Scoring Assist Differential - Breaking Down The Kobe Laker E

[indiefan23]

There are some truths to his conclusion, but there are also times that Kobe shot a lot during a Laker loss because no one aside from him could create. It certainly does not change the fact that he has been inefficient for most of his career, though there are games where the team offense fails and Kobe had to take over.

Cept Kobe didn't really create, and if he did he was absolutely not consistent. But you're not dumb though, so I appriciate your input. There are those times but I really don't believe that Kobe tries to score lots in response to them. He just tries to score lots all the time.

What is highly questionable is the following. He directed every loss at Kobe for shooting, well, Wade scored 55 on the Magic and lost by 20, should I say then if Wade let his teammates scored more they would have won? Kobe didn't have Wade's efficiency, but that doesn't take away that it could be a misguided conclusion, maybe they would have lost anyways if Kobe shared the ball. Who knows? Even on those 'quality wins' he has to cite reasons other than Kobe for the cause of winning. The author credits the Lakers win on the other team shooting badly, then conveniently ignore the non-existent D against the Bobcats and the Grizzles(38 FTA for both teams).

Hmm... wade never scored 55, 50, but thats just semantics. In that game his teammates shot 20, 33, 14 and 40 percent. Thats how a stat line should look. And in that game Wade still only took 30 shots. I dont' think the stat really is misguided as it shows a trend, not individual games. Those games were just examples and honestly were chosen arbitrarily. I took his top 10 games and examined the two best and worst results.

The argument I was addressing was that Kobe's scoring was what won them games and what was needed. Dallas shot 13% from the arc and was a very good 3 shooting team. Dallas played a horrible game. The other the rockets were without their best player and the other one they lost. Its a pretty accurate portrayal I think.

Then you get to the part where he says Kobe had help and he has the guts to include Cook and Smush. He concluded that they didn't work out in LA was all because Kobe couldn't develop young talents. First, MJ may have done something to make Pippen to become the player that everyone will remember him by, but he must have the will to work for it, and to put everything on MJ for Scottie's accomplishments is utterly foolish. Cook and Smush have never been players that follow coach's orders well, and their work ethic are pretty bad for pro players. Was Kobe also responsible for Smush hitting a valet? Was Kobe responsible for an out of shape Cook buried on a very shallow Orlando bench? They're adults, not babies. If they can't find playing time elsewhere then that means they didn't work hard enough. There is only so much a star player can do, everything else is up to the role player if he wants to step up.

Hmm... Jordan didn't totally make Pippen, I love the guy and he gets oodles of credit, but Kobe really hasn't developed any players. Smush is just an example and Kobe was pissed with LA for getting players who needed work like Smush. I think he took it out on him and it caused a rift. I was nto saying they were all stars, but they wern't terrible either. Over 3 years, they should not have been 3 games under .500. Its underachievement when you've got a guy who's arguably the best player in the league, and 1-2 top shelf players on your team. And its not just Pippen. Jordan won with the same guys getting better each year on his team and then took them to 3 titles. Of course Smush had something to do with it but seriously, the guy got minutes and responded with good numbers and then his star player started to get down on him and his play went down. I'm not blaming the guy with way less talent for losing or for lacking the maturity. Everyone in LA seems to just get sick of it after a few years and tunes out.

That second to the last paragraph also deserves a laugh, he mentioned guys like Kareem, Magic, West, MJ, and Lebron on how they always make the talent around them better and was never held back by them. This was written after Mo Williams finished the Magic series with 37% shooting and neither Big Ben or Z played any form of defense against Dwight and Rashard. To me, this sounds like someone who doesn't like Kobe and try to disguise it with an objective approach. Kobe should certainly have a better assist conversion rate if he is truly great, but there are so many sections of the article that are either questionable or downright false it's not worth reading unless you need to feed your hatred for Kobe.

