Kobe vs. LeBron: THE VERDICT IS IN!!!

All right, man. So, peace. You know, they had a good little debate or discussion on LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and who may have been the better player. So, we're going to go through the conversation and I'm just going to chime in here and there.

If LeBron is able to beat the Golden State Warriors, I might move him up to Kobe Bryant status. Michael's on a whole another level. Agreed. I don't, I don't understand why people keep trying to mention Kobe or LeBron with Michael Jordan. Then neither one of them are, are on his level. They're just not. The Kobe-LeBron, uh, debate is much more realistic, much more comparable. All right. Michael Jordan is just, this is just not even close. Michael Jordan led his team to six championships. Led his team to six championships. Not even, not even going into the six and 0. He led his team to six championships. Kobe Bryant led his team to two championships and LeBron James has led his team to three. Like, it's not even a comparison right now. To, you know, if, if we just want to go by accomplishments, just by accomplishments, LeBron is more a better debate for LeBron would be him against Larry Bird. All right. Kobe against, you know, a LeBron or maybe, maybe even a Tim Duncan. And I will put Tim Duncan above Kobe as an overall player as far as impact, offensively, defensively, what he does for his teammates, him acting as a conduit between the coach and, and the rest of his team. All right. But the, the Jordan stuff is just ridiculous. That's just media, media nonsense. He won six championships. LeBron is amazing, but I don't understand why people just move him right past Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant won five championships, but I agree. I think that that's why I said that's, that's a much better conversation. Now, what do I think? I think that LeBron is a better player than Kobe was. I think he's a, a better player than Kobe ever was in regards to his overall understanding of the game. But the conversation is much better because Kobe has accomplished more in regards to winning than LeBron overall. You know, it's just, I mean, even if you want to look at his first three championships with Shaq, he wasn't the best player on those first three teams. Shaq was. But even if you want to give him half credit for those three championships, that's still puts him at three and a half and LeBron at three. That's why the conversation is much better. But might put him with Kobe if they're able to beat the Warriors. Yeah, if, if LeBron beats the Warriors, that will put him above Kobe, slightly above him. The chuckster is saying, pump the breaks. Max, is LeBron already greater than Kobe? Yeah, he is. I love Kobe. I love me some Kobe Bryant. In fact, I think statistical analysis of Kobe right now misses the mark partly because he straddled two eras as the statistical revolution was coming and people like efficiency and everything and the rules changed. Kobe still played a more old-school brand of basketball. No, actually, he didn't. Actually, Kobe didn't play an old-school brand of basketball. Kobe was part of the generation of heroball players who tried to mimic Michael Jordan. All right. Actually, old-school players from the '80s moved the ball, shared the ball, and, and most of the better players shot in the high 40s percentile into low 50%. Right. When you look up guys like Bernard King and Alex English and a lot of those guys from the '80s who you would call old-school players, they normally shot, you know, high 40s to, to low 50%. All right. Bernard King had a couple years where he shot well over 50, well over 55% from the field. All right. So, no, Kobe Bryant did not have an old-school game. He had a heroball game, uh, that was modeled after Michael Jordan. Like I said, you had a generation of guys who came into the NBA in the late '90s, you know, the, uh, Allen Iverson, Paul Pierce, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, you know, those guys, Kobe, they came into the league and they tried to mimic the Jordan style of heroball, and it resulted in very, very ugly play in the NBA, even though people try to glamorize it. The NBA was an ugly game in the late, late '90s, early 2000s, and that's why they had to change a lot of the rules and make it a little easier to score, make it try to promote ball movement because those guys were trying to copy Jordan and they did not have his ability. They did not have his brain, and they did not have, uh, that overall charisma that he brought to the court. They just didn't have it. So, they had to make the game, you know, more conducive to scoring and to an, an openness that was lacking in the early 2000s, late '90s, that really hurt the game. And so his efficiency numbers won't look as good as he actually was. His efficiency numbers don't look good. Kobe's efficiency numbers don't look good because he wasn't an efficient player. He took a lot