RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #13 (Kobe Bryant)

[OhayoKD]

has anyone really mentioned accolades? certainly no one is rating him highly because of his all-defensive teams. and yes, he achieved a lot. winning 5 titles against arguably the toughest slate of competition ever would seem to be pretty good, considering we only have 3 guys who have won more and they've all already been voted in long ago, and two of them (kareem and russell) got theirs by going through way less total competition, with all 11 of russell's titles or all 6 of kareem's titles involving less combined SRS than just the lakers 3-peat

Do you genuinely believe Kobe has ever beaten a team comparable to the +4 srs 69 Lakers where 60's Jordan and Hakeem joined forces and still lost?

SRS is not a measure of absolute quality...

[70sFan]

Why do you have Kobe over Dirk? Dirk has better box stats and significantly better impact stats. Is it just the rings? I feel like Dirk has 1.5 rings as the alpha (got screwed in 2006) and so does Kobe (kinda 1a/1b with Pau in 2010). I mean, I guess you could give Kobe 1b credit in 2001 and 2003 too, but also Dirk had one of the most impressive rings of all-time sweeping Kobe and Pau, dominating KD, Westbrook, and Harden, and then pulling a massive upset against the Bron/Wade/Bosh superteam. I definitely don’t see a meaningful edge for Kobe in team playoff performance. What’s the deciding favorite for you?

No, it's not rings. I think that Kobe provides you more value in postseason with his versatile offensive game (less efficient scorer, but much better playmaker) and I am more skeptical about Dirk's defense than some here.

I also disagree with a lot of things you said here. Dirk doesn't have better boxscore stats (they are basically identical in all boxscore composites, even though I find them useless), I don't view Gasol as 1b at all in 2010, I don't think Dirk "got screwed" win 2006 and the only thing I can agree is that Dirk looks better in RAPM studies, but it's mostly influenced by Shaq sample. If we look at how they fared in 2006-11 period, there is not a significant difference either way:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201024055547/https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2

2006: Dirk 5th, Kobe 6th
2007: Dirk 6th, Kobe 8th
2008: Dirk 7th, Kobe 6th
2009: Dirk 13th, Kobe 5th
2010: Dirk 18th, Kobe 4th
2011: Dirk 1st, Kobe 32nd

I think that Dirk has a better longevity overall and they are quite close all things concerned, but I am not as high on Dirk's peak as some people are here. Still, I see nothing wrong with choosing Dirk over Kobe. I actually like Dirk a lot more for what it's worth.

Out of curiosity, why don't you vote? You still participate, give an opinion and clearly have rankings. It's not like you have to commit to anything.

Just seems like it's a waste not to if you have a ranking of the available players already. The list reflects the boards opinion and you're part of the board!

I don't have enough time to participate consistently and I don't see the point in inconsistent voting. I wouldn't feel well with myself if I only vote once per 2-3 threads with very short posts that don't justify my voting.

[One_and_Done]

Adding up SRS to determine opponent strength is like saying Kobe at 34 ppg and 2 guys who score 1ppg are just as good offensively as 3 guys who each score 12ppg. It's nonsensical.

The vote count is very close, and may require some thinking about how to do the preferences to ensure the result reflects the majority views.

Kobe 6, West 4, D.Rob 3, Oscar 1, Mikan 1. However West is tied with Kobe 7-7 on preferences. It's still early days though.

I would suggest eliminating candidates votes from lowest first, and then distributing their preferences in that order, so we don't end up with too many preferences extinguished.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Adding up SRS to determine opponent strength is like saying Kobe at 34 ppg and 2 guys who score 1ppg are just as good offensively as 3 guys who each score 12ppg. It's nonsensical.

The vote count is very close, and may require some thinking about how to do the preferences to ensure the result reflects the majority views.

Kobe 6, West 4, D.Rob 3, Oscar 1, Mikan 1. However West is tied with Kobe 7-7 on preferences. It's still early days though.

I would suggest eliminating candidates votes from lowest first, and then distributing their preferences in that order, so we don't end up with too many preferences extinguished.

I have counted and recounted and I have it Kobe 5, West 4(the rest I agree with), and thus 7-6 for West on preferences.

The nominations are quite interesting. It's currently a four-way tie, with Moses, KD, Dr. J, and K.Malone each having two votes apiece.

[One_and_Done]

Someone may have switched.

While we're doing nominations to keep in the habit, nobody is nominated this round to compensate for 2 people being nominated last time.

[therealbig3]

The Shaq-Kobe duo breaking up had just as much to do with Shaq being a giant man-child with his own fragile ego and a terrible work ethic and subsequently demanding a trade as it has to do with Kobe wanting to be the man.

They both caused that breakup. I'd also say the loss in 03 to the Spurs had more to do with Shaq underperforming than Kobe. Kobe actually played quite well.

But I get it, placing the blame squarely on Kobe for Shaq and Phil leaving means you can also blame him for the mediocre results the Lakers had from 2005-2007, instead of giving proper credit to Kobe for carrying weak rosters to the playoffs. Then let's cherry pick two Finals series against a historic defense that forced him to struggle while ignoring how he tore through the Western Conference for 3 straight years and led some of the best playoff offenses of all time all 3 times, despite the Finals struggles. BTW, Kobe had a 53% TS in the 2010 Finals, with a 108 Orating, against a fantastic Boston defense. He actually had a very good series and was a deserving FMVP, even with the poor shooting game 7 (before that game, I'd say he was actually pretty great...which is sometimes the issue with these small sample sizes, one really bad or one really good game can skew the overall averages by a lot and ends up misrepresenting what actually happened in a series). His performance in the 2010 Finals was certainly better than either of Dirk's Finals performances.

