maximizing his off-ball gravity, while providing him with advantages on ball. I'd rather see Kobe cutting into space, getting post entry's from another playmaker, or flying around a post hub, rather than make him play like Harden or Shai. Kobe can absolutely play like that and have success, but the best version of Kobe is coming at defenses from a million different angles and attacking with advantage, while opening up advantages for teammates with his gravity.

Give me some Steph and Booker play packages, mixed in with some flex and delay action so that Kobe isos aren't guardable.

Man I'm glad you're here!

Just like Curry is great as a point guard, so is Kobe. But neither are best there. Wild to me the people wanting to put Kobe into that decision maker role. Kobe's a brilliant basketball analyst. He isn't among the best at making decisions on the fly because he thinks his shot is always the best. And that's fine...it just means you use him a bit differently. His size, strength, post game...all of that lends itself to off ball play. And if you want to let Kobe cook a few plays a game as point...that's a great mix up and he'd be great doing it. But he's better off ball.

The counter point to what we're here agreeing on might be that Kobe developed all that because he was taught the triangle from day one and rarely left it. I'll leave that as a though piece if people think he could have developed better away from what brought him 5 titles and 6 finals.

[dhsilv2]

I'm not sure the on-ball guy needs to be a star/better than Kobe though.

Neither am I, which is why I didn't say that

The Shaq remark wasn't about necessity, it was about how those Lakers functioned. If Kobe was operating with primacy, we're only talking about a quality on-ball second option who can score and shift the defense at a reasonable level, not at Diesel's level of impact. Because Kobe was the clear second option on those teams, which changes the narrative. But what helped enable Kobe to play off-ball a bunch was the presence of those other ball-handlers and Shaq's ability to function on-ball as well, you know?

Draymond being on-ball to maximize Curry, Mark Jackson or Jalen Rose being on-ball to maximize Reggie... that kind of thing! Odom was an excellent complimentary pieces for Kobe. To me he was a huge part of why those rosters worked, even before they got Gasol and other talent upgrades.

I mean, to be fair, they were a +2 offense prior to Gasol, primarily on the back of ball protection and offensive rebounding as much as anything. Obviously, of course, with Kobe holding down huge volume, but they were the same level of offense in 05 as they were a year later in 06 when he went bonkers on like 8 more PPG. Gasol helped propel their offense to considerably better heights, but it was his defensive impact as much as anything else which flipped the script.

Meantime, they "worked" to a given degree. That was a 34-win team in 05, and 45 a year later with better health out of Kobe and Odom, the addition of Kwame (which makes me cringe so hard, framing that as a positive), and such.

Bleh. Even though I was pissed at him for his part in blowing up a dynasty, I felt bad for Kobe in 05 and 06, man. Those were ROUGH squads, and it didn't get better in 07, when they barely humped .500.

I felt they should have leaned further into that identity, as there was a feeling of: Kobe needs to have his iso touches, for ego reasons. Not that he wasn't amazing on-ball too. I just have this imagination of Kobe tilting 10-15% more towards being an off-ball threat. Trading in 2-3 crazy contested iso for 2-3 more pin downs or flex action types of things.

Yep, that'd be a nice way to approach it. Anything to make life easier for him, for sure.

Just to add a small but meaningful nitpick. The triangle as Phil ran it doesn't really have an "on ball" guy like we think of today. Not saying you two don't know this. Just wanting to put this in the message board history. So when we talk about that system, while someone could "take over" and go off script as happened plenty...that's fine. But the triangle itself was a bit of a non on ball system in a way.

[og15]

Low post game is nearly gone in today's game so all his post-up touches would be either 3 pointers, drives or a mix of both.

Kobe is a first option, if he wants to go operate out of the mid-post area he can, just like Kawhi gets post touches.

I've been constantly trying to remind people when we talk about mid-range, yes, the role player mid-range has been mostly taken away, but first option and stars can take whatever shots they want.

[MrBigShot]

Like he was used in 2012-2013

[GrindCityHustle]

Full reign on the Bulls while allowing Giddey to have a half court shot game winner here and there.

[Lockdown504090]

The problem with Kobe is that his athletic peak and shooting peak was pretty far apart (01 +/- to 10 playoffs +/-) so it depends which Kobe you have.

He got to the rim and got better looks easier when he was younger, but did not have the jump shot consistency and skill of the older one.

So I imagine the younger one playing more rim attack oriented while looking for playmaking using the pick and roll & different sets, picking his spots more in terms of jump shots and 3's. If you could make him, he was coached by Phil Jackson and still took so many contested long 2 fadeaways in iso and off the dribble etc..

Older one would be happier to look more for threes in pick & r, or using different sets with screen actions to get open, but also look a lot more like Shai operates in the mid range, with his jumper being improved. Compared to Shai a better 3pt capacity, worse midrange %/shot selection, less athleticism/rim pressure and more turnovers.

It would be fun to see if he could play smarter with his jump shot selection, and how his efficiency would look if he picked his spots more.

This is the thing right. We have way better shooting coaching and we have way better recovery tools. kobe was in the 1996 draft. they didnt have very much in these two areas and bryant was 18. I think we could have got his knee right at least even if you just dropped 2005 kobe into todays league.

[tsherkin]

Just to add a small but meaningful nitpick. The triangle as Phil ran it doesn't really have an "on ball" guy like we think of today. Not saying you two don't know this. Just wanting to put this in the message board history. So when we talk about that system, while someone could "take over" and go off script as happened plenty...that's fine. But the triangle itself was a bit of a non on ball system in a way.

Yeah, it was a read and react system designed to move the ball around, and it often did. Kobe often broke the triangle, of course. When I was saying "on ball," I didn't mean like "in the style of Lebron or Luka." I meant someone with an active possession in the low post (Shaq/Gasol) or someone with a perimeter iso or running a PnR. Doesn't need to be killer high-volume, just someone with an active possession enabling him to move without the ball. That seems to be what cupcake was talking about as well.

[flytimes11]

With all due respect, this is a pointless and unnecessary thread. Despite what most Lakers fans think, Kobe is not a top 5 player, let alone top 10 player of all time

He was a decent player but hardly on a level of a Michael Jordan/Larry Bird/Lebron James type

Heck I don’t think Kobe is a top 5 Laker of all time tbh.

This is why RealGM is a bad site to talk basketball. You have guys who spend all their time on here spewing awful takes like this. Go touch grass.