First of all you guys have me confused with somebody else when you are talking about Kobe. You don't have a stat about one on one situations. Somebody provided total points, which doesn't really show how a guy got his points. Deandre Jordan has a great shooting %, so that can be misleading too. Basketball is harder to quantify in stats. I would say the fact Lebron does not want to be an iso guy, at the very least, means he sees himself better in other areas.
Sorry the Kobe stuff still cracks me up, because I have went after Kobe hard in the forum, especially for his sham of a last season. That said his work ethic was legendary.
Also being accused of being a Lebron basher is silly too. I saw him play a lot as high school kid in AAU, even spoke to him few times. I have a very good idea of how he was coached when he developed. How he handled his experience as a kid, considering what was going on around him, shows exceptional character. His takedown of Sir Charles is spot on. There have been a lot of hyped guys as the next GOAT and of all the famous 14 year old celebrities ever Tiger, Sid Crosby, are the only others that came to mind, living up to the impossible hype. (McDavid may too) But, Lebron has lived up to the craziest hyperbole ever.
It is possible my evaluation of LBJ's post skills are colored by what I saw then. I also ponder that maybe all of us guys from a different era may not have seen the low post did not matter as much as we believed, but if it was possible to find a weakness then that was it. I am sureit bothered us old schoolers because Lebron was probably as big as a Gronk at the time. I expect I question my own opinions more than you do yours, being old enough and close enough to the game to see your opinions validated or proven wrong.
The opinion about his post up is not even originally mine, I stole it from a Hubie Brown Q and A at a clinic I attended. And it certainly connected to what I saw of the teen Lebron all those years before. The Karl Malone line I used was Hubie's. Hubie did say Lebron and MJ were the two guys most likley to make it in any era, but had Bird up there too.
I never ever said Bird was the same athlete as Lebron that is garbage. But it was represented that he was a terrible athlete, he wasn't. Athleticism is more than leaping. Bird was very agile for
a big guy. Bird's agility, size quickness were often underplayed to support how his success was all skill and smarts. There was more than a little racism, at the time, on both sides of the Bird is a bad athlete argument. I simply said if you think he was a terrible athlete it is closer than that. I never even concluded Bird was a better player. Yet there are quite a few, even in this thread posts firing back at me on those grounds. On that note though if Lebron was a million times better athlete and every skill is better than Bird's, why do guys that played in the NBA, not you, but Reggie Miller feel the comparison is not so overwhelmingly in Lebron's favor?
I will go on record as saying I would build a team around Lebron before Bird based on his superiority on D, and in transition. (I look forward to the attack claiming that I said Lebron sucks in the half court)
I also pointed out the difference in how basketball is coached now and then, and how the game has changed post play, and that Lebron's history of playing elite AAU against older guys developed his incredible perimeter skills, rather than the back to the basket power moves, much to the betterment of the basketball world. There are strength's and weaknesses in both eras. In the 80s some coaches may have made Lebron a 4 and nothing else, but probably not the talent was that obvious.
Anyway I would be happy to line up my experience in basketball, side by side with yours.