BTW, the Lakers WON the Shaq trade, in case you didn't notice. The move was actually the right one for the franchise.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote: David Robinson
Simplest version is that David Robinson >>> the other candidates in defensive impact and is much closer to them offensively than they are to him on defense. He has the best box score numbers of anyone currently nominated and has incredible impact numbers for the years we have available, on par with the very best players of all-time. Both his 3-year regular season peak and his late career playoff averages handily beat a full dataset for LeBron. The fact that his playoff on/off is so high makes me think a lot of his "lack of playoff resiliency" is more just "putting in more effort on defense than offense in the playoffs". I think he easily clears the rest of the field by a huge margin.

Alternate: Jerry West
Seems like no one else is really getting traction except for West and Kobe and of the two of them, West is a better scorer, a better passer/playmaker, and a better defender. He beats Kobe in all 3 major categories. Kobe gets credit for longevity, but really he was only a real impact player for like 11 seasons anyway and I don't really care much about how many seasons he could play at a Tim Hardaway Jr. level in my all-time rankings.

[OhayoKD]

We don't need to take Jack Haley's word for it; D-Rob himself has copped to this. This is from interviews he gave to Jack McCallum for McCallum's book "Dream Team"

"I first got saved in 1991," he told me years later. "It was something that was really emerging in my life, and I was just trying to understand it myself. I probably did talk about it a little too much in the locker room. Larry Brown [the San Antonio coach at the time] and some other people didn't like it. Guys are like 'Christians are soft. They're not going to cut your throat out when it's throat-cutting time.' That was the thinking.

But my mentality was, I want to help my teammates. If I can stop someone from running around in circles in their private life, I want to do that. I just had to find the right way to go about it. I was struggling about when to say something and when to keep my mouth shut."

And there's also this passage about Robinson trying to bring Barkley to the Lord during their time in Barcelona in 1992:

Later in Barcelona, Robinson and Barkley would have a conversation about Christianity, Apollo sitting down with Dionysus. They were lifting weights - "Well, I have lifting and Charles was just sitting there," says Robinson - and Barkley said to him, "David you need to say what's on your mind. You need to be more honest." Robinson responded this way: "What you mean to say is not more honest. You mean more controversial. That's two different things."

And then Robinson opened up to him.

"Charles, I love the fact that you're not afraid to say what you want to say even if it's going to get you in trouble. And that will be an even better thing if you ever give your heart to the Lord. You're going to need that quality of talking plain because people will not necessarily want to hear what you're saying."

D-Rob is basically admitting here that he did this type of stuff back then.

Now, having said all of that - I don't really think there's much evidence that his doing that stuff actually had a detrimental effect on the on-court product.

And I think it's incorrect to say that it was his fault that Rodman didn't work out in San Antonio. As has been pointed out, Avery Johnson and Terry Cummings were also Christians, and it seems like the Spurs had a fairly conservative culture back then. Rodman was a huge character who wanted to be able to do things his way and the organization as a whole wasn't having it. Rodman was more the odd man out there than Robinson was. There is a degree to which Jordan and Pippen kept Rodman in check, I guess, but I think it was more that the Bulls organization basically allowed Rodman to do whatever he wanted and be fully himself as long as he produced on the court.

Man, Robinson seems to be such a good man and cool guy to play with. He was probably a bit naive in this regard as a young and passionate man, but I don't understand how you can hold it against him. The first quote in particular is very saddening.

Every time I hear something from Robinson's off-court life, I come out liking him even more.

I for one did not find "if you ever give yourself to the lord" endearing but to each their own.

[homecourtloss]

In hindsight, the Mavs were in the middle of an all-time lighting-in-a-bottle playoff run, but based on their regular seasons, the Mavs had a 4.41 SRS and a +4.6 Net Rtg while the Lakers had a 6.01 SRS and +6.7 Net Rtg.

Mostly agree with your post, but will press this a bit: the Mavericks had that SRS because of how atrocious they were without Dirk (2-7 and -9 per game point differential). At full health, they were better than the Lakers.

Again, not saying I thought they would beat the Lakers because of that; I gave the Lakers the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, when it turned out that yep the Mavericks were indeed better than the Lakers after all, that was not any particular shock to me (although a +16 or whatever sweep certainly was — but I think we agree only so much of that can be pinned individually on Kobe).

That was a really good team that was hidden because of different players out at different times. For example, Dirk and Tyson Chandler only played in 65 games together and in those games, they were 52-13, +11.5 NET.
Kidd/Dirk/Marion/Chandler only played 52 games together and there were 41-11, +14.3. Dirk/Chandler/Terry also played in 65 games (52-13) and were +15. At full strength, they were really good.

[70sFan]

We don't need to take Jack Haley's word for it; D-Rob himself has copped to this. This is from interviews he gave to Jack McCallum for McCallum's book "Dream Team"



And there's also this passage about Robinson trying to bring Barkley to the Lord during their time in Barcelona in 1992:



D-Rob is basically admitting here that he did this type of stuff back then.

Now, having said all of that - I don't really think there's much evidence that his doing that stuff actually had a detrimental effect on the on-court product.

And I think it's incorrect to say that it was his fault that Rodman didn't work out in San Antonio. As has been pointed out, Avery Johnson and Terry Cummings were also Christians, and it seems like the Spurs had a fairly conservative culture back then. Rodman was a huge character who wanted to be able to do things his way and the organization as a whole wasn't having it. Rodman was more the odd man out there than Robinson was. There is a degree to which Jordan and Pippen kept Rodman in check, I guess, but I think it was more that the Bulls organization basically allowed Rodman to do whatever he wanted and be fully himself as long as he produced on the court.