of bad shots. Right. He probably is the most overrated all-time great player to ever play. Kobe Bryant was all right. And a lot of people going to get mad at that. I really don't give a damn. All right. I will put Kobe, you know, all-time, I will put him just outside of the top 10, probably like top 15 around there. If we want to talk about talent and, uh, impact. If we're talking about impact, he's definitely not top 10, not even close. Impact to me is, he, you know, he comes on your team and he totally changes the, uh, he totally changes the overall layout of your team. Like, you become a 50 to 60 win team within two years or so. That's not the effect that he has on the team. That's just not. But I'll go into that later on as this, uh, segment proceeds. Kobe Bryant was like the next thing to Michael Jordan. He's amazingly great. LeBron's even better, primarily because he's 2 inches taller and 40 pounds heavier. And, and LeBron just has a better overall understanding of the game. But what people will try to come back with is that Kobe was a better clutch player. No, he wasn't a better clutch player. He was, uh, he lacked conscience in the clutch. Meaning what? He wasn't scared to fail. But his, his, his clutch numbers are terrible. Kobe Bryant is like a 30% shooter in the clutch. All right. His clutch numbers are horrific. They all trying to compare him to Jordan. Jordan was a 50% shooter in the clutch. I mean, he's just a bigger player who has many of the same skills Kobe does. Kobe was better at making difficult shots than maybe anyone who ever lived. I, I, I'll give you that. Kobe made some of the wildest jump shots I've ever seen anybody make. I mean, his ability to make wild and crazy jump shots was probably unparalleled right there with Jordan. But LeBron doesn't have to take difficult shots because he makes his whole team take easier shots, which is actually a more valuable skill. Except sometimes the way it feels late in games in the fourth quarter, it feels like the guy who can hit the difficult shot may be better than the guy who creates the easy shot, though it's not true. Look, statistical analysis says LeBron is clearly better than Kobe. And in terms of the championships, which I think it is important to count championships when you're talking about the best player or one of the two best players on a championship team, LeBron was always unquestionably the best player on every team he played on. Kobe played with Shaq where he was really 1B to Shaq's 1A. Agreed. Like I've already stated, the best player on that first three-peat team was Shaq. You know, people try to throw in five championships on Kobe like he led the team to five championships. He did not. All right. The best player on, on that first three-peat team was Shaq. And let's be for real, the Lakers probably played the weakest finals competition of any, uh, multiple championship-winning team. I mean, they played the Pacers, the, um, they played the Pacers, the Sixers, and the Nets in three seasons. And the best team out of, of the three were the Pacers, and they were older. I mean, Reggie Miller by that time was about 36 years old. All right, maybe even older than that. No, probably around 35, 36, somewhere around there. But he was their best player. And they, you know, they, that team was a very good team. They, you know, they had lost a little bit from the '98 team that, that took the Bulls to seven, but they were very good, but they weren't great. And every team after that that the Lakers faced in the finals got lesser and lesser. So, the Lakers were very fortunate in that era that there wasn't a very intelligent team to go against them. They got the, they got the luck of the NBA rigging the, the, uh, Sacramento Kings series in 2002, which is the worst officiated, the most rigged series ever. Anybody who remembers watching that series, that, that, that series was so clearly rigged that it's pathetic. Even Stephen A, simp, as, uh, as silly as a lot of his observations are, even he has come out and stated that he believes that that series was rigged. All right. And then you combine that with the low basketball IQ of the Sacramento Kings. I mean, that series was a seven-game series. That series could have easily been a five-game series on the side of the Sacramento Kings. A, when they win the three-peat, I mean, Shaq won the MVP, the, the MVP of the finals every year. You could argue Kobe was bigger against the Spurs, and that was really the finals in the West back then. But at any rate, when you just count championships, that also misses something. If that's the only thing you're doing, that's one thing. That I will say, even though the Lakers have very poor competition in the finals, uh, they did have to go through the Spurs in the early 2000s. I will, I will grant them that. And Kobe often times was very, very good against the Spurs, but predominantly because he never really had to worry about facing a double team because, uh, he