KB
NBA Starter
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2009
- Messages
- 3,468
- Reaction score
- 3,349
- Points
- 113
You are completely ignoring the other end of the floor though. Dwight is the best defensive player in the game. You have to factor that in as well. And you can't just throw out stats like, "Kobe was 25 5 and 5." That's taking stats out of context and they have little to no significance. Dwight was the only player in the league to average 23 points, 14 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks last year. Does that make him the best?
And pointing to the finals is kinda pointless for this argument, considering that was over 2 years ago and we are talking about the hear and now...
I am not ignoring defense as I stated in my first post that Kobe can control/dictate tempo on both sides of the floor from three different positions (don't know how this is ignoring defense or "the other side of the floor")
Kobe's made the All NBA Defensive First Team 9 times (counting last year) so he is also one of the best defensive players in the game as is Dwight. Kobe is almost always matched up against the other teams best offensive wing, which as you admit is a the most talent/skill heavy position in the league so since that position has more talent/skill depth it would, by logical to assume that it requires more defensive effort to contain those players since they are more talented/skilled group. Kobe’s been doing that for almost 10 years, we hear it every time the Lakers play a game....
In regards to the here and now is the fact that Kobe's year last year was better than Dwight's. My purpose of citing Kobe's stat line is to show he is still as productive, if not more so, than the young guys that put up similar numbers.
I brought up the finals from 2 years ago to show that if Dwight doesn't get the ball in the right spots he is not that effective. When he seems to be having a bad game on offense this effects his defensive effort and he usually ends up in foul trouble out of frustration (happened in two of those finals games). Those finals were also a perfect example of how good Kobe is at controlling tempo on both sides of the ball since Kobe was either guarding Nelson (when he came back) or Hedo. The job of Nelson and Hedo in that series was to get Dwight the ball in the right spots which didn’t happen on a consistent enough basis due to way Kobe played defense on the P & R’s
The places Dwight gets the ball half the time are not good spots for him to make moves (too far away) due to his lack of a refined post game as he relies too much on athleticism and strength. Dwight is easily the best big in the game but he is not a better player than Kobe