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there been good args against bird in the top 100 so i wanna know what the args for him are

Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

One_and_Done wrote:Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

kob made the 08-10 lakers a contender...

does bird actually got better impact whatever or r u just saying things

ShaqAttac wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

kob made the 08-10 lakers a contender...

does bird actually got better impact whatever or r u just saying things

The 08-10 Lakers could have won 50 games a year without Kobe. We saw that from what Pau did in Memphis with meh support players.

Bird joined a 29 win team with a minus 4.8 SRS as a rookie and turned them into a 61 win 7.4 SRS team. That's the difference in their impact.

Bird is just a much better offensive player, with their defensive value being similar. Obviously kobe reduces the gap with longevity but as far as prime there's really no comparison. His combination of shooting, passing, movement, iq just were so good for any offense.

Bird lead the NBA in PER, BPM, VORP and WS multiple times. Kobe never lead the NBA in any of them.

One_and_Done wrote:

ShaqAttac wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

kob made the 08-10 lakers a contender...

does bird actually got better impact whatever or r u just saying things

The 08-10 Lakers could have won 50 games a year without Kobe. We saw that from what Pau did in Memphis with meh support players.

Bird joined a 29 win team with a minus 4.8 SRS as a rookie and turned them into a 61 win 7.4 SRS team. That's the difference in their impact.

And then they got smashed by the 52-win pace Sixers and only matched that srs mark once thereafter. Kobe turning a contention-level rs team into a +20 playoff side is a way more impressive one-off.

PS: I have no clue where you got "50-wins" from, but the Bird-less Celtics(mysteriously never reaching those 1980 regular season highs) were a 45-win team without Bird from 88/89. By Moonbeam's stuff Bird is consistently lower than mj, magic, and hakeem throughout the 80's

Bird>Kobe is also pretty untenable for modernism

Gibson22 wrote:Bird is just a much better offensive player, with their defensive value being similar. Obviously kobe reduces the gap with longevity but as far as prime there's really no comparison. His combination of shooting, passing, movement, iq just were so good for any offense.

And yet they led similar offenses with similar impact portfolios with Kobe. not Bird, proving he could win without a specific co-star while being forced into difficult isolation looks again and again by the triangle.

Kobe is a much better ball-handler, a comparable creator, a better defender, and a significantly better scorer who doesn't fold again and again in the playoffs.

Let's be honest. Pretending Bird was much better is a matter of vibes, not basketball.

As is, even by the inputs of a guy who has bird top 5 and kobe as fringe top 20, Kobe still generates significantly more value over the course of his career.

Honestly baffling Bird is still included in top 10 conversations here

One_and_Done wrote:

ShaqAttac wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

kob made the 08-10 lakers a contender...

does bird actually got better impact whatever or r u just saying things

The 08-10 Lakers could have won 50 games a year without Kobe. We saw that from what Pau did in Memphis with meh support players.

Bird joined a 29 win team with a minus 4.8 SRS as a rookie and turned them into a 61 win 7.4 SRS team. That's the difference in their impact.

What makes you think the 08-10 lakers are coming close to a 50 win team without kobe???

Gibson22 wrote:Bird is just a much better offensive player, with their defensive value being similar. Obviously kobe reduces the gap with longevity but as far as prime there's really no comparison. His combination of shooting, passing, movement, iq just were so good for any offense.

Bird isn’t better offensively than Kobe (although it’s close between the two)

Peak for peak the two are very comparable but Kobe has far superior longevity

Well, personally I don't anymore.
I used to rank Bird ahead, but I hit a point where I began to feel I put him higher simply because I wanted to, for nostalgia's sake (because I "liked" Bird more, appreciated his career more).
However, it wasn't so clear or easily justified if being honest about my criteria.

Did Bird have greater impact? I suspect he may have, but not by a substantial margin. For more information, I believe there is some data pertaining to both players presented within the bowels of the #9 thread of the current top 100 project.