had Shaq. Magic and Bird is still an argument. Bird got three, Magic got five. I think there's an acknowledgement that Magic was playing with a slightly better team, at least with a deeper bench than Bird was. Yeah, uh, Magic had a, had a, a slightly more talented team than Bird's team, even though Bird's team was also extremely talented. I mean, I believe that those Celtics had about five Hall of Famers on that team between Bird, uh, Parish, McHale, Dennis Johnson, and, and also Bill Walton. And in the early '80s, they had, uh, Tiny Archibald. The problem, the reason why Larry Bird only won three championships was because in the early '80s, they were going back and forth with the Sixers, which everybody sleeps on. I mean, people, people don't understand the Sixers actually went to three finals in the early '80s in the Larry Bird era. They were better. They were better than the Celtics in the early '80s. Right. The one time that the, that the Celtics beat them in the early '80s, they had to come back from down 3-1, which was in '81. All right. That's when Bird won his first championship. And in the late '80s, of course, the, uh, Bad Boy Pistons came into power, and Bird got hurt. So, that limited, you know, the championships. That's why I said that the, that a real debate would be, uh, Prime LeBron against Prime Larry Bird. All right. Larry Bird was an extraordinary player, man. That man was an extraordinary player. I mean, think of, uh, Dirk Nowitzki, except a step quicker, who could pass like LeBron. All right. That was Larry Bird. And who could rebound. All right. Larry Bird was, Larry Bird was off the chain. I mean, he won three straight. He won three straight MVPs. LeBron didn't do that. Right. Right. Now, I would say that LeBron, I would give LeBron a slight, slight, slight edge over Bird. Slight edge, only because of the, um, the physical advantages that he has over Bird. But mentally, Bird was above him, particularly in the clutch. He, uh, you can count on him down the stretch of games more because he wasn't, he didn't overthink things, because he didn't, he, he didn't know. He was much more confident in his ability to convert in pressure situations because of his ability to shoot free throws and make clutch jump shots, which LeBron can't do. All right. That, that comparison is much closer than people think, man. So, it's not just about championships. In a tiebreaker, maybe you'd look at championships. The truth of the matter is, by all analysis that you, you know, all the empirical evidence says LeBron. It doesn't need to come to a tiebreaker. LeBron's the best player since Michael Jordan. Kobe was better than Duncan? Maybe not. No, he wasn't. LeBron is the, is the best overall player since Jordan. But, and, uh, if we want to go after that, it, then after that, it would be Shaq, and then Tim Duncan, and then Kobe. Those are the best players since Michael Jordan. Not as good as Shaq. There's no one in the argument with LeBron in this entire era. He spent more time as clearly the best player in the world than any player in my lifetime except Michael Jordan. Well, listen, in that regard, and from that, from that vantage point, I agree with you about LeBron James being a better talent. My problem is, we don't take the intangible into consideration nearly as much as we should. And let's look at it from the, from the analysis that you threw out there about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Well, Larry Bird, to me, was a better individual talent because he could shoot considerably better than Magic. He was a fabulous passer at the forward position as well, and obviously, he won championships, just not as many. The reason why you love a comparison like that, Max Kellerman, is because both of them could be relied upon in the clutch to do whatever it is that they do to accentuate their greatness. Well, you know, Magic had his hiccups in the clutch. You know, I mean, fortunately for him, his rookie year, he, you know, he had that game where Kareem got hurt and he had that great Game 6 in Philly. But he also had a lot of, you know, he, he flubbed a lot in the clutch in the early '80s. In the late '80s, when he was, you know, when he took over the team from Kareem, that's when he really came into the forefront as a great clutch player. Whoever they were, whatever made them great, we didn't leave. They didn't leave that at the door when money time arrived. When we look at LeBron and Kobe, that's where I think we part ways. Because even though LeBron has matured to that point where there's no longer a question about that, as and where he's concerned, for a lengthy period of time in his career, it was a huge question. I have religiously stated for the first 46 minutes, I'll take LeBron James over almost anybody in the world, world all-time, with the exception of maybe Jordan, and even that is a maybe. The problem is, is that when you get to that money time, that clutch, where you sit up there and everything breaks down and you grab the ball and you say, here, take me to the promised land. LeBron is not somebody that's going to be on that list, most of the time, in a lot of people's eyes. And nobody is going to question that Kobe would be on that list. When money time arrived, and it was time to give him the ball, whether, whether it was in the finals against Indiana, whether it was 2001 in the postseason, whether it was 2010 against Boston, or times in between. 