Man, Robinson seems to be such a good man and cool guy to play with. He was probably a bit naive in this regard as a young and passionate man, but I don't understand how you can hold it against him. The first quote in particular is very saddening.

Every time I hear something from Robinson's off-court life, I come out liking him even more.

I for one did not find "if you ever give yourself to the lord" endearing but to each their own.

I know a lot of people don't, being passionate about your religion isn't seen positively these days.

If the worst thing you can say about Robinson is that he cared about other people and wanted to help them (even if being naive), then you prove the point.

[Owly]

has anyone really mentioned accolades? certainly no one is rating him highly because of his all-defensive teams. and yes, he achieved a lot. winning 5 titles against arguably the toughest slate of competition ever would seem to be pretty good, considering we only have 3 guys who have won more and they've all already been voted in long ago, and two of them (kareem and russell) got theirs by going through way less total competition, with all 11 of russell's titles or all 6 of kareem's titles involving less combined SRS than just the lakers 3-peat

Do you genuinely believe Kobe has ever beaten a team comparable to the +4 srs 69 Lakers where 60's Jordan and Hakeem joined forces and still lost?

SRS is not a measure of absolute quality...

Fwiw, I would guess they have because that particular LA ('69) team, despite the names, just didn't seem to be as effective as the names (actual and invoked) might suggest (with the caveat that if one is looking at the finals opponents I don't otoh know what the Lakers were like with West and he missed significant time and now glancing at it one reckoning has them at circa 5.8 SRS, maybe tightening the rotation can squeeze their healthy top-end strength up a bit ... across era comps get dicey, mind you we are already diluting, lowering league average via expansion)- though within the series they were perhaps unlucky in that they outscored the the Celtics - (well I would suggest so if Kobe played against teams as single individual). Although if a team perhaps doesn't play up to their typical level (arguably part of what went on in 2001 sweep of the Spurs) even if you think their "real" typical strength is at a high level do you credit them with beating the a team of the higher level ...


On "3 guys who have won more" ... by what measure? By titles Sam Jones et al are still on the board. By your own winning toughness measure I think you've said Horry is above (and also has more titles) ...

As others have noted I don't think it's fair to ding teams (or players) for playing well in the regular season. The dynastic Celtics played in the tougher conference, typically secured the one seed and won. If the Lakers sometimes had to beat trickier first round opposition than they might have otherwise it's tough for me to prize them doing well in that small sample to dig themselves out of a hole generated over a longer one.

Mind you I think the broader point would be about how much does any of this have to do with Kobe Bryant's standard of play. I'd be inclined to argue it's tangential, at best

[f4p]

has anyone really mentioned accolades? certainly no one is rating him highly because of his all-defensive teams. and yes, he achieved a lot. winning 5 titles against arguably the toughest slate of competition ever would seem to be pretty good, considering we only have 3 guys who have won more and they've all already been voted in long ago, and two of them (kareem and russell) got theirs by going through way less total competition, with all 11 of russell's titles or all 6 of kareem's titles involving less combined SRS than just the lakers 3-peat

Do you genuinely believe Kobe has ever beaten a team comparable to the +4 srs 69 Lakers where 60's Jordan and Hakeem joined forces and still lost?

SRS is not a measure of absolute quality...

a) what is with the pushback on SRS? you yourself quote PSRS constantly on this board, and it's arguably a noisier and tougher to nail down measure than regular season SRS. and as i would ask One_and_Done, what is the alternative? given that it's basically just margin of victory, SRS is constantly used as a measure of teams and seen as better than raw wins (and wins is already a pretty good measure). certainly i don't know how you're going to come to a conclusion about the quality of the 40 or 50 teams a player might face in their playoff career without using something like SRS. saying it was slightly too high on one team or slightly too low on another doesn't seem to mean much over the careers of guys like duncan and kobe that might span two decades. otherwise we would need some project to get a crowd-sourced quality level for every team in history. playing a bunch of +5 SRS teams is almost certainly going to be tougher than facing a bunch of +2's and that's tougher than a bunch of -1's.

b) i absolutely think he beat comparable teams. "60's jordan" is clearly not actual jordan and "60's hakeem" has some results suggesting he makes a huge difference with teams and some results where he joins or leaves a team and barely anything happens. i would contend that actual jordan and hakeem teaming up would result in a dominant team that would likely win the most games in the league and be up in elite company like +8-10. the lakers went 52-30 and finished 5th out of 14 teams in SRS. there would seem to be a really good argument they weren't the best team in the league. and nothing up until the 1972 season would say any different.

they also followed their regular season up with a +11 win over a -1.5 SRS team (warriors) and then had only a +2 win over a +2 team (hawks). nothing indicates they were particularly amazing, much less so good as to eclipse all teams kobe ever faced over 20 years.

the 2001 spurs were a +8 team with a +6.5 win over a +1.8 team (minnesota) and then had a +11.6 victory over a +4.6 team (dallas). so regular season and postseason dominance.

the 2002 spurs were a +6.3 team with a +10 victory over a +3 team (seattle), though the series did go the full 5. nonetheless, nothing to indicate lesser performance than the lakers.

the 2004 spurs were back to a dominant +7.5 team and the best defensive relative rating in the modern era with a +14 victory over a +3 team (memphis).

and of course there are still teams which would seem quite comparable like the 2008 spurs, 2009 magic and 2002 kings and then a team that would fit the "better than their SRS" profile like the 2010 celtics.

those 2001/02/04 spurs teams all seem to easily clear a lakers team that couldn't do better than +4 and 52 wins. and even if you want to somehow claim the lakers were better than their +4 SRS (they did go 43-18 with west, which without looking up the MOV, would be around +6), they've got a lot of catching up to do just to get to even to +8 defensive juggernauts who dominated their playoff opponents, much less to somehow be far enough ahead of those teams kobe played that somehow it would really prove that kobe was just beating up on a bunch of SRS stat-stuffers while the real competition was the relatively weak set of teams that bill russell beat throughout his career, which includes a bunch of negative or +1/+2 type teams.

