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stupid question. lebron was clearly nba ready, averaging 21-5-6 his first season. kobe took 3 years to get to 20ppg
stupid question. lebron was clearly nba ready, averaging 21-5-6 his first season. kobe took 3 years to get to 20ppg
Don't forget he was playing alongside a center dropping around 28, 13 RPG, & 2.5 Bpg WHILE also consistently drawing double and triple teams which he mostly scored on. LBJ on the other hand had the great Illgauskus who was um, tall?
LeBron day in day out especially in any uptempo game. I do think against junk zones etc Kobe would be better, because LeBron's jumper was broke as a youngster. Bothw would be beasts pressing full court ut 1 on .1 Kobe was the better defender as a youngster LeBron would be amazing as a roamer.
The video goes a little deeper than just comparing them. They also talk about the teamates and coaches.
I think LBJ would have been better, even though his shotting wasnt there, I do agree that no player could be able to stop the penetrations, not at that level and with that body. He would have shot hundreds of FTs.
answer is obvious as the bald spot on manu's head. lebron would've been the better college player because no college team has such luxury to have two superstars on the same squad, meaning kobe would struggle to make ends meet when he can only count on himself. while my is a proven player who can carry a ty team through tough matchups.
In the east
Lebron was clearly better in his early years. Kobe was not that special coming into the NBA, which is why he was not a number one pick. He had to work to get where he is now, and his game improved dramatically over his first few years. By 2001, he was one of the top players in the league. When you take Lebron's size advantage into play as well, he would have dominated in college right away.
They should change the rules again.
Players can either go to college for a minimum of two years, or declare straight out of high school. No more one and done.
Clearly Bron. He was pro ready in H.S.
Probably LeBron. But how great he would have been I think would somewhat depend on where he went and what coach he played for. I think he'd have more success, for example, at UNC under Roy Williams than he would have at Duke under Coach K. I think in a more structured offense, LeBron wouldn't get as much freedom to showcase his talent. He'd still be great because his talent was just too good. But he'd be better off on a Fab Five type of free flowing, push and run, alley-oop type of monkeyball team than say running the Princeton offense.
And some people are forgetting how good Kobe was out of high school. He didn't have an immediate impact in the NBA like LeBron did, but you're also talking about different situations and cir stances. Kobe went to a team that had won 50 games the year before and already had a good starting SG in Eddie Jones. LeBron went to the worst team in the league the year before and immediately was given 40 minutes a game no matter how he played. If Kobe goes to a lottery team, good chance he probably plays 35+ minutes a game and puts up something like 20/5/5.
Back in the mid 90s, it was still taboo to draft kids right out of high school. I believe KG the year before was the first one in decades. That's a big reason why some teams still passed on Kobe in 1996. By 2003, high school-to-pro kids were not uncommon at all in the lottery. Kobe in his own right averaged 30/10/5 his last two years in high school, got the Naismith POY, won a state le, surpassed Wilt Chamberlain in high school scoring in Pennsylvania. And if rumors back then were true, John Lucas had Kobe come to 76ers practices and he would practice with them and not just hang but play well. Kobe was NBA ready out of high school too, plus he was more skilled. He probably would have been perfectly fine at Duke.
Kobe should've went to college. His first 2 years in the league were basically developmental years
Same as who is the better pro player. LeBron in spades.
Kirby would fit in with a Duke Lakers type ref rigging.
But seems like the Duke reffing has gone away in recent years. Kobes cannot exist without.
question is who'd been a better College student?
My money is on Kobe as his math and language skills were probably superior to Lebron
Correct, KG was the first player to be drafted out of high school since Moses Malone.
Agreed. Jamstone with the pure uncut goods.
Thank you captain obvious
thisAgreed. Jamstone with the pure uncut goods.
Pretty sure Lebron couldn't have made the grades to get to college, much less get through it. Kobe would have perhaps.
While Jam raised some good points, and I appreciate his Kobe slobbering efforts, the answer is unequivocally Lebron. Coming out of the league, Kobe was no where close to an NBA ready player. He had potential, everybody knew that, and that's why he was drafted relatively high in the first round despite being a guard and coming straight from HS (was there ever a straight to pros HS guard in the past?). His shot selection was horrible (he actually improved since his early years), his outside game was suspect (even more so than a HS Lebron), and his defense was uneven. You can see glimpse of his hero-ball tendencies back in the day (air balls vs. Jazz) without the skills, and that mentality would likely not be tamed in college.
