Kobe’s end of career thread:

Personally, I’ll just say Kobe Bean is personally my nominee as the greatest player of all time.

Kobe Bryant is legit one of the only NBA players in history that can honestly be guaranteed that would’ve disputed load management, even though he tore his Achilles attempting to fight for a 8th seed in the Western Conference towards the end of his 20 year tenure with the Lakers.

Before the Achilles injury (7 Game Stretch)

28.9 PPG
8.4 AST
7.3 RPG
2.1 SPG
1.0 BPG
45.6 MPG

Kobe’s goat value comes into question a lot, though people praise his scoring and criticize his lack of passing, though he averages 25/5/5/1 on 45/33/84 splits, and having won 2 championships with a team that had no stars besides Pau Gasol AFTER Shaq left.

Not to mention the fact that as the second scoring option behind one of the greatest big men of all time, he averaged (in the playoffs):

And unlike notable stars in the league who left their teams after losing, Kobe went through a small drought of not winning after Shaq left until Pau’s arrival, even matching up against the 3 headed Celtics, led by Pierce, Big Ticket and Rondo in the Finals as the lone star.