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This is something that bothers me a bit. It seems like fellow NBA players seem to consider Kobe a top 3 or 5 guy, and most (not all) rank him above LeBron even now. There's a discrepancy between how former players and people on RealGM seem to view him. Why?

Don't get me wrong, I know he's a legend (somewhere around #10 for me). But I'm always puzzled as to why fellow players consider him a GOAT candidate.

Basketball players are envious of skills and things they can not do. They see talent as equal to goodness and most can't see beyond that. Because Kobe Bryant can do what most basketball players can't, they rate him high.

We see this with how little respect Rudy Gobert gets. He is quite clearly a top-10 player in the league over the past 2 years but I doubt any former players view him as such.

Because he won three and they wanted win also with 30 ppg.

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Kobe is fun to watch
its his playstyle

Kobe being one of the best players ever at making difficult shots impresses them

Because they don’t know and/or care about things like advanced stats or impact metrics. If they did it would be obvious he doesn’t resemble anything like a top 5 player ever.

Kobe was a great tough shot maker and an excellent man defender when dialed in.

So the things Kobe was good at show up at first glance and in the highlights and the the things he was less good at (e.g. lazy off ball defense at times, sometimes lazy defense against non-marquee matchups, tendency to settle for sub optimal shots) aren’t as readily apparent.

Also Jordan was a mythical figure and Kobe kind of played like him and had a similar attitude.

Also Kobe won a bunch of championships when many of the current talking heads were in the league and was also peaking when a lot of the current great players were young and impressionable.

First, NBA players ranking guy in the teens in the top 10 isn't that much of an overrate. The difference between a top 10 guy and a guy in the teens is awfully small. I can think of a lot of players who get overrated a lot more by their peers more.

Why does he get the slight boost? Players overvalue skillsets and Kobe had a god one. Players overvalue rings and Kobe had enough for 1 hand. Not hard to understand.

Because the Hornets were forced to trade him.

Play style. , over reliance on tough mid range jumpers. And he was actually an all time great player

he was already great and also gets a bunch of boosts

such like playing in los Ángeles, high scoring style based of high dificulty shots, lots of rings, modern player, offensive star rather than defensive one etc

Colbinii wrote:Basketball players are envious of skills and things they can not do. They see talent as equal to goodness and most can't see beyond that. Because Kobe Bryant can do what most basketball players can't, they rate him high.

We see this with how little respect Rudy Gobert gets. He is quite clearly a top-10 player in the league over the past 2 years but I doubt any former players view him as such.

I don't remember seeing anyone having Gobert as top 10ish aside from you.

sp6r=underrated wrote:First, NBA players ranking guy in the teens in the top 10 isn't that much of an overrate. The difference between a top 10 guy and a guy in the teens is awfully small. I can think of a lot of players who get overrated a lot more by their peers more.

Why does he get the slight boost? Players overvalue skillsets and Kobe had a god one. Players overvalue rings and Kobe had enough for 1 hand. Not hard to understand.

I believe the OP came with the assumption that Kobe is a GOAT candidate and if true that is very different from how this board rates him at least.

Kobe is an icon, many players idolize him and give him the benefit of the doubt against just about anyone not named MJ. Same reason Allen Iverson is consistently overrated by players.

Another reason is that most of the top 10 are big men (Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Duncan, Shaq and Hakeem) and players and media tend to gravitate to perimeter players.

dygaction wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Basketball players are envious of skills and things they can not do. They see talent as equal to goodness and most can't see beyond that. Because Kobe Bryant can do what most basketball players can't, they rate him high.

We see this with how little respect Rudy Gobert gets. He is quite clearly a top-10 player in the league over the past 2 years but I doubt any former players view him as such.

I don't remember seeing anyone having Gobert as top 10ish aside from you.

A lot of posters have Gobert inside top 10... and rightfully so. He's been amazing in recent years, can't see any case for leaving him out of top 10.

70sFan wrote:

dygaction wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Basketball players are envious of skills and things they can not do. They see talent as equal to goodness and most can't see beyond that. Because Kobe Bryant can do what most basketball players can't, they rate him high.

We see this with how little respect Rudy Gobert gets. He is quite clearly a top-10 player in the league over the past 2 years but I doubt any former players view him as such.

I don't remember seeing anyone having Gobert as top 10ish aside from you.