For my part, I do think Bird peaked a little higher. If I'm comparing "average prime years", I think Bird's are a little better, even though Kobe is a touch more playoff-resilient, fwiw.

However, as I've established for years and years, I'm a total career value [above replacement] kind of guy when it comes to player evaluations (beginning to incorporate a touch of CORP principle, too). And Kobe sort of destroys Bird on the longevity/durability spectrum, which becomes awfully relevant to such an approach.

Take what I might call Kobe's "extended prime" (a slightly liberal view of what might be called "prime" years), what I'd gauge to be '01-'13....

That's 13 seasons (the length of Bird's ENTIRE career). I've just got through saying I think Bird's average prime year is better than Kobe's average prime year; but those 13 years include some of Bird's NON-prime, too. In his full-career avg season, is he better than an average PRIME season of Kobe? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, we're certainly not talking about a notable margin, imo.

And that's before giving recognition to the fact that from '01-'13 Kobe played 76 more games and nearly 3400 more minutes than Bird did [in his whole career]. In short: in terms of availability, Kobe's got ~1 full season more PRIME games/minutes played than Bird played in his whole career.

And Kobe's got some additional value added from '98-'00, too ('97 and '14-'16 are of no consequence to me).


In light of all that, I hit a point where I had a great deal of difficulty putting Bird's 13 years [really it's only 12] ahead of all that [16 years] of relevant Kobe seasons. For awhile [even after recognizing that], I justified keeping Bird ahead by telling myself that Bird was "bigger/more important for the game", "more iconic" than Kobe.

The thing that dispelled that notion was Kobe's death, watching the world react. Realistically, I should have known after the summer of '08 [the Redeem Team]. That spectacle made it clear that Kobe's persona transcended just the sport; he was a cultural touchstone, in a global sense. But somehow I missed it (or simply denied it) until his death.


So, no longer having that "excuse", I made the switch. In a way it was liberating. I stopped playing favourites, stopped bowing to a long-established hierarchy I'd established in my mind [e.g. "Bird cannot go lower than X place..."], and the world didn't end.

ceoofkobefans wrote:

Gibson22 wrote:Bird is just a much better offensive player, with their defensive value being similar. Obviously kobe reduces the gap with longevity but as far as prime there's really no comparison. His combination of shooting, passing, movement, iq just were so good for any offense.

Bird isn’t better offensively than Kobe (although it’s close between the two)

Peak for peak the two are very comparable but Kobe has far superior longevity

close relative to era. Anything but if you break era-relativity

trex_8063 wrote:Well, personally I don't anymore.
I used to rank Bird ahead, but I hit a point where I began to feel I put him higher simply because I wanted to, for nostalgia's sake (because I "liked" Bird more, appreciated his career more).
However, it wasn't so clear or easily justified if being honest about my criteria.

Did Bird have greater impact? I suspect he may have, but not by a substantial margin. For more information, I believe there is some data pertaining to both players presented within the bowels of the #9 thread of the current top 100 project.

For my part, I do think Bird peaked a little higher. If I'm comparing "average prime years", I think Bird's are a little better, even though Kobe is a touch more playoff-resilient, fwiw.

However, as I've established for years and years, I'm a total career value [above replacement] kind of guy when it comes to player evaluations (beginning to incorporate a touch of CORP principle, too). And Kobe sort of destroys Bird on the longevity/durability spectrum, which becomes awfully relevant to such an approach.

Take what I might call Kobe's "extended prime" (a slightly liberal view of what might be called "prime" years), what I'd gauge to be '01-'13....

That's 13 seasons (the length of Bird's ENTIRE career). I've just got through saying I think Bird's average prime year is better than Kobe's average prime year; but those 13 years include some of Bird's NON-prime, too. In his full-career avg season, is he better than an average PRIME season of Kobe? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, we're certainly not talking about a notable margin, imo.

