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ESPN collaboration about where "the Great Debate" between Kobe and LeBron now stands.
Source: http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-40-80/The-State-of-the-Great-Debate--Kobe-vs--LeBron-2009.html
The State of the Great Debate: Kobe vs. LeBron 2009
May 15, 2009 10:49 AM
Kobe Bryant entered the NBA just as LeBron James finished fifth grade. In many ways they are exceptionally different. Yet 13 years later, their careers are inextricably intertwined in the minds of basketball fans. They are the two most recent recipients of the NBA's MVP award, gold-medal winning Team USA teammates and leaders of teams favored to make next month's NBA Finals.
They are also rivals for the title of best player on the planet.
So ... who is it? We invited a panel of bloggers to sort it out:
Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com and ClipperBlog
Henry Abbott of TrueHoop
Josh Tucker of Silver Screen and Roll
Kurt Helin of Forum Blue and Gold
John Krolik of Cavs the Blog
Rob Mahoney of Two Man Game
Timothy Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell
Royce Young of Daily Thunder
Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN.com/Clipperblog: It's clear from the results of the MVP vote, as well as our unscientific poll, that LeBron James is the overwhelming favorite in this debate. For those of you on the LeBron side of the discussion, what's changed in the last year? For those of you on the Kobe side, why are you sticking with your guy, in the face of such overwhelming sentiment toward LeBron?
Rob Mahoney, Two Man Game: LeBron developed a Kobe Complex. It's hard to pin down exactly when beating Kobe became LeBron's goal, but I'd wager it was some combination of Kobe's MVP and their Olympic camaraderie.
All the new wrinkles in LeBron's game: The newfound aggressive defensive focus, the three-point shot clear from Akron ... they have Kobe written all over them. LeBron turned the regular season into a game of upstaging the reigning MVP, and regardless if Bryant even knew he was playing, LeBron was going to make sure that he won.
As a result, we've been treated to a player unlike anything we've seen ... The truly scary thing is that with the appropriate measuring stick in Kobe and the championship closer than ever, there's plenty of reason to believe that this year's MVP has only just begun.
"Pull-up jumper, leaner, runner, floater, fadeaway, fallaway, mid-range, long-range, close range, pump fake, jab step, up-and-under, dunk, layup, left hand, right hand, face-up, post-up, driving, elevating, strength, savvy, power, finesse, balance, body control, footwork. Bryant can do it all."
--Josh Tucker
(Noah Graham, NBAE via Getty Images)
Royce Young, Daily Thunder: The thing I see in Kobe is a straight assassin. He's the Travis Bickle of basketball. He's there to finish you, even if your kid is in the other room watching. I don't get that from LeBron. LeBron is a slow cooker -- a guy that needs 48 minutes to beat you. He's absolutely unguardable one-on-one, he can rebound, he can create for teammates and he can man up. But does he have that sense of the moment like Kobe does? Can he just walk on the court and say "I got this" to his teammates. I'm not sure he's there yet.
I hate to be the desperado here out riding fences, but in one respect I'm a straight James man. But in another, I want Kobe. It all depends on where we're at on the clock I guess. If I'm starting a franchise and I get to choose one player, I want LeBron. But if I'm taking one shot at the end of the game, I choose Kobe.
Timothy Varner, 48 Minutes of Hell: Who is better? Michael Jordan or Michael Jordan? It's an impossible question, and it's the one before us.
Consider this number: 31.89. That's Michael Jordan's career best PER. He had a PER above 31 from 1987-91. But here's the thing: I would choose the less statistically impressive Jordan, the Jordan of 92-98, over the earlier, more statistically dominant Jordan. If the question comes down to Michael Jordan or Michael Jordan, I choose the MJ who won the most rings.
We might say there is no way to measure the immeasurable, to account for intangibles. But that's not entirely true. Wins and losses address some of the "intangible" gaps in our metrics. And so do championships. Kobe Bryant has been to the Finals five times, winning three titles. Kobe is still on top of his game. Simply put, LeBron James needs to win something before I crown him king. LeBron James won the MVP award this season, and I still prefer Kobe Bryant.
Kurt Helin, Forum Blue & Gold: If you love basketball, you can (and should) love them both. Kobe and LeBron are different players with different styles. LeBron is just a freak of nature, blessed like no other and he is just tapping into that. Kobe is more polished, someone who loves the work of perfecting his game. A gym rat (but with athleticism). Each has a few of the same qualities, but used differently each does things the other cannot.
And I love to watch them both for those reasons, for LeBron's bull-like drives to the basket, for Kobe's amazing balance on the pull-up jumper. I look at it this way -- if I say Jordan was the greatest player ever, does that diminish Wilt Chamberlain? No. I grew up worshiping Magic, but that does not mean Larry Bird was somehow lesser.
