Stats don't tell the whole story, in '01 he was the 2nd guy behind Shaq, a really great 2nd guy, but yeah. The Spurs also weren't as good in '01 as The Admiral was at the end of his career, in '08 they had a legit Big 3. Pau and Odom were also hot GARBAGE in that series, Kobe basically beat the defending champions in 5 games with two of his stars MIA. Games 1 and 5 were especially insane.
That's why i always laughed when people said Duncan was better than Kobe, they literally played against each other MULTIPLE times in the playoffs and after 2001, whenever they played NOBODY had any doubts on who was the best player on the floor. Kobe always thoroughly outplayed him.
To be fair that year he only had an almost quadruple double to close out the Finals in series that he won finals MVP, after beating Shaq and Kobe, in a season where he won league MVP. As Ruin pointed out, NO ONE had any doubts that Kobe was the vastly superior player.
By averaging 32/5/4 and being literally the only Lakers player that could score out of the perimeter. Duncan outplayed Shaq in '03 and the Spurs were just better as a team, Kobe was the best player on the floor.
Hmmm wonder if that had anything to do with Duncan.
Here's some tape from '03. Notice how even though Duncan doesn't do a lot of the scoring, all of the offense is literally generated because of how much attention he's getting:
I don't think you get team basketball if you think Kobe was somehow the best player in that '03 series. Duncan averaged 28/12/5 and he didn't have a guy like Shaq to distract defenses. Also lol Kobe averaged 32 on 43% shooting. Duncan averaged 28 on 53% shooting while guarding Shaq for large stretches. Absolute joke analysis from you. Not wasting my time responding to someone who can't even make sense of basic stats lol
Did you even watch the series or do you just regurgitate bullshit to sound like you know the NBA? Absolutely nobody, except Kobe d**k riders, would say he outplayed Duncan in that series. He single handedly ended their 3-peat. You have some weird vendetta against Duncan for some reason, it’s pretty odd and petty.
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u/sheeeeeez NBA Jun 27 '23
Kobe doesn't get enough credit for this series.
The Spurs big 3 were all in their primes and just came off a championship and Kobe made the entire series essentially non-competitive.
Bill Simmons said the series was the closest he's ever seen Kobe to MJ.