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Kobe's defense has always been overrated. Ray Allen, D Wade, Paul Pierce and Lebron's scoring averages in games played against Kobe Bryant are actually higher than their career scoring averages.
Through 9 seasons, Kobe and Durant actually have identical defensive ratings, Durant averages .2 fewer steals and .5 more blocks. I've never seen Kobe's defense impact a series the way Durant's did in last year's WCF.
Post up their "identical defensive ratings" I seriously hope you aren't comparing raw stats and not weighted metrics.
Sorry, you don't make 9 all-defensive teams and be "over-rated", the people that vote on that are not random people off the street or millions of Chinese all-star voters but rather people that follow that professionally. That's just sour grapes.
Comparing stats with Kobe is tricky because he started young and ended old.
If you are comparing career averages from a guy that played 20 seasons or so to a guy 8-9 seasons in, it's garbage.
If you want to compare prime year to prime year then that is much fairer.
FYI- I personally really really like Kevin Durant, much more than Kobe but lets be fair here.
you see, PPG going up isnt always a sign your oppenent plays bad/mediocre or even average defense. there are more factors to defense then how many points someone scores against you. ask tim duncan, artest, bowen, leonard, lebron, hakeem, jordan, payton, russell, all the great defenders will tell you that.
kobe is ranked 42 nba all time in defensive win shares. ALL TIME.
DWS are cumulative. Kobe played 20 seasons.
In those head to head matchups, Kobe's personal fouls-per-game increased, whereas Ray Allen's turnover's per-game increased.
Kobe's DBPM is a net negative, meaning he's an average to slightly below average defender. Even using the eye-test, I struggle to recall Kobe ever playing lockdown defense.
In those head to head matchups, Kobe's personal fouls-per-game increased, whereas Ray Allen's turnover's per-game increased.
Kobe's DBPM is a net negative, meaning he's an average to slightly below average defender. Even using the eye-test, I struggle to recall Kobe ever playing lockdown defense.
So you're essentially saying that all all-defensive team selections are invalid.
Kobe in Shaq era was a fantastic defensive player, he had everything you could ask, very high IQ, always in stance, bulldog mentality, quick feet and hands and generally very athletic.
If stats say otherwise, then that's a piece of evidence no.18829 for you that statistics are flawed when it comes to defense.
Later he had to carry them more and got a bit lazier. He'd flash defense but also take it easy. Similar story with LeBron too.
Kobe in Shaq era was a fantastic defensive player, he had everything you could ask, very high IQ, always in stance, bulldog mentality, quick feet and hands and generally very athletic.
If stats say otherwise, then that's a piece of evidence no.18829 for you that statistics are flawed when it comes to defense.
Later he had to carry them more and got a bit lazier. He'd flash defense but also take it easy. Similar story with LeBron too.
He had to take it easy because as you get older you can't exert yourself so much at both ends of the court and they needed his energy on offense.
Same story with Jordan too FYI...around age 30 give or take.
They're not getting "lazier", they just physically can't run full steam for 40 minutes like they could when they were 25.
His defense started to be more episodic once Shaq left and he had to carry them. He was in his physical prime back then.
Anyway, he was a great defender when he needed to be.
His all-nba defensive team selections continued uninterrupted with something like 2/3rds of them occurring AFTER Shaq left and continuing until he was in his early 30's.
Same voters more or less before and after Shaq's departure.
I guess that I'm just more inclined to believe the people that follow the league for a living and vote on these things as they get them generally right....as opposed to individual fans (like us) that have their own biases, lack of experience and so forth.
The voters had him 1st team D before Shaq and after. *shrug*
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