Is Kobe Bryant the "CLOSEST" to Jordan???

I'm mp's, so the great Kobe Bryant had two numbers retired by the LA Lakers. And of course, this bird, the very predictable, is Kobe Bryant, the closest thing to Michael Jordan conversation. Of course, they're gonna talk about it, and I'm gonna chime in too. Jerseys retired by the same team last night at the Staples Center, 20 years with the purple and gold, playing in seven finals and earning five rings. Today is Kobe, the closest thing to His Airness on the court. I think so. I don't know why they continue to ask this question. For this is why I always talk about sports media narratives. Everyone knows that Kobe Bryant spent most of his life obsessing over Michael Jordan, trying to be him, trying to replicate all of his moves, down to his mannerisms, down to his thought processes. Michael Jordan, to his great credit, took Kobe Bryant under his wing and trained him up. Not only did he show them a lot of his moves, he also gave Kobe insight into his mentality. So, very few people want to give Jordan credit for what he did for and with Kobe Bryant, but he was a, a heavy, heavy contributor to making Kobe Bryant the player that he became.

This conversation with Kobe, to his face, blowout loss to the Pistons, five games in the NBA Finals where they got annihilated. Yeah, in which he was terrible. He did not get Shaq involved to the degree that he should have been involved. Very few people ever mention that series in 2004. Kobe Bryant hit the, hit a shot to send the game into overtime. I believe it was Game two, maybe Game one, one of those games. And that pretty much was the highlight of the series for him because Tayshaun Prince, I've mentioned it before, Kobe Bryant, and they may as well have been Andy Dufresne in that series because he was locked up. That man, with that man, went nowhere and went nowhere fast. But most of Kobe Bryant superfans, they don't mention that series for whatever reason. That resonated with me as well because I'm at the saw that Hamlet on a world's biggest stage for Michael Jordan. That's where it resonates with me now.

Kobe is that guy. That guy. He's that guy with that killer instinct. He had that kind of game. I will say this for Kobe in regards to the Game Six blot against Boston, and I mentioned it in another video in regards to that Game Six blowout when they put James Posey on him and the other brother who was playing with the hoodlum with the Memphis Grizzlies for a while, huh? Huh. Kobe gave credit to being his best defender, Tony Allen. They both did a phenomenal job on Kobe over the course of that series. And by Game Six, Kobe was very much worn out mentally and physically. And the Lakers were not ready to face a team as intense as the Boston Celtics. Boston that season was extremely intense, led by Kevin Garnett. And the Lakers were building, and they probably got to the finals a year early. Either that or they just ran into a team that was just better than them. And that happened. But the Bulls, when they finally got to the finals, they were ready. Had the Bulls got to the finals in 1990, say Pippen had played that Game Seven and somehow they found a way to win in Detroit, who knows? They might, they may not have been able to beat Portland. I think they would have beat them anyway. I think that Jordan would had seven titles instead of six. But no, that there's a lot that there's a lot that comes into play when certain teams make the final. Some teams are just not ready yet.

Michael, but is he the closest? Yeah, because everything was in an effort to mirror or he clips what Michael Jordan had done. Michael Jordan was the target that Kobe was aiming for. He was unapologetic about it in every way to everyone, included Michael Jordan. And that's why it's alright to make those comparisons. Kobe Bryant is the closest to Michael in terms of the actual game. Of course, and that was Steve Kerr's point. He planned by the way, he modeled this whole game on Michael Jordan. He mobbed his whole life on Michael Jordan, his whole life. That's why I said I urge to see these guys coming to, coming. Kobe Brad was better than Michael Jordan in what way? Oh, he took longer three-pointers. His dress, everything was modeled on Jordan, trying to be a better version of the original. And that's a great thing. Let me say this, even though I get on Kobe and LeBron and I get it, I get there, I get there fans all in a tizzy. This is a great thing what they've done with their careers. You're supposed to want to take things to the next level. I'm sure that Michael Jordan looks at them and says that they're doing what they're supposed to do. You always want your descendants to take what you did to another level. What's the point of you living beyond someone being able to learn from their accomplishments and their mistakes and you're not being able to advance what they accomplished? The point of you being here is to take what you've already seen in what you've already learned and improve upon it. That's the only way to push mankind forward. So Jordan's true greatness lays in the fact that even though he came into the NBA over 30 years ago, he's still considered the greatest player ever. And we're now two generations beyond his career, or a generation