Those guys couldn't match up with the Magic. You explain to me how Z or Ben are going to stop either of them? Shard can easily shoot over them and Dwight can easily overpower them. Mo didn't play well either. I think its totally apt though... should that team be contending for a championship in the east finals? No. They probably squeak in without Bron and go out in the first round. He lifted them up.

As for the things that are downright false, I'd honestly love to hear them. Cheers.

[indiefan23]

Solid article, now before I do anything:

Bookmarked, indiefan, if you find anymore relevant to this player, you post them.


Thanks

Hey, cool man, if you like the analysis you should subscribe. I wrote the article and created the stat... wanted to see if I was on to something so I thought I'd subject it to the hatred of Kobe's fans. Thanks again for the props!

[Frosty]

Nice! I'm glad we agree on something frosty, even if we don't agree on old schoolers. ;0 but to be honest, I appreciate your input on the era debate. Thats the kind of stuff I come to places like this for.

Yah me too. Always looking to get challenged and hopefully learn more. I'll even admit you're wrong on Wilt.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Stat is inaccurate because it doesn't take into account ball movement, and FG attempts based on score. Nor does it actually have any correlation to winning or player production.

[TrueLAfan]

From a statistical point of view, it's a limited analysis. It doesn't take into the account the way either individuals or teams score and set up to score their points, or how well individuals functions as primary ballhandlers within a system. A player that has gets a proportionately higher number of assists In 2005 and after, Kobe averaged getting about 23% of his team's assists; LeBron had over 35% last year. That's close to a 50% difference. AI is even higher. Someone like Nique is far lower. That's such a huge difference in the way an individual players works within a team offense that it makes an analysis like this very shaky from the get go.

Then there's the difference in team offensive strategy itself. In the last three years (i.e. "Phil's Back), the Lakers have averaged 15% more assists per game than they did in the two years before. A shift in team offense can result in wild differences in both total assists and, causally, the individuals that produce them. (This, then is related to the reason above.) If an offense is geared toward a primary scorer with an minimum of secondary passing (or with one and only one primary distributor), it will affect the amount of secondary passing by the primary scorer. There is far too great of a variance within strategies to make equitable comparisons between teams and individuals on them.

Then there's the sample size issue. Even a guy like Dominique Wilkins only scored 40 or more points 45 times in 1074 games. That gives a confidence interval (in layman's terms, margin for error) of +/- over 14%, which is very high for any sort of analysis. In essence, that means that it can't be predictive or comparative because there's just too small of a group to make an accurate analysis from.

One way of checking into and complicating (in a good way) some of these issues is to look at field goal attempts rather than percentage. As noted, Kobe's FG% differential in +40 pt. games is the smallest here...my guess is that other players didn't really take many, if any more shots in the their high scoring games. This isn't really addressed here, except to say that "Kobe seem to be the most selfish. Of all time? No hate, but maybe. He's a great scorer but appears to pad his stats by ignoring his teammates as his dimes continuously drop as points increase." The more accurate conclusion is that Kobe takes more shots in his high scoring games...but if that's his designated role with the offense (or if it's his decision to take that role)...then it's not selfish unless it somehow undermines the team. Since 2005, the Lakers are .647 (44-24) when Kobe scores 40 or more, and .593 (199-143) when he scores less. I'm neither a Kobe fan nor a hater, but if a player's team wins more when he, as the primary scorer, scores 35% more and gets credit for an assist 35% less often, I don't think selfishness has anything to do with it.

Differences of that magnitude render an analysis like this moot as a real statistical tool, but interesting for comparing how/why high scoring players function the way they do, and the relative effectiveness in terms of team success...which is much more complex question, and would require considerably more study and analysis.

[WesWesley]

I find it funny that people are calling Kobe a stat padder.

It must be nice to be a stat padder, and a champion at the same time.

[kflo]

kobe has not been inefficient for most of his career.

and he is obviously truly great.