2010 against Boston, you mean in Game 7 when the man shot six for six for 2000? And that nutjob Ron Artest had to save him. He was very, very fortunate, man. That Game 7, that man was about six for 24. Ron Artest, Metta World Peace, whatever he called himself, Ron Artest saved his ass. Kobe at a younger age was so sensational. LeBron and that Boston finals really was what solidified Kobe's legacy. Had to grow into that role for a significant period of time, and that's the difference. What LeBron learned to have, Kobe had, MJ had. And here's the last point, Matt. Kobe wasn't, Kobe wasn't a great player until, you know, until about four years into him being a professional. So, this stuff about how Kobe had it from the start. I mean, let's remember the first memory that, that we have of Kobe as a collective, uh, a collective viewership of the NBA was him throwing up three air balls against Utah. All right. There's this narrative about Kobe that he's this phenomenal, unbelievable clutch player on the level of Jordan, and he's not. What he is, is he's a, he's a conscience-free player with a green light. That's what he's always been. Like I said, the, the, the facts speak very differently from the narrative. Max, LeBron was pushed to that elevated level of play. Kobe took it. MJ took it. These are guys that you knew from the moment that moment arrived, they belonged there. LeBron was pushed, coached, nurtured, tutored into that elevated position. That is the difference. I agree with that. And had we been having this discussion, even one championship that they won after he choked in Dallas in '10-'11, in the, in the 2011 championship when LeBron choked in four fourth quarters. In fact, I went on LA radio and apologized, you know, openly to Kobe Bryant fans for saying it, to Kobe, for saying, look, I was wrong about LeBron being better than Kobe. He doesn't, you know, he just choked, and Kobe would never have had a performance like that. Well, let's understand something, please. This is part of the Kobe Bryant is clutch, LeBron is not clutch narrative that the media pushes. And it's, it's more in the middle. I wouldn't call LeBron a clutch player, uh, but I wouldn't call him unclutch. I wouldn't call Kobe unclutch, but he's not clutch to, to the level that they try to project him as, on the level of a Larry Bird or Michael Jordan. All right. Kobe Bryant was terrible in the finals against Detroit, and he was being single-covered, not double-covered. They put Tayshaun Prince on him, and the man was horrific in the finals. All right. That's a fact. So, people don't have to like that. It just is what it is. All right. He had, he had some good moments in the '08 finals against the Celtics. They pretty much had James Posey on him, and on, what's the brother's name that's with the Memphis Grizzlies, Tony Allen? They pretty much had them guarding Kobe one-on-one. He, you know, he got locked down in a large portion of that series. All right. Like I said, you go up and look up the numbers on Kobe as opposed to listening to the narrative. He had some terrible finals. Nothing is as bad as the finals that LeBron had in 2011. But they try to act like Kobe is is on Jordan's level, and he's just not. Kobe Bryant fans try to act like this nonsense about he's nipping on Jordan's heels. No, he's not. He's absolutely not. Not nipping on Michael Jordan's heels at all. As a matter of fact, the highest shooting percentage that Kobe Bryant ever had in his career is equivalent to the lowest shooting percentage that Michael Jordan ever had in his career with the Bulls. All right. For a season, not even. It's not even close. But like I said before, Kobe Bryant had a terrible series against Detroit. I believe that he hit the game-winning shot in Game 1 or Game 2, one of those games, and from there on, he was terrible. They had Tayshaun Prince on him, and the man could barely make a shot, and he shot them out of the series because Shaq played well. So, LeBron had to grow into what he grew into. But my God, what does he have to do to eventually prove it? Like, isn't it even more interesting that he was able to develop into this and do what he's done the last several finals? Question for you, and I'll just ask this because as a basketball guy, I have my own opinion. It wasn't just the four fourth quarters against Dallas. There's four times that LeBron hasn't shown up in the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals. I think 2007 was one, 2011 another, 2014, 2015 