Kobe Bryant Is No Michael Jordan, so Please Just Stop with the Comparisons!

It seems that there's a certain segment of NBA fans that keeps wanting to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Plainly put, Kobe is no Michael Jordan, he's not even close. And while I know that if you're one of that breed, you're going to be saying this is hating, it's not. 

I don't think that Woodrow Wilson is a bad president. Heck, he's even in the top 10. But really, he's no Abe Lincoln. That's just the way it is. That's not insulting Wilson by any stretch. But to compare Lincoln to Wilson is an insult to Lincoln. Frankly, to compare Kobe to MJ, is just downright insulting to the latter. 

Now, before you start braying about hating, I just want to give you some crisp details here by comparison. First, let's take a look at Player Efficiency Rating or PER. Now, I know what you're thinking, PER has some problems and it's not a perfect stat. I agree.

But the problem with PER here is not that it inflates the difference between the two, it's that it actually makes them closer than they really are. There are two primary criticisms of PER, it rewards bad field goal percentage and it doesn't account for defense. In both of those areas Jordan was superior to Bryant. 

Now, in terms of PER, Jordan has to be the all-time leader with a PER of 27.91 compared to Bryant's of 22.54, which settles him at 17th. So just rough snapshot, well heck there's a huge difference between the two, and in order to even justify comparing them, you'd have to say that there was something that Kobe was actually better at, and a lot better at than Jordan. 

Without getting into a lot of numbers and just making it confusing and all, MJ scored 20 percent more points on average, grabbed nearly 15 percent more rebounds, about 12 percent more assists, 10 percent less turnovers.

Anticipating the proverbial "Kobe didn't start his first two years" argument, I'll point out this. Looking at the percentage stats, Jordan's True Shooting percentage was higher, his rebound percentage was higher, his steal percentage was higher, his block percentage was higher, his usage percentage was higher, his turnover percentage was lower, his offensive rating was higher and his defensive rating was lower. 

Furthermore, MJ lowered his numbers by coming back and playing with the Wizards. If we take out the first two years of Kobe's career then we also should take out the last two years of Jordan's career. If we do that, it broadens the difference between the two, it doesn't narrow it.

In fact, if you just look at the numbers, Jordan did literally everything better than Kobe. Well except for the free throw percentage. But Kobe shoots his with his eyes open. 

I know, I know, the numbers don't say everything. You're right, they don't. Jordan won the MVP six times, Kobe won it once. And you can say he got ripped off out of one or two.

Even if that's conceded (which I'm not sure it's true, but for the sake of argument let's say it is) and we give Kobe two more, then that's still only half of what MJ had, and MJ got ripped off out of two also. Charles Barkley and Karl Malone just got theirs as a courtesy. It's not like anyone really believed they were more valuable. 

What about winning the rings? Well first, Jordan has six, and Kobe has five. (No he hasn't won his sixth yet.) And furthermore, Jordan had more to do with the six that he won than Kobe has. Kobe has actually played more playoff games and well over 300 more post season minutes than MJ, but MJ has scored nearly 1000 more points! He also has more rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. 

Whether you're talking the regular season or the postseason, there is not only no argument that Kobe is significantly better than Jordan in any one thing, there's not even really a valid argument that he's Jordan's equal in anything except free throw shooting. 

Another argument I always hear is that Kobe doesn't get the ball the way that Jordan did; that the triangle isn't the same for him. My answer to that is there's a good reason for that. Kobe doesn't handle the ball in the same way that Jordan did because he's not Jordan! 

Clearly, Jackson doesn't have a philosophical problem with it. It's not that Kobe is different because the offense is different, it's that the offense is different because Kobe is different.

I can illustrate the big difference in a very simple argument. The Bulls sealed the NBA championship twice when Jordan, covered, passed the ball out to an open man. In his entire career, Kobe Bryant does not have a single game winning assist.

Not one. That's why Kobe can't run an offense. He'd rather take a bad shot than give a teammate a good one. 

Furthermore, Jordan never had a real scoring big man in his entire career. The best he had was Horace Grant, whose best season as a Bull saw him score 14.1 points. On the other hand every time Kobe's teams have won the NBA Championship, he had arguably the game's best presence in the paint, whether it was Shaquille O'Neal or the combination of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, along with Lamar Odom.

Yes, Michael Jordan had Scottie Pippen, and Scottie Pippen was a heck of a player,  one of the 30-40 greatest of all time, but he wasn't a low post scorer. The Chicago Bulls are unique among all dynasties in that they are the only dynasty that won without a great big man. That's because MJ was a guard who scored in the paint like a big man. 

In some ways Kobe bears a passing resemblance to MJ in that he does possess Jordan's incredible ability to create space off the dribble, but he is not close to being able to drive the ball into the lane and score the way that MJ could, and he doesn't have the post game that Jordan developed later in his career. 

Yes, Kobe has done some great things, and he scored 81 points in a game, and he had the incredible run of 50 point games. However, I'm not arguing that Kobe is not great. He is.

I'm arguing that he's not Jordan.

If you think he is, you need to accept the reality. There is nothing, and I mean this, absolutely nothing to suggest he's even in the conversation. That's not hating, it's rendering Jordan the respect he's due. 

As a point of  clarification which has come up in the conversation below, there are different understandings of the word "compare." I recall once watching a football game involving the Baltimore Ravens. In that game the announcer went on to compare the style of Ray Rice with Emmit Smith. Certain aspects of his game were reminiscent of the game's all time leading rusher.

While there are aspects of Rice's game that compare with Smith's no one would contend that the players  themselves are comparable in the sense of caliber or achievements. When I argue that Kobe cannot be compared to Jordan, I'm not arguing that there is not any aspect of his game that is similar, I'm arguing that the whole of Bryant's career is not on the level of Jordan's.