It's quite interesting that Jammy is putting all these parameters around Lebron, and yet not around Kobe. Kobe, and every single other player, is subjected to stricter team structure in college. Kobe would require a system that would allow him to showcase his strengths as much as Lebron. In other words, that "but" argument on Lebron was basically moot.
And when you put the direct Lebron to Kobe comparisons as young NBAers, there were really no comparisons. Lebron was better than Eddie Jones ever was even as a rookie, and yet Kobe couldn't start over Jones.
That said, Lebron played in a much more perimeter friendly league right out of HS, while Kobe had to wait till 2000 for the league to change it's rules to favour those next Jordans (Kobe, Carter, McGrady, Iverson) in order to sell tickets.
W
Which of all the rule changes are you refering to?
The Kang would dominate college basketball, tbh.... nobody would be able to guard him, and he'd have at least 1 college rang to go with his high school and NBA rangs....
Did you miss the part where I said LeBron would probably be the better college player? The only reason I say probably is because I think people are underestimating how good Kobe was out of high school himself. It's not clearly LeBron or unequivocally LeBron. It's probably LeBron. The reason I put parameters on LeBron's success because he's the one I said would have been the better college player. So that's why I focused on him when I said that. And when I said that, I only raised that as to how successful he could have been in college. I specifically stated he'd be great no matter what because his talent was just too good. But would he be on a team where he's allowed to use his athleticism to be a 25-30 point scorer in college or would he play in a more structured and equal opportunity offense. For example, LeBron would not average 25 points a game under Tom Izzo at Michigan State. He'd score in the 15-18 PPG range because of Izzo's style of coaching, who likes balance on offense with both inside and out play and rarely runs isolation plays for players.
If LeBron was drafted in the mid 90s, he doesn't start, at least not immediately and he certainly doesn't get 40 minutes a game. That just didn't happen back then. Not with Kobe, not with KG, not with T-Mac.
KG's rookie year: started 43 of 80 games and most of those were at the end of the season after Minnesota started 11-29 in the first half. Averaged 28.7 minutes per game.
T-Mac's rookie year: started 17 of 64 games and 15 of those starts happened at the end of the season after the team was 15-51. Averaged 18.4 minutes per game.
Jermaine O'Neal's rookie year: did not start a game his rookie season. averaged 10.2 minutes per game.
It wasn't just Kobe. It was all high school-to-pros players in the mid 90s. You earned your playing time, and you didn't start until the team was clearly in tank mode. And in KG's and T-Mac's situation, they were playing for teams that were among the worst in the league their rookie years. And in Jermaine O'Neal's case, he didn't even get to really play much at all because his team was pretty good, and they had good players at the position he played (Sheed, Uncle Cliffy).
LeBron drafted in the mid 90s, he doesn't start right away, doesn't average 40 minutes a game, and if he plays for a good team like Kobe and JO did, he probably gets even more limited playing time. You can criticize Kobe's shot selection or defense. You act like LeBron was a perfectly adequate NBA player from game 1. He wasn't. But he was going to play 40 minutes a game no matter what, no matter how many mistakes he made, no matter what poor decisions, no matter how many forced shots. He shot under 42% from the field his rookie year. And that's a guy who shoots close to 50% from the field the rest of his career. He shot under 30% from three point range his rookie year and he took over 200 attempts. Let's not criticize Kobe's shot selection or readiness in such a way to suggest LeBron was infallible the moment he stepped onto an NBA court. What high school-to-pro kids are without the need of polish and refinement? None. For that matter any rookie even if they were a 5 year college player or a 25 year old international player with 10 years of professional experience.
LeBron wouldn't have played ahead of Eddie Jones either. LeBron is clearly more talented even as a rookie, but newly drafted high school kids just didn't get that type of opportunity back then. T-Mac was playing behind John Wallace and Reggie Slater. KG couldn't start over Christian Laettner until Minnesota traded him. It's not about how good Kobe was compared to Eddie Jones. It's that Eddie Jones was the vet and he was going to start. I don't think you get that.
Well, if Kobe had gone to college he would have learned that NO MEANS NO!
I hope.
Easing up on the perimeter defense to allow offensive players to ball hog and not get touched when they are doing cross-overs and behind the back dribbles.
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