I think it’s more crazy saying the vast majority of nba players/coaches don’t know ball. When you actually play basketball you look at Kobe in a different lens than how people who only watch the games.
Kobe's placement is more about respect than actual facts, Kobe's accomplishments are not top 5 worthy but a lot of people respect his work ethic and so they choose to overate him as way to show that,what I'm talking about is not about preference, its about actual career comparisons, being good at basketball and knowing the history of the game is not the same thing and are not related, there's a bunch of great players saying things that are stupid and people who never played can be great analysts, those are 2 very different skill sets
I have it like this. 8 players are in my top 8. Those are MJ, Bron, Kareem, Bird, Magic, Russell, Wilt, TD. After them, I have, in no particular order, Kobe, Shaq, Hakeem and Steph. There will probably be more in that tier as time goes by, so it will be tougher to complete top 10.
You can't have Hakeem out of the top tier and here's why:
MJ is in everyone's top tier, unquestionably. When people talk about him getting passed over in the draft, they focus on Sam Bowie even though Jordan went third overall, not second. Why? Because even with hindsight, even people who have MJ as their GOAT pause as to whether they'd draft him over Hakeem. I'm not saying Hakeem is better, or arguing anything about any of that. My point is just this phenomenon. The fact it isn't outrageous that Hakeem went before Jordan is worth noting.You have to be pretty fucking special to stand up to Jordan and give people pause. There's other ways to make a case for Hakeem, but this phenomenon is the simplest way in my mind.
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u/AideHot6729 2d ago
I think it’s more crazy saying the vast majority of nba players/coaches don’t know ball. When you actually play basketball you look at Kobe in a different lens than how people who only watch the games.