[f4p]

has anyone really mentioned accolades? certainly no one is rating him highly because of his all-defensive teams. and yes, he achieved a lot. winning 5 titles against arguably the toughest slate of competition ever would seem to be pretty good, considering we only have 3 guys who have won more and they've all already been voted in long ago, and two of them (kareem and russell) got theirs by going through way less total competition, with all 11 of russell's titles or all 6 of kareem's titles involving less combined SRS than just the lakers 3-peat

Do you genuinely believe Kobe has ever beaten a team comparable to the +4 srs 69 Lakers where 60's Jordan and Hakeem joined forces and still lost?

SRS is not a measure of absolute quality...

Fwiw, I would guess they have because that particular LA ('69) team, despite the names, just didn't seem to be as effective as the names (actual and invoked) might suggest (with the caveat that if one is looking at the finals opponents I don't otoh know what the Lakers were like with West and he missed significant time and now glancing at it one reckoning has them at circa 5.8 SRS, maybe tightening the rotation can squeeze their healthy top-end strength up a bit ... across era comps get dicey, mind you we are already diluting, lowering league average via expansion)- though within the series they were perhaps unlucky in that they outscored the the Celtics - (well I would suggest so if Kobe played against teams as single individual). Although if a team perhaps doesn't play up to their typical level (arguably part of what went on in 2001 sweep of the Spurs) even if you think their "real" typical strength is at a high level do you credit them with beating the a team of the higher level ...


On "3 guys who have won more" ... by what measure? By titles Sam Jones et al are still on the board. By your own winning toughness measure I think you've said Horry is above (and also has more titles) ...

i mean, 3 guys who are actually going to be voted on anywhere close to this range and who have at least multiple titles as the leader of their team (and even kareem would get debates on how many that exactly is). it all ties together, but horry is just a massive outlier in terms of underdog series (13 wins), actual vs expected titles (+4.92, highest ever), and highest career combined opponents SRS. but obviously getting to play with peak hakeem/shaq and prime duncan will help in those matters, though he almost certainly was around for too much outperformance to think it had nothing to do with him.

As others have noted I don't think it's fair to ding teams (or players) for playing well in the regular season. The dynastic Celtics played in the tougher conference, typically secured the one seed and won. If the Lakers sometimes had to beat trickier first round opposition than they might have otherwise it's tough for me to prize them doing well in that small sample to dig themselves out of a hole generated over a longer one.

i mean some of this is literally just having to face 4 playoff opponents instead of 2. while i suppose we could assume that bill russell going 10-0 in game 7's means he would also go 15-0 or 20-0, the celtics clearly lived on a knife's edge for a lot of their championships. having to face 2 more quality teams just simply makes it more likely that something will go wrong. and being the 1 team in the league that breaks away from the -2 to +2 mediocrity treadmill means you basically get to never face a great team, whereas even being the best team in a 30 team league means you are probably going to have 4 or 5 really good potential opponents around who will present a challenge because ending up with a league with equal team strength over 30 teams is much harder than over 8 or 9 teams.

also, this isn't punishing the celtics. it's just saying who they played and how much more you had to win and how much better the teams were if you wanted to get a title. it's just acknowledging that trying to get titles in a 2 round playoff against a +2.7 and then +2.3 team (bill russell's average title run) is much easier than doing so in a 4 round playoff against a +3.3 and then +5.3 and then +5.9 and then +4.3 team (kobe's average title run).

Mind you I think the broader point would be about how much does any of this have to do with Kobe Bryant's standard of play. I'd be inclined to argue it's tangential, at best

perhaps. but i would say in a world where we talk about how much a team won, how good your opponents were should be somewhat heavily considered.

[70sFan]

i would contend that actual jordan and hakeem teaming up would result in a dominant team that would likely win the most games in the league and be up in elite company like +8-10.

I think you might be surprised how underwhelming RS results a combo of Hakeem and Jordan can potentially create, especially if they would be the equivalent of 1969 West/Wilt age-wise (so 1993 Jordan and 1995 Hakeem).

[iggymcfrack]

In hindsight, the Mavs were in the middle of an all-time lighting-in-a-bottle playoff run, but based on their regular seasons, the Mavs had a 4.41 SRS and a +4.6 Net Rtg while the Lakers had a 6.01 SRS and +6.7 Net Rtg.

Mostly agree with your post, but will press this a bit: the Mavericks had that SRS because of how atrocious they were without Dirk (2-7 and -9 per game point differential). At full health, they were better than the Lakers.

Again, not saying I thought they would beat the Lakers because of that; I gave the Lakers the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, when it turned out that yep the Mavericks were indeed better than the Lakers after all, that was not any particular shock to me (although a +16 or whatever sweep certainly was — but I think we agree only so much of that can be pinned individually on Kobe).

That was a really good team that was hidden because of different players out at different times. For example, Dirk and Tyson Chandler only played in 65 games together and in those games, they were 52-13, +11.5 NET.
Kidd/Dirk/Marion/Chandler only played 52 games together and there were 41-11, +14.3. Dirk/Chandler/Terry also played in 65 games (52-13) and were +15. At full strength, they were really good.

Basically, when Dirk played, they were really good. 55-18 when he played, 2-7 when he didn’t. +11 NetRtg with him on the floor. -5.5 with him on the bench. The Lakers meanwhile were +4 with Kobe on the bench (he played all 82 games).