fourth quarters, he wasn't around to be found. And well, that's for the LeBron James fans to deal with. You know, a lot of these guys are running around talking trying to act like he's as good as Jordan. LeBron, LeBron's truly his, his only great finals performances, uh, were in, uh, 2015 against the Golden State Warriors, the first three games, and then 2016, last year, in the last three games. Right. And he was pretty good against, uh, OKC in 2012. Other than that, he really hadn't been that good. He was great in Game 7, uh, against the Spurs in 2013. If you watch that series, remember, like I've mentioned before, Popovich was single-covering him with Kawhi Leonard, and he had Kawhi guarded him five feet off because he knew that LeBron was scared to take a jump shot, and he was terrible in that series until the fourth quarter of, like, the third, middle of the third quarter of Game 6 against the Spurs. They were fortunate to win that series. Like I said, like has been stated by many people, including myself, Ray Allen saved his ass in that series. All right. 2014, the man cramped up. I guess, I guess whatever those, those, uh, that he was getting from Biogenesis, the, uh, performance-enhancing drugs he was getting from Biogenesis, allegedly, I guess they made his hamstrings cramp up when they turned the AC off in San Antonio. That season. All right. In some of those situations, there's no doubt. But he has matured to that level of greatness. So, I would ask you this simple question. In the end, what it comes down to, Max, is this, and I'll ask, as great as LeBron is, is how much faith did you have in him until, not but not right now, but as he was maturing? How much faith did you have in him compared to the faith you had in Kobe? I want to address that. Kobe gives you the feeling that he always wants it. And because of that, you want that guy on your team. But in fact, if you look at actually what happens frequently, Kobe's teams became less efficient late in games, even in clutch games. LeBron doesn't give you the same in a postseason. Yes, yes. LeBron, you see how shocked Stephen A. was because he's like a kid that believes fairy tales. This narrative that, you know, he's one of the people who helps promote because that's all these sports media is. They, you know, they, they spin yarns of of fiction on a lot of these athletes. This nonsense about how Kobe is this unbelievable clutch player. What he is, as Max pointed out, is a guy with no conscience. All right. He's a guy with no conscience. He's got great fundamentals as far as his footwork, but he has very, very little understanding of the game. He'll get on TV and he'll wax poetic and he'll be able to articulate the ins and outs of the game and the schemes that different teams are running because he is a basketball savant. There's no doubt about that. But then he'll get on the, he'll get on the court and he'll just totally disregard game plans and structure and and just totally try to take over because that's just his personality. All right. He's a narcissist by nature. There's just no getting around that. All right. He's not a, he's not a, uh, there's no, there's no magnanimity in his nature. There's just not. All right. So, as Max pointed out, so well, there's a difference between the narrative and the truth. And you see Stephen A. is is shocked because, and all you got to do is look up the numbers. It's just the truth. In clutch situations, he's a 30% shooter. Doesn't give you the feeling that he wants it. The same way, if the ball was in his hands, he's not as good at wanting to take and then making the difficult shot. But what you find is LeBron James makes his team better close and late in playoff games. So, that's what I would say. And I would say, even if you want to say that wasn't the case and Kobe had that over LeBron late in games, because you just say, oh, forget all about all that statistical mumbo jumbo. All I know is a lot of times among the all-time great teams, it comes down to those last few seconds. I want the guy on my team who wants it in that moment. That would be the tiebreaker if it was a tie. What I'm telling you is, if it, LeBron doesn't quite statistically match up to Michael Jordan by the most sophisticated metrics, but even then, Jordan had that. LeBron didn't. What I'm telling you is, it's not that close between LeBron and Kobe. And all the other areas that puts Kobe over the top. Agreed. It's not even a tie. For, for, um, for their clutchness to be a deciding factor, it's just not. It's not even close. And even the Kobe fans, and you'll find that 95% of the ardent Kobe fans are normally based out of Los Angeles. Right. Most people outside of Los Angeles pretty much know that Kobe Bryant is not on the level of Michael Jordan, and that LeBron is, is overall a better player than him. LeBron just hasn't, hasn't accomplished as much as Kobe Bryant has team-wise. All right. On paper, but like I said, on paper, really, LeBron