All of those guys were in their prime years when they played with Kobe, and I still don't buy it. Odom had his best year on Miami, Gasol was very good even as a rookie- he was just in a small market and on a horrible team. Kobe is awesome, but without Gasol, Kobe's only titles would still be with Shaq.
Odom was a 43% shooting Power Forward with Miami, which I believe was the worst mark in the league for a starter at his position that year. He didn't rebound or defend better with Miami either. I'm not sure what makes that his best season. Further to my point about the shot opportunities that Kobe creates, Odom's been in the league for 10 years, 6 with the Lakers. His top 6 FG% seasons all happened alongside Kobe.
Gasol was a very good player, no doubt. But now he's a perennial all-star, potentially a future hall of famer, and discussed amongst the best big men in the game. That wasn't the case beforehand. His "prime" seemed to begin on February 1st, 2008, as he was a 50.1% shooter with Memphis, and tallied a 58.9% figure in the same year in LA.
Fisher was hardly in his prime, as a 33/34 year old. He was coming off of a season in which his eFG% was 41.8% with a playoff team and highly thought of PG in Williams. (Fisher played most of his minutes at SG there) The very next year, at the age of 33, his eFG spiked 9 percentage points, to 50.8%. The difference was that now he was benefiting from the open looks that Kobe creates.
Kwame Brown's best season happened at the age of 24, which is typically before a player's prime. Smush Parker career arc went from being a journeyman player that was barely in the league, to being the starting PG of the Lakers and putting up his most efficient numbers at the age of 24-25, to being a journeyman player who was out of the league in a year. Trevor Ariza is another player whose percentages plummeted once he left LA.
Finally, regarding the point about Kobe having titles because of the presence of Gasol and Shaq...does this same line of logic apply to Larry Bird? He had two Hall of Famers in his supporting cast for all 3 of his titles, and a third (DJ) for two of them. The same can be said of Magic.
It's strange to me that this line of logic is used against Kobe on a Celtic board, for exactly that reason.
There are some very interesting points in your post, but I think you are clearly cherry picking certain numbers as well as confusing a lot of cause and effect and continuing to blur the line between "perception" and "acutuality."
For example, you state two very good players, Gasol and Odom, had their best years alongside Kobe, and conclude that Kobe was the cause; as proof you offer shooting percentages, all-star selections, and general media regard. However, I think it is quite clear that the vast majority of NBA players, if traded to a better team, see their percentages go up while many other numbers go down. This is not a phenomenon of Player X "making his teammates better," but is simply a natural progression that occurs because a good team has increased options such that a given player now has the choice to jack up a 25% shot or pass the ball. If we go by PER, which very nicely folds together a given player's total offensive contribution, we in fact see that Odom's best year was one year BEFORE joining the Lakers, and that Gasol's best season, too, was one year BEFORE joining the lakers; since joining the Lakers both have seen their total contribution go down while their percentages have gone up. Again, this is what happens when good players play on good teams; their efficiency overall stays the same because they are required to do less overall and therefore can be pickier about doing those things better. But it is not an osmotic process of Kobe making Gasol/Odom shoot a better percentage; rather it is a function of Gasol/Odom/Kobe ALL TOGETHER not having to be the sole carrier of offense, and thus being able to shoot fewer, better shots. Statistically, however, Gasol and Odom have been strikingly consistent throughout their careers in terms of PER regardless of whether or not Kobe was on their team. Gasol, for instance, was the best player on a Memphis playoff team, then though remaining the exact same player, lost a lot of good teammates and became the best player on a crappy team, then got traded to a good team again and was the best player in the '10 finals series. He's still the same player, but his distribution is a little different: he shoots a higher percentage now, but also shoots fewer shots, which ends up with him having the same impact. If Kobe really made him BETTER, he would be able to shoot a higher percentage on the SAME number of shots as he took in Memphis, as ANY player, if their number of shots decreases, their percentages should go up; that or his percentage should go enough higher that his PER goes up, not down a little.
But here is the most illogical part of your post:
Gasol was a very good player, no doubt. But now he's a perennial all-star, potentially a future hall of famer, and discussed amongst the best big men in the game. That wasn't the case beforehand.
All of those accolades that began when he was traded to the Lakers are 100% Human-determined; they have NO relevance to or reflection of what actually happens basketball wise and are merely reflective of who the media decides to shine a spotlight on and why the media chooses to do so. Of course this illogical type of thinking is insidiously pervasive throughout the sports world, so I wouldn't expect you to rise above it, but I need to point it out: Gasol becoming a perennial All-Star upon joining LA has NOTHING to do with any change in his play, but everything to do with newfound attention from entering the spotlight that was already shining at Kobe, a spotlight that was shining because a. It's LA and the Lakers, b. the residual attention on Kobe from winning 3 titles as Shaq's assistant, and c. due to b., the media deciding that Kobe was the next Jordan, despite nearly all objective stats showing that he was merely one of the more talented swingmen in this generation who happened to be the swingman that was on Shaq's team and, to his credit, has been able to maintain his peak for a long time.
Finally, regarding the point about Kobe having titles because of the presence of Gasol and Shaq...does this same line of logic apply to Larry Bird? He had two Hall of Famers in his supporting cast for all 3 of his titles, and a third (DJ) for two of them. The same can be said of Magic.
This part of your post I actually like. It takes very strong teams to win titles, but the media then decides, pretty arbitrarily and usually with reverse logic (in other words, picking the ending they like the best then hand picking evidence to describe the path to get to that ending rather than looking at events objectively). As such, certain individuals get far too much praise for the achievement of their teams. I think there is no question that Magic and Bird were each the best players on their respective teams' titles (some debate fore the early Magic titles, actually), but neither were the only reason they won and both needed many other great teammates to have the success that they did.
It got taken to another level with Jordan, clearly. And it's pretty much, for better or (in my opinion) worse, set the template for how to write about basketball: assume that the best player in the league will win the title, then, find the best player on the team that does win the title, and assume, therefore, that he must be the best player in the league and give him all credit for his team's victory. The thing is, for Bird, Magic, and especially Jordan, as well as Shaq, the numbers backed up that narrative; they have never done so for Kobe! In other words, objective stats clearly show that Bird, Magic, and Jordan were better than their peers; Kobe, however, has never really stood out as all-time elite compared to his peers or let alone even his teammates on his championship teams by statistal measures! I think that is what bothers non-LA fans the most. Because sports writers are insanely lazy and conventional, they pigeon hole and force feed certain cliches into us without acknowledging that maybe each generation is unique; they've forced "Kobe is Jordan" on us because they assumed there had to be a next Jordan even though Kobe has never approached, objectively, by statistics, whatever, how much better than average or better than the next best player Jordan was. There was never a season during Jordan's peak in which there was debate about whether he was the best player in the league; there is very strong debate, especially if you use objective measures, as to whether or not Kobe has ever even been the best player on a title team. So what really bothers non-LA fans is that, from everything we can see, Kobe is a very good player on a team of very good players, but EVERYTHING said or written about the team comes from the premise that ALL successes must, by some wacky definition, be due solely to Kobe; sports writers need a protagonist, and he's their chosen one. We would not be having these discussions if he didn't start his career in the limelight in LA next to Shaq; instead, his career would look much more like that of an imaginarily healthy T-Mac or, say, that of KG.
Topic: Conspiracy: Stern wants Gasol's legacy to disappear (Read 14760 times)