And that's before giving recognition to the fact that from '01-'13 Kobe played 76 more games and nearly 3400 more minutes than Bird did [in his whole career]. In short: in terms of availability, Kobe's got ~1 full season more PRIME games/minutes played than Bird played in his whole career.

And Kobe's got some additional value added from '98-'00, too ('97 and '14-'16 are of no consequence to me).


In light of all that, I hit a point where I had a great deal of difficulty putting Bird's 13 years [really it's only 12] ahead of all that [16 years] of relevant Kobe seasons. For awhile [even after recognizing that], I justified keeping Bird ahead by telling myself that Bird was "bigger/more important for the game", "more iconic" than Kobe.

The thing that dispelled that notion was Kobe's death, watching the world react. Realistically, I should have known after the summer of '08 [the Redeem Team]. That spectacle made it clear that Kobe's persona transcended just the sport; he was a cultural touchstone, in a global sense. But somehow I missed it (or simply denied it) until his death.


So, no longer having that "excuse", I made the switch. In a way it was liberating. I stopped playing favourites, stopped bowing to a long-established hierarchy I'd established in my mind [e.g. "Bird cannot go lower than X place..."], and the world didn't end.

Counter-point: Did Kobe really provide much value outside of his prime years? '97 and '98 he's coming off the bench and has a negative BPM in the playoffs. 2013 he has an injury that keeps him from being available for the playoffs (which the Lakers barely made). 2014-2016 he's arguably a negative player. So really, you've got like 14 years at most where he really gives you anything significant. In that 14 year span, Kobe has 72.1 VORP compared to 77.2 VORP for Bird in 13 seasons (really 12 since he missed almost all of '89). IDK, Kobe does have a longevity edge, but I don't think it's gamebreaking or anything. I only have Bird one or two spots ahead of Kobe though so it's not like I would have any kind of major difference between them.

OhayoKD wrote:And then they got smashed by the 52-win pace Sixers and only matched that srs mark once thereafter. Kobe turning a contention-level rs team into a +20 playoff side is a way more impressive one-off.

What do you mean "52-win pace" team? Are you looking at their SRS (which was 4th best in the league anyway) or net rating (also 4th) or something? Because that was a 59-win team in reality, one which topped the league in defense. They weren't much able to stop Doctor J and that was a large problem for them.

And yet they led similar offenses with similar impact portfolios with Kobe. not Bird, proving he could win without a specific co-star while being forced into difficult isolation looks again and again by the triangle.

Kobe definitely proved himself as an isolation scorer.

With respect to team offense, peak Boston from 85-88 was at +4.9, +4.6, +5.2 and +7.4 team ORTG. They were at +4.1 in 1980.

Post-Shaq, the Lakers managed +5.5 and +4.5 in 08 and 09. Kobe didn't have a single season with a TS Add comparable to 88 Bird, He peaked in 07 at about 160, a mark which Bird bested 3 times (and was at 250+ in consecutive years).

Kobe is ... a significantly better scorer who doesn't fold again and again in the playoffs.

Don't know about that. He folded pretty regularly in the Finals, leastwise as a scorer. He was considerably worse in Finals series across his career, 02 notwithstanding, and scored below playoff average in every Finals series apart from 2002.

DraymondGold's WOWY look doesn't love his top-end impact relative to Bird. VORP likes Bird a LOT better than Kobe, having him leading the league 4 seasons in a row and with 8+ in 4 straight seasons, 7+ in 6 straight. Kobe hit 7+ twice in his career and never led the league. He also never led the league in WS/48 or OBPM, though his 06 peak is close to Bird's in that regard. Again, these are box score aggregates and all that stuff, sure. But we don't have full PBP data for the older seasons, so we have only so much to work with.

To act like Bird doesn't belong in this conversation is ridiculous. To prefer Kobe over Bird is not ridiculous, but you're being overly dramatic. Kobe was definitely a better isolation scorer. That meant less in the RS, but Bird's resilience as a scoring threat in the playoffs isn't amazing relative to Kobe's, which is surely a mark in Bryant's favor.

