NBA: 5 thoughts from ESPN’s top 74 all-time greats list
4. With all due respect, Kobe Bryant curiously jumped from outside the top 10 in 2016, to inside it in 2020
Rank: 9
ESPN made an all-time NBA greats list in 2016 where the rankings stretched from 100-1. Bryant, during the final chapter of his career at the time, was placed outside of the top 10. He was ESPN’s 12th best NBA player of all-time preceding Jerry West and succeeding Oscar Robinson. While he shouldn’t have been behind those guys, in particular, the honest perception was that Kobe Bryant wasn’t a top ten all-time player despite his allure and impact as an NBA talent.
In 2020, ESPN pushed Bryant into the top 10 within their revised NBA all-time great list. A lot of that can be manufactured nostalgia and ancestral respect for a fallen NBA legend since his tragic death. Bryant is easily the second-best shooting guard of all-time and mimicked His protege Michael Jordan to the T of five championships.
The issue with him being so high is the feeling that his best years in the league truly didn’t elevate the Lakers to the cusp of postseason respectability, and only one of his two post-Shaq titles truly were a Kobe driven masterpiece.
Whether Bryant supporters want to admit it or not, three of Bryant’s five championships were perpetrated by the dominance of Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal who is ranked behind Bryant in this list. At both of these player’s peaks, O’Neal was a better force of dominance than Bryant was. While Kobe has longevity over Shaq, a lot of that Post-Shaq Era not only produced spotty championship appearances but also saw several types of lackluster postseason success.
From 2007-10, Kobe went to the finals three years in a row and won two titles. The other nine seasons without O’Neal, Bryant either didn’t make the playoffs, didn’t get out the first round or only won one playoff series altogether.
Bryant’s elite seasons in the league were arguably in 2004-05 and 2005-06 respectively where he averaged 35.4 and 31.6 points-per-game. During those years the Lakers were 45-37 and 42-40 in the regular season securing playoff berths. They played the Phoenix Suns both times, and while Lamar Odom was the team’s second-best player, they did get a 3-1 lead versus the Suns in 2004-05 that they blew in seven games.
The following year, they played the Suns again and lost in five games. Two first-round exoduses by the Lakers in Bryant’s best NBA seasons forced the Lakers to build a complete team around their star for his talents to be fully maximized. Kobe is an elite offensive talent in his own right, but his score first nature was the ultimate boom or bust sequence in the prime of his career.
It rewarded the Lakers’ titles as the centerpiece of a team, but even more avenues of postseason emptiness that have him being more of a top 15 all-time great than a top 10.