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That's what greatness is all about: making solid to good teams great.
I don't know how much I really buy into this cliche. How measurable is that really? Did Jordan really "make" his championship teams great? Or did the personnel decisions, management, coaching, training, etc. help make them great? One player's will and desire alone cannot make a team great - if they did, Jordan and Kobe would have won a few more titles than they already have. Jordan's greatness couldn't make Paxson hit 3's or Pippen steal the ball. There has to be chemistry and the other players have to be pretty damned good.
We all know Gasol is a talented player but he's never been seen as a "great" player. He didn't make the All Star team, nor did any of the other Lakers. They're not good enough to be All Stars, but they're good enough to not give Kobe credit for making them better. I sincerely doubt Kobe would be given the credit for making his team great if they win it this year, he'd just be written off as having a more talented team than LeBron. As where LeBron would be seen as the savior of his band of non-All Stars, making them all better players. I think LeBron simply gets the benefit of the doubt a little more because he's likable. Kobe has to endure the double standard because he's a polarizing figure. I think he's come to that realization already.
The biggest difference between LeBron this year and last year? Mo Williams. He isn't a star necessarily, and he might not command double teams, but he gives LeBron a solid number 2 that he can depend on - which he didn't have last year. He's LeBron's version of Gasol.
Last edited by scirocco22; 04-29-2009 at 05:28 PM..
Reason: quotation edited
Jordan was in a class by himself. The closest out there now is Labron, at least in physical ability. The will and drive of Jordan was unmatched, and he had a mean streak, which Kobe doesn't possess.
I think LeBron is being put up on a pedestal way too soon. Kobe has all of the physical ability and mental toughness. It's a matter of surrounding him with key talent, just as it was with Jordan. Chicago did a great job of surround Jordan with not just talent, but key talent.
And when Kobe gets "mean", it's often referred to as whining. When Jordan got mean, it was considered "mean". The only difference between their mean streaks is how you perceive each guy.
I think LeBron is being put up on a pedestal way too soon. Kobe has all of the physical ability and mental toughness. It's a matter of surrounding him with key talent, just as it was with Jordan. Chicago did a great job of surround Jordan with not just talent, but key talent.
And when Kobe gets "mean", it's often referred to as whining. When Jordan got mean, it was considered "mean". The only difference between their mean streaks is how you perceive each guy.
The biggest difference between Kobe and Jordan has been shooting percentage...it's quite telling.
I agree with you about the whole "surrounding with talent" thing.
One thing about Jordan though...he MADE Pippen better. He lead by example, Pippen was always working out with MJ in the mornings at Jordan's house etc.
Another telling quote from Dennis Rodman was when he said the Bulls practiced harder than any team he'd ever been around and that the practices were more intense and competitive than the games. This was Jordan's doing.
Steve Kerr has said the same things as has other veterans that came onto the Bulls roster for stints like Ron Harper etc.
I don't know how much I really buy into this cliche. How measurable is that really? Did Jordan really "make" his championship teams great? Or did the personnel decisions, management, coaching, training, etc. help make them great? One player's will and desire alone cannot make a team great - if they did, Jordan and Kobe would have won a few more titles than they already have. Jordan's greatness couldn't make Paxson hit 3's or Pippen steal the ball. There has to be chemistry and the other players have to be pretty damned good.
I think that's an easy question to answer. Look what happened to the team when he took his two-year "retirement" and then look what happened when he returned. The 1990s Bulls provides a perfect illustration of the cliche.
The biggest difference between Kobe and Jordan has been shooting percentage...it's quite telling.
I agree with you about the whole "surrounding with talent" thing.
One thing about Jordan though...he MADE Pippen better. He lead by example, Pippen was always working out with MJ in the mornings at Jordan's house etc.
Another telling quote from Dennis Rodman was when he said the Bulls practiced harder than any team he'd ever been around and that the practices were more intense and competitive than the games. This was Jordan's doing.
Steve Kerr has said the same things as has other veterans that came onto the Bulls roster for stints like Ron Harper etc.
I think the biggest difference between Kobe and Jordan is that Jordan put more effort into getting to the basket where Kobe works more on jump shots. Kobe is a better jump shooter than Jordan was - Jordan had to work on that over the years. But the fact that Jordan was able to get to the hoop more is probably reflected in the shooting percentage.
And I don't know that you can say that Jordan MADE Pippen better. I think too many people give Jordan that undue credit. He might have made him work harder and/or practice harder. But if Pippen didn't have the talent to begin with, he never would have been named one of the 50 greatest players. Kobe demands hard work from his teammates too, but that demand doesn't turn them into great players. I don't think either of us would say that he'd be given the same credit for making Trevor Ariza a star, if in fact, Trevor Ariza ends up being a star. The fact is, Jordan and Pippen just flat-out played well together. Together, they dominated. They needed each other. That was evident as soon as Pippen left after the last championship.
