both have a career defensive rating of 105. clyde averaged a whole ONE rebound more than kobe. and one more assist..soo yeah i guess he's better at those. but not by much. clutchness is bullshit? really? REALLY? and how is all defense bullshit? oh and guess who has the higher almighty PER?
i love lebron. hes my favorite player not on the blazers. im waiting for him to win a few rings before i put him in the top 10-20.(he has stepped up tho, like the game winning three last year against orlando, and a few years back he had like 25+(?) points straight against the pistons)
Clutchness is mostly bullshit, but not completely. I don't know of any real number-crunching go back very far, but if you want to take more than "it just is" shot at it, http://offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/how-do-you-determine-clutch/ and http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/14218/new-numbers-on-kobe-bryant-in-crunch-time are good starts. For defense, neither Clyde or Kobe have been real difference makers, except for some nice highlights. PER rewards inefficient scorers, so tends to be popular because it matches the same bias most people have: scoring is what matters most. WoW's stats, in the original post, do not. So Fat Lever has had some of the greatest seasons any SG has had, even though he was never a big time scorer. For a few years, though, he was a constant threat for a triple double every every damn night, and came close to averaging that. You may not think he was all that great, though, if you think 5 more points a game was more important. If so, you're probably also wondering why Iverson has no seasons on that list. Kobe has been one of the best, but looking at overall impact in the game, over a season, has generally not been quite as efficient in scoring, passing, or rebounding, etc. That's what those numbers say. If you want to diasagree (and many would), you'll pretty much have to resort to one of these strategies: total scoring is much more important, something that can't be measured is much more important (e.g. "I just know", clutch, leadership), something outside the games are more important (e.g. awards, championships, contracts), or the stats are wrong (inconsistent for different eras/teams, unfairly awarded free throws/fouls, etc.). Personally, I wonder if Clyde would have looked even better with no-handchecking rules we have now, but we'll never know.
Everything. Rebounding, yes (Clyde once averaged 7.9 rpg in a season, Kobe never did that). Passing, yes (Clyde once averaged 8 apg in a season, Kobe never did that). Steals, yes (Clyde once averaged 2.7 spg in a season, Kobe never did that). Clyde was incredible. If it weren't for Jordan, he would've been the greatest player of his time. He did everything on the court. The key steal, block. If there was a key rebound or loose ball, there'd be a crowd of people around it and then out of that crowd would come Drexler, with the ball, racing down the court and jamming it on the other end. We were soooooo good in the 1990-91 season and Clyde was a big part of that. Yes, we blew it in the playoffs (to one of the great teams of all time), but during the season, holy shit. We looked like the best team of all time. I remember Barkley raving about us constantly. It was either he or Reggie Miller that season (I think it was Reggie) who called us the best team ever. We DOMINATED teams. In one game against the Spurs (the team we had just beaten in a 7 game series the season before), we led 49-18 after one quarter. Drexler had a near triple double in that quarter, I think. Check this out. Danny Ainge knows what I'm talking about (and Jordan played with Bird, and against Magic & MJ): [video=youtube;ctrCrJoEYO8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctrCrJoEYO8[/video]
Not only did Clyde not get all the favorable calls that Kobe gets, he also had to deal with a senior referree who held a personal grudge against him. Jake O'Donnell was forced into retirement after throwing Clyde out one too many times.
Actually, Kobe's "Clutch" numbers are pretty average at best. Kobe has a "clutch" reputation because he has rings and because he takes SOOOO many would be clutch shots that folks remember the hits and not all the many, many misses.
