Top 100 NBA Players: #5

Kobe Bryant

(Kalb: #18, Simmons: #15, BBR: #68)

Among all active NBA players, Kobe Bryant is ranked the highest on this list. Part of it is due to his 2 scoring titles. Part of it could be his 5 championship rings, more than any other active player. And part of it can be traced to how well he has played for such a long period of time.

Kobe, like most of the other active players near the top of the all-time greats, started out with an advantage. Because he did not attend college, he has had more seasons in which to pile up numbers. Of the top 5 active players on this list, only Tim Duncan attended any college, and only three active players on this list are college graduates (the others are Steve Nash and Grant Hill).

A few years ago, there was a big uproar because Kobe Bryant had never won an MVP award, and people thought it was a travesty that one had never been awarded to him. But if you remember, he wasn't even the best player on his own team until 2004-05, and that was the first of three straight seasons in which the Lakers didn't even win a playoff series. The fact is, until 2008, there was no way Kobe could have won an MVP, despite the fact that he was easily the best player to never have won. That season, playing with a new attitude, he won the only MVP he ever deserved. Here is a comparison of he and LeBron James from that season:

Kobe - 28.3 pts, 6.3 reb, 5.4 ast, 1.8 stl, 0.5 blk, .459 FG%, .361 3P%, .840 FT%
LeBron - 30.0 pts, 7.9 reb, 7.2 ast, 1.8 stl, 1.1 blk, .484 FG%, .315 3P%, .712 FT%

Looking strictly at the numbers, LeBron was the better player that year, but the Lakers finished 12 games ahead of Cleveland in the win column, and advanced two rounds farther in the playoffs, so Kobe was the more valuable player that season, and he is the only player in the last 7 years to supplant LeBron as the best player for an entire season.

Kobe has played in 7 NBA Finals and won 5 championships, and though he was not the best player the first four times he reached the Finals, he was easily the best #2 player ever on a championship team. Think about it: two of the 6 greatest players in history were on the same team at the same time during their best years. Had their egos not clashed, we may have been looking at the greatest dynasty in history. Instead, we have two great players who had their best years together but were still able to win titles later on with different supporting casts.

Kobe has the sort of resume necessary to be considered one of the greatest of all time. He has the longevity, with 16 years under his belt despite being only 33 years old. He's a great offensive player, as shown by his pair of scoring titles and his 10 All-NBA First Team appearances. He's also great on defense, making First Team All-Defense 9 times, and he's a winner, with enough championships to fill up one hand. The biggest thing that has held him back was that lull in the middle of his career, missing the playoffs or losing in the first round three straight times in what should have been his best years. He will probably move even higher on this list, since he is still one of the top player in the game today, but his ceiling is probably at #2 because of what he left on the table in the middle of his career.

From this chart you can see that Shaq peaked right where he should have, and that Kobe's peak is facing the wrong direction. Why is Kobe ranked ahead of Shaq? First of all, he recovered from that valley and became just as good again, making up for his weak years with longevity that actually mattered, unlike Shaq's later years. It also helps that Kobe won two more rings without Shaq in three tries, while won only one more, and he wasn't even the best player on the team at that point. It's that extra title and his ability to maintain his high level of play for so long that allowed Kobe to surpass Shaq among the all-time greatest players.