Lockdown504090 wrote: kd has a higher true shooting in 2014. bryant has 39 usage rate and played 41 minutes per game with only 2 starting level players on the team in 2006. how do you. can you make the argument that he shouldnt have 41 minutes per game and a 39 usg? the rest of the perim players were really bad despite the gravity of 1 of the greatest offensive players in leauge history. Then playoffs, outside of the 2012 finals run, hes not much more efficent, and that difference is again somewhat made up for with the usage.
I showed you his raw TS% and his TS+ with the Thunder in the playoffs. It's not a small gap, it's significant.
I dont think theres anything wrong with thinking kd is better as a scorer than bryant( i would disagree) but to say theres a massive gap statistically, i dont think is even rooted in reality. Go look at his numbers playing for mike dantoni, when he was already on one leg compared to his earlier career. Imagine if he was in that system before.
KD is definitely a better scorer. Better at drawing fouls, uncontestably superior shooter from everywhere, comparable iso scorer. On average, he scores more effectively than Kobe. That's just what it is. Kobe had a pretty spiky scoring presence based on whether or not his jumper was falling, and he could get insanely hot, but he'd also rain stinkers a lot more regularly than Durant. People like to remember when he got hot and the fact that he liked to shoot a LOT, but that's not really the same thing as being a better scorer. And remember, this is KD we're talking about: he's one of the 5 guys in NBA history with 4+ scoring titles, right? Kobe probably would have had one or two more had he not played alongside Shaq in his earlier years, if we're being fair to him, of course, so I'm not using the scoring titles as a measure of superiority, just a reminder of the player we're discussing alongside Bryant.
And yes, I agree, there are some era considerations, but those didn't change the different in height and shooting ability. And even in that season, Bryant still only managed to go so far with it. Maybe as a younger guy, and perhaps especially with saner usage, he'd have looked better. He was very good, like, an all-time great player. But there were barriers for Kobe compared to a guy like Durant, tools which KD possesses even now as an older guy which Kobe would never have enjoyed. That's not something he could overcome, and that's before we get into Kobe's specific mentality.
In 2013, Kobe was a 57% TS player, which was +3.5% rTS and 107 TS+, which was fairly similar to his best decade. 99-08, he posted a 106 TS+, which is at least making some adjustment so we're looking at it relative to league averages of the time so we don't default to looking at raw efficiency, which obviously adjusts some with league environment. So what we were learning there is that when healthy, with a coach who was putting him in better positions, he was able to score roughly as he did before his team starting falling apart. This isn't quite the platform you're looking for relative to Durant.