"Over time the only way to consistently attain offensive success is to get to the basket, which LeBron James does better than any player in the league, not only getting dunks and layups but involving his teammates and opening up the floor."
--John Krolik
(Jesse D. Garrabrant, NBAE via Getty Images)
In a dozen years, we may be having the "Is LeBron the greatest ever?" discussion, but that will not tarnish MJ. Like others, I just can't take a side in a Kobe/LeBron debate because I see no real reason I have to. Both are great, and while I may root for the team of one ... it does not mean I have to chose one player over the other.
Josh Tucker, Silver Screen and Roll: LeBron James is the MVP; Kobe Bryant is the better player.
Both are lockdown defenders, fantastic passers, capable of scoring or facilitating and excellent leaders of their teams. The primary differences lie in each player's individual offensive repertoires, and the key here is the versatility, polish, and completeness of each player's game.
LeBron James is a player with one primary, ultra-developed offensive skill: His ability to get to the hoop for layups and dunks. At the same time, there are several areas that he has yet to develop. He has improved his 3-point and free throw shooting this year, but even so, both are average at best. He has no mid-range jumper, he doesn't use screens effectively, and his post game is suspect. His athleticism and quickness are his primary tools, and his footwork at this point is still fairly rudimentary -- which, in part, explains why he's not better in the post. (Imagine what a player of his size, strength, and athleticism could do in the post with Kobe's footwork!)
Kobe Bryant doesn't have a single dominant skill that far outweighs all others, like LeBron does. Instead, he has the most complete, versatile, and polished skill set in the NBA. Pull-up jumper, leaner, runner, floater, fadeaway, fallaway, mid-range, long-range, close range, pump fake, jab step, up-and-under, dunk, layup, left hand, right hand, face-up, post-up, driving, elevating, strength, savvy, power, finesse, balance, body control, footwork. Bryant can do it all. His footwork, in particular, is unparalleled, and because of it, he is extremely effective in the post, making easy work of smaller players and even taking advantage of larger players without the fundamental skill set to compete with his own.
Simply put, the difference between the two boils down to unprecedented raw athleticism versus unequaled, finely-honed skill.
John Krolik, Cavs the Blog: Josh just made the point that the offensive arsenal that Kobe acquired later on in his career makes him the best player because it allows him to be effective against elite playoff defenses. Last I checked, he won three rings pre-arsenal and has two first-round exits and two finals losses post-arsenal. The arsenal didn't make him worthy of playoff success. He was great before he developed it to the extent it is now. He got better. It wasn't a magical moment of clarity.
If you're going to try and compare these guys with any sort of advanced statistical analysis, LeBron's just going to blow Kobe away ... Kobe's PER this year, when he finished second in the MVP race and was probably two wins away from making a real run at the award, was slightly lower than LeBron's in 2006-07, his worst regular season other than his rookie year. It's not just PER either, win shares, +/- rating, you name it. For years, pretty much any way people have come up with to use numbers to distill a basketball player's value, LeBron James has been at or right at the top.
Henry Abbott, TrueHoop: LeBron James's biggest advantage over Kobe Bryant is his size. That height and weight -- with that agility, speed, leadership, and skill -- is a combination we have really never seen before. It is why he blows away just about every statistical analysis.
But I think it might also be why a lot of people -- myself included -- have been slow to appreciate how good he really is.
He just doesn't move like the best basketball player in the world. Put almost any part Kobe Bryant's game in super slow motion, and you'll see beauty. Every little part of his game is refined, perfected, tested and honed ... Put LeBron James clips in super slow motion, and you're liable to find things here and there that he could do a little better. That footwork, that release, that way that he walks a little bit like a duck.
There is a cognitive leap. Could the best basketball player in the world have noticeable flaws?
LeBron James might be the first NBA wing player who really looks like a big man. When he is in a battle with ... just about anyone ... he never looks like the underdog. For the purposes of marketing (as a crude approximation of thriving in the hearts of fans) how many fans feel that they are like him?
It matters not a lick to people in Ohio, who clearly could not love LeBron James more. But I think it has a little effect on the rest of the world. On first exposure, people admire him, fear him, respect him ... but the sympathy is a bit harder to come by. You have to dig deeper -- to appreciate how selfless his game is, how harmoniously his team functions, to get a sense of his personality -- to find a guy that would make a casual fan say "I love that guy."
Tucker: Taking away the best part of LeBron's game is very difficult -- but not impossible ... On the other hand, take away one aspect of Kobe's game, and he will hurt you with another. Take away his lanes to the hoop, and he'll get his close range shots by posting up. Try to keep him on the perimeter, and he will elevate and shoot over you. The endless array of moves you see in highlight reels? Try as you may to prevent it, that's about to happen to you. And if you try and take away all (or even most) of his strengths? He'll pick you apart with passing, punishing you for overplaying him. All you can do is pick your poison and hope you get very, very lucky.
