Kobe Bryant Is Better Than Michael Jordan

Also, Kobe averaged over 30ppg and everyones calling him a hog but what about Jordan? I don’t remember anyone referring to him as a hog even when he was averaging 37.1ppg or 35ppg. Over his entire playing career, Jordan dominated the ball and yet no one refers to him as a hog but the perfect player and now that Kobe is doing the same thing, he’s nothing but a ball hog.

4) The Zone Defense

During Michael's day, teams were not allowed to play the Zone which we see from almost every team nowadays. Now you might think this is not a big deal but think again. This meant that Jordan was covered man-to-man and and once he beat his man, there was pretty much no stopping him.

Jordan took full advantage of this because let’s face it, there was no one that could guard him and thus he scored a lot and got to the rim more often than not. The Zone came into effect in 2001, just as Kobe was getting into his prime. The Zone takes away individual match-ups and makes it harder for players to get to the rim.

Now in the zone, if you got 4 offensive players on one side and one offensive player on the other, it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna have the 4 defensive players on one side as well. The defensive players stay and cover their area. So if you isolate Kobe on the elbow, he still has to go through 3 players to score.

Now Kobe’s got 3 people coming at him and when he passes the ball to a teammate, is it his fault Kwame Brown has girly hands and catch it or can’t make a layup?

Jordan never had the problem of facing a zone. He could beat anyone guarding him and by the time someone came over to help, it was either too late or Jordan would just dunk on that person.

Now you may think this is not a big deal, but when the rest of the league knows that Kobe can’t be stopped and he’s the only one scoring, it’s not rocket science to know that you should switch to a zone to at least slow him down or take him out of his comfort zone.

5) Opposing teams and guards

To this day, I don’t believe Jordan played against the same competition and defenders that Kobe has to deal with on a daily basis. The one person that comes to mind from MJs days that could have given him trouble is “The Glove” Gary Payton.

He was the only perimeter dominant defender from that era that comes to mind but he never played against MJ that much. Other than that, I don’t recall a lot of good defenders guarding Jordan and that’s why he could do what he did with ease. Players that guarded him a lot were the likes of John Starks and Joe Dumars. Now they didn’t suck but they weren’t as big or strong like Wade, Bowen, LeBron, or T-Mac.

Now without a doubt MJ went up against some of the best bigs this league as ever seen such as Hakeen Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson and Karl Malone but they didn’t change the league like Tim Duncan and Shaq have. Also, MJ never had back to back MVP winners in his own conference to deal with like Kobe has with Tim Duncan and Steve Nash. And let’s not forget the fact that when Jordan started winning his championships, the Magic led Lakers were on a downward spiral and the Bad Boy Pistons were too old to keep up.

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