PlayVal favors Bird a fair bit, but Kobe's Box Creation does actually top out notably higher from 05 onward. ScoreVal actually prefers Bird at his peak. 86 and 87 playoff Bird are competitive with Kobe. PS PlayVal favors Bird. Playoff Box Creation slightly favors Kobe, mostly from that 08-10 run, which was quite impressive. Playoff Passer Rating clearly favors Bird.

So again, with what quantitative data is present, it isn't all a cheering procession for Kobe, and acting like it is doesn't foster productive conversation. There is a very competitive pro-Kobe argument, but that isn't quite the same as what you're representing here.

iggymcfrack wrote:

trex_8063 wrote:Well, personally I don't anymore.
I used to rank Bird ahead, but I hit a point where I began to feel I put him higher simply because I wanted to, for nostalgia's sake (because I "liked" Bird more, appreciated his career more).
However, it wasn't so clear or easily justified if being honest about my criteria.

Did Bird have greater impact? I suspect he may have, but not by a substantial margin. For more information, I believe there is some data pertaining to both players presented within the bowels of the #9 thread of the current top 100 project.

For my part, I do think Bird peaked a little higher. If I'm comparing "average prime years", I think Bird's are a little better, even though Kobe is a touch more playoff-resilient, fwiw.

However, as I've established for years and years, I'm a total career value [above replacement] kind of guy when it comes to player evaluations (beginning to incorporate a touch of CORP principle, too). And Kobe sort of destroys Bird on the longevity/durability spectrum, which becomes awfully relevant to such an approach.

Take what I might call Kobe's "extended prime" (a slightly liberal view of what might be called "prime" years), what I'd gauge to be '01-'13....

That's 13 seasons (the length of Bird's ENTIRE career). I've just got through saying I think Bird's average prime year is better than Kobe's average prime year; but those 13 years include some of Bird's NON-prime, too. In his full-career avg season, is he better than an average PRIME season of Kobe? Maybe, maybe not. If it is, we're certainly not talking about a notable margin, imo.

And that's before giving recognition to the fact that from '01-'13 Kobe played 76 more games and nearly 3400 more minutes than Bird did [in his whole career]. In short: in terms of availability, Kobe's got ~1 full season more PRIME games/minutes played than Bird played in his whole career.

And Kobe's got some additional value added from '98-'00, too ('97 and '14-'16 are of no consequence to me).


In light of all that, I hit a point where I had a great deal of difficulty putting Bird's 13 years [really it's only 12] ahead of all that [16 years] of relevant Kobe seasons. For awhile [even after recognizing that], I justified keeping Bird ahead by telling myself that Bird was "bigger/more important for the game", "more iconic" than Kobe.

The thing that dispelled that notion was Kobe's death, watching the world react. Realistically, I should have known after the summer of '08 [the Redeem Team]. That spectacle made it clear that Kobe's persona transcended just the sport; he was a cultural touchstone, in a global sense. But somehow I missed it (or simply denied it) until his death.


So, no longer having that "excuse", I made the switch. In a way it was liberating. I stopped playing favourites, stopped bowing to a long-established hierarchy I'd established in my mind [e.g. "Bird cannot go lower than X place..."], and the world didn't end.

Counter-point: Did Kobe really provide much value outside of his prime years? '97 and '98 he's coming off the bench and has a negative BPM in the playoffs. 2013 he has an injury that keeps him from being available for the playoffs (which the Lakers barely made). 2014-2016 he's arguably a negative player. So really, you've got like 14 years at most where he really gives you anything significant. In that 14 year span, Kobe has 72.1 VORP compared to 77.2 VORP for Bird in 13 seasons (really 12 since he missed almost all of '89). IDK, Kobe does have a longevity edge, but I don't think it's gamebreaking or anything. I only have Bird one or two spots ahead of Kobe though so it's not like I would have any kind of major difference between them.