Should LeBron turn his offensive weaknesses into strengths, there will simply be no stopping him ... His game right now is built primarily around athleticism and power. In a few years, when age reduces these natural abilities, he will need to have developed a complete skill set to compensate. Like Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan before him, even LeBron James will need to make the transition from talent to skill. Fortunately for him (and for us, who have the privilege of watching him grow), there is little doubt in my mind that he will do just that.
Mahoney: The beauty of Kobe's game comes with his fluidity. He glides from one move to the next, crossover to spin move, dancing with the ball en route to the rim or a jumper that gently splashes the net. It's a sight to behold, really. Kobe's fundamentals aren't just better than LeBron's when examined closely, they're superior when viewed through almost any lens. Those very fundamentals, excellence achieved through straight up gym ratting, make Kobe's aesthetic appeal seem ... oddly attainable.
Suppose that you gave me a basketball, put me on the court and told me to do a "Kobe Bryant move," I'd probably do some poor imitation of his myriad pump fakes, or mimic his brutal up-and-under/step-through routine. I wouldn't sell it like Kobe or have footwork like Kobe, but at least I'd know where to begin. But, if you told me to do a "LeBron James move," I'd probably laugh at you. One of the reasons that LeBron is so captivating is because so much of what he does is otherworldly. It requires a physical superiority and body control that most of us can only dream of, and the only things likely to bring us any closer are steroids and a trampoline.
Krolik: Pretending that LeBron predicating his game on driving to the basket while Kobe prefers to go with mid-range shots as some sort of stylistic difference is just wrong. Going to the basket is, universally, the way to get efficient baskets, followed by shooting threes. Midrange jumpers are the easiest shots to get, but the trade-off is that they're a victory for the defense over time -- not one player in the league shot better than 50% on midrange jumpers this season. Kobe's percentage on mid-range jumpers was 44% this season, one of the better marks in the league. Keep in mind that mid-range shots rarely produce free throws or offensive rebounds. The worst offensive team in the league, the Clippers, had a TS% of 52%. So if your offense were to be entirely Kobe Bryant shooting mid-range jump shots, you would have the worst offense in the league by a very wide margin.
The mid-range game is definitely the weakest part of LeBron's game, something he should definitely work on (especially his footwork in the post), and a great plan B late in the clock if you can't get the corner for a drive or open 3. But to say that LeBron's lack of development and devotion to the least efficient shots in basketball are what keeps him from being as good as Kobe is just fallacious. Not only are mid-range shots inefficient in the long run, but they keep the team from getting involved; instead of getting into the paint, scattering the defense, and opening up teammates, the possession ends with little ball movement and few other players getting involved. On a micro, individual level, a perfectly executed midrange move is pretty and a solid way for one player to score against a defense, but over time the only way to consistently attain offensive success is to get to the basket, which LeBron James does better than any player in the league, not only getting dunks and layups but involving his teammates and opening up the floor. LeBron has consistently controlled the rebounding game, made passes, and worked amazingly hard on defense in playoff series against elite teams, and because of this the Cavs have consistently won in the playoffs in the past even when LeBron didn't have his offensive game going. There's more to being a complete player than being a scorer.
Varner: Nothing is more pretentious than pretending that looks don't count. And nothing is more difficult than trying to absolutize aesthetic preference. Krolik has blown up prominent myths that surround this debate, and he's shown that James accumulates stats like an avalanche gathers snow. I'd concede the debate, long before this is "all said and done" if LeBron James simply won a championship or two. The numbers march all over my camp and burn the tents. But that would be a concession of the head, not the heart. In terms of beauty, I don't think any other basketball player will ever arrest my imagination quite like Kobe Bryant. W.H. Auden once bragged that he had composed in every known rhyme scheme and meter. Kobe Bryant makes the same claim with each bounce of the basketball. Last night he broke the defense down with haiku, tonight he's ballin' to the sound of sestina.
Mahoney: If Kobe wasn't so polarizing, his aesthetic appeal would universally trump LeBron's. His game taps into something so innate and accessible, yet masterful at the same time. He'll always have a connection with fans, for better or worse, because he carries a certain mortality. The Kobe myth needs no introduction, and his failures and shortcomings are well-documented. But take a few of the character hits out of the equation, and Kobe had every chance in the world to be the people's champ. People may flock to excellence, but they really bond with those in hardship. Kobe has stared both in the face, but the jury decided long ago to make him public enemy number one.
