For Love...For Honor...For Kobe

In Bill Simmons' first ever fantasy basketball preview column, unleashed Friday, he ranks Kobe Bryant only No. 6 on his list of most eligible fantasy ballers (Bryant is generally considered a top-three pick) and goes on to explain why it might not be the greatest idea to build your imaginary team around Mamba this year.

He goes through a lot of potential hazards: Kobe's considerable mileage; his decrease in athletic explosiveness and the lack of a fallback option to combat it, a la M.J. with the latter-day power-post game/turnaround fallaway; potential on-court chemistry issues (not enough shots to go around, clogged middle); and his pinkie.

I'm not even going to get into all of those things—I'll save it for another day, another piece. This post is going to be long enough.

Simmons wrote something six months ago that stuck in my craw a little ever since—now, he's mentioned it again, and for my own sanity, my own piece of mind, I must delve deeper into it and disprove it to the public.

In recent times, I have become almost neutral regarding Kobe Bryant the Man. But that feeling of indifference does not extend to my fervent support and defense of Kobe Bryant the Basketball Player. As a diehard Lakers fan, I feel the same way about 24 that Simmons feels about Larry Bird, or Michael Wilbon feels about Michael Jordan.

So when the Sports Guy attacked Kobe's reputation for utter individual dominance last June by typing that he struggled against bigger defenders, it actually hurt my feelings.

Simmons said that these types of defensive players served as Kobe's "kryptonite" flaw—nonsense, as far as I was concerned. Maybe he had his troubles against historically great team defenses, but to state that any type of single defender could have an advantage over him in a strictly player-to-player matchup...I was affected by that.

Still, I just let it simmer—until ol' Simmy referenced it again in the fantasy hoops column—and well, I've got to get it off my chest. What can I say? It bothers me.

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In the initial column, posted between Games Five and Six of last year's NBA Finals, Simmons wrote:

"Boy, Kobe sure seems to have trouble scoring on these Shane Battier/Paul Pierce types, doesn't he? If someone's a little bigger than him, stays between him and the basket and has the reach to contest his jumper, and if that person is flanked by smart defenders who remain aware of what Kobe is doing at all times, it sure seems Kobe has trouble getting the shots he likes.

"Not to belabor the point because it's a moot discussion at this point, but M.J. didn't have a 'kryptonite' flaw. He just didn't. Of everyone from the '90s, John Starks probably defended him the best...and it's not like Starks was shutting him down or anything. He just made M.J. work a little harder for the points he was getting anyway.

"The point is, Jordan did whatever he wanted during a much more physical era, and when he faced great defensive teams—like the '89 and '90 Pistons or the '93 Knicks—nobody ever shackled him or knocked him into a scoring funk.

"Kobe? He looks a little lost offensively against the Celtics. It's true. Same for the 2004 Finals against Tayshaun Prince, another lanky defensive player with a good reach. Just remember to mention this on his NBA tombstone some day."

The Battier reference likely stemmed from an ABC televised game in mid-March between the Lakers and Rockets in Houston, when Battier held Bryant to 24 points on 11-of-33 shooting in a 104-92 Rockets win. And obviously, Pierce did an excellent job on Bryant at times in the championship series last June.

Then, Friday, Simmons wrote of the Lakers that "their best lineup remains Fisher and Vujacic at the guards, Kobe at the three, and Gasol with Odom or Bynum up front...which allows opponents to defend Kobe with bigger players and opens the door for more spotty offensive efforts from Kobe like what we witnessed in the 2008 Finals."

And I could no longer stop myself from addressing this maddening assertion.

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