Most of his career without Shaq he was. I think he can't claim all-timey greatness because he spent his prime killing his teams and being served crushing defeats. Greats carry their teams and make them overachive and Kobe has never done that.

no, most of his career without shaq he's been an efficient and elite bulk scorer and playmaker. kobe's teams have always been among the top offensive teams in the league, regardless of who he was teamed with. the problem you have is how badly you represent the talent he was surrounded with when he was leading them to 45 and 42 wins, and what the sources of their problems were. they were bad defensively. in part because of your heroes like smush, or luke, or vlad, or cook. kobe's now been in 6 finals in 10 prime years, yet he has to prove he can elevate teams. you created a stat based on 40 point games, based on a 68% winning %, as a way to prove something AGAINST him? it's horrible analysis. you have your mind made up and invented a way to support your hypothesis.

[kflo]

seriously, fg% differential? ever hear of eFG% or ts%?

[SDChargers#1]

Let's look at some of Kobe's ex-teammates when playing with Kobe and without.

Smush Parker - EASILY the best numbers of his career with Kobe (career highs in FG%, ppg, 3P%, etc). Since, couldn't make the rotation on a 15 win Miami team, and is now out of the league.

Kwame Brown - Played some of his best basketball on the Lakers (career high in FG%). A career incompetent scorer, Kwame's FG% miraculously sky rocketed as a Laker.

Brian Cook - EASILY the best numbers of his career with Kobe (career highs in FG%, ppg). Averaged 45%+ FG% as a Lakers. Since leaving...38%....weird.

Lamar Odom - Career high FG% before joining lakers was 46%, averaging 43.5%. Since then has never shot under 46.8%, averaging 48.5%.

Pau Gasol - Before joining the Lakers averaged ~50% from the field. Since joining 58%.

The list continues, but I will stop there. It is pretty obvious that by Kobe drawing double teams he creates wide open looks for his teammates, even if he doesn't get credited with the assist every time.

Now look at players on Lebron's team, and you will notice the opposite. Career lows in FG%.

[indiefan23]

Stat is inaccurate because it doesn't take into account ball movement, and FG attempts based on score. Nor does it actually have any correlation to winning or player production.

Takes all those things into account by comparing to the average assists which normalize the data set with respect to all those things. The only variable that changes is the points scored. As stated, the regular fluctuation of the offense and teams are normalized giving a much clearer view of how, in the average playing context, scoring affects assists.

[Jordan23Forever]

You can't compare players' FG% within the triangle and outside the triangle. Kobe is not the sole reason for anyone's jump in FG% when they come into the triangle. He helps, undoubtedly, but it isn't completely attributable to him. It would be more informative if we saw these players in the triangle without Kobe for a year or two and compared that to playing with Kobe in the triangle, since the triangle is a very unique and much more effective offensive system than the systems these players were coming from.

[microfib4thewin]

Cept Kobe didn't really create, and if he did he was absolutely not consistent. But you're not dumb though, so I appriciate your input.

I meant create as in trying to create his own shot, when the defense heats up and they cannot create any mismatches via the triangle, naturally the ball should go to Kobe. Does it work all the time? No, but it beats having Odom trying to attack with 3 defenders in the middle or have Gasol flip a heavily contested shot.

There are those times but I really don't believe that Kobe tries to score lots in response to them. He just tries to score lots all the time.

Oh really? That's some lofty assumption with a proof of.... 4 games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHtZIZ3-ORE (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh21KLjqo3Q (part 2)
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_y ... 2008011713 (boxscore)

This was the game against Phoenix in Jan 17 of last year. Bynum was injured two games ago after averaging 17/12 during the last 7 games, and no doubt the Lakers became much less capable of beating the Suns and defend the #1 spot in the division. Kobe didn't try to go off despite that with Kwame committing 7 TOs and made every mistake possible. After the game Kobe told the media the fans should not have booed Kwame, and there were no reports of Kobe chewing on Kwame for his performance.

