Some Things:
1. There's a reason Kobe Bryant scores a lot of points. One of them is because he wants to. Don't underestimate the significance of this. Sure, sometimes that manifests itself in high-volume shot fests with teammates standing around. But more often it's demonstrated by little plays like I was last night, where Kobe sprinted - and I mean sprinted - to get ahead of the ball in transition, running straight to the front of the rim where he could get early and deep post up position and where he's creating a scoring opportunity he probably converts about 70 per cent of the time. Similarly, NBA players are almost all incredible finishers. Give them a little room on the break and they're going to make a basket about nine out of 10 trips. But last night when Derek Fisher was out on a break, Bryant again busted his tail to be there to trail, giving the defender something to think about, giving Fisher an option to pass and being there just in case Fisher missed his layup or got it blocked. This is classic Grade 8 stuff, when trailing on a fast break is probably the surest way to get an easy two because contested layups are converted at about 40 per cent. There is a lot of garbage to clean up and lots of easy points to be had. Is Kobe self-interested in this respect? Sure. But I think it's impressive that a guy who's guaranteed at least 20 shots a night for stepping on the floor is hungry enough to chase easy baskets like a teenager might.
2. Obviously lots of fodder for Kobe-LeBron comparison based on the events of the week. One night Kobe drops 61 points at the Garden, two nights later LeBron pops for one of the rarest triple-doubles in NBA history. Talking to various guys around the Raptors this week it seems the general sentiment is that Kobe is still the better player, though by a pretty slim margin, obviously. The primary difference being that he's just that much more skilled than James. The suggestion was that in a single, must-win game, Bryant could dig deeper into an endless arsenal of tricks to get his game off under the most extreme circumstances, whereas LeBron was somehow stoppable with enough bodies and the hope that his shooting might be a bit off.
3. There is statistical support for this. I was nosing about on this earlier this week and came across some interesting numbers on 82games.com. When it comes to scoring there isn't much to choose between them in conventional numbers: James averages 28.5 points a game on 49.1 per cent shooting; Bryant 27.5 on 47.9 per cent shooting. But if you breakdown those numbers there are some telling trends. Though neither are great three-point shooters, Bryant is better, converting 34.9 per cent of his attempts compared with 29.2 per cent by James. Interestingly though, only 17-per-cent of Bryant's shot attempts are threes, while James shoots 21 per cent of his shots from deep. As a result they score about the same number of points from out there: 3.8 for James to 3.7 for Bryant.