So ultimately, Kobe’s supporting cast was massively better, but 32 year old Dirk was so much better than 32 year old Kobe that he single-handedly made them a much better team to the point they swept the Lakers out of the playoffs.

[Owly]

David Robinson caused chemistry issues with his constant proselytizing btw, a lot of his teammates couldn’t stand him. He was thoroughly inept as a leader too and couldn’t keep Rodman in check at all, and that combo floundered despite having high hopes. That’s an actual negative on court result due to off court issues.

Can keep going, everyone has problems like this at some point in their career.

Can you bring some evidence that DRob was causing issues with anyone but Rodman, who was a walking issue without any help? I've never heard it before.

Haley said strong religious beliefs -- including those of Robinson, Terry Cummings and Avery Johnson -- caused a rift in the Spurs locker room in the mid-90s.

https://www.espn.com.au/nba/draft2004/columns/story?id=1811526

A former teammate said David Robinson caused a rift in the Spurs’ locker room due to his proselytizing.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/jonathan-isaac-in-sermon-i-invited-my-magic-teammates-to-hear-me-preach-but-none-came

It is some evidence however, so thank you.

Errr ... it's evidence of something. I'm not sure it's evidence (even taking it at face value) of the initial statement that DR specifically was doing this "constantly" that it caused a situation where "a lot of his teammates couldn’t stand him". And even if we're taking Rodman's handler as an impartial source he also talks about how Robinson and Del Negro went out to lunch with Haley and Rodman at Robinson's initiation and Rodman "wouldn't respond". He goes on, "Dave tried everything ... He tried everything imaginable to bond with Dennis Rodman ... you keep going to someone and try to get through to them and the person continues to snub you ... I admire the guy for continuing to try. I would have thrown in the towel and said, 'Hey, F.U.'
But he continued to try to be a man and a leader, so for that I admire Dave." The story about a meal comes up again (hard to tell if its a greater deal retelling or multiple occasions but there's a retelling of Dennis chatting with Haley on the way there then once there with Robinson and Del Negro he's giving monosyllabic answer over a 2 1/2 hour meal).

I don't love all Robinson's politics, we don't know what goes on behind closed doors or away from the areana (and depending on the sources you trust you can find other quibbles) but even taking Haley at face value, he says Rodman was deliberately late for training and facilitated 90% of the trouble that came his way (this and the above from Lazenby's Airballs). I don't think it was a Robinson problem not being able to "control" Rodman - Rodman was annoyed with the new regime, was probably given too much rope by the old one. He needed to behave ... a bit, to not be actively harmful on the Bulls to get a new contract and there wasn't the rift with the organization. Put simply, I don't think Rodman on the Spurs is a David Robinson problem.

I'm bringing up Robinson to point out how everyone can have things cherry picked

okay but that makes

I mean you can try to contextualize it all you want

A bit galling because it seems to be telling people that they shouldn't contextualize it and by comparing them there is an implication the situations are at least somewhat similar or the analogy doesn't work.

how do we know it wasn’t because Robinson hurt team chemistry? ...

Again seems to be an explicit challenge to rebuke rather than 'Everyone has flaws, people are being inconsistent,' type angle.

I mean I also knew this was going to get dismissed immediately, because it goes against the narrative that’s being built here (Kobe bad, everyone else good).

Well I think it was always going to get dismissed because the idea of Robinson causing harm was wildly speculative and doesn't really have any foundation. Put that against say Game 7 2006 2nd half. There is an established body of thought that he didn't play to his ability in order to send a message. I'm not in a place to say how credible that it is (I would tend to believe and hope players give their best effort, especially in the playoffs and wouldn't risk compromising the integrity of the game and I suppose if suspicious enough their careers, though intentional excessive passivity would be hard to prove) but its a big enough deal if true and I guess widely enough considered plausible that ... if one wanted to advocate for Bryant in that area as a teammate I'd want to address it and would at least expect it come up (especially given the earlier teammate allegation). Ditto the Walker incident.


I think it would make more sense (than the generalized suggestion of a "dismissed ... because ... narrative that's being built here (Kobe bad") to go through complaints/issues probably from posters if you think people are cherry picking or perhaps your own list, give your opinion and compare with actually analogous situations
e.g.

hitting Samaki walker: This is what I believe happened ... I think Kobe reportedly hitting Samaki Walker was right/wrong/ uncertain because X/Y/Z. I believe the likely net impact was A/B/C.
Smush Parker relationship: This is what I believe happened ... I suspect that Parker saying Kobe never talked to him off court is hyperbole, I think that the "you aren't accomplished enough to talk to me ..." comments were(a joke/ a test/probably not actually made) ... I think this interpretation given in this post "blah, blah, blah" is incorrect/misleading/wrong because ...
I think on the whole his is broadly akin to X ...

Or not (understandable) ... but I don't think there's a generalized "Kobe bad, everyone else good" narrative and to the extent you think there is it might be best to address specific posts and/cover it systematically per the above.

As above I think the general Kobe landscape is pretty positive: he's got an award from the WNBA named after him and his daughter ... I can see worlds where he's less positively perceived (maybe some where fully seeing legal processes through at whichever level sees him missing some amount of time through one reason or another ... and there'll be some where there being no settlement works for him).

[Owly]

Do you genuinely believe Kobe has ever beaten a team comparable to the +4 srs 69 Lakers where 60's Jordan and Hakeem joined forces and still lost?

SRS is not a measure of absolute quality...

