Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!

[Athens2005]

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

[DCWildcat]

in only 3 quarters

delivered a pretty nasty elbow to nowitski that should have been an auto technical,

though

[hoosierhateruklover]

I can't believe Phil benched him after the 3rd. He was gonna shatter MJ's 70 for sure.

[kybuc]

LOL! The actual title of this thread shoud have been................

Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog, Ball-Hog!!!

:P

[matt57]

as much as i don't like kobe it's hard not to be super impressed with that line. can you imagine if the game was actually close??? he could've gone for 80. that's SCARY....

[Fletch]

What a team player ...:rolleyes:

[Athens2005]

Fletch wrote: What a team player ...:rolleyes:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dailydime-051222

some good stuff on this page


Go Lakers!

[Mountain Cat]

Jordan averaged over 30pts per game for 7 consecutive years and won rings while doing it. Kobe is a scorer no doubt, but he could not be mentioned with Jordan as a team player. To me one of the most amazing things about MJ was that he kept his FG% at almost 50% for his entire career, and had his team mates throwing him the ball with 2 seconds on the clock a lot.

Jordan is the best player ever. Kobe is not even the best player in the league this year.

[Athens2005]

Mention the name "Kobe Bryant" to any basketball fan, and you'll get a rapid stream of opinion. Sometimes it may be positive and sometimes it may be negative, but few players engender such a strong reaction from fan and foe alike.


Supporters will tell you Kobe is a Jordan-esque talent who has already proven his worth with three championship rings, not to mention Tuesday night's stellar 62-point outburst. Detractors consider him an egotistical stat fiend who was riding Shaq's coattails, not to mention an alleged criminal. Rarely will you hear somebody stake out a middle ground between those two positions.


BY THE NUMBERS
HOLLINGER STATS
PER (Player Efficiency Rating)
True Shooting Percentage
Assist Ratio
Turnover Ratio
Rebound Rate
Usage Rate

PER BY POSITION
PG | SG | SF | PF | C


Today I want to focus on a particular aspect of that negative impression -- Bryant's rep as a ball hog. A year ago the Lakers rebuilt the team around Bryant, and some skeptics had visions of Kobe launching 50 shots a game while the other Lakers stood around and watched.


It didn't work out that way in 2004-05. We know this because of a tool I use called Usage Rate, which measures how many possessions a player uses per 40 minutes of action.

To calculate Usage Rate (Warning: math ahead. If evasive action is required, skip the next two paragraphs), add a player's field-goal attempts and turnovers. Then add 0.44 times his free-throw attempts (since FTAs use approximately 0.44 possessions each) and one-third of his assists (for the same reason). Divide the result by the player's minutes and multiply by 40, and you're done.

For the Usage Rate shown on the ESPN.com player pages (like Kobe's), we take the additional step of adjusting a player's Usage Rate for his team's pace. That evens the playing field between a player on a fast-paced team such as Phoenix, which has many possessions in its game, with one on a more methodical club like Indiana.



AP Photo/David Zalubowski
If you want to know where the ball is, chances are Kobe has it.
As I was saying, Usage Rate allows us to see that Kobe wasn't the ball hog that some expected in 2004-05. Yes, he had the ball a lot, but he actually used fewer possessions per 40 minutes than he had done two years earlier with Shaq and, believe it or not, he averaged fewer points and more assists in 2004-05 than he had in 2002-03.

In 2005-06, on the other hand, it's been a different story. Bryant is hoisting up 26 field-goal attempts per game, even though the Lakers have played at a fairly slow pace. Overall, his Usage Rate of 34.9 (all stats through Tuesday's games) is leading the league by a comfortable margin. In fact, it's one of the highest of all time. We can calculate Usage Rate starting only in 1977-78, when the NBA started calculating turnovers, but since then only 10 players have posted a higher Usage Rate than Bryant. Additionally, only one of those 10, Allen Iverson, had his high-usage season in the last dozen years. Clearly, then, Bryant's been calling his own number unusually often.

