Minge wrote:The illusion O'Neal and Bryant's championships overshadowed by O'Neal as the 1st option, when in fact, they both shared that responsibility since 2001. Pippen does not deserve equal weight. Pippen was nowhere near a dominant a scorer as his counterpart. Pippen never averaged more than 22.8-ppg without Jordan. Bryant was an equally dominant scorer as his counterpart and it did not matter if O'Neal was on-or-off the floor. The argument for Pippen's role for Bryant only holds for the year 2000. After that? It's thrown out the window.
Between 1999 and 2004 (the time in which Bryant was a starter for the Lakers) the Lakers had a 30-10 record with Shaquille O'Neal playing and Bryant not. If they missed O'Neal and Bryant played they won 23 of those 49 games. That is the difference between 61 wins team and a 39 wins team. That is the difference between a contender and a lottery team. Looking at the +/- numbers for the 2002/03 and 2003/04 season nothing indicates that Shaquille O'Neal and Bryant had equal responsibilities. And these are the two seasons in which O'Neal played worse than between 2000 and 2002.
Looking at their scoring numbers, we can see that Bryant scored 25 ppg on 55.2 ts% in games in which both played. Without O'Neal Bryant's scoring output raised to 29.5 ppg, but his scoring efficiency dropped to 52.7 ts%. Bryant goes from a well above average efficient scorer to an average efficient one. No team will win championships, if that kind of scoring threat is your main offensive option. Shaquille O'Neal scored 27 ppg on 58.3 ts% with Bryant, he scored 29.6 on 59.3 ts% in games without Bryant. There is no indication that Bryant helped Shaquille O'Neal in terms of scoring efficiency.
Bryant wasn't the player who created the space for everyone else, it was O'Neal, the efficient scoring threat in the middle, not the perimeter scorer who took advantage of that.
Yes, I agree that Bryant's role was more important after all than Pippen's, but in no way or shape Bryant was equal responsible for the titles as Shaquille O'Neal. To put that into a pretty impressive perspective, we can look at their numbers for the NBA finals 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004. Shaquille O'Neal had 27.5/11.6/2.5 per 36 minutes on 59.5 ts% with 8.9 turnover rate, Bryant had 18.6/4.4/4.1 per 36 on 49.3 ts% with a 9.9 turnover rate.
In 6 finals with the Bulls, Jordan's and Pippen's per 36 numbers looked like this:
28.1/5/5 on 55.9 ts% with a 7.2 to-r for Jordan
16.3/7.2/5.1 on 50.1 ts% with a 11.9 to-r for Pippen
Pippen scored less than Bryant with the same scoring efficiency, had more assists, but also the higher turnover rate and was the way better rebounder. Overall Bryant in those finals was way closer to Pippen than to Jordan or Shaquille O'Neal. And please don't tell me that Bryant was the better defender in comparison to Pippen.
That is the reality for those championships. The 3-peat Lakers were Shaquille O'Neal's team, alone, there was no 1a and 1b, there was a clear #1 in Shaquille O'Neal and a #2 in Bryant.