Had he been the young Kobe the results would be very different. Does Kobe still play selfishly when he doesn't have to? Yes. Are there games where he plays under control? Yes. Are there games where Kobe absolutely have to take over in order to win? Yes.

Those games were just examples and honestly were chosen arbitrarily. I took his top 10 games and examined the two best and worst results.

And you happen to take the two losses where the opposing team shot 38 Freethrows, so Lebron's teammates not putting up a formidable defense should be mentioned like in the Magic series, while Kobe's teammates stinking up on D should be disregarded? How many 40+ games did he have? And how many of those games did you bother to 'analyze''? How many external factors aside from Kobe did you weigh in? I might as well say that Lebron's performance is irrelevant to his team's success because when he shot badly his team either wins or makes the series close, but when he shot well his team becomes less competitive. Just look at the numbers against the 07 Pistons, the 08 Celtics, and the 09 Magic.

Code: Select all

      FGM FG%  3-PT  FTM FT% REB AST PT
2007 8.83 45%  5-14  7.1 73% 9.1 8.5 25.6
2008 7.85 35% 10-39  9.7 75% 6.4 7.5 26.7
2009 12.5 48% 11-37 11.6 74% 8.3 8.0 38.5


Looking at this, it's obvious that when Lebron scores less and goes to the line less his team becomes more competitive. When he shoots 48% it's bad because his team got eliminated in 6 games. My sample size are much bigger than yours, yet the idea of Lebron hurting his team is just as inane as your 'Lakers can win more just by having Kobe shoot less' hypothesis. It's very easy to use data and make up a conclusion of your liking when you decide to ignore any facts or numbers that goes against your theory. All you have really gone over are a few games where Kobe scored alot and determined if he helped or hurt the team by a two sentence description. By ignoring what happened to the 19 other players and the situations that have occurred throughout the game there is basically insufficient evidence to judge if Kobe really helped or hurt the team. Until you can provide more than just pulling up a couple of numbers that favor your opinion the games you have mentioned are considered inconclusive.

Besides, like TLAF said, if Kobe's team wins 65% of times when he scored over 40 it's rightful to ask how much he hurt the team, if at all.

Smush is just an example and Kobe was pissed with LA for getting players who needed work like Smush. I think he took it out on him and it caused a rift.

Assumption without proof.

I was nto saying they were all stars, but they wern't terrible either.

Define 'not terrible'. Odom is still one of the main players, but the rest? Smush is in China, Kwame can't get much playing time on a Detroit team that has terrible frontcourt depth, Luke is only playing half his minutes from his breakout year of 07, then we get to the bench. Evans is in Atlanta with similar production, Cook is no longer a rotation player, Mihm is hampered by injuries, Turiaf is only getting slightly more playing time despite GSW having a severe lack in PF, Devean George is playing arguably his worst season since his sophomore year in 01, Radmanovic is playing more minutes with Charlotte, but his percentages all across the board has gone down with higher usage. I would wait until next year to see how much he can contribute, but I think the Bobcats will be very disappointed. Butler was the only one that improved since his departure, and he was no longer with the team in 06, so he was hardly a contributor in the rebuilding period.

So, outside of Bynum who has improved greatly from the mediocre years, everyone else is either playing backup on a team worse than the 05-07 Lakers or are no longer in the league. Is this what you call not terrible? Maybe if you are talking about the Clippers.

Over 3 years, they should not have been 3 games under .500. Its underachievement when you've got a guy who's arguably the best player in the league, and 1-2 top shelf players on your team.

Define 'top shelf' player.

And its not just Pippen. Jordan won with the same guys getting better each year on his team and then took them to 3 titles. Of course Smush had something to do with it but seriously, the guy got minutes and responded with good numbers and then his star player started to get down on him and his play went down. I'm not blaming the guy with way less talent for losing or for lacking the maturity. Everyone in LA seems to just get sick of it after a few years and tunes out.

