socal74 wrote:
Exactly what's happening with these cats. They didn't really watch him play. They just remember the older post achilles Kobe. Hell I saw some post talking about Kobe like he was not even comparable athletically to Ant. WTF are some of these dudes watching? Young Kobe was athletic as ****. Go watch his dunks when he was #8. Like everyone forgot how he played before going to #24
To one extent or another, this happens in every generation. At least now, we have better access to more games if the younger folks want to go back and actually watch a given player in question. It's a progressively harder each decade you go back, apart from epic games on Hardwood Classics.
Kobe was very, very good. He had his issues, as does basically any player, but any conversation about him should be prefaced with the underlying understanding that he was extremely good. And his numbers back that up. A lot of the negative talk about him comes from pushback against the Cult of Kobe... but you don't have like, a Cult of Trajan Langdon, you really only have fanbases like that for players who reached a certain threshold of popularity AND have some punch to the arguments pertaining to their ability, you know? Jordan, Lebron, Kobe, like that.
Ant is the right kind of personable and on-court exciting. He's certainly been a playoff monster so far. I think most folks are waiting to see it over an extend PS run and an actual full-ish regular season before anointing him, but he's clearly a skillful player who has huge promise going forward.