Looking for The Real McCoy

He has just won his fifth NBA title. But compared to Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant still has some way to go

A little over a week ago, the Los Angeles Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant, added yet another chapter in their illustrious basketball history by winning their 17th NBA title. It was LA’s second title in succession, their fifth in the last 11 years. And as Bryant held aloft his second Most Valuable Player (MVP) trophy for the finals, soaking in the adulation and the confetti of his fifth NBA title, one could hear the echo of the inevitable question only get louder — is Kobe Bryant as good as Michael Jordan?

 

Michael Jordan was big, his legacy even bigger. Since his retirement in 2003, he has been widely regarded as the greatest basketball player ever to have played. His accomplishments, all statistical superlatives — six NBA titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, 14 NBA All-Star teams and a career regular season scoring average of 30.1 points per game (best of all time), do not do full justice to his greatness. For if one is to go by the number game alone, any player outscoring Jordan’s career points tally or surpassing his career titles would be in the reckoning for the greatest ever.

The Jordan phenomenon is best understood by looking beyond what Sherlock Holmes would have termed ‘elementary’. Jordan was why an entire golden generation of basketball players — John Stockton, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing — never won an NBA title. He was why the Chicago Bulls, with a 72-10 regular season record in 1995-96, are the only team in NBA history to win more than 70 games in a regular season. Analyse it as you will, but the only truth behind the approximate 6000 per cent increase in the Nike share value, from $7.00 in November, 1984, to $418.00 in July, 1998, is that of Jordan being the company’s brand ambassador.

But perhaps the best testimony of Jordan’s greatness comes from the fact that every time the game went down to the wire, he stepped up. The last second shot over Craig Ehlo against Cleveland in 1989, a career defining playoff series performance against the New York Knicks in 1992 and a last minute bailout in game 6 against the Utah Jazz in the 1998 NBA finals are all part of the Jordan legend.

And this is where Bryant, never mind his athletic ability and shooting prowess, is still lacking. In games 3 and 7 of this year’s NBA finals, Derek Fisher and Ron Artest respectively, bailed the Lakers out in tight situations. Even in the closing minutes of game 4, with the result still in the balance, Rajon Rondo made a crucial steal off a Bryant pass in to give Boston an improbable win. Bryant may have played well through the series, but he is yet to cement his reputation as the go- to-guy at crunch time — à la Jordan. Yet, if the Jordan-Bryant comparison creeps into basketball debate readily then this only points to our inability to discern.

An English movie character once said during a film, that sometimes to quench their extreme thirst, people will crawl through the desert towards a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand. To which his co-star replied, “People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”

At 33.4 points per game, Jordan’s career playoff scoring average, the highest of all time, is a good 7.9 points clear of Bryant’s career playoff scoring average of 25.5 points per game. On that count alone, fans should be able to tell their cab horse from a derby winner.

(Akshay Manwani is a Mumbai -based freelance writer)