Yes. I am quite sure Jordan won the title with the same team that struggled in the playoffs in his first five years.

As for Smush, good numbers for a scrub team or good numbers for a contending team? His best year of 06.

44% FG 36% 3PT 3.3 REB 3.7 AST 11.5 PT

Those are average number at best for a fringe playoff team, and it is absolutely terrible on a 3rd option when the team has championship aspiration. When the players you aren't blaming goes to a different team and has similar issues that limits or denies their playing time, is it really Kobe's fault or the fault of the players?

As I said, they aren't babies anymore, and Kobe is not their father. There is only so much blame you can assign on Kobe before it goes back to the player himself.

Those guys couldn't match up with the Magic. You explain to me how Z or Ben are going to stop either of them? Shard can easily shoot over them and Dwight can easily overpower them. Mo didn't play well either. I think its totally apt though... should that team be contending for a championship in the east finals? No. They probably squeak in without Bron and go out in the first round. He lifted them up.

But that goes back to your original point. Kobe is not able to make his teammates better so he should take responsibility. According to you, Lebron should also take responsibility for Mo shooting like he got possessed by Antoine Walker, Big Z and Big Ben playing like Dinosaurs, and West for not being able to guard someone 8 inches taller than him. If all you care about is the bottomline, then both Kobe and Lebron should take the blame for leading a team to a disappointing loss. If you are going to dig and talk about matchups, then you should also talk about Smush's inability to stay infront of his man who had to guard Nash and how Kwame's terrible help defense plays right into the hands of Amare's pick and roll plays.

You can't prove a point when you base it on unproven assumptions and vague terms that requires definition. The only thing you did prove is that Kobe converts assists at a lesser rate than the other greats, everything else is either questionable or requires more information to reach an objective conclusion.

[wallflower]

Theres nothing rational about the stat. He had a theory in mind and then he made up some funny calculus that fits but it doesnt say anything substantial about the game. I wonder how many other "Stats" he came up with before he stumbled up on one satisfactory enough to bash Kobe? This article does prove one thing to me and thats Kobe trancends stats. I am a witness.

[LebronsCavs]

Solid article, now before I do anything:

Bookmarked, indiefan, if you find anymore relevant to this player, you post them.


Thanks

Hey, cool man, if you like the analysis you should subscribe. I wrote the article and created the stat... wanted to see if I was on to something so I thought I'd subject it to the hatred of Kobe's fans. Thanks again for the props!

great article!

[indiefan23]

Nice! I'm glad we agree on something frosty, even if we don't agree on old schoolers. ;0 but to be honest, I appreciate your input on the era debate. Thats the kind of stuff I come to places like this for.

Yah me too. Always looking to get challenged and hopefully learn more. I'll even admit you're wrong on Wilt.

Okay, well, since I said I think Wilt can play today, I'll finally accept that I am wrong. ;0

[indiefan23]

Theres nothing rational about the stat. He had a theory in mind and then he made up some funny calculus that fits but it doesnt say anything substantial about the game. I wonder how many other "Stats" he came up with before he stumbled up on one satisfactory enough to bash Kobe? This article does prove one thing to me and thats Kobe trancends stats. I am a witness.

I did nothing of the sort. I was in a discussion where I said Kobe played selfishly and that 'scoring to win' was a myth, that from what I saw, Kobe didn't need to score to win and actually didn't pass when he did get going. They said that thats ridiculous given Kobe's high assist totals, so I made a stat comparing his scoring directly with his passing. It goes down. Way down.

Its not wild and crazy calculus. Its using fundamental techniques to normalize data. Really just basic math. When Kobe starts scoring big his ability to involve his teammates goes way down, and the more he scores the more down it goes. For other players (who not coincidentally don't have a selfish label) it goes up. Its a fact. I think you can derive all sorts of good information and the stats also backed up by experience. Top to bottom, it ranks players almost in their direct reputation for selfishness. Kobe/Mike/Iverson at the bottom, Bron/Wade at the top.

