drza wrote:An Unbiased Fan wrote:drza wrote:I'm having trouble evaluating Paul, LeBron and Kobe. My feeling is that LeBron was the best of them in the regular season, with Paul second and Kobe third. In the postseason LeBron obviously wasn't efficient against the Celtics, but he came awfully dang close to toppling that team and I credit him for that. So I guess I'm talking myself into having him above the other two.
When it comes to Kobe vs Paul, I'm torn. The stats tell me that Paul was significantly better. I thought that Kobe was pretty strong in the postseason, though. I do feel that he was given some of the credit for the Lakers' run that should have gone to the Gasol/Odom front line. Kobe was definitely the best player, but I think Gasol should have gotten a bit more love.
I'm interested to see if any particularly compelling arguments come to light for any of the above
The problem with Lebron is that he didn't play great defense in 2008, and led the Cavs to only 45 wins in a very weak East. In the playoffs he beat a 43 win Wiz team, but was very erratic on both offense & defense in the Celtic series. He ended up shooting 41% for the playoffs.
Kobe to me was the best. Paul had great numbers, but in the context of the opposing offensive schemes, I would say both were even. Kobe added defense to the equation though, and this along with his leadership, especially 2 weeks before the end of the season and the playoffs, give him the edge.
Re: postseason. I have some experience paying close attention to what happens to a lone-superstar that is expected to do everything when he is leading a team without a lot of talent against great opposition in the playoffs. In most cases your efficiency gets a lot lower, which makes your boxscore stats not as impressive. But I tend to look more at overall impact than purely what the box scores show, which is one of the things I like about the +/- stats. They aren't perfect, but they often seem to show when a player is having a big impact that the box scores don't catch.
That said, LeBron's postseason +30.9 on-court/off-court plus minus was telling to me. He might not have been efficient, he might have been grinding, but dangit he made a lot of people in Boston hold their breaths. To me, that was more impressive than what Kobe accomplished under better circumstances.
Lebron had a horrible series against the Celtics. I don't see how his postseason was more impressive than Kobe's. Lebron beat a 43 win team and proceeded to shoot 35.5% against Boston and averaged 5.3 turnovers a game.
Kobe led his team without Bynum to 3 series wins against 50+ win opponents and had a better series against Boston than Lebron.
If the Finals were a 2-2-1-1-1 format, LA/Bos would have gone 7 games too.
Boston vs Celveland 2008:
Game 1 - Lebron 12 points (2-18) FG, 9 ast, 9 rebs, 10 turnovers
Game 2 - Lebron 21 points (6-24) FG, 6 ast, 5 rebs, 7 turnovers
Game 3 - Lebron 21 points (5-16) FG, 8 ast, 5 rebs, 2 turnovers
Game 4 - Lebron 21 points (7-20) FG, 13 ast, 6 rebs, 4 turnovers
Game 5 - Lebron 35 points (12-25) FG, 5 ast, 3 rebs, 4 turnovers
Game 6 - Lebron 32 points (9-23) FG, 6 ast, 12 rebs, 8 turnovers
Game 7 - Lebron 45 points (14-29) FG, 6 ast, 5 rebs, 2 turnovers
26.7 ppg/7.6 apg/6.4 rpg/ 5.3 tos 35.5% FG
Boston vs LA 2008:
Game 1 - Kobe 24 points (9-26) FG, 6 ast, 3 rebs, 4 turnovers
Game 2 - Kobe 30 points (11-23) FG, 8 ast, 4 rebs, 4 turnovers
Game 3 - Kobe 36 points (12-20) FG, 1 ast, 7 rebs, 3 turnovers
Game 4 - Kobe 17 points (6-19) FG, 10 ast, 4 rebs, 2 turnovers
Game 5 - Kobe 25 points (8-21) FG, 4 ast, 7 rebs, 6 turnovers
Game 6 - Kobe 22 points (7-22) FG, 1 ast, 3 rebs, 4 turnovers
25.7 ppg/5 apg/4.7 rpg/3.8 tos 40.5% FG