beyond his career if you count the Wizard years. The original was also clearly the greatest player who ever lived and usually recognizes the greatest athlete in the history of American team sports and really the greatest of all time on planet Earth. Like, if that you're, you play, you happen to play that guy's position and you try to be that, the greatest ever in any sport, and you try to be that, only better than the original, who else would take on that task, right? You know, with that level of lauding, I can understand why Jordan hesitates to have interviews with many of these modern-day media members. I think that there's a portion of Jordan who's embarrassed by the way that he's been deified. Don't get me wrong, he has a huge ego and I'm sure that that consciously he also likes it. He likes to be known as the greatest ever. But I'm sure that there's a portion of his, of his, uh, of his mental where he just is embarrassed by the way people talk about him like a god. It goes way, way, way too far into a form of idolatry, right? But Kobe tried it and came there extremely close. For those who want to argue that Kobe, well, if they played in a different era, if only hadn't played with Shaq enough, when you look at it and you dig and you start to adjust for errors and you start to account for everything, the most advanced analytics, the eyeball test, the measure in terms of championships, if you talk to teammates who they shared, by the way, were contemporaries rather, who were on each, the words were played with Kobe and watch Jordan, everything, they will all tell you Jordan was a little bit better. Jordan's the greatest ever, but Kobe came, as I said, perilously close. I think we shouldn't conflate the idea on the one head of being the most like someone with on the other hand having as much value as someone. So Kobe is most like Jordan in terms of his game, his size, the position, everything. But LeBron is closest to Jordan in terms of value. I would agree with that. I would definitely agree with that. And I think that that is an accurate distinction between the two players. Kobe did the best job of trying to mimic Jordan. But the LeBron vs. Jordan conversation is much more pertinent to me than the Kobe versus Jordan conversation because LeBron has been the alpha on all of his teams. Kobe Bryant has not one. And the next time you get to a non-big man, although at LeBron's size, you can almost argue he doesn't play like a big man, but he is like Carl Malone size, right? Yes, in this era, he is a big man. I brought that out a long time ago, and many of these television sports analysts are finally starting to come around to the analogy that I've been making for a long time, which is that LeBron James is an amalgamation of Carmelo and Scottie Pippen. That's what he is. He's not Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson mixed together. That's just nonsense that the media came up with for hype about 15 years ago. LeBron James's game is not reminiscent of of either Jordan or Magic Johnson at all. He's a great passer, but he is not the passer that Magic Johnson was. He's a very, very good scorer, but he's not the scorer that Jordan was. Really, in the last two years, really, especially this year, LeBron James has diversified his offensive repertoire to the level where you can compare him offensively to Michael Jordan. But really, the most pertinent comparison or analogy to previous players to be a combination of Carmelo and Scottie Pippen. However you wanted to find that, the name is going to be LeBron. Well, that's your opinion. That's your opinion too. I have Jordan, and then the three dominant centers, Kareem, Bill Russell, and I might not even have Walt there at four. For our product, put Magic at five, I would have Bird, and then six would be LeBron. But to me, him and Bird are interchangeable at five. And then probably seven, I would put Wilt, eight, Shaq, nine, huh, ten, Tim Duncan. Those are my top ten. So, so Coker's absolute right. Kobe both like Jordan, LeBron closest to Jordan in terms of value. What do you mean in terms of value? And when you say LeBron eclipses Jordan, I'm sorry, LeBron over on eclipses Kobe, what he means is when you look at most of the metrics, when you look at value, as he stated, and as I've stated numerous times on other videos, when LeBron comes to your team, you, you're almost guaranteed to win 50 games. You cannot say that about Kobe Bryant. And many of his fans, of his fans, get upset, but you cannot erase 2005. Oh, well, Kobe played with Smush Parker. You played. That's why you make the playoffs. If you're an all-time great player, if you're a player that people are saying is top two or three all-time, like his fans try to allege, you don't miss the playoffs. I don't care what you playing with. I don't care who you're playing with. So really, what Kobe Bryant showed is that he's an all-time great player, but he's not top, he's not top five all-time. But the top five all-time great players who play most of the season, they don't miss the playoffs. I don't care what conference they're in. You mean, you mean to tell me you can't make one of the top eight seeds? No, sir. And if you look at Kobe's PER numbers, they're nothing compared to LeBron James or Michael