[indiefan23]

From a statistical point of view, it's a limited analysis. It doesn't take into the account the way either individuals or teams score and set up to score their points, or how well individuals functions as primary ballhandlers within a system. A player that has gets a proportionately higher number of assists In 2005 and after, Kobe averaged getting about 23% of his team's assists; LeBron had over 35% last year. That's close to a 50% difference. AI is even higher. Someone like Nique is far lower. That's such a huge difference in the way an individual players works within a team offense that it makes an analysis like this very shaky from the get go.

Not shakey at all. Its not a stat reflecting who gets the most dimes or % of their assists. That's what those specific stats do and I'd never argue them with this. This measures how a single player changes his own passing game when he's scoring increasing points, or to increase points, if you will. You're a smart guy truelafan, or maybe you don't like me cuz of that other thread ;0 but did you read the article? The stat is not even suggesting who the better or more prolific passer is at all.

Then there's the difference in team offensive strategy itself. In the last three years (i.e. "Phil's Back), the Lakers have averaged 15% more assists per game than they did in the two years before. A shift in team offense can result in wild differences in both total assists and, causally, the individuals that produce them. (This, then is related to the reason above.) If an offense is geared toward a primary scorer with an minimum of secondary passing (or with one and only one primary distributor), it will affect the amount of secondary passing by the primary scorer. There is far too great of a variance within strategies to make equitable comparisons between teams and individuals on them.

Offensive systems do not affect this stat becasue the dataset is normalized to scoring vs assists. More assists per game do not hurt or help you for this stat at all. 'Nique kills Kobe but never had a season over his dimes.

Theres also no information that suggests the triangle really reduces assists. MJ's dimes went down .2 despite playing less minutes under a drastically reduced pace. I don't buy it.

Then there's the sample size issue. Even a guy like Dominique Wilkins only scored 40 or more points 45 times in 1074 games. That gives a confidence interval (in layman's terms, margin for error) of +/- over 14%, which is very high for any sort of analysis. In essence, that means that it can't be predictive or comparative because there's just too small of a group to make an accurate analysis from.

Hmm... I don't accept that at all. ;0

1. This is in response to "Kobe needs to score for his team to win" which is just about the exact same level of error.

2. You're referring to a predictive quality of a statistic, or if another 1000 games were played would the same results occur. The sample is too small for that. Just because you rolled a 6 on a die 30 rolls out of 100 does not mean its going to happen again. For showing what 'did' happen its another story totally. I can show I rolled the die 30 times and got 30 6's quite accurately and I'm showing that in high scoring games Kobe did not pass. Aside from that, all sports stats have low sample rates. 82 games is a low sample rate out of 1000 too but you'll still say Michael Jordan had a career year in 1988 won't you. No, he didn't have a great year for 35/8/8 was just a random statistic with low confidence. Its a silly argument because we mays well just not use any stats at all in that case. Except MJ did have a career year, did play at the highest individual level he ever had and Kobe was playing selfish basketball.

3. In sports trends are not random because they are connected directly to players who operate in non-random activities that are connected to real world events and those feed directly into the outcomes. Given your logic, a guy who was not given minutes for his first 5 seasons and made the leap in his 6'th to average 10 more boards a game would have a very low confidence to have another season at high boards but in reality it would be very high. I didn't only put up the stat and say ha, that proves it, but looked into many examples and social situations that all point to the same thing. Stats alone are just numbers if you don't put them in context and there's a lot of complementary evidence that's pushing that error lower.

The sample size also gets rather large when you start to consider that its not a head to head comparison but a comparison to 6 other players and none of them even come close to his differentials. I'm pretty confident that we could do 6 more scorers and wouldn't find someone close. This is basketball, not dice rolls.

