Unfortunately, Basketball Reference’s shot tracking only dates back to 2000-01, which excludes four seasons from Bryant’s career totals. But we do know he didn’t get the chance to try. Would Bryant have been able to average 20.9 points as a rookie, or 27.2 points in his second season, as James did? We’ll never know. Combined with his otherworldly talent, there was never any doubt: The Cavaliers were LeBron’s team from Day 1, ready to go as their prize rookie went. By the time Cleveland took him 1st overall in 2003, the NBA was 16 additional players and almost a full decade deeper into the straight-from-high-school experiment. It wouldn’t be until his third season that Bryant finally cracked the starting lineup, averaging 37.9 minutes, 15.6 shots and 19.9 points in 1998-99 as a 20-year-old. The following two seasons would prove to be an exercise in frustration for the precocious young star as he waited impatiently for his opportunity to shine. That was especially the case with the Lakers, who were expected to contend for the championship after adding Shaquille O’Neal to a veteran roster that included, among other standouts, a future All-Star at Bryant’s position in Eddie Jones. Bring them along slowly? Throw them right into the deep end? At that point, it was still anyone’s guess. As such, the NBA was still grappling with how to best develop them. When the Lakers traded for Bryant in the summer of 1996, he was the first high school guard to join the NBA, and only the fifth high school player overall. But as far as that goes, Bryant’s career point total would almost certainly be larger, perhaps even significantly so, had he entered the league with a different team, at a different time. Different era, different opportunityĬumulative statistics are better measures of production and longevity than actual impact. Nearly 34,000 points - one bucket at a time, one game at a time, one season at a time, since 2003.īut does that mean James was the better scorer? Raw stats would seem to say so, with James averaging more points per game on superior efficiency.īut let’s take a deeper look in some other areas that might shed more light on how two of the very best scorers to ever grace an NBA court truly measure up. It marks the latest achievement in a career already filled with them for James, surpassing yet another great with seemingly no end in sight. Now comes even more fuel to the fire as James, now wearing the same purple-and-gold uniform Bryant donned for two decades, surpassed the Laker legend for third place on the career scoring list in a loss to the Sixers in Philadelphia. But LeBron, counters the other, is just better. Kobe has more rings and a killer instinct LeBron lacks, argues one side. Off the court, however, is a different story altogether as fans have been debating their respective places in the game for years. Not on the court, at least, where the two never locked horns so much as a single time in the playoffs, where rivalries are truly born. Despite being inextricably linked as superstar contemporaries whose career overlapped for 13 seasons, there was never much of a rivalry between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.
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