Fwiw, I would guess they have because that particular LA ('69) team, despite the names, just didn't seem to be as effective as the names (actual and invoked) might suggest (with the caveat that if one is looking at the finals opponents I don't otoh know what the Lakers were like with West and he missed significant time and now glancing at it one reckoning has them at circa 5.8 SRS, maybe tightening the rotation can squeeze their healthy top-end strength up a bit ... across era comps get dicey, mind you we are already diluting, lowering league average via expansion)- though within the series they were perhaps unlucky in that they outscored the the Celtics - (well I would suggest so if Kobe played against teams as single individual). Although if a team perhaps doesn't play up to their typical level (arguably part of what went on in 2001 sweep of the Spurs) even if you think their "real" typical strength is at a high level do you credit them with beating the a team of the higher level ...


On "3 guys who have won more" ... by what measure? By titles Sam Jones et al are still on the board. By your own winning toughness measure I think you've said Horry is above (and also has more titles) ...

i mean, 3 guys who are actually going to be voted on anywhere close to this range and who have at least multiple titles as the leader of their team (and even kareem would get debates on how many that exactly is). it all ties together, but horry is just a massive outlier in terms of underdog series (13 wins), actual vs expected titles (+4.92, highest ever), and highest career combined opponents SRS. but obviously getting to play with peak hakeem/shaq and prime duncan will help in those matters, though he almost certainly was around for too much outperformance to think it had nothing to do with him.

Okay but if we have actual tools that are much more accurate at measuring players that we can confidently say, "Sam Jones, you don't belong in this discussion" why not use them.

And as you allude to people will pivot to titles as the man and Kobe's probably only at 2.

Fwiw, are you naming those names because they're great players? I would think that if I wanted my team to outperform my regular season team I'd want those who outperformed themselves most rather than the generally good. Of course it's harder to know that it's "real" (If indeed any of it is), sustainable. But I'd want to be playing with Anthony Roberts, Bobby Wanzer, Trenton Hassell, Connie Simmons, Reggie King, Baron Davis, Spud Webb, Tommy Burleson, Jim Holstein, Bob Houbregs, Pep Saul ... good players and bad so long as they were raisers.

As others have noted I don't think it's fair to ding teams (or players) for playing well in the regular season. The dynastic Celtics played in the tougher conference, typically secured the one seed and won. If the Lakers sometimes had to beat trickier first round opposition than they might have otherwise it's tough for me to prize them doing well in that small sample to dig themselves out of a hole generated over a longer one.

i mean some of this is literally just having to face 4 playoff opponents instead of 2. while i suppose we could assume that bill russell going 10-0 in game 7's means he would also go 15-0 or 20-0, the celtics clearly lived on a knife's edge for a lot of their championships. having to face 2 more quality teams just simply makes it more likely that something will go wrong. and being the 1 team in the league that breaks away from the -2 to +2 mediocrity treadmill means you basically get to never face a great team, whereas even being the best team in a 30 team league means you are probably going to have 4 or 5 really good potential opponents around who will present a challenge because ending up with a league with equal team strength over 30 teams is much harder than over 8 or 9 teams.

also, this isn't punishing the celtics. it's just saying who they played and how much more you had to win and how much better the teams were if you wanted to get a title. it's just acknowledging that trying to get titles in a 2 round playoff against a +2.7 and then +2.3 team (bill russell's average title run) is much easier than doing so in a 4 round playoff against a +3.3 and then +5.3 and then +5.9 and then +4.3 team (kobe's average title run).

Okay but if you're in an nine team league and your SRS is +8.25 then the league average non-Celtic team is going to be a bit worse than -1. So yes it is easier to win a smaller tournament than a larger one, without any notion of team construction just, all teams equal there's as there's less competitors. But then say they expanded the NBA so that there were thirty teams and they could pick off the eighth or so man off each roster (if Red didn't trade his advice for immunity from getting picked, something I've read he did with the Bulls) and then picked up scraps from lesser leagues. The league average is lower, Boston are maybe slightly worse in real terms (if Red didn't wrangle protecting his team, they lose a decent player in real terms, maybe a better player than the other established teams lose) and look a lot better against a lower absolute standard "average" of which they now make up a smaller part. And they could now go through a 16 team playoff and rank 1st and beat one of the expansion teams that rank circa 16th might be circa neutral [maybe worse given the league's probably top heavy] and then they beat the circa 8th team that was one of the worst old teams but now look good and then they beat the two teams they actually beat who are now apparently much better. The Celtics look much better but the threat of those additional rounds is marginal.

Whilst SRS is a very valuable tool the idea of using it to measure "difficulty" with cross era comps ... it seems to rely on a static league average. I'm not saying there's a simple solution but you see the issue.

Mind you I think the broader point would be about how much does any of this have to do with Kobe Bryant's standard of play. I'd be inclined to argue it's tangential, at best

perhaps. but i would say in a world where we talk about how much a team won, how good your opponents were should be somewhat heavily considered.

I just think we have much better tools to measure players contribution to winning overall, rather than measuring players contributions to team winning by looking at how the team [not the player] won and the notional level of opponents [who might not have played at this exact level over a small sample and where a team/player seeking to maximize this would be best served by hunting for the 8th[or given it's era-dependent: bottom] seed in the regular season].

[HeartBreakKid]

I would suggest eliminating candidates votes from lowest first, and then distributing their preferences in that order, so we don't end up with too many preferences extinguished.

I believe this is how the last project was done.

[f4p]

Fwiw, I would guess they have because that particular LA ('69) team, despite the names, just didn't seem to be as effective as the names (actual and invoked) might suggest (with the caveat that if one is looking at the finals opponents I don't otoh know what the Lakers were like with West and he missed significant time and now glancing at it one reckoning has them at circa 5.8 SRS, maybe tightening the rotation can squeeze their healthy top-end strength up a bit ... across era comps get dicey, mind you we are already diluting, lowering league average via expansion)- though within the series they were perhaps unlucky in that they outscored the the Celtics - (well I would suggest so if Kobe played against teams as single individual). Although if a team perhaps doesn't play up to their typical level (arguably part of what went on in 2001 sweep of the Spurs) even if you think their "real" typical strength is at a high level do you credit them with beating the a team of the higher level ...


