Revisiting this thread after several days is intriguing and humorous for me. It should be obvious to all impartial observers by now that the true point of the thread is part of a larger campaign with a singular agenda:
to discredit LeBron and champion Kobe as the superior player at all costs. Make no mistake that this and this alone is the real issue here (and elsewhere where similar antics can be observed).
For heaven's sake, they gave themselves a
group name: the 'gang of 27.'
They've adopted
matching signatures because it's
very important to them that you look at their data and their data alone and come to the same conclusion they do. This
matters to them--
your opinion about LeBron and how Kobe compares to him is of great importance to them.
A review of the facts:
The heralded data is cherry-picked. The 27-gang assumes an arbitrary stretch of time and an arbitrary point-spread and demands that this and this alone be the metric for comparing LeBron with Kobe. Not only do they not want to address anything that falls outside these capricious parameters, but they also won't accept
your cherry-picked data if it yields different implications.
A few pages back, I saw one of our 27ers reject someone else's cherry-picked data because he claimed
the sample size is too small! In other words, '
we'll decide what constitutes a fair sample size, not you.'
Good enough, 27-boyz; how about this for an adequate sample size?:
LeBron: 1353-of-2849, .574 TS%, 28.4 ppg
Kobe: 2014-of-4499, .541 TS%, 25.6ppg
That's the
total number of field goals and attempts for both guys in the playoffs, along with TS percentage and scoring average. Is that a large enough sample size for you? It ought to be, as you literally
can't produce a larger one, since that's every single field goal make and attempt each guy has ever had in the postseason. Hell, if you want to make it sound more like yours, it can be 'offense in the last 48 minutes of a game with a +/- of X points'.
'No', they'll reply, 'that's too broad; this is about a specific clip of time and point-spread'... in other words, a large sample size is bad and a small sample size is
also bad; only this one insanely-specific swath of data will be permitted-- it has to be
just right (maybe they should change their name to the 'gang of Goldilocks'). Of course, the rest of us know that the real reason this approach is being insisted on is because
the real agenda here is to discredit LeBron.They're inconsistent in their discourse. Multiple times throughout this thread, I've seen the 'gang' jump on a poster for writing something that doesn't have anything to do with the topic. 'This is about the specific conditions we laid out in the OP', they've said; 'don't mess up our thread by bringing things up that don't have anything to do with those conditions.'
That would be fine, except that those 27ers-- the same ones, mind you, who told you not to derail their thread-- have made numerous comments in these pages about 'the decision' and how 'five beats three' and the game the other night against the Warriors... you know, stuff that
also doesn't have anything to do with their thread topic. They're evidently free to tangentialize, but
you better not.
It becomes a lot easier to understand the motivation behind this selective discourse once we recognize the common idea in those tangents, which also happens to be the real objective of the 27-gang:
to discredit LeBron.They cherry-pick what they respond to. I'm a little disappointed that my last post here was never addressed by any of the 27 guys; it was thoughtful, thorough, and it made some great points, and I even submitted it as a reply to one of their posts, so I know they must've seen it. However, it also pointed out an obvious agenda through behavioral analysis and it laid to rest this silly notion of arbitrarily calling one part of the game clutch and another part meaningless, so I can see why it was ignored: because acknowledging those realities weakens the mission of
discrediting LeBron.So let's take a look at what's really going on here: there's a minority contingent of basketball fans who specifically are Kobe fans who are low-key furious that the 'LeBron or Kobe?' issue was settled a long time with the vast majority of fans coming down on the side of the former. They've always resented LeBron because they've always believed that their guy should've been the recipient of all the attention and admiration LeBron's always gotten.
Recognize that I'm not calling out anyone specific in this thread in the sense of accusing people of being part of that minority group; I'm simply describing a pattern of behavior. I'll leave it to others to analyze peoples' actions and decide for themselves who fits that description. Recognize also that I'm not talking about the overwhelming majority of Laker/Kobe fans, who are amazing fans and who are a great asset to NBA fandom as a whole, but only of that tiny, extreme faction that nevertheless rattles the cage pretty loudly and that unfortunately makes the
real Laker fanbase look bad far too often.
Finally, recognize the truth, which is that LeBron and Kobe are/were both gods and titans on the basketball court and that whichever guy you prefer, you've made an excellent choice and your guy is a legend and an all-timer.
Perhaps the most mystifying part of this saga is that most of the people in this minority contingent are yet lucid enough to realize that they're never going to alter the narrative or change anyone's mind, but that isn't really their goal anyhow. This crusade is more about collectively steeling themselves, giving themselves a foundation by which they can convince each other that the overwhelming majority of people are stupid and wrong and that they alone know
the truth.
LeBron is 0-7 in game winning/tying FGs in the finals. And is 20/116 or 17% in game winning/tying FGs in the 4th/OT for his career. That's historically bad 