Here's how the career value breaks down from a guy who has Bird top 5(pretty indefensible imo) and Kobe as a fringe top 20 guy:

Kobe still comes out comfortably ahead of Bird(and a little head of magic)

And yes, you might also notice Garnett is way ahead of all-three(though how you feel about magic/hiv comes into play here)

One_and_Done wrote:

ShaqAttac wrote:

One_and_Done wrote:Better impact. Kobe is a tool you add to supplenent a contender, Bird is the guy who makes you a contender in the first place. Bird's impact is just higher, so much so that Kobe's longevity isn't enough to overcome it.

kob made the 08-10 lakers a contender...

does bird actually got better impact whatever or r u just saying things

The 08-10 Lakers could have won 50 games a year without Kobe. We saw that from what Pau did in Memphis with meh support players.

Bird joined a 29 win team with a minus 4.8 SRS as a rookie and turned them into a 61 win 7.4 SRS team. That's the difference in their impact.

Happy Friday

We know what Bird's Celtics were before he got there; a 29 win team. Yeh, there were some other things that changed a little between 79 and 80, but none of it was stuff that moved the needle much. Cowens was worse. Tiny was healthier, but he and Cowens were 'look how good the team is, they deserve more representation' type of all-stars. It was Bird making them look good, and he was the guy carrying them. The Celts were 12-4 in games Cowens missed for example. I've already explained how topping out & the law of diminishing returns works, so I'm not fussed that the Celts SRS was rarely much higher after this. The East also improved around them, which would affect SRS too.

By 88/89 the Celtics were completely different and had been supplemented by other players. Lift isn't linear either. It's much tougher to take a 40 win team to 60 wins than a 20 win team to 40 wins. Bird could do the former, Kobe was more in the latter camp.

It's very clear from what Pau did in Memphis that he could be the centrepiece of a 50 win team himself. Throw in all the other good players like Odom, Artest/Ariza, Bynum, etc, and Kobe's Lakers could have won 50+ games a year without him on average. Pau wishes he had that much help for some of those Memphis playoff runs. His 2006 Grizz teamwon 49 games in a brutal West with a starting line-up of Pau, L.Wright/Tsakalidis, Damon/Chucky Atkins, Eddie Jones and Shane Battier. Odom would have been better than any of those guys, as would a line-up of Pau, Odom, Artest/Ariza, Fisher & Bynum.

There is a very competitive pro-Kobe argument, but that isn't quite the same as what you're representing here.

I specfically took issue with the idea Bird was "much better"...

tsherkin wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:And then they got smashed by the 52-win pace Sixers and only matched that srs mark once thereafter. Kobe turning a contention-level rs team into a +20 playoff side is a way more impressive one-off.

What do you mean "52-win pace" team? Are you looking at their SRS (which was 4th best in the league anyway) or net rating (also 4th) or something? Because that was a 59-win team in reality, one which topped the league in defense. They weren't much able to stop Doctor J and that was a large problem for them.

Yes. SRS is more predictive so I tend to use that when available. Point is they were nowhere near as good as their rs when it mattered. If people are going to put all this stock into unreplicated one-off signals(which btw, is why he scores so much higher in dray's wowy than moonbeam's), then why are we stopping at the rs.

And yet they led similar offenses with similar impact portfolios with Kobe. not Bird, proving he could win without a specific co-star while being forced into difficult isolation looks again and again by the triangle.

Kobe definitely proved himself as an isolation scorer.

He proved himself in a great many ways I'd say. Synergy had Kobe scoring near or above the 90th percentile on basically every type of offensive play. Isolation-scoring without illegal d is inherently less inefficient than other play-types, but that is a matter of scheme more than ability. The triangle forced him to take the most ineffecient shots, but that does not mean he was incapable of hitting the easier ones. As in compared to the peers, his efficiency was actually elite when you compare players across the same shot types(you may have already seen this):

Kobe's alot more efficient than people think and he certainly has a more complete arsenal than Bird. Hence why Bird drops while Kobe generally maintains(despite much higher milage).

