It’s a shame that much of Bams elite defensive play is harder to quantify to people that don’t actually watch him play
they just see he doesn’t average 2 blocks and some other centers do so that makes them better defenders 💤
My favorite performance from Josh Richardson while he was the Miami Heat:
37 PTS
5 REB
1 STL
14-22 FGM (64 FG%)
8-11 3PM (73 3P%)
100 FT%
Showed out against the KD Warriors, put himself on the map that year.
People talk about Wade and Kobe like they played in completely different eras. We saw them play and the matchups were extremely close lol
You can literally google their head to head numbers AND watch their film. The gap isn’t impact. The gap is career achievements.
Kobe fans acting like DWade is DeMar DeRozan or something. DWade looked Kobe in the eye many times and outplayed him. He won a finals MVP before him. He led the 2008 Olympic team in scoring while coming off the bench. Yall lucky he had glass knees
KG was so much better than Dirk at every facet of the game that when they played each other in the playoffs, KG held him to *Checks notes*
33-16-4.5 stocks on 52/72/89 splits while getting swept.
A lot of this is context: Kobe played most of his prime playoff basketball in a slower, more defensive era, in the tough West, and in the triangle offense, which spread possessions around more than a heliocentric system. Add in the Shaq/Pau years where the Lakers often didn’t need Kobe to take 30+ shots this is more era, scheme, and team context suppressing the really huge totals.
We had eyes SGA isn’t better than Kobe brah