Is Kobe's Luster Gone Forever?

[Steven_M]

My, how things change with the passage of time.

Kobe Bryant earned plenty of accolades in his first few NBA seasons. It became evident pretty quickly that the Los Angeles Lakers had a good player on their hands, and by the time the team won its first title of the Phil Jackson era, Bryant was...
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[Chris Kelley]

Perhaps I was the only one to hold this attitude at the time....and into now...but Kobe's name never held much luster for me to begin with. And that, principally, is because he came from high school to pro.

When I watched the most recent NBA Finals, I was struck by the laxidaisical manner in which both teams, Pistons and Lakers both, engaged in what was once an art form practiced by the teams named Celtics and Lakers....that being passing. Go back and watch the crisp, clean, efficiency....more than efficiency, preternatural knowledge of where one's teammate was going to be when the ball landed back on the world....and you will see something that modern players simply happen to get lucky on, most of the time, these days. The championship of 2004 was, as such, and simply put.....sloppy. At Basketball, The Art, they sucked.

Seeing that made clear to me that none of the "modern superstars" of the NBA are much to look at and admire, compared to the warriors that once lived. Bird passed, without looking, most of the time. Too often these days players lose a dribble out of bounds almost as if it were regular, let alone make no-look passes. Too often players refuse to pass, and instead want to be on highlight reels like their idols of old....those same ones that did know how to pass to find the open man in order to win, but those highlights not getting the press-coverage so many now crave.....teamwork and machine-like efficiency never that much in vogue, after all.

Bryant, over the course of all the years I've looked at him, has never shaken that high schooler mentality of "give me the ball even when I miss, this thing's about me, baby...", most glaringly in my mind because he never went through college. True, he has enormous talent....

...but to mention his name alongside Michael Jordan and Larry Bird is to mention the Brooklyn Bridge alongside the Great Wall of China or Pyramids at Giza. Not exactly the same category, and never even invisionable as such.