With respect to team offense, peak Boston from 85-88 was at +4.9, +4.6, +5.2 and +7.4 team ORTG. They were at +4.1 in 1980.


Post-Shaq, the Lakers managed +5.5 and +4.5 in 08 and 09. Kobe didn't have a single season with a TS Add comparable to 88 Bird, He peaked in 07 at about 160, a mark which Bird bested 3 times (and was at 250+ in consecutive years).

TS Add assumes volume/efficiency scale linearly(it doesn't). We can actually see this with Bird in the playoffs. The volume goes down. The Efficiency does not go up. Moreover, this isn't a matter of him shifting to his creation because his creation also drops(ast% goes down). It's the reverse of what we see with Kevin Durant, and I think Bird is plagued by a similar problem:

Bird's a great passer...if his teammates get him the ball at the right spots, and if they can do a little extra to get past the defenders Bird does not take out of a play:

Something else to consider: as the "eye test" bit here comes from a highlight reel, we are theoretically getting Bird's most valuable assists. Take a look at a year some consider his offensive peak like 1987, and I think you'll notice a bug chunk of those assists, are not taking extra defenders out of the play. In other words, he is barely creating anything.

And yes, Kobe dropped off facing some of the greatest playoff defenses ever. But I don't see how this marks some advantage for Bird when, faced with not as good defenses(88 Pistons), his teams might see their o-rating drop by 13 points. That was IIRC, the same year as that outlying regular season +7.4 you listed. I don't see the point of cherrypicking a series here or there, Kobe in general is more reselient, and he probably faced better defenses while making deeper runs again, and again, and again.

Otherwise non-shaq Kobe and Bird's offenses matchup pretty well, and that is not including 2001 where the Lakers posted the 2nd best playoff offense ever with Kobe
-> averaging more minutes(regular season too)
-> his team's primary ball-handler
-> ramping up his production to the point he was outscoring and outscoring shaq on better effeciency through 3 of 4 rounds(including the most important one vs san antonio)
-> playing goatish lvl defense(for a guard)
-> scorching shaq in on/off and matching or exceeding him in "sophisticated" box and box/impact hybrids

You can tell me it's shaq's gravity this or shaq's ft's that but at no other point has any team of shaq's played basketball anywhere near that level with or without and it's not shaq whose going way up here.

I don't see what justifies Bird being "much better" than that though I guess this takes us too...

DraymondGold's WOWY look doesn't love his top-end impact relative to Bird. VORP likes Bird a LOT better than Kobe, having him leading the league 4 seasons in a row and with 8+ in 4 straight seasons, 7+ in 6 straight. Kobe hit 7+ twice in his career and never led the league. He also never led the league in WS/48 or OBPM, though his 06 peak is close to Bird's in that regard. Again, these are box score aggregates and all that stuff, sure. But we don't have full PBP data for the older seasons, so we have only so much to work with.

Draymondgold's WOWY has a 30-game sample filter. IOW, it's basically just looking at 1979. And we have the issue here where outside of when the Celtics defense spikes(6th man Walton is slept on), in 1986, the Celtics never match that one-off. In 87/88(this is the sample Ben chooses for his peak video fwiw), the Celtics are a 45-win team without Bird. 61 win with. Very good. Nowhere near as good as you would hope if you're taking 1980 at face-value.

I think I prefer moonbeam's method(yes box, but when it is used for internal scaling bias becomes less of an issue), where Bird is consistently behind several star contemporaries. And this is all regular season.

I don't really put that much stock in the box-stuff but fwiw, I think Bird is helped here by racking up a deprotonate amount of uncontested rebounds and box not capturing when bird gets hit defensively. I'm not going to say he was a negative generally, but there are games where he is having a high volume of major and minor breakdowns(fwiw there's some film-tracking I've vetted from the first game of the 87 ecf and his defense honestly looks horrific).

