Kobe sparks 'Who's better' debate after liking anti-LeBron comment
Lakers legend Kobe Bryant kicked off quite the firestorm in the most seemingly harmless of ways Saturday.
He hit “like” on a tweet that said, “If you were a baller, you’d know that kobe is more skilled than Lebron.”
Kobe’s latest like on Twitter is pretty interesting 👀 pic.twitter.com/zWxzR074p4
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 13, 2018
Bleacher Report noticed, and it was off to the races in the responses as virtual drinks were poured, barroom arguments erupted and Internet pool cues were broken over knees and used in a good old-fashioned Twitter brawl.
One commenter pointed out that Shaquille O’Neal carried Kobe to three of his five championships.
https://twitter.com/Lebumbetter/status/995468261188866048
Another pointed out that Kobe’s hero ball was atrocious in the clutch, while Cleveland superstar LeBron James is even more money than the legend himself, Michael Jordan:
https://twitter.com/Tg31Third/status/995477812432834560
And yet another pointed out that the Lakers beat the Celtics in 2010 despite, not because of, Kobe, while Miami’s win in 2013 was powered by LeBron’s heroics in Game 7.
— Julian (@jclee4) May 13, 2018
In other words, the Internet drinks and it knows things, because the very notion that Kobe was “more skilled” than LeBron is absurd on its face.
Now, to be fair to Bryant, most of his prime was in the NBA’s Dark Ages, that statistical dead zone between Jordan’s second retirement after the 1998 “Last Shot” and 2005, when Mike D’Antoni went to Phoenix and sparked the basketball Renaissance with his “Seven Seconds or Less” offense, the forerunner to modern pace-and-space basketball.
The whole league was trash for seven years, and Kobe was just a product of his time; scoring guards were expected to play isolation basketball, using one-on-one moves rather than having a rhythm and flow to the game that we take for granted today.
This is why Kobe holds the all-time record for missed shots. He played in an era that once saw a team, the Boston Celtics, score 66 points in a playoff game … and win.
(Seriously, Game 3 of the 2002 Eastern Conference semifinals between the Celtics and Pistons was the single worst basketball game in NBA postseason history.)
Much like how baseball players who played during the “steroids era” must have their home run totals put into proper context, so too should Dark Ages NBA players have expectations adjusted accordingly.
But even when you stop to consider that, LeBron still wins out.
After all, this year, he’s playing on a G-League team, but he’s set to take the Canton Charge to the NBA Finals while dressing up those scrubs in Cleveland Cavaliers uniforms.
LeBron’s teams have won 23 consecutive playoff series against Eastern Conference opponents. The guy beat the Indiana Pacers by himself in the first round. Well, OK, he and the refs beat the Pacers; the league even admitted outright that it blew the goaltending call in Game 5 that would’ve sent the series to Indiana with the Pacers up 3-2.
But griping from the Pacers-fan peanut gallery aside, LeBron is about to tie Jerry West for most Finals appearances by a player who never had Bill Russell as a teammate.
So of course Kobe is going to like a Twitter status that says nice things about him.
But the simple fact remains, the debate in NBA circles isn’t LeBron James vs. Kobe Bryant.
It’s LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan.
And if this Cleveland team wins a title? Well, get your goat emojis ready and your Twitter app open.
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