I think that's an easy question to answer. Look what happened to the team when he took his two-year "retirement" and then look what happened when he returned. The 1990s Bulls provides a perfect illustration of the cliche.
The Bulls needed Jordan to win a title - no question about that. It doesn't automatically mean that he made his team great. He was one piece of the puzzle. Without that piece, they weren't going to be the same. You can say that for any championship team in history when talking about their best player. But to give him all the credit for taking a good team and making them great? I'd say that's too cliche.
You can't disrupt the formula and expect it to still work.
And who's to say Pippen didn't make Jordan better? It just seems like Jordan gets a LOT of the credit simply due to how much we all loved watching him. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Jordan days, even though I wasn't a Bulls fan. It was amazing watching the guy. I just think people will always hold everyone else to a different standard. That's all I'm saying.
The Bulls needed Jordan to win a title - no question about that. It doesn't automatically mean that he made his team great. He was one piece of the puzzle. Without that piece, they weren't going to be the same. You can say that for any championship team in history when talking about their best player. But to give him all the credit for taking a good team and making them great? I'd say that's too cliche.
You can't disrupt the formula and expect it to still work.
And who's to say Pippen didn't make Jordan better? It just seems like Jordan gets a LOT of the credit simply due to how much we all loved watching him. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Jordan days, even though I wasn't a Bulls fan. It was amazing watching the guy. I just think people will always hold everyone else to a different standard. That's all I'm saying.
Ask yourself this: did they build the team around Pippen? Or did they build it around Jordan? Jordan gets a lot of the credit not just because we loved watching him, but because he was the keystone that made a really good team a great team.
Ask yourself this: did they build the team around Pippen? Or did they build it around Jordan? Jordan gets a lot of the credit not just because we loved watching him, but because he was the keystone that made a really good team a great team.
They built it around Jordan, and eventually Jordan and Pippen - all the other pieces were proven to be pretty interchangable. Jordan was the leader though, no question. And he was an extraordinary player. But in the Kobe vs. Jordan comparison, it just seems that Kobe will always be held to a different standard. The first argument is always about how Jordan won 6 championships and Kobe only has 3. The one that always follows is how Kobe couldn't have won them without Shaq. As if it was certain that Jordan would have gotten his rings without Pippen. He made the Bulls a great team by being on the team, not necessarily by making his teammates great players - that's the key point I'm debating.
I'm really not trying to discount what Jordan was able to accomplish, nor am I saying that Kobe is "greater" than Jordan. And I truly was a Jordan fan myself back then. But I just believe that he might get more credit for the team's accomplishments because of how much he was loved. And I think that's why LeBron will have a better chance at being seen as the next closest thing to Jordan, rather than Kobe. Not because of their play, but because of how they're perceived by the masses. I think that plays a bigger role in how "great" a player is thought to be than people realize.
The biggest difference between Kobe and Jordan has been shooting percentage...it's quite telling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ludachris
I think the biggest difference between Kobe and Jordan is that Jordan put more effort into getting to the basket where Kobe works more on jump shots. Kobe is a better jump shooter than Jordan was - Jordan had to work on that over the years. But the fact that Jordan was able to get to the hoop more is probably reflected in the shooting percentage.
The biggest difference between MJ and Kobe? Those HANDS. Jordan had those huge Dr. J hands that allowed him to handle the ball better as well as control it better when he was bumped. It helped him take on all those behemoths from the 90's NBA, finish the play, and get a foul call in the process, no sweat.
Kobe simply doesn't have that luxury. His hands are regular-sized, and it affects his ball-handling and his ability to control the ball when driving.
In terms of creativity in his moves (mostly driving), Kobe has a slight edge over Jordan, mostly because he needs to be more creative because of his small hands. I'd liken Kobe to a Ferrari: elegant, poised, exquisite handling, strong but not that strong.
MJ was more like a Lebron or a Dodge Viper with the moves of a Ferrari: massively strong and overpowering, yet poised, elegant, and equisite. But...just not quite as exquisite as a Ferrari.
IMO, Kobe has MJ beat in terms of exquisiteness and overall fluidity. Not by much, but enough.
That said, MJ was hellaciously creative in his own right. Heck, a good chunk of Kobe's moves are peeled right out of Jordan's repertoire. It's quite simple: Jordan was extraodinarily strong, but he wasn't Lebron James. He couldn't simply run into a defender, big man at least, and expect that defender to bounce off him like a bowling pin. And those 90's "Jordan Rules" defenses were designed to beat the living sh#t out of Jordan and double team him as much as possible. So he had to come up with multitudes of ways to score, ways to twist his body and arms, angles to shoot at, etc. against those oppressive 90's defenses.