So again, with what quantitative data is present, it isn't all a cheering procession for Kobe, and acting like it is doesn't foster productive conversation.

Sure. But Kobe has a massive longevity advantage, so unless you don't factor that in(and many people who rank bird higher supposedly do) I do not really see how ranking Bird higher makes any sense.

Doubly so if you're factoring in how players play in other eras like OaD is.

Triply so if you care about things like winning and championships.

Bird being way better is just silly I think. I don't see how you get there unless you put all your stock in 1980 or you're conflating passing skill with creation.

Higher peak for those who weigh that more than longevity, with advantages in efficiency in decent volume (50/40/90 club), defensive impact/effort, and a bunch of advanced stats.

Not saying I hold the same view necessarily. Looking deeper reveals more nuanced issues as we see in the replies, and it depends on the criteria. But that's more or less a summary of many common arguments.

Personally I have them very close as top 2 in their respective positions. That said, having him outside of the top 100 I think is pretty ridiculous by any reasonable criteria.

Considering many people really focus in on a player's prime years, it makes a lot of sense why one might lean Bird>Kobe.

I think the average level of Bird's playmaking and defense during his prime was better than Kobe.

For one, Bird looks better in the basic all-in-one numbers we have.

If we look at their peak 7-year spans.

Bird

RAPTOR WAR-137.2

Best 7 Years Averaged By PIPM-5.4

Kobe

RAPTOR WAR-120.6

Best 7 Years Averaged By PIPM-4

Then there is the fact that Bird was the undisputed best player on some historic offenses that surpassed what Kobe did. For example, the 1988 Celtics had an offense surpassing the RS efficiency of even the 87 peak Lakers. Boston’s true shooting percentage was 58.8% in 1988, a record that would stand until the 2016 Warriors shot 59 percent in their 73-win season per Backpicks.

It was just the RS either. 1986-1988 Boston had a rORTG of +7 in the PS. The 08-10 Lakers were close at +6.7. However, Bird has more stretches of guiding truly prolific PS offense as the true #1.


Bird also played on defenses that reached levels that Bryant was never apart of. Bird played on a Boston Celtics squad who in the PS from 80-82, had a -6.5 rDRTG, which is in the upper stratosphere historically. This is particularly noteworthy because Bird played in one of the most important defensive positions on the floor for much of the time at the PF position. In the 1980 and ’81 playoffs, Bird logged about 43 minutes per game next to Dave Cowens, Parish or Rick Robey had a really strong steal rate of 2.3 percent and block rate 1.5 percent. While yes, Kobe was clearly the more impactful on-ball defender, we know that off-ball defense and deterring shots at the rim in really any fashion is probably more valuable and Bird really had special instincts and off-ball awaren


If you look at things in comparison to how they did versus their peers against the same defenses in the PS, the Celtics gain even more ground. You can look at something like common offensive rating. Common offensive rating is comparing a team’s postseason play to other teams against that same given opponent (for that particular PS). The rORTG is also listed on the side too for those who, where a team’s playoff offensive rating is compared to it’s opponent’s regular season defensive ratings.

Per 3-year common rORTG, the 85-87 Celtics peaked at +8.8. The 08-10 Lakers were at +7.6. This suggests that Boston offense was more outlier relative to their peers than even LA's.

Bird's peak is significantly higher than Kobe's, and I find it strange that some people think that they're of similar value. In the same season, Bird led the league in PER, OWS, WS/48, OBPM, BPM, and VORP. Something a little surprising? Kobe has never led the league in any of those categories. This gap is why in this board's peak projects, Bird has always been around 10 spots above Kobe.

Bird was undoubtedly the best player in the world for at least a stretch, and I'm not sure if that's really true of Kobe. Like many, I don't have them very far apart overall, but that's only because of Kobe's longevity advantage.