On "3 guys who have won more" ... by what measure? By titles Sam Jones et al are still on the board. By your own winning toughness measure I think you've said Horry is above (and also has more titles) ...

i mean, 3 guys who are actually going to be voted on anywhere close to this range and who have at least multiple titles as the leader of their team (and even kareem would get debates on how many that exactly is). it all ties together, but horry is just a massive outlier in terms of underdog series (13 wins), actual vs expected titles (+4.92, highest ever), and highest career combined opponents SRS. but obviously getting to play with peak hakeem/shaq and prime duncan will help in those matters, though he almost certainly was around for too much outperformance to think it had nothing to do with him.

Okay but if we have actual tools that are much more accurate at measuring players that we can confidently say, "Sam Jones, you don't belong in this discussion" why not use them.

And as you allude to people will pivot to titles as the man and Kobe's probably only at 2.

Fwiw, are you naming those names because they're great players? I would think that if I wanted my team to outperform my regular season team I'd want those who outperformed themselves most rather than the generally good. Of course it's harder to know that it's "real" (If indeed any of it is), sustainable. But I'd want to be playing with Anthony Roberts, Bobby Wanzer, Trenton Hassell, Connie Simmons, Reggie King, Baron Davis, Spud Webb, Tommy Burleson, Jim Holstein, Bob Houbregs, Pep Saul ... good players and bad so long as they were raisers.

the numbers i posted aren't about outperforming the regular season. they are just straight up who each player beat, in an absolute sense. if you have to beat 20 SRS worth of teams to win a title, it is less likely that you will win than if you have to beat +3 SRS worth of teams. this is not a controversial (or really debatable) conclusion.

As others have noted I don't think it's fair to ding teams (or players) for playing well in the regular season. The dynastic Celtics played in the tougher conference, typically secured the one seed and won. If the Lakers sometimes had to beat trickier first round opposition than they might have otherwise it's tough for me to prize them doing well in that small sample to dig themselves out of a hole generated over a longer one.

if they played in the tougher conference, then they should have been racking up combined SRS, right? they would have to go through all the good teams? FWIW, i went through the celtics entire run and, if they avoided the team with the 2nd best SRS in a season, i bumped their best opponent's SRS up to the 2nd best SRS. it gave the celtics all of about a +6 boost to russell's actual total of +60. in other words, that was essentially the upper limit of what was possible. so at best they would have got 11 titles out of beating +66 worth of teams.

also, there's no real evidence that the lakers somehow boosted their opponents' SRS by being bad in the regular season.

the 2000, 2008, 2009 and 2010 lakers were the #1 seed, so they faced the "worst" opponents they could, and they ended up facing a combined 76.4 worth of opponents despite seemingly having it easy like the celtics. if the 2001 lakers had been the #1 seed, they would have ended up facing a combined 18 SRS instead of 22 SRS and if the 2002 lakers had managed to be the #2 seed instead of the #3 seed (kings were clear by 3 wins but let's put the lakers over the spurs), they would have literally faced a 0.03 tougher opponent in the 1st round, so they maxed out again. we're talking about tiny changes on the margins of the overall conclusion.

i mean some of this is literally just having to face 4 playoff opponents instead of 2. while i suppose we could assume that bill russell going 10-0 in game 7's means he would also go 15-0 or 20-0, the celtics clearly lived on a knife's edge for a lot of their championships. having to face 2 more quality teams just simply makes it more likely that something will go wrong. and being the 1 team in the league that breaks away from the -2 to +2 mediocrity treadmill means you basically get to never face a great team, whereas even being the best team in a 30 team league means you are probably going to have 4 or 5 really good potential opponents around who will present a challenge because ending up with a league with equal team strength over 30 teams is much harder than over 8 or 9 teams.

also, this isn't punishing the celtics. it's just saying who they played and how much more you had to win and how much better the teams were if you wanted to get a title. it's just acknowledging that trying to get titles in a 2 round playoff against a +2.7 and then +2.3 team (bill russell's average title run) is much easier than doing so in a 4 round playoff against a +3.3 and then +5.3 and then +5.9 and then +4.3 team (kobe's average title run).

Okay but if you're in an nine team league and your SRS is +8.25 then the league average non-Celtic team is going to be a bit worse than -1. So yes it is easier to win a smaller tournament than a larger one, without any notion of team construction just, all teams equal there's as there's less competitors. But then say they expanded the NBA so that there were thirty teams and they could pick off the eighth or so man off each roster (if Red didn't trade his advice for immunity from getting picked, something I've read he did with the Bulls) and then picked up scraps from lesser leagues. The league average is lower, Boston are maybe slightly worse in real terms (if Red didn't wrangle protecting his team, they lose a decent player in real terms, maybe a better player than the other established teams lose) and look a lot better against a lower absolute standard "average" of which they now make up a smaller part. And they could now go through a 16 team playoff and rank 1st and beat one of the expansion teams that rank circa 16th might be circa neutral [maybe worse given the league's probably top heavy] and then they beat the circa 8th team that was one of the worst old teams but now look good and then they beat the two teams they actually beat who are now apparently much better. The Celtics look much better but the threat of those additional rounds is marginal.

okay, but none of that actually happened. maybe, maybe if kobe played in the 70's you could argue that might have some sort of effect on the numbers. but kobe played most of his career after decades worth of the talent pool expanding to meet, and probably exceed, the expanding number of teams. there was one team added during his 20 years. there is nothing to indicate that bill russell was playing against some concentrated talent set of superteams and kobe was just getting to beat the weaklings of an expanded league. the difference is 144 to 60. "maybe SRS slightly underrated this one team in this one year" isn't making up that difference.

even if you want to look at the celtics as suppressing everyone else's SRS. i took their SRS every year, divided by "(#Teams - 1)" and multiplied by the number of playoff series they played. i get that it would boost russell's combined opponent SRS by 20.8. so certainly a worthwhile thing to note. but doing the same thing for kobe gave him a boost of +8. so the net effect is +13. compared to a difference of +84.