LeBron, on the other hand, is already treated with reverence. As the sole human that can make Marv Albert scream, "WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE!", James has climbed Mount Olympus and begun to carve his statue. Do his wild displays of unbridled athleticism demand respect? Most definitely. But that warrior-god quality is what will always create a disconnect from LeBron and the rest of us. Henry really nailed that point home in regard to James' size, but I don't see why it isn't equally applicable to LeBron's style. You can even take it a step beyond Jordan, and bring it full circle back to Bryant: Regardless of whether you love or hate #24, the way that LeBron plays the game will be the very reason why we don't care about him the same way we care about Kobe. He can break every record in the books, but with LeBron, we're all just witnesses, subjects to the brilliance of a king we'll never "know."
Arnovitz: Rob and Tim touched on the fact that Bryant's game is something we can, as mere humans, experience at a relatable level -- something that's difficult to do with James. Josh cataloged the full range of Kobe's arsenal, and most of those skills are things we were taught as kids, and Kobe has perfected them. But Krolik brings up some good points: There are facets of the game on the floor beyond scoring that James controls for long stretches, like rebounding, and distributing.
Is it fair to say that each player is more complete than the other -- in entirely different ways? Which metric you value most -- accessibility, range of technique, fluidity, mastery of the game the way you grew up understanding it to be played, total dominance on the court, number of rings, PER, etc -- determines, to a large extent, where you come down on this question.
In some sense, we're not really debating the greatness of Kobe v. the greatness of LeBron. We're debating how we measure greatness.
Young: I think a major part of deciding any X vs. Y player debate, is you've got to decide what's most important. Obviously, it makes it easy when a guy's got the total package. A guy like Jordan did it all. He's got the rings, the stats, the commercials and the brand name. If Jordan had gone the Barry Sanders route, do you think he'd be as revered? If he had disappeared once the lights were off, do you think we'd remember him quite as fondly. People still talk about him and Bird's Micky D's commercial. That's staying power. So when we evaluate Kobe and LeBron years from now, who's going to be there one that had it? They're both going to finish with elite statistics. They're both going to finish with rings. They're both going to have dominated their sport like few have before them. But who are we going to remember?
Varner: You're right. We are debating how to measure greatness. Maybe that is the ultimate testament to each player -- he's able to bring the discourse to this level. Perhaps that's the most reliable rubric of all.
Tucker: As I see it, we're evaluating and comparing these two athletes not as winners, scorers, stat-accumulators, clutch shooters, or participants in a skills challenge, but as basketball players. To me, that means that the "best player" should be measured not by one of these standards, but by all of them, and the final decision should go to the player with not only the most complete skill set, but the most complete overall resume, looking at all of the above standards. It shouldn't be about which player is more statistically productive, or which is more versatile. It should be about the total package of championship success, statistics, all around skill set, performance when it matters most, and any other measure relevant to player evaluation.
That is how I view this discussion, and by that measure, Kobe Bryant is the most complete basketball player on the planet, both in terms of skill set, and in terms of his overall basketball resume. LeBron James may be more dominant statistically, but Bryant has the more complete skill set, the championship success, and a long history of being the best player in the building when it has mattered most.
Abbott: Here's where I have a view that I know not everyone shares. To me basketball is a really beautiful way to try to figure out winning. What works? You can have all these theories in life (getting up early is the key to success, or networking, or inspiring others, or working hard, or surrounding yourself with good people, or having innate talent ...) but in basketball you get to assess all that nightly on the scoreboard. If what you're doing works better, eventually it'll show up in wins and losses.
We're still figuring out (go Krolik!) how to break a game into its meaningful numerical elements. So instead of being able to prove that this or that player needs to add this or that skill, we make blanket statements. Players ought to be able to score from the post. And have a nice looking mid-range jumper. And do a huge list of things. Josh Tucker and others have demonstrated nicely that Bryant is the king of that list of things.
Does that list of things equal wins, though? That's theory. Good theory. It's usually true. If my kids want to play basketball, I hope they'll believe in the power of mastering the elements of the game.
But I can't get away from the reality that I have watched Kobe Bryant have a lot of inefficient games. Think about it: Why do we all know that Bryant can do magically difficult things? One answer is because he tries to do magically difficult things game after game after game ... even when it's not in his team's best interest. And that shows up in his efficiency, which is stellar for a human, but middle of the pack for a superstar.
LeBron James is not really about magically difficult things, and that might be a key to why he produces. At a rate no one has since Michael Jordan. And he's just getting started.
I am hyper-aware of two things:
The fact that Kobe Bryant can do this or that is less meaningful to me than the reality that James does contribute more to wins.
Talk of James' shortcomings, in terms of skill and polish, has probably overblown here. It is less true than ever, and might look downright foolish in a couple of years.
For me, as a guy obsessed with wins, James is more productive by just about every measure. If I could pick just one player to either start a team with or score a key bucket, I'll take LeBron.
That might tell us something about basketball, but I think it tells us that much more about LeBron James, who really is one of a kind.
Source: http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-40-80/The-State-of-the-Great-Debate--Kobe-vs--LeBron-2009.html
