Kerr: Kobe-Jordan comparisons legit
LOS ANGELES — It is one of the great sports debates: Is basketball superstar X better than Michael Jordan?
Kobe Bryant, who became a cultural phenomenon just as Jordan was planning his exit, was long compared to Jordan. With Bryant now retired, LeBron James is judged against Jordan.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr reckons that the BryantJordan comparison makes more sense than the JamesJordan one.
“Kobe is the closest thing to Michael,” said Kerr, whose Golden State team watched Bryant’s Nos. 8 and 24 be raised to the Staples Center rafters at halftime Monday night. “Everybody’s been compared to Michael. LeBron has been compared to Michael. I don’t think LeBron is like Michael at all. I think he’s a very different player, a different mentality, mind-set.
“Kobe has the same mindset and mentality that MJ had. The assassin, the ‘I’mgoing-to-rip-your-throat-outwith-my-scoring.’ The lowpost dominant fade-away jumper.”
Kerr should know. In his four seasons playing with Jordan in Chicago, they won three NBA titles. Kerr played against Bryant’s Lakers teams for seven years before watching them as a front-office executive, TV analyst and, ultimately, head coach.
Advanced analytics suggest that Jordan was a better allaround player than Bryant, but a slew of similarities make comparing the two fun sports-bar fodder.
Bryant’s 33,643 career points are the third most in NBA history, one spot ahead of Jordan at 32,292. The two played the same position, both were roughly 6-foot-6, 200 pounds, possessed the same obsessive work ethic and even had many of the same moves. Bryant’s five championships were one shy of Jordan’s six.
“It’d be fun to watch,” Kerr said when asked who would win a game of oneon-one between Bryant and Jordan in their primes. “Very similar games. Kobe shot a lot more threes, but in Michael’s era, threes weren’t as big a part of things. I’m sure he’d work a lot harder on his threes if he played in the modern era. (Bryant) was so similar in terms of the footwork, the reverse pivot, and I’m sure he got a lot of that by watching Michael.” McGee keeps perspective: As the league trends toward small-ball lineups, Kerr has less use for JaVale McGee ,a 7-foot, 270-pound center whose best skills — running the floor, throwing down alley-oops, swatting shots — are maximized against towering frontcourts. McGee entered Monday averaging a careerworst 7.9 minutes per game.
“You have to think about the dynamics,” McGee said. “We’re going to the playoffs every year. We’re going to go to the Finals most likely. You just have to realize that it’s a great spot to be in, to be with a Finals-contending team in any way, shape or form.”