But on a historical basis, how unusual is Bryant's Usage Rate? One thing about Usage Rate is that comparisons between seasons aren't as clear as we'd like, because it partly depends on the pace of the league as a whole. Since the league played at a faster pace in the 1980s than it did today, players from that era tend to have higher Usage Rates than players of the new millennium.

We need a way to adjust for that, and it's a relatively easy one. All we have to do is divide a player's Usage Rate by the league average Usage Rate in that season. That way, we get a player's Usage Rate Multiple (URM) -- how many times more frequently than the league average he uses possessions.

And looking at URM, Bryant is dominating the ball like few ever have. Of all the players in the past 28 years, nobody has been a more, shall we say, enthusiastic offensive participant than Kobe has been this year.

Usage Rate Multiple -- All-time leaders*
Player Year URM
Kobe Bryant 2005-06 1.89
Michael Jordan 1986-87 1.88
Allen Iverson 2001-02 1.86
Michael Jordan 2001-02 1.84
Allen Iverson 2003-04 1.79
* No Usage Rates before 1977-78

So Kobe is keeping the ball in his hands a lot. Check that: A lot. But is that a good thing? Bryant's True Shooting Percentage, for instance, is unusually low for a star player, at 53.5 percent. Even chuckers like Eddie House (54.7 percent) and Carmelo Anthony (53.8 percent) are beating that. And, as some have commented, Kobe's gunning made the other Lakers bystanders in the offense.

Fortunately, Bryant seems to be getting the message that sometimes less is more. Although the chart above seems to indicate that he's threatening Jordan's record for offensive indulgence, I greatly doubt he's going to be anywhere close by April. You see, Tuesday's explosion vs. Dallas excepted, Bryant has already toned down his act considerably. Let's take a look at his season month by month:

Kobe Bryant: November vs. December
November December
FGA/Game 29.4 22.7
FG% 42.4 48.2
Ast/Game 3.9 4.7
TO/Game 3.0 2.8
Usage Rate 36.0 33.5
URM 1.95 1.82
Lakers W-L 5-8 9-3


As you can see, Bryant was on pace to become the ball-hoggin'est player in history in November, with a URM that put even Jordan's to shame. But once Turkey Day passed, Bryant started passing too. He sharply cut his shot attempts, upped the assists, and posted a Usage Rate in the range of his previous two seasons. That's still plenty high, but he's no longer forcing teammates to pry the ball from his hands to get touches.

The formula is working for the Lakers, too. L.A. has won six of its past eight, including Tuesday's rout of the Mavs, and forward Lamar Odom has used the increased touches to post some of his best games as a Laker. Overall, the Lakers' scoring average is five points higher in December than it was in November.

One always can wonder whether sharing the ball more was something Kobe took on himself to do, or whether Phil Jackson whispered something into his ear about it while reminding him that he could be traded someplace with a much less forgiving climate. Regardless, the results speak for themselves. With Bryant trying to go it alone, the Lakers were a fairly easy team to defend. Since he's started spreading the wealth a little, L.A. is back on track. Now, if he could just bring Shaq back …

John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. His book "Pro Basketball Forecast: 2005-06" is available at both Amazon.com and Potomac Books.

[Athens2005]

When comparing Jordan's career to Kobe's, you have to consider that Kobe's career basically re-started last year.

After playing 8 years, and winning 3 titles with O'Neal; Shaq was traded, the Lakers changed coaches, and the team was re-built around Bryant.

Before Jordan won titles, he was not the unanimous "best player", Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were considered better by many, if not most. There were tons of people criticizing Jordan's game for years, until he won a title. Even after winning 3 straight titles and retiring, there were those rooting for the Bulls to win it all in '94, to prove that Jordan was not all that he had been cracked up to be.


The best player in the league is debatable. Typically, the best player label is reserved for the best player on the championship team.

Let Kobe play out his career, and make the "final" comparisons then.

[DamonEsquire]

I still say. When this is all said and done. He will need propably 5-10 more sixty pointers. If he is to reach the all-time points per game leader, that is Mr. Jordan. Right? These next five years will lead us. I would not change much from form. Just continuity with 50% field goals. 30 pts. per game then mix in some sixties ocassionally... He is a prize possession andglamour is foreseen!!!!