is right there with him because LeBron has led his team to three championships. Kobe Bryant has, has led or co-led his team to about three and a half championships if we give him half credit for the first three. LeBron, LeBron makes other guys better. LeBron has more of a complete game. Let's not ignore the fact, Max, that LeBron is 3 inches taller and about 40, 35, hold up, about 35 to 40 pounds heavier. And then we have to take, well, if that's the case, then why you even having a damn conversation? Then you're having a conversation to compare impact and skills. Now you're trying to make size a factor. If that's the case, then why have, why have the conversation? Have to take into consideration, okay, where are you? So, in other words, if I'm, if I'm Isiah Thomas, and I'm a miniature dude, there's what, so much I can do? Whereas if I'm a bigger dude who's a physical specimen, who's imposing over everybody, I have an advantage. So, my point is, if I have that, hold up, hold up. If I have that advantage over you and I don't utilize it, what's worse? Me maximizing what I have available to me or not maximizing it? That's the point. You want to measure LeBron's heart? He's going to lose pound for pound or inch for inch. Is Thomas talking about the Thomas, Allen Iverson? If they were 6'6", 6'8", those are the two best players of all time. Kobe, if he was 6'8", would be maybe better than LeBron. He wasn't. You know, there are no weight divisions or height divisions here. You throw them all in together. No, but, but there are moments, but there are moments, and moments matter. We, we got to go to break. Yeah, there are moments, and and moments do matter. Stephen, that you're correct. And then a lot of big moments, Kobe Bryant came up short because his clutchness is overrated. But what he did have was a total lack of conscience, which is, uh, consistent with somebody who's a sociopath, as Kobe Bryant has shown himself to be, quite frankly. All right. That man has sociopathic tendencies. We can see from what he did in, in, uh, Colorado. We can see what he did in, uh, to to a lot of his teammates. All right. But that's, that's a whole another level. That's a story for another day. Break. When we come back, O. But yeah, uh, in regards to the LeBron James and Kobe Bryant issue, that's, to me, that's LeBron is clearly the overall better player. LeBron has, has had the greater impact. He's gone to various teams with different coaches, and it's been, it's been pretty much the same result since, uh, 2007, right? If you have LeBron James since 2007, you're going to win anywhere from 53 to to 65 games. You're going to make a serious deep run into the playoffs and, and most likely get somewhere near the championship. All right. With Kobe Bryant, um, if Kobe didn't have Phil Jackson, if he didn't have a dominant low post player, he didn't even make the playoffs. All right. And, and that's a fact. All right. That's a fact. People going to get mad. The first year that Shaq left, that was Kobe's opportunity to show how great he was. They didn't even make the playoffs. All right. They had to beg Phil Jackson to come back, and he came back, and he made them a relevant team again. Kobe threatened to leave because he, quote unquote, had no help, even though he had the most talented team in the league until he ran everybody off. Oh, by the way, Rick Fox is on record as saying that he retired a couple years early because he couldn't stand playing with Kobe. All right. So, after Kobe runs all his teammates off, then he begs for help and he threatens to force a trade if he doesn't get help. And, uh, David Stern, uh, links up with Jerry Buss, that mind control handler Jerry Buss, the guy who liked to have sex with young girls, allegedly. And they, they orchestrate the trade for Pau Gasol, who at the time went on to become probably the best low post center in the NBA at the time. And that's what made Kobe relevant as a championship-level, uh, uh, leader again. All right. Kobe can, Kobe can get you that. He can get you to that title if you have all the right mixing and the right coaching to temper his sociopathic nature because he's not a leader. All right. You need a great coach to lead with, with Kobe there because Kobe, Kobe's personality is like a black hole. All right. Everybody's just going to get sucked, all the positive energy is going to get sucked out of the room with him there because, you know, he's got those, those, you know, that mental, you know, how he's configured mentally is not conducive for a team sport. All right. While LeBron, on the other hand, can overcome the nature of the coach because by nature, he's more magnanimous. He wants to get everybody involved. All right. So, it's just different. But Jordan combined the nature of the both of them. That's why he was better than the both of them. Right. One of a few reasons why he was better than the both of them. But that's a story for another day. All right. Peace.