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Bruce contained Bryant as well as anyone during his prime, and a lot has to do with Bruce's combination of length and quickness. There weren't a lot of lockdown defenders at the perimeter in the early 00's, it was pretty much Bowen and Artest, Kobe was great when he had his mind to it, but then he just let go of that end of the court as he "got his own team".
The rule changes also benefited Kobe more than anything. The league never saw such a huge number of big time perimeter scorers in TMac, Carter, Iverson, Pierce, Allen in the early 00s, and then with Wade, Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Curry, Harden coming in later in the game. It's really no coincidence, the NBA wanted to open the game up, and changed the rules accordingly.
Not to mention the Shaq impact. The Spurs consciously ignored the perimeter and focused on stopping Shaq, and it backfired. The Spurs defensive strengths in 00 and 01 was their centers, and they played to their strength. Not only did Kobe have a field day in 01, Fisher scored way above his scoring average as well, and shot the lights out the entire series. He shot 75% from 3. Rick Fox shot 43%, and Shaw shot 50%, the Spurs just totally ignored the perimeter because they knew there was nothing they could do with players like Antonio Daniels, Terry Porter and Avery Johnson playing the perimeter.
Yeah, Smith wasn't there in 01, my bad. But point still stands, Kobe was abusing a backcourt that Fisher abused as well. Once Spurs got Bowen, Kobe's scoring dropped to 26 ppg on 45% shooting (around his season average). People thought the Spurs had always been loaded defensively, and it's not true, Duncan and Robinson erased a lot of mistakes early on, they didn't really get great defensively until they supplemented those two with Bowen and Jackson. The Spurs also sucked on defense in the late 00s.
