Lakers vs. Heat: No LeBron James or Dwyane Wade Means More Praise for Bryant

Three of the top players in the NBA—Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade—will be at American Airlines Arena for Thursday night's marquee matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat.

All three are dealing with maladies of one sort or another. Only one is guaranteed to play.

And that one has torn ligaments in his shooting wrist and takes numbing shots before every game to dull the pain.

But when you're Kobe Bryant, the standard bearer of the post-Michael Jordan era, that sort of grit and toughness comes to be expected, fairly or unfairly.

Well, mostly fairly, seeing as how that's the bar that the Black Mamba sets for himself.

Meanwhile, Wade is an infirmary all to himself. Wade has already missed four games this season, including Miami's manic win over the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday, while dealing with a sore left foot and a sprained ankle, among other things.

James, on the other hand, has been dealing with flu-like systems since the end of the Heat's recent five-game road trip and was sent home from Miami's game-day morning shootaround to rest up. He's expected to be a game-time decision.

And Kobe? Well, you know he'll be up for it, whether the top two of Miami's Big Three are ready to roll or not. The only game-time decision at Kobe's disposal is whether he'll be the Scorer or the Facilitator.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, Wade's and James' absences are perfectly excusable, if not outright understandable. After all, this is just one early-season game amongst a schedule of 66 for a Heat team with its eyes on the big prize (i.e. the Larry O'Brien Trophy) after reaching the NBA Finals in Year 1 of Pat Riley's South Beach experiment.

But we're not talking about the grand scheme here. We're not talking about just any players. We're talking about LeBron and Wade, two of the top five players in league, at the very least, and Nos. 1 and 2 when discussing the best players currently in their athletic prime.

For them, greatness is obviously well within reach—especially for Wade, the MVP of the 2006 NBA Finals—but hardly sewn up just yet. These two want to be "like Mike," and are the closest to such esteem among their late-20s-to-early-30s peers, but they haven't exactly demonstrated the grit and determination to warrant consideration in the same paragraph as His Airness.

If anything, they'd have difficulty matching up to Kobe at this point. The way the Mamba has shown them up this season, going for 40 points seemingly night after night and making sports transcendence appear effortless amidst a normally debilitating injury, certainly doesn't help their cases.

Even if Kobe's wrist weren't an issue, he'd still deserve kudos for his toughness over Miami's dynamic duo. He's earned at least that much at the age of 33, with 16 NBA seasons, five championships and the tremendous wear and tear that comes with all of that.

Because now, nearly nine years out from MJ's third retirement and nearly 14 years removed from the one that really mattered, Kobe has become canon against which contemporary superstars are measured.

And if King James and D-Wade can't fight through the pain to play against one of the greatest players in the history of basketball, even as he slides stubbornly into the twilight of his Hall of Fame career, how can they possibly hope to measure up to him? 

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