Whilst SRS is a very valuable tool the idea of using it to measure "difficulty" with cross era comps ... it seems to rely on a static league average. I'm not saying there's a simple solution but you see the issue.

i think you're suggesting a larger effect than exists. while the league has expanded at varying rates, it has largely been tied to increasing population, increasing popularity (why the expansion is possible in the first place) and an increasing talent pool. there's not just some huge era bonus that we can give the 1960's or anything.

Mind you I think the broader point would be about how much does any of this have to do with Kobe Bryant's standard of play. I'd be inclined to argue it's tangential, at best

perhaps. but i would say in a world where we talk about how much a team won, how good your opponents were should be somewhat heavily considered.

I just think we have much better tools to measure players contribution to winning overall, rather than measuring players contributions to team winning by looking at how the team [not the player] won and the notional level of opponents [who might not have played at this exact level over a small sample and where a team/player seeking to maximize this would be best served by hunting for the 8th[or given it's era-dependent: bottom] seed in the regular season].

this is a data point. make of it what you will. team performance seems to be considered a big deal in this project. winning as much as someone but doing it against better competition would seem to indicate a team level performance that is better. how much you want to credit the individual will be up to each person doing the ranking. and as mentioned, "hunting for the 8th seed" isn't really having much of an effect on any of this. the lakers were the #1 seed 4 times. and even the #1 seed is eventually going to face 2 really good teams if they win it all.

[lessthanjake]

i mean, 3 guys who are actually going to be voted on anywhere close to this range and who have at least multiple titles as the leader of their team (and even kareem would get debates on how many that exactly is). it all ties together, but horry is just a massive outlier in terms of underdog series (13 wins), actual vs expected titles (+4.92, highest ever), and highest career combined opponents SRS. but obviously getting to play with peak hakeem/shaq and prime duncan will help in those matters, though he almost certainly was around for too much outperformance to think it had nothing to do with him.

Okay but if we have actual tools that are much more accurate at measuring players that we can confidently say, "Sam Jones, you don't belong in this discussion" why not use them.

And as you allude to people will pivot to titles as the man and Kobe's probably only at 2.

Fwiw, are you naming those names because they're great players? I would think that if I wanted my team to outperform my regular season team I'd want those who outperformed themselves most rather than the generally good. Of course it's harder to know that it's "real" (If indeed any of it is), sustainable. But I'd want to be playing with Anthony Roberts, Bobby Wanzer, Trenton Hassell, Connie Simmons, Reggie King, Baron Davis, Spud Webb, Tommy Burleson, Jim Holstein, Bob Houbregs, Pep Saul ... good players and bad so long as they were raisers.

the numbers i posted aren't about outperforming the regular season. they are just straight up who each player beat, in an absolute sense. if you have to beat 20 SRS worth of teams to win a title, it is less likely that you will win than if you have to beat +3 SRS worth of teams. this is not a controversial (or really debatable) conclusion.

What I’m about to say is more a general point rather than connecting back to any particular argument about current nominees, but the above isn’t actually necessarily true IMO. Let’s say Team A faces four playoff opponents that each have a 5 SRS. That’s a total of 20 SRS worth of opponents. And it’s a tough playoff run! Is it possible for a team to face only +3 SRS worth of opponents and have it be harder, though? I’d say yes. For instance, if Team B faces three -3 SRS teams and one 12 SRS team, that’s +3 SRS worth of opponents, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that Team B had an easier path to a title overall, because a 12 SRS team is exponentially harder to beat than a 5 SRS team.

Of course, this is an extreme example. Teams have never faced three -3 SRS opponents and one 12 SRS opponent. But that 20 SRS vs. 3 SRS thing is also a bit of an extreme example in terms of the numerical difference. More generally, there’s certainly examples where someone can have a tougher run without having higher SRS of opponents.

I think the better way to look at this would be to account for the combined implied title chances of the opponents based on their SRS. Ben Taylor once posted the below, many years ago. Not sure if the numbers would need updating a decade later, but I think the difficulty of a title run would probably be better described by adding these percentages together for all the opponents, because it would account for better teams being exponentially harder to beat:

Spoiler:

14 95.2%
13 92.0%
12 87.4%
11 82.2%
10 72.1%
9 62.7%
8 52.4%
7 35.3%
6 22.3%
5 16.3%
4 9.9%
3 3.7%
2 0.8%
1 0.4%
< 0 0.0%

Using those numbers, the difficulty of four 5 SRS opponents would, indeed, fall below having three -3 SRS and one 12 SRS opponent (65.2% title chances defeated vs. 87.4% title chances defeated). Which seems like the correct result to me in that particular hypothetical.

Of course, this is by no means perfect either. Some teams are much better than their regular season SRS, because they were sandbagging a bit or because of regular season injuries. Some teams are much worse than their regular season SRS, due to injuries in the playoffs. And, holding SRS and injuries constant, teams with an MVP-level player tend to outperform teams without one, in the playoffs. So we’d always need to layer on context. But I think this is a better starting point than just adding SRS.