Prediction season is almost in full swing, and here is one from me: Kobe Bryant is going to compete for the NBA scoring title all the way into April, and he might just win it. In fact, if I had to pick a favorite, I’d pick the Mamba.
With all due respect to Kevin Durant, no one has been more of a pure scorer in the NBA longer than Kobe.
Yes, the guy is 37 and is coming off a major knee injury. Yes, he tore his Achilles the season prior to that. But you know what? I don’t think any of that matters. The guy’s natural scoring skills are still top-notch; the Lakers are going to need him to score — especially with the way they have been playing defense in the preseason, and Kobe is still the hardest working athlete in the NBA.
In this interview with George Wrightster and Brett Winterble in 980TheBeast in Los Angeles, I talked more about Kobe (the 40th-best player in the NBA, according to ESPN), the Clippers and their chances of winning the West, as well as my interview with the new director of the NBA players union, Michele Roberts.
You don’t think an Achilles and major knee injury for a 36 year old (not 37) who’s played 18 years in a highly physical sport matter? Seriously?
And who cares if he’s been a more of a pure scorer longer than Kevin Durant? The skills and athleticism he relied on to be that type of scorer are gone. What 25 and 30 year old Kobe did to score his points has little bearing on what 36 year old Kobe is going to do.
He isn’t going to lead the league in scoring when all he relies on now are midrange fadeaway jumpers. If you bothered to watch any of his preseason games, you would have seen that he can’t get to the rim or beat guys off the dribble anymore (say bye to all the free throws he relied on for cheap points in the past). Sure he’ll jack up 25 shots a game on a bad team but it’s laughable to think he’s going to hold that up for 70-80 games and score the required 27-30/game to win a freaking scoring title.
Also, how do you know Kobe is the hardest working athlete in the NBA? Have you observed all other athletes and somehow quantified that kobe actually works harder than all of them?
I’m going to chalk this up as you being contrarian to your former employer/mortal enemy in an effort to get more traffic. If that isn’t the case though, Stick to Lebron FA predictions.
Good post. Add that Lakers are going to be out of games and out of playoff contention, so no justification to play him through the 4th quarter. Once the Lakers hit 10 games under 500, they will be finished.
I do agree with Jab at ESPN because they create rankings and stories to “feed the ESPN monster”. Case in point is that they recently had story about Nets owner selling team and left in uncorrected on main NBA home page for almost 6 days. Fact was that inside story had owner Prokhorov retaining control of team, gaining some owners of Dodgers and no in giving up control of Nets at any forseeable time.
Regarding Durant, it should be apparent that he won’t be returning before Christmas or early January (1st doctor’s eval. is around Dec 1 before he can even practice). Still, even if Durant begins play in January, he should have enough games to win scoring title. Melo should also beat out Kobe too, as there won’t be much else for him to compete for with his mediocre team.