A lot of posters have Gobert inside top 10... and rightfully so. He's been amazing in recent years, can't see any case for leaving him out of top 10.

If there were, which I seldom saw, hope they realized how ineffective he was in the playoffs and how easy he could be taken advantage of defensively. Most lists have him borderline 15-20. His salary is top 10 worthy though ($205M/5yr), ouch.

dygaction wrote:

70sFan wrote:

dygaction wrote:
I don't remember seeing anyone having Gobert as top 10ish aside from you.

A lot of posters have Gobert inside top 10... and rightfully so. He's been amazing in recent years, can't see any case for leaving him out of top 10.

If there were, which I seldom saw, hope they realized how ineffective he was in the playoffs and how easy he could be taken advantage of defensively. Most lists have him borderline 15-20. His salary is top 10 worthy though ($205M/5yr), ouch.

So you like repeating myths, don't you?

I'm quite sure that Giannis also would look "exposed" defensively if he had to play with such a poor collection of perimeter defenders. No, Gobert wasn't taken advantage of, teams took advantage of Jazz horrible perimeter defense and Rudy couldn't stop drives and defend three point line at the same time.

70sFan wrote:

dygaction wrote:

70sFan wrote:A lot of posters have Gobert inside top 10... and rightfully so. He's been amazing in recent years, can't see any case for leaving him out of top 10.

If there were, which I seldom saw, hope they realized how ineffective he was in the playoffs and how easy he could be taken advantage of defensively. Most lists have him borderline 15-20. His salary is top 10 worthy though ($205M/5yr), ouch.

So you like repeating myths, don't you?

I'm quite sure that Giannis also would look "exposed" defensively if he had to play with such a poor collection of perimeter defenders. No, Gobert wasn't taken advantage of, teams took advantage of Jazz horrible perimeter defense and Rudy couldn't stop drives and defend three point line at the same time.

Sounds like you don't want to look at the facts but repeating the myths. Giannis adjusted and won. The problem with Gobert is not one season. Over the past 5 seasons (17-21), he was a superman DPOY level defender in the regular season (ORTG 127, DRTG 100, DWS 5.0, DBPM 2.3) but consistently underperform/lackluster in playoffs (ORTG129, DRTG 110, DWS 1.7, DBPM 1.4).

Because they probably don't rate players they haven't seen play. Also because of his recent death.

Think about it if you had somebody like Devin Booker rate the best players of all time he's probably excluding Russell, Mikan, Wilt, West, Oscar, Kareem, Hakeem, Magic, Bird, MJ. Removing 10 players makes Kobe either top 1-3 by default and that's before personal bias like whether you like Shaq, Duncan, Kobe, whomever.

dygaction wrote:

70sFan wrote:

dygaction wrote:
If there were, which I seldom saw, hope they realized how ineffective he was in the playoffs and how easy he could be taken advantage of defensively. Most lists have him borderline 15-20. His salary is top 10 worthy though ($205M/5yr), ouch.

So you like repeating myths, don't you?

I'm quite sure that Giannis also would look "exposed" defensively if he had to play with such a poor collection of perimeter defenders. No, Gobert wasn't taken advantage of, teams took advantage of Jazz horrible perimeter defense and Rudy couldn't stop drives and defend three point line at the same time.

Sounds like you don't want to look at the facts but repeating the myths. Giannis adjusted and won. The problem with Gobert is not one season. Over the past 5 seasons (17-21), he was a superman DPOY level defender in the regular season (ORTG 127, DRTG 100, DWS 5.0, DBPM 2.3) but consistently underperform/lackluster in playoffs (ORTG129, DRTG 110, DWS 1.7, DBPM 1.4).

So you are still on the stage of evaluating defense by boxscore stats?

Jazz had 118.8 DRtg in 2021 playoffs with Gobert on the court. It doesn't look good in absolute sense, until you realize that they were also 130.3 without him. It's the worst defensive rating I've ever seen, far worse than anything we've seen among the worst defensive teams ever. Of course, on/off numbers are extremely noisy for postseason runs but it is backed up by RS on/off and eye test. Jazz sucked so much on defense without Gobert that they would be the worst team in the league defensively.

Giannis is amazing defender, but he also plays with all-defensive players around him. Replace Conley/Mitchell/Bogdanovic with Jrue/Khris/Tucker and Jazz defense would be more than just fine.