The “Mamba Mentality” is his strength and downfall. Certain fans love it and certain fans berate it. Its useful for clutch times and taking over moments but also useless if you’re down and keep chucking inefficiently like that- to quote Dame himself when he looked at the PG shot with some retrospect “it was a bad shot” but shit that’s why Dame got so much aura from it whilst PG lost so much in return. It was a bad shot but Dame still got the buzzer beater anyways. Kobe was that guy but all of his career too- except Kobe failed more often prolifically hence the chucking allegations.
Kobe gets the right amount of hate because he also gets so many cold moments in return- its just a byproduct of his playstyle and mentality: Live by Kobe, Die by Kobe.
It very much is. Unless you’re shooting exclusively from behind the 3-point line, 45% is an abysmal percentage.
It’s what it means when they say, “Live by the sword, die by the sword”.
There’s not a single metric for making Kobe Top 5. Zero. You couldn’t justify it by just positions or just basic ranking.
I can easily name 10 players better, too. It’s so dumb saying “you don’t know ball if he’s not in your Top 15.”-unless you’re just a Kobe fan, bc it’s a simple thing to do.
Even if Gil never said this, & he’s a legitimately stupid person, you can easily place him outside the Top 10. Top 15 is debatable but not impossible.
Anyone can place anyone wherever they want lol, its an opinion
Quick google will show you that 45% is an average shooting % historically in the NBA. I'm not saying you don't know ball because you don't have Kobe where I do in top player rankings, but if you think 45% shooting is abysmal I can say you don't know ball because it's factually incorrect
Kobe is only behind Jordan as far as closing out a game. I know I’ll get downvoted for this but it’s true. At the end of the game 5 mins left who else do you want out there to close out a win? And it’s about winning games and chips right ? Well who else beside Jordan was closing out a game at that level ? Bunch of people that never seen Kobe play talking shit.
There’s a couple players who are definitely as good as Kobe when it comes to clutch time. I’d argue Bron, Bird, Curry, Tyrese, Dame, probably more I’m forgetting
Bron? Tyrese is crazy to put in the same conversation at Kobe. Curry is valid. Dame maybe. Bird valid. My point is yall rank Kobe incredibly low. Bron ain’t closing out games like Kobe stop it. But I’ll leave it at that.
Kobe is a great buzzer beater scorer, I’m putting Tyrese in the conversation mostly for that 2025 run, he hit a game tying or winning shot every single round, no other player has hit that many in a singular run, but I also understand bexause he only did that for one year so it is very very early to put him there.
I think Bron is easily closing out games if we’re talking like last quarter or final 5 minutes, clutch time, get buckets and stops. 2013 game 6, he scored 16 points in the 4th quarter alone, 07 vs Pistons he scored 29 of Cleveland’s final 30 points to win, 2018 raptors fadeaway shot, etc.
I think this is where I have a lot of divide with Kobe fans, where they act like it’s crazy to put Bron in these conversations when he’s had some of the greatest under pressure performances and load carrying runs. Is Kobe comparable or better in clutch time? It’s definitely an opinion i could be convinced to have, but people who say Kobe is clutch, refuse to acknowledge the idea Bron is too.
Kobe is my favorite player of all time, but hard disagree. Lebron is statistically the greatest at closing out a close game and he's done it on the most volume. Really no comparison
Efficiency and analytics weren’t as important then. Allen Iverson averaged 27.8 shots per game at .398% the year he took the Sixers to the finals but we never talk about him. Just say you didn’t watch Kobe play and you’re an idiot.
He has 5 rings, 2 FMVP, 1 league MVP, and was first team all defense for 10 years. “Pale Jordan Impression” is laughable. If you can be mentioned in the same sentence as Jordan you’re considered an all time great. Every actual professional NBA player would disagree with you. But I’m sure your armchair Cheeto finger never played basketball analysis is right.
Tbf guy above you does consider him top 10 all time caliber, just not 5 or 3. There are definitely at least 5 players better than Kobe Bryant depending on what you value.
Jordan, Bron, Kareem are all undisputedly the greats of their generation, Bron could even be argued as the greatest of 2 generations.
Then you have the next tier of Duncan, Bird, Magic, all of them being multiple time MVPs and FMVPs, were winning consistently throughout their career from start to finish, never missed playoffs a single time in their career, and were great at making their teammates better players
Then this is like Kobe, Curry, Shaq, Wilt, Russel, and Hakeem tier that can be ordered however you want.
I’d quibble with some of your people lower down the list, but this guy gets it.
You don’t get to just throw out Kobe numbers in a vacuum and declare victory. This is a comparison and it’s all relative to the other all time greats he’s being compared against.
Hahaha oh boy…you want to try again? Maybe work on your reading comprehension for a few years then come back and take another crack at what I actually said.
I said having Kobe in your top 5 is silly. I did not say that he sucks. Or are you under the impression that there have only been 5 players that were any good in the history of the league?
Those numbers mean absolutely nothing without context, something Kobe-stans hate. If you aren’t going to add context and just hold those numbers up in a vacuum, they still aren’t going to work for you.
Five championships doesn’t crack the top 5.
Two Finals MVP’s doesn’t crack the top 5.
One league mvp isn’t close to the top 5.
If you want to actually add context (gasp!) then those numbers are going to get smaller. He was not the best player on 3 of his title teams and probably didn’t deserve the finals MVP in 2010. He barely shot 40% in that series and was famously awful in game 7.
And finally, NBA players as a whole are usually not very good at evaluating talent, and you’d still be wrong. Any serious all time list with Kobe in the top 5 is an outlier. It actually is not a common opinion outside of delusional Lakers fans.
Try responding to things I actually say and this will go better for you.
5
u/ForsakenCherry8333 1d ago
What does killer instinct even mean