Vs: NBA MVP & other awards 2010-2011
Tim Kawakami listaa "NBA All-Defensive First Teamiin" rankatun Kobe Bryantin omassa arviossaan toiseksi huonoimpaan(!) puolustusviisikkoon.
[quote author="http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2011/05/15/my-4th-annual-nba-no-defense-team-al-jefferson-monta-ellis-kobe-bryant-and-more/"]Kobe Bryant, Lakers. OK, I will immediately agree that Bryant is almost assuredly not one of the 10 worst defensive players in the league and I don’t imagine any opponent’s eyes light up when he sees Kobe guarding him.
I will stipulate that putting him on this list is, in large part, grading Kobe against his past performances on D, and that’s not entirely fair.
So what.
His imploding effort on defense this season forced me to put him on this list, just to make sure we remember how good he used to be and how shaky the Lakers get on D when Bryant is as bad as he was this season.
Despite the Lakers’ excellent record, during the regular season it was clear that Kobe regularly took defensive possessions off, got stuck on screens, got lost in the flow, and didn’t get back in transition–often to complain about not getting a foul call on the offensive side.
In the playoffs, it only got worse. Why did Dallas get so many open 3s? Derek Fisher was one reason, sure, but Bryant, by my view, was blatantly lazy rotating after a couple of Mavericks passes.
Even when Bryant tried to summon his old lock-down self against Chris Paul for a few possessions in the middle of the New Orleans series, Bryant was no match for CP-3 and habitually allowed himself to get knocked off by a screen.
Which is what bad defenders do when they know they can’t stay in front of penetrator and want somebody else to guard the damn guy.
We saw Bryant cross that fateful line this year: From good defender to a bad defender, just like that.
Overall, Bryant was statistically the Lakers’ worst regular on defense–the Lakers gave up 4.1 more points per 100 with him playing than with him out and opponents shot 48.9% EFG when Kobe played vs. 45% when he was out.
In the basketball-card stats, Bryant blocked a career-low 12 (!) shots and had only 99 steals in 82 games, his lowest total since 2004-05, when he played only 66 games.
Obvious point: Bryant has a bad knee and various other nagging ailments; at 32, having just finished his 15th NBA season, he’s wearing down and now the toll is showing.
One stat that illuminates the accumulation: Bryant is only a few months younger than Stephen Jackson (both born in 1978), yet Bryant has played 21,186 more minutes, regular-season and playoffs, than Jackson has.
That’s the equivalent of seven 82-game seasons averaging 40 minutes a gam (which nobody does) that Bryant has played MORE than Jackson, who himself has shown signs of wearing down for a few years now.
Bryant was voted on the first team All-Defense this year, as he is most years. Most years he has deserved it. Not this time. Not even close.[/quote]
Lienee aika käynnistää: "mutku Koubi oli top-vitoses puolustuksessa!"