Game 27: Los Angeles Lakers (12-14)@ Golden State Warriors (18-9)

Quote:

Originally Posted by gr824

Just to keep the record straight:

No, I did no overall comparison of Bryant's 'game' to Iverson's, at least not in the way you imply when you ran with my comments. I brought up AI to show an example of a player who truly does/did 'chuck' far worse than Bryant, yet one who the league/fans 'supported' and certainly did not laugh at, which explodes the hyperbole from your earlier post ...

The rest of the Lakers shot very well during the fourth quarter and overtime [ by my quick count, 13-21 ], but not so great through three [ 44+% ]. Had the refs called the fouls Bryant deserved in the first three quarters, Bryant would have been, say, 16-36 [ 44.4% ] or 16-37 [ 43.2% ], plus he would have shot 8 or 10 more FTs, too, meaning a stat line of, probably, 40-42 on 36-37 shots and [ about ] 44% shooting. Not a tremendous line, but surely not one that would justify berating and pillorying him the way you are in this thread ...

Also, keep in mind that the Lakers as whole had well over 100 shots from the field in this game [ 107, to be exact ], so, even as the box score stands, Bryant took 'only' 38% of the team's shots, not a low percentage, to be sure, but not outrageously high by any means either. Had fouls been called where they should have been [ as I indicated above ], the Kobe-to-team shot percentage would have been even lower [ 35.3%-35.9% ] ...

Like I said before, this contest was no barometer, at least not a working one ...

I simply have to reject the idea that Kobe's 41 shots have something to do with the refs, let alone with how bad his percentage was. The Lakers as a team will never get better with Kobe taking 41 shots in any game. That's not about team ball, that's about Kobe ball, and it's embarrassing coming from someone with as much experience as he has, to say nothing of someone who professes to care about rings more than anything else.

There's no way to parse the numbers -- even in an overtime game. Kobe was a ball-hogging idiot, which is a tendency he's had in the past. That he decided to play that way when he was shooting poorly and finally had Nash on the floor is not a good sign, but rather a sign of a potential nightmare for the rest of the season.

We only go as far as Kobe takes us, and he knows it. But that doesn't make him right about every decision he makes. And in this case I maintain that he was fundamentally wrong to play the game he played, and that as a veteran and former champ he should know better.

As for the idea that people didn't laugh at Iverson...nobody I know ever took him seriously as a threat to win a title. The greatest moment in Iverson's life came when he led his team to a single overtime victory against the Lakers in the 2001 playoffs, after which his team was utterly crushed. Today nobody thinks of Allen Iverson as anything other than a sorry footnote and a testament to me-first basketball. He didn't win anything, he faded out in an ugly way, and if anything he will be the poster child for future ballers on how not to play.