Kobe vs Duncan

i think its great they both spent their entire careers with 1 franchise…as u mention 2 totally opposite players..

people who arent basketball fans know the name kobe..when kids on the playground and make a tough shot they yell ”kobe”.

people who work in in offices after tossing paper into a basket yell kobe when it goes it..
kobe’s name is stapled into pop culture..

duncan was quiet and steady.a no nonsense guy that played the game without flair..but was a winner…his accomplishments r on par with kobe…
2 of the top 5 players of the last 25 yrs!! but i think kobe has a slight edge…

Kobe had a higher peak, Duncan had more consistent team success. I take the higher peak.

First of all my overwhelming feeling on this day is that they were both absolutely amazing hoops legends and human beings, and I’m just glad I got to watch them play for so many years. As far as comparing them, I’m a Spurs fan and thus clearly biased, but I have to say I don’t see this as particularly close. Not a knock against Kobe, he’s an all-time top 10 player. But I think there’s a strong argument for Duncan as an all-time top 3 player.

I think the “higher peak” argument reflects a bias toward scoring over anything else, and the esthetic preferences of the SportsCenter era. Duncan from 1998-2007 or so was as statistically dominant as any player of that time.

I started to go through a bunch of reasons in-depth, but it felt like I was speaking ill of the dead. So I will just say that Duncan’s peak lasted a few years longer than Kobe’s, he won a championship (2003) without the kind of dominant sidekick Kobe always had, he never had some of the personality conflicts with teammates that Kobe did, and he adapted to the way the game started changing around 2010 or so, while Kobe mostly resisted (though in kind of a heroic way) those changes.

Kobe is the sexier pick of the 2. But really they are examples of a remix of Jordan or a remix of Olajuwon. Take your pick, there isn’t a wrong answer of who was better imo.

Kobe a longer prime than Duncan?

Duncan beat Lebron’s super big 3 at the age of 38 while still being the franchise player and almost beat them the year before at age of 37 if it wasn’t for R.Allen’s triple and for G.Poppovich for benching him twice in the final 2 possessions making the biggest mistake in NBA Finals history.. by the way Duncan had 30pts&17rb in that game 6 and would have won 6 out of 6 Finals…

Duncan has been way more dominant than Kobe and it is just not even close. Duncan has a case for being TOP 5 player in NBA history while Kobe barely makes the TOP 10.

I think there’s an assumption that Timmy dropped off from his “peak” when he went from averaging 20+ ppg to somewhere in the mid-teens. I disagree. I think he and Pop just saw where the game was heading, and understood that post-ups and 15-foot bank shots weren’t as efficient as what they could create with nonstop movement, Tony and Manu penetrating and dishing and finding open shooters. Like 2quick4u points out, Duncan could still get 30 when the Spurs needed him to.

Also, if anything he became an even better defender toward the end of his career. During those two seasons the Spurs went to the finals against the Heat, Duncan was probably the best defensive big man in the game. He was basically Rudy Gobert with a jump shot and passing skills.

Higher peak is largely due to the perception by their peers that kobe was the best player of his generation from 2004/5- 2010. This is the same argument for Jordan over lebron- his best years were clearly better by most people’s perspectives. This is a fact. If you differ- it’s an argument- but largely of the minority. If it was just offense- you do realize Kobe actually has more 1rst team all defense than Duncan, and the same overall all defenses.

Well, I don’t think “most people’s perspectives” really count for much. Most people are fans, not objective analysts, and there are probably at least 10 times more Lakers fans than Spurs fans in the world.

I would take other players’ opinions more seriously, but even a lot of them, especially the young ones, sometimes come across as starstruck. And for sure Kobe was a much bigger pop-culture phenomenon than Duncan, and played a much bigger part on Sportscenter-type highlights.

All-defensive teams are pretty suspect. They reward steals and blocks, which are often the result of gambles that in the long run actually hurt a team’s defense. And they reward man-to-man, lockdown defense over anchoring a team’s defensive scheme. Now that we have advanced stats for defense, although they’re not perfect by any means and tend to favor rim protectors, we can get a better idea of how players actually impact the game on D.

From the years in question, 2005-10, here are Duncan’s and Kobe’s defensive win shares, as per basketball-reference.com:

2004-05: Duncan 5.7 (3rd in NBA); Bryant 1.0 (tied for 227th)
2005-06: Duncan 6.9 (t-1st); Bryant 3.7 (26th)
2006-07: Duncan 6.8 (1st); Bryant 2.2 (t-93rd)
2007-08: Duncan 6.2 (t-2nd); Bryant 4.3 (14th)
2008-09: Duncan 5.0 (t-4th); Bryant 4.0 (19th)
2009-10: Duncan 4.5 (12th); Bryant 4.0 (16th)

I’m curious, to anyone who wants to add to the debate and elaborate;

Does Kobe or Duncan or neither or both… would either of these players make anyone’s Mount Rushmore? How about if Mount Rushmore were positionless…? Would it change? How would it look if you only included retired players? How would it look if you had any players out of the vacuum? And finally how would it look if you did not include players that you watched from your childhood as in say less than 19 years old. To me it’s really all perspective. People have biases. In a vacuum of positionless retired players, my Mount Rushmore looks something like this:

Magic
Jordan
Kobe
Bird
Olajuwon

Obviously there’s a bias of what era I started really watching basketball. (I also hold Lakers bias) If I must consider what technical position players played, I have to put Kobe on my bench, move Bird to the 3 spot and Duncan at the 4. Is that way off? Was Duncan, who has more chips better than Olajuwon? How about any of the other paint players I didn’t even mention? (Shaq, Kareem, Chamberlain, and Russell to name a few) From highlights and legend, seems like these guys could be considered as Mount Rushmore players too. And then the players of today… If LeBron retires tomorrow he definitely should be considered in the Mount Rushmore conversation. People can argue others too, but I’d say LeBron gets in… somewhere… Anyways, a bit of rambling, but the point is Kobe and Duncan were so good at their craft and had different paths to get there that they are both Mount Rushmore players if you go by that era. I feel it’s the only fair way to assess comparing greats. And all the Rushmore considerations may be great in any era, however you only play your own era, your own time. Kobe vs Duncan to me is a close debate. I disagree with one being way better than the other. But it is fun reading lots of cases made for both.