As Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James’ NBA future hangs in the balance, the “greatest of all time” debate has continued to rage on across all parts of the internet and beyond.
Some are questioning whether LeBron really is the GOAT, while others (such as myself and a few Basketball Hall of Famers) seem to think the crown has already been transferred to San Antonio Spurs freakshow Victor Wembanyama.
One man who is often at the center of these debates is none other than FS1’s Nick Wright.
Wright has been a champion of LeBron’s accomplishments for quite some time, declaring James the GOAT over Michael Jordan nearly a decade earlier, after the former’s improbable Finals win over the Golden State Warriors.
While the argument has usually been a two-horse race between LeBron and MJ, some fans have opined that former Lakers legend Kobe Bryant deserves a seat at the table, a premise that Wright roundly rejected in a clip from his show, “What’s Wright? with Nick Wright.”
“From ’99-2002, Shaquille O’Neal was the best player in the world. From 2003-2007, Tim Duncan… he was the best player,” Wright claims.
He goes on to say that LeBron James became the best player the minute he dropped 48 points in his double overtime win against Detroit in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2007, and stayed there until 2018, when Giannis Antetokounmpo rounded into form.
The shocker was who he left off that list of players.
“Kobe’s the eighth greatest player and he was never the best player in the world.”
Listen, I like Nick Wright and I think he has had a ton of good takes in the past, but I have to push back a little on this narrative I see LeBron fans go with when discussing his GOAT status.
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No, Kobe isn’t the GOAT, and I don’t think anyone outside of the most hardcore Lakers fans would even make that claim.
He is, essentially, a watered-down version of Michael Jordan.
I don’t want that to sound like a pejorative, and he’s still one of the best players of all time, but everything he was great at, MJ did before him and better.
With all that being said, this idea that Kobe Bryant was NEVER the best basketball player in the league is dumb.
Even before Shaq was sent packing from Tinseltown, there was an argument that Kobe was starting to become the dominant alpha on the team.
That became even more evident when the Lakers’ front office chose Kobe over Shaq in the duo’s now infamous split.
Saying that Tim Duncan was the best player in the world from 2003-2007 is insanely clouded by hindsight bias.
Duncan is a legend and probably the best forward of his era (though an argument could easily be made for Kevin Garnett), but Kobe was the guy in the NBA for nearly a decade.
No one was saying Tim Duncan was the best player in the NBA during that time frame, and although he had plenty of accomplishments to his name, including the three championships and two MVPs that Wright mentioned, he didn’t even come close to Kobe’s impact, star power or individual talents.
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A lot of what Duncan accomplished can be tied to team success.
While the Spurs had a great supporting cast around Duncan, Kobe was left with scraps after Shaq was dealt to Miami.
And if LeBron became the GOAT in 2007 after his 48-point performance against the Pistons (a year in which the Spurs won the title again), why wasn’t Kobe considered the best player in the league after winning back-to-back scoring titles in 2005 and 2006 and winning MVP in 2008?
Kobe had 81 points in a game against Toronto, surely that qualifies him for “best in the world” consideration, right?
Is it the personal accolades of LeBron in his early years in Cleveland or the team championship success of Duncan in the mid-2000s?
Because Kobe Bryant had both during the decade.
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I’m not picking on Wright either, because as I alluded to before, he’s not the first person that has made this argument.
This weird erasure of Kobe Bryant’s time as the best basketball player on the planet is kind of odd.
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Even if you go back and watch broadcasts of Kobe during the playoffs in the mid-to-late 2000s, you’ll hear announcers talk about how Kobe is “the best in the game right now.”
Players from that era almost unanimously agree, too.
Is Kobe a threat to LeBron or Jordan as the greatest basketball player who ever lived? No, I don’t think so.
But saying he wasn’t, at one point, the best player in the NBA just feels like revisionist history.