Jordan. And he was, and his usage rate, when you, when you, uh, balance it out with his PER, it's not as astounding that you would think. His PER is somewhere around similar to Larry Bird's, but Larry's usage rate was nowhere near Kobe Bryant's. He's going to be higher on the all-time list. Is that, if you had to pick one or the other, you're starting a team, you're going to take LeBron. Yep. Except if you're a Laker fan, then you take Kobe and you sit back and you watch Kobe take 40 shots, shoot 18 for 40, score 41 points and go 500, and then you make a bunch of excuses about how is there other guys on the team that's not playing well. To point out a lot of that has to do with LeBron's superior size, which is true. He's six foot eight, 250 plus. But it also has to do with the efficiency in scoring. LeBron is an incredibly efficient scorer. Absolutely. Especially in the last five or six years, LeBron has really mastered the art of knowing where and when to shoot. And that is a big difference in between him and Kobe Bryant. And even in their head-to-head matchups, it's only regular season matchups that they've gotten together, but he dominated the regular season matchups. He's just a better player. And to me, it's not very controversial. I think that Kobe is a, is a player who's more appealing to alpha males because he has an alpha male personality. I mean, he has an extreme alpha male personality to the point of being borderline sociopathic. Dennis Rodman kind of figure. Whoa, he could guard some of these. There was a, but there was a portion in LeBron's career where he could guard centers, but that was during the era where there was a lull in the big man. Right now, the big man is returning. Like LeBron could not guard most these top centers right now. He couldn't guard DeMarcus Cousins. He couldn't guard Joel Embiid if they were fully healthy. He just couldn't. It'd be too much mass family to deal with. Even with as big and as overly muscled as his physique is right now, he still wouldn't be able to deal with them on a consistent basis. But if you were to put him on them in the, in spots, he would do it. He'd know, he would do a moderately good job because he is a big man for this era, particularly at the size that he is right now. But a young LeBron, they couldn't guard the big men back in the 2000s. He couldn't guard Tim Duncan. He couldn't guard Kevin Garnett. He couldn't. And that's why he would lose to them in the playoffs. No, no, not of a magic. I think that his passing is comparable to Bird. Even I think that Bird is a better passer than him. But Magic, no. Value, the one who brings you the most wins or the closest to a championship all by himself, the one who fits in best are the most different kinds of team, the one who's going to be ranked higher on the all-time list. Value, Jordan's one. Then the question is where does everyone else fit in? LeBron is going to end his career as the first non-big you mentioned after Jordan. And Kobe will fit in with Bird and Magic somewhere below that. Colby, Kobe is not gonna be in the top ten. Kobe's career is over. Okay, Kobe, Kobe's fits in somewhere around that 11 to 15 range. And it, depending on your knowledge of the history of basketball, that will determine where you put him. I said this odd infinitum, he's in that range from 11 to 15, 11 to 20. Well, you have the John Havlicek, the Isiah Thomases, the Moses Malone's, the Dr. J's, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West. You know, those guys. I would put Kobe up somewhere around 11 to 15. But when you own, when you've, when you understand the game and you respect what other players have done, no, you don't put Kobe, you don't put him as the third greatest non-big ever. Give me a break. Because I think that while you're right, we need to understand why there's a lack of appreciation for Kobe in this, or I should say, pardon me, let me not miss, let me not miscite him. I believe he would have Kobe as the fifth greatest non-big because I believe he said that he had him after Jordan, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, and I believe he said, no, well, the fourth greatest because I believe he said that he had him right above Larry Bird. But there's no way that Kobe Bryant is as good as Larry Bird. Sorry, that's going to be held against Kobe to some degree, which, as it should, which is almost justifies why he had this insatiable appetite to prove himself away from Shaquille O'Neal. He didn't want to appear with him for the rest of his career because he didn't want to be, you know, identified with just him. He wanted to establish his own aura of invincibility and what have you. That's the same reason why he also advised Kyrie Irving, I have no doubt in my mind about this, why he advised him to leave LeBron and find his own, you know, find his own way, create his own legacy. We don't take into account what LeBron did. LeBron didn't win a title until he joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. He didn't win a third title until he joined Kyrie Irving and made sure you got Kevin Love to come from Minnesota as well. Absolutely. And many of the LeBron James superfans don't really grasp that or don't want to admit or acknowledge that when they say silly things