4. Not so much in 'Nique's case, but in everyone else's case, you neglected to mention that there's a connection between passing and scoring. If you pass less and force more shots you're going to score more points and push up your sample size. How many more 40 point games do you think Lebron has if instead of 25 triple doubles over a 4 year span (some of which when he was raw, freakish to think) he was getting 1-2 assists per game?

5. For a guy who fabricates old school player's heights based on no evidence (unless you posted something since I looked at that thread last time) you seem to be awfully concerned about veracity now.

One way of checking into and complicating (in a good way) some of these issues is to look at field goal attempts rather than percentage. As noted, Kobe's FG% differential in +40 pt. games is the smallest here...my guess is that other players didn't really take many, if any more shots in the their high scoring games. This isn't really addressed here, except to say that "Kobe seem to be the most selfish. Of all time? No hate, but maybe. He's a great scorer but appears to pad his stats by ignoring his teammates as his dimes continuously drop as points increase." The more accurate conclusion is that Kobe takes more shots in his high scoring games...but if that's his designated role with the offense (or if it's his decision to take that role)...then it's not selfish unless it somehow undermines the team. Since 2005, the Lakers are .647 (44-24) when Kobe scores 40 or more, and .593 (199-143) when he scores less.

I'm neither a Kobe fan nor a hater, but if a player's team wins more when he, as the primary scorer, scores 35% more and gets credit for an assist 35% less often, I don't think selfishness has anything to do with it.

Dude, your name is 'true LA fan'. Its just a coincidence then?

And yea, except Kobe pads his stats agaisnt scrub teams. I don't think you read the whole article, did you? The average wins of his top ten scoring opponents is 33 games. With a loss to the expansion bobcasts with a 1-15 Adam Morrison and a 7-29 Felton. Or the game vs Memphis without Pau Gasol who won 22 games. Kobe put up record level shots in both games and shot his team out of them. When Kobe's scoring huge points his team should be winning those games 'anyway' but they are way closer then they should be because Kobe volume shoots for his place in record books instead of his place on the team. I call that selfish and thats teh credit he's getting.

Differences of that magnitude render an analysis like this moot as a real statistical tool, but interesting for comparing how/why high scoring players function the way they do, and the relative effectiveness in terms of team success...which is much more complex question, and would require considerably more study and analysis.

Well, you're not correct. Everyone knows stats are not everything but they're not nothing as well. I never said it made an irrefutable fact, but suggested it offered really good perspective into what happened and surrounded it by about 4,000 words of analysis.

[indiefan23]

But don't get me wrong, great post! You're the first person to actually address the statistical side of it really in any way. I really appreciate it!

[indiefan23]

I find it funny that people are calling Kobe a stat padder.

It must be nice to be a stat padder, and a champion at the same time.

The guy won by passing 8 dimes a game... its nice to be vindicated for years of Kobe fanboying even though their guy won. ;0

[indiefan23]

no, most of his career without shaq he's been an efficient and elite bulk scorer and playmaker.

Hmm... -10 FG% and -6 assists in high scorint games beg to differ with you.

kobe's teams have always been among the top offensive teams in the league, regardless of who he was teamed with. the problem you have is how badly you represent the talent he was surrounded with when he was leading them to 45 and 42 wins, and what the sources of their problems were. they were bad defensively. in part because of your heroes like smush, or luke, or vlad, or cook.

Heros? I said they were okay role players. And what about Butler? Kobe finished that season off 2-18 with Caron Butler on his team. Or Farmar or Vujacic or Bynum, who are all very good defenders. ;0

kobe's now been in 6 finals in 10 prime years, yet he has to prove he can elevate teams. you created a stat based on 40 point games, based on a 68% winning %, as a way to prove something AGAINST him? it's horrible analysis. you have your mind made up and invented a way to support your hypothesis.

Yea, thats why his opponents in his top 10 games average 33 wins, an injured franchise player and 13% from 3? ;0