ElGee wrote:Vincent 666 wrote:NO-KG-AI wrote:Yea, other guys have gotten to 35(and more) without having their PPG raised by a whole point with a single game.
Consistent compared to who? He's not nearly as consistent as the other guys who have hit 35 before, and he's not as consistent scoring 30 as a lot of guys are.
His 63 point and 81 point games are a lot less often than his games that are terrible shooting games.
I mean, I guess it depends on what you like. If you prefer a guy that scores 20, 20, and then 60, to get a 33.3 average, that's cool, but I'd rather the guy that gets 30, 33, and 36, or the guy that gets 27, 33, 39. That's just me though.
seems like you're going out of your way to not give Bryant credit.
Hes had 5 seasons of averaging over 28 points. 9 different seasons of over 25. His scoring averages rank up there with pretty much any all time great scorer.
Still dont understand what you mean by consistent. Bryant is a player who is on pace right now to retire 3rd all time in points and I believe first in playoff points. Thats pretty consistent.
Neil over at B-R had a post a while ago about consistent vs. inconsistent individual performances and his findings were consistency gives the team a greater chance to win. In other words, it is better to have a guy with game scores of 30, 30, 30, 30, 30 in a series than 15, 45, 15, 45, 30.
I think that's NO-KG's point. When we call Bryant “inconsistent,” it's not a description of his season to season numbers, but instead a description of his game performances – really his shooting – from game to game as a high volume scorer. Consider the 3 best wings of the generation, Jordan, LeBron and Wade in their primes:
Frequency of “good” shooting games vs. “bad” – Regular Season FG%
Code: Select all
>50% <40% PPS
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Jordan (91-98) 52% 14% 1.30
James (06-10 49% 17% 1.39
Wade (05-10) 47% 17% 1.39
Kobe (00-10) 39% 29% 1.26*Kobe (00-10) shoots over 50% 39% of the time and under 40% 29% of the time. He's averaged 1.26 points per shot.
*Wade (06-10) shoots over 50% 47% of the time and under 40% 17% of the time. He's averaged 1.39 points per shot.
*James (06-10) shoots over 50% 49% of the time and under 40% 17% of the time. He's averaged 1.39 points per shot.
Jordan (91-98) shoots over 50% 52% of the time and under 40% 14% of the time. He averaged 1.30 points per shot. His numbers would obviously be better if we inlcude 87-91.
*As of this year's All-Star break.So, relative to the players he's being compared to, Bryant is a streaky shooter.
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As far as his raw scoring numbers go -- which seems to be a huge sticking point for a lot of his fans --he also just happens to shoot the ball a lot more than anyone else. We shouldn't minimize an outburst like 2006 -- which does statistically hold up to some of the better recent scoring seasons -- but for some people extra shots at a low percentage
in favor of passing for a better percentage shot isn't good. This was NO-KG's point vis-a-vis Malone shooting more. Or any player, really.
If Bryant can "only" get 22 good looks a game, and those shots yield 30 points (1.36 points/shot), should he take 6 more forced shots at a low percentage or pass to a teammate for a better shot? That's the thinking, and it's fairly obvious what the better answer is. In this hypothetical, some people are in awe by the raw scoring numbers despite the 6 forced shots producing 5 extra points (0.83 points/shot, which would be horrendous). Assuming that were true, it's not that Bryant's overall performance isn't good, it's just that he actually "undoes" some of his goodness with those kinds of decisions.
So how much more does he shoot it..well...
more?
Post-Shaq (since 2005), Kobe has a whopping
64 games with 30+ FGA's.
LeBron has 25. Wade 13. In those games, Kobe and LeBron average 41.6 ppg, Wade 41.3 ppg. But most NBA stars don't hoist 30 a night unless they have it going fairly well, which doesn't seem to hold true for Bryant, who's FG% in such games is significantly
lower than his overall average during that span (45.5%)
Wade shoots 48.8% in such situations. LeBron 47.7. Kobe, 43.8%. Only 13 of those 64 games were over 50% shooting for Kobe. Wade and James have fairly normal distributions of scoring and percentage, Bryant is all over the place.
Games with 30+ FGA's since 2005
Code: Select all
# % of Games PPG FG% *Difference from Overall FG%
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Kobe 64 13.9% 41.6 43.8% -1.7%
Wade 13 3.2% 41.3 48.8% +0.4%
James 25 5.3% 41.6 47.7% -0.7%
All this is to illustrate what the eye is seeing: Bryant's shot selection leaves something to be desired and (as a result?) he's streakier, as a scorer, than other elite wing players. And that's probably not a good thing.
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See5 noted his macroscopic consistency. Certainly, Bryant's sustained excellence from 01-present is a major bright spot on his resume. But there's been little discussion in this thread of the changes in his game over that time period. In 01 and 02 he was an elite 2-way wing player. In 2003 he basically turned the 3-point shot into a jump shot. That was part of the transformation into a more explosive, higher variance scorer. In 2006-2007 lots of shooting (from what I can gather, the most polarizing period in people's assessments of him). From 2008-2010 a little more balance -- better decision making, shot selection. If there were a version with optimal shot-selection/playmaking, defense and rebounding, then yes, that peak would certainly be top 10 peak of all-time. Maybe top 5. But there isn't...
His advanced stats from that time:
Code: Select all
WS/48 On/Off Roland
====================================
03 .210 10.3
04 .210 5.8
05 .145 2.7
06 .224 12.4 14.8
07 .199 5.9 12.4
08 .208 7.1 12.0
09 .206 11.9 12.6
10 .160 12.3 11.7For me, those versions of Kobe have all had comparable impact on the game. The earlier versions more complete but not as good offensively. The middle versions more one-dimensional and shot-happy (excluding 05, where he just flat out struggled). The later versions probably exerting the smallest defensive impact with the largest offensive one (I'd take healthy 2010 Bryant over, perhaps, all of them).
Hope that shed some light on the issue and the semantics involved. It is the subtle differences that separate elite players, after all.