And let's face it: defensive rules nowadays just aren't as, um.....liberal with what they allow defenders to get away with compared with the rules in the 90's. You needed creativity to average 30+ a game without being a complete chucker.
And let's get that shooting misconception out of the way, shall we? Recently, Mark Jackson, a huge Kobe suckup, stated that while Ray Allen had a gift-from-God jumpshot, Kobe had to work on his by making 3000 jumpshots a day during the offseason. The problem? Ray Allen has borderline OCD, and he worked (and still works) his ass off perfecting that jumpshot. You just never hear about Allen's obsessive routines until someone happens to write about it.
And just like MJ had to work on his jumpshot, Kobe had to work on his. Nobody is born with a perfect jumpshot - some may have better natural technique, but all have to work on making it consistent. And both perfected their jumpshots by working harder than pretty much anyone else in the league.
That said, Jordan came from a time when the 3-pointer was a rather new concept. You simply didn't have that many guys like Quentin Richardson or Rashard Lewis jacking up 6 threes a game back then. Jordan could shoot the three, as seen against the Blazers in the 92 Finals, but he wasn't a three-point shooter.
Kobe grew up at a time when Dennis Scott and John Starks were jacking up threes. And don't forget when the league shortened the three-point line distance, and almost everyone got into the act. You can see the differences in the number of attempts currently, and from 1990-1991:
MJ was a far deadlier mid-range shooter than Kobe is, especially later in his career. Kobe's unquestionably the better three-point shooter.
I have a theory on this: Kobe, looking up to his idol, wants to do MJ one better by being a better three-point shooter, something MJ was decent at but never completely proficient at. But there's more. Kobe simply doesn't have the ball-control that MJ does, mostly due to his small hands. So he uses the 3 as a tool to give himself space that he otherwise wouldn't have. That's my theory, anyway.
Last edited by urban analysis therapist; 04-28-2009 at 03:39 PM..
I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Barkely and Malone and putting words in my mouth as I CLEARLY have stated they never were at that level. Let me put this another way....I completely disagree with you that Nash is WAY better than Jordan see, we can both play the make stuff up and then disagree with it game. Stop it, you know basketball way better than that.
I am merely saying that Hakeem had 2 incredible seasons. That they occurred when Jordan was only PARTIALLY around is moot. I'm saying that he had two years that measure up to anyone. Heck, look at what Shaq did to Philly in the finals a while back and it's hard to imagine ANYONE could give an opposing team a bigger ass-whipping.
Jordan had season after season after season like this. There have been a FEW guys that had a year or three at that level...Olajuwon had 2 years and Shaq had arguably a couple years at that level too.
Look at it another way...Tim Duncan has been consistently awesome...probably a career roughly equal to Olajuwon? Duncan had more high quality seasons but I don't know that he ever played to that extra level that Olajuwon reached for 2 years and Jordan was at for 10 years or so.
Maybe it was the sun and 93 degree heat that was beating down on me when I read your post. Or maybe you changed your post. I don't know. But at least we can agree on Barkley and Malone now.
And now that I'm considering it, I'd say Olajuwon was the best player in the league for those two years. Period. No "MJ wasn't around" excuses or anything like that. If I'm going to say how great he was in dismantling the other great centers of the league, I might as well give credit where credit is due with no strings attached.
As for Duncan: he maybe had one season where he was at that transcendent level of greatness, but he's a truly great player and a definite "Franchise" player nevertheless. He's the ultimate winner and team leader of this generation (or is it last generation? Whatever). And the goal of the NBA is to win a championship, no? If I were to build a team from scratch using players from today, and I can choose to have a rookie version of that player than my choices are simple.
Number 1, of course, is Lebron, based on his mindblowing potential. I mean, the guy's bigger than Karl Malone and moves like MJ or Bo Jackson. And it doesn't hurt that his leadership qualities are top notch. Number 2 would be Timmy. Then 3 and 4 would be Kobe and Wade in no particular order, probably Kobe first.
Was he as great as Jordan or Olajuwon? From a statistical POV, probably not. But his stats are incredible nevertheless for how much he played at an elite level for so long. And IMO, greatness is a bit hard to qualify. I may go into it later on, but for now, I'm pulling a Justice Potter Stewart and saying, "I know it when I see it." For Duncan, it's not hard to see: 4 championships as the "Franchise player" of the team (except maybe in 1999, when he was a co-franchise player with The Admiral). It's that simple.
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see, we can both play the make stuff up and then disagree with it game. 
Stop it, you know basketball way better than that.
And it doesn't hurt that his leadership qualities are top notch. Number 2 would be Timmy. Then 3 and 4 would be Kobe and Wade in no particular order, probably Kobe first.
