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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Kobe vs. LeBron: The debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lately I’ve been getting away from talking strictly basketball here. I can’t help it sometimes, the mind tends to wander to a bit. But I’m back on ball today. Really. Someone asked me a great question that’s totally off base from tonight’s Hawks-Wizards game (a must-win road game for the Hawks, who are running out of reasonable chances to knock teams off on the road before heading west this weekend. Have I mentioned how huge this upcoming road swing is? It’s going to determine the tone of the Hawks’ season for quit some time thereafter. Play well and you go into the New Year with momentum. Get buried and you’ll spend the next two months trying to dig out of the hole. Huge, huge trip coming up for the folks from Hawksville).
I was having a discussion with a good friend about the league, players and the like. He’s a sportswriter in another state that covers college football. He’s probably been to two NBA games in his life but loves NBA basketball and really knows the game. He was asking me if I had a choice between Kobe and LeBron who would I take? (He’s a Kobe guy, loves making that ridiculous comparison between the Black Jack Bauer – Kobe’s new No. 24 – and MJ. Me, I don’t bother with that kind of trivial foolishness). I balked at the question. Refused to pick until we specified what we were looking for. I tried to explain to him that it’s a hard choice to make if you’re deciding who you want to start a team with or who you want in a one-on-one game.
When you watch the NBA on TV (as I did before I started covering the league) your appreciation for players isn’t what it is when you start watching guys in person, day after day. I always assumed certain things about the league prior to covering the league (my favorite theory, and I’m serious when I tell you this, was that it was just one big production, ballet in high tops with the refs, players and everyone else in on the game. Like the WWF without the body slams and chairs across the back. How ridiculous was that?). I know better, now, of course. But just like your perception from afar can be colored by what something looks like on TV or through the lens of someone else (like yours truly), an up-close view of something can be tainted as well. Sometimes you’re too close. So close that you can’t step back and see the bigger picture.
For example, no one scrutinizes the play of the Hawks the way we do. I can’t tell you how many writers from other cities who have commented to me this season about how good Joe Johnson is. It’s almost as if they were waiting to see if last year was a fluke before deciding that “yeah man, he’s good.”
So back to the question that was asked. Kobe or LeBron? I still don’t know which guy I’d pick. But I’ve got an even better question, at least I think I do. And since we’re in to playing fantasy GM around here all the time, I thought it most appropriate here. What player would you choose if you were starting your team today, on Nov. 28, 2006?
You can choose from any player in the league right now. But they have to be current NBA players. And we’re not talking about what they might be in three or four years or what they might have been in their prime. We’re talking about right now.
Who would you want? And make a case for the guy, not one against someone else.