like Jordan never won a playoff series until he got Scottie Pippen. When, if you understand the real reason why Jordan won his first playoff series was because they finally got good enough to avoid Boston in the first round. That's why he won his first playoff series because they, Boston agreed, and that had a lot to do with the success that he ultimately was reached. Now, he doesn't deserve to be excoriated for that because it's a team game. You can't win by yourself. But he went about the business. He didn't inherit anything. He put himself in a position as a free agent where he went to, where he went to in Miami. Yes. And and that whole stratagem was pre-planned by him and D Wade. And much credit to them. You should propellant, pre-plan your life and make strategic moves. But there's a reason why he decided to, to become Confederate with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh because what they all had in common was they were all in three different locations where they were all going nowhere fast. So kudos to LeBron for being his own team builder. But that will count against him when you have these all-time great conversations with conference throughout his career because it's been considerably weaker than the West for the pretty much the last decade. We've got to pay attention to all of that to where Michael Jordan had Pippen and had to groom and elevate Pippen. Thank you, sir. I guess some of these guys are coming my comments and say to say this ridiculousness. Scottie Pippen was great. He wasn't a role player. Michael Jordan didn't raise him. What are you talking about? Why you try takes, man? Just be quiet. Lottie's guys talk all this [ __ ] didn't even see Scottie Pippen play. Scottie Pippen was a great two-way player, great utility man. He could, he could bring what you needed at that moment. He was not a good player in the clutch. And anybody who knows that knows that Scottie Pippen was not the guy you went to to get a clutch basket because he just was not that guy. That's why Phil Jackson used to habitually design game-winning plays for Toni Kukoc instead of Scottie because he knows he knew that Scottie wasn't that guy. And those of you brothers out there who are old enough to remember and saw the second three-peat team, Phil would also habitually draw a play for Toni Kukoc even when Jordan was on the team because he knew that Jordan was so secure in his ability to play and shoot in the clutch that he would not be offended by having a play run for Scottie. I mean, pardon me, for Toni Kukoc. Scottie was extremely insecure about his place in the NBA and on the team and on the respect that he believed that he was not receiving. So he would spaz out whenever a play was not designed for him and it was given to Kukoc when he felt like it should have came to him. That's why he had that meltdown in the playoffs against the Knicks in that game, I believe was Game three, where Phil designed a play for Kukoc. Makati is an all-time great role player. People get offended when I say that, but he was, it was a role player to me. A role player is a guy who was not going to lead your team to a championship. And there are many players in the Hall of Fame who were role players. James Worthy, Kevin McHale, Scottie Pippen, Joe Dumars. These are all-time great players. They're role players. Dennis Rodman, Manu Ginobili. Those guys are all-time great role players. Did nothing wrong with that. You know, I think that people want to evaluate everything based on their own personal scale of glorification. And just because you're an All-Star does not mean that you're not a role player. You'd be an all-time great role player and go to eight, nine All-Star games, but if you don't have the ability to lead a team to a Finals victory, you're not, to me, you're not a superstar. You're a role player. You just might be a great role player. Champion along with Michael Jordan, cause Michael Jordan could not have won without him. And then in Kobe's case, he got piled the soul that came on board. You still had Andrew Bynum, Law, Odom, and all of those other guys. But LeBron had his crew of individuals as well, and it proved to be very, very beneficial to him. But we don't bring that up nearly a year. We bring it up. Do you penalize LeBron for that, though? Or do you go to Kobe's good fortune? Because as much as Kobe had to play 1A to Shaq's 1, which in a sense is unfair to him, Kobe was born into an NBA situation where essentially by the time he became an all-star player, he had Phil Jackson as a coach and Shaquille O'Neal in his absolute prime as a teammate. Like, tip LeBron, Phil Jackson, and Shaquille O'Neal, and he ain't going anywhere, especially in the LA market. Could you imagine then he wouldn't have to go looking for super teams? Because that's, that's a great scenario. If LeBron had played with Shaquille O'Neal, how many championships would they have won? And they have very similar personalities. They would have meshed much better in the late 90s, early 2000s. But Shaq was such a jealous person, he may have found a way to alienate LeBron as well. Shaq was extremely jealous for like the first, I would say, 10, 11 years of his career of anybody who he thought would have a chance to take away some of the attention. That's what dissolved his rapport with Penny Hardaway. That's what dissolved his rapport with Kobe Bryant as well, as Kobe wanting to be the main guy. And Shaq knew them. When he went to Miami, he had to make it work with D Wade because if he, if it had been three different locations where he had fell out with the star guard on the team, he would have, it would all signs would have been pointing towards him. So he knew that he had to take a secondary role on that team with Dwyane Wade. Shaq was a role player on that team. He was a phenomenal role player, but he was still a role player. The lead guy was Dwyane Wade. That's not an insult. You have a lot of great all-time great players. Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, a lot of great players. John Stockton, Karl Malone. They were superstar players and they got to the finals. I would not call them a role player. Not just because they didn't win a championship, they would stay with borderline superstar players. They just got to a level where they faced a greater superstar. They just could not overcome them. Mike, when you, when you lose the finals in seven like Patrick Ewing did to Hakeem Olajuwon, he just faced a player who was greater than him. Hakeem Olajuwon is on the top 10 all-time great players. Charles Barkley, he got to the finals, he led the team, put him on his back, got to the finals, he just lost it to the greatest player ever. You know, so this, there are different criteria. But Scottie Pippen is just, he's not, he's, he's not a superstar level player. He was a great player. He was a superstar level role player, as I stated, just like a Kevin McHale, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman. You know, when you put those guys on your team, they, a lot of times they can, they could win a game for you in the finals. They could win a game for you in the playoffs. You know, but to me, they're just different. You know, there's different levels. I don't know that you take credit away from LeBron for seeking out that situation himself when Dan Gilbert so miserably failed to surround him with anything the first go-round in Cleveland. Well, here's the problem with that. They would have to won against Boston in 2010 until LeBron found out that his mama was getting a train Randolph. Let me stop. Until LeBron found out that Delonte West was tapping his mama, okay? So it's offered me to buy into the LeBron didn't have enough help. And he had enough help to be up to 2-1 on Boston in 2010 until he had a mental breakdown. A little bit. Kobe shine seeing all that he could do playing with Shaq. In another sense, he's playing with a prime Shaq and he's at his prime. That's in terms of how high each guy's talents are pitched. There may never have been or since a combination like a prime Shaq and a prime Kobe. Well, they were definitely right there with any combination ever as far as raw talent. They pride the greatest combination ever. I will probably put give them a slight edge over Magic and Kareem just because of their, the fact that they were both in their prime physically. But as far as basketball IQ and understanding how to win and playing together, definitely Magic and Kareem over them. Then after that, Kobe was a sixth man before Kobe ultimately started. There was any Jones and Nick Van Exel of the world and others who want a team. But, but we knew that wasn't going to last because Nick Van Exel was a knucklehead and Eddie Eddie Jones was a very good player, but he wasn't Kobe Bryant. And that's similar to the situation that I mentioned with Lonzo Ball where the Lakers may have to consider getting rid of some of those nice players who are not willing to get on the bus with the Lonzo Ball experiment because I do notice an issue between Lonzo and Julius Randle, Alonzo and Jordan Clarkson. They may have to find a way to get those guys out and move guys in who are going to go along with the program. What are you at first arrived? So Kobe arrived, it wasn't a star and was a star from open attack. He had some mature and work through the Del Harris era. Let's not forget that as well. So there was some, oh, look, Del Harris was leading them to, you know, 50-plus wins. Del Harris wasn't the problem though. Harris just was not a championship level coach. He was not the reason why Kobe Bryant was not playing well. He wouldn't plan well because he had to develop, he had to mature. All right, that'll do it, guys. We got another. But anyway, this was a nice little conversation. Kobe Bryant is our all-time great player. But when you say the closest thing that we've seen to Jordan, I think that that's a double-edged question. On the, on the, on the overt end of it, they're trying to imply that Kobe replicated Jordan's style of play. But subconsciously, they're also trying to imply that it's Kobe Bryant, the second greatest player ever, because it's pretty much a consensus by most of the members of the mainstream sports media that Jordan's the greatest basketball player ever. So when they ask a question like that, that is a loaded question, they're trying to implicitly advance to the viewer that Kobe Bryant may be the second greatest player ever. And other than Laker fans and Kobe fanboys, nobody really believes that. But anyway, P.