2021-22 NBA "REGULAR" SEASON THREAD

i like chris paul a lot but i don't think that he's a better player than wade or kobe or even kyrie

likely a better teammate than the latter two

lmao yeah cp3 is better than kyrie

kyrie is not even in the same conversation man, completely different caliber of player

honestly never heard someone rate kyrie, the world is full of wonders

it’s sad how cp3’s early career is forgotten these days. personal stuff aside kyrie is an incredible player, has the rare ability to make people look silly with his handle quickness and footwork on a regular basis…pre-knee injury, paul did alla that AND led the league in assists and steals

not to mention one of them was one of the best defenders and the other one of the worst

i think chris paul is better than both isiah thomas and kyrie. him & isiah are pretty similar, i think cp3 is just more talented overall, better shooter w/o a doubt, pretty similar in terms of passing, rebounding, defending etc.

he's just a better overall basketball player than kyrie. kyrie got lucky to play w/ lebron in his prime -- he put up insane games when they won the title so it's no shade at him but i don't think it's controversial at all to say that we're looking at kyrie's career completely differently if lebron never returns to cleveland. prob not a guy who has ever played in the NBA finals or come close to it. dude is insane ballhandler, offensive player and scorer, but he's not on chris paul's level as a player.

when you start putting paul up against guys like kobe, wade, dirk, garnett... it's much more eye of the beholder. if you put chris paul over those guys it's more of a longevity and holistic basketball argument. in terms of peak greatness, the ability to score the ball at will, really push a team to the top of the mountain in the playoffs via sheer ability to get the ball into the basket (excluding KG here), those guys are better than chris paul. i can see it either way. i think he prob belongs in the same tier as those guys more or less. i would prob take the peak versions of all those guys over the peak versions of cp3... give me the guys who are putting up 30/6/5 (wade and kobe) over the over the 22/5/11 of chris paul. but that's just personal preference. obv the advanced stats & things like that value efficiency and across the board contributions more than what i'm talking about.

i'll cop to some recency bias and to paul's glory years coming a time when i was paying less attention to the game

lol

you have to give it to cp3 over isiah just for the longevity, theyre pretty similar players but paul did it for twice as long

I agree on CP3 > Kobe but the phrase ">" does a lot in these discussions. like Kobe is maybe a better player in a pure basketball sense but I think if you were building a team from scratch you'd probably want CP3. alas it's hard to compare them since Kobe has been on great Lakers teams nearly his entire career while most of CP3s teams either don't make sense or suffer lots of injuries down the stretch

i think we can all agree that chris paul is no lauryn hill

Back in the 80s, Kool Moe Dee did a report card with grades for rappers on the inner sleeve of the ‘How You Like Me Now’ LP. Ego Trip got him to do another one at the end of the 90s. Fun reading. pic.twitter.com/CQL2zyv4h0

— aka Jimbo Jones (@jimbojonestown) January 8, 2022

kobe will always be overrated because of titles but his early to late 20s he was insanely athletic, great scorer, just an amazing basketball player, and be even better playing in a more spaced out era. like if harden and brad beal can average 30+ ppg nowadays i have no doubt peak kobe could have had several seasons north of 35 ppg. i mean harden did and he’s a better long range shooter than kobe was (tho again tailored to his era) but kobe is still a better player, to me. i don’t begrudge anyone who would take the amazing PG over that but i don’t think it’s cut and dried that you would “rather have” that over the crazy athletic and good pure scorer if you were starting a team.

there were extenuating circumstances be it going thru post-lebron expansion in cleveland or injuries to himself or others in boston, but the historical accounting of kyrie’s career outside of playing with lebron james is not going to look very hot. i guess we’ll see what happens this year

i need to see the alternate timeline kobe where he played his whole career in charlotte before i decide

or for the nets!

he prob still ends up in LA with shaq

its true you cant keep kobe from the lakers its like one of those scifi movies where two people still fall in love despite being put in different dimensions or whatever

i think shaq could go anywhere tho shaq is not bound to a place

man idk about cp3 over kobe that seems pretty wild to me. kobes overrated n all but...

just at the most basic level
https://i.imgur.com/aLrIton.png
vs
https://i.imgur.com/yltcoFR.png

i mean almost all of those are voted upon awards and kobe is the most overrated player ever

do we really think kobe played 15 seasons of all league defense

12, rather

cp3 vs wade is an interesting one to me, feel like I would take Paul but not sure I have an at all accurate memory of wade

cp vs wade is much closer i agree.

wade and kobe are interesting re the contemporary game cause wade didnt shoot 3s and kobe shot tons of them, very poorly

i mean almost all of those are voted upon awards and kobe is the most overrated player ever

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:10 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think close to his death he was becoming properly rated and the pendulum was swinging towards underrated a bit. twitter was very anti kobe for a time.

has any player in nba history gotten a bigger rep bump than kyrie for a 2-3 game stretch of insane play?

twitter is full of lunatics tho, amongst casuals hes top 5 xp

kyrie is a legitimately great scorer he can go out and get you a shot, and hit it too, its just the everything else thats not really at alltime levels

I watched a lot of CP and Kobe at their peaks but one thing with Kobe in those years is that when Kobe was on the floor you were never out of a game. The dude would just have these moments where he could dominate a game like no others.

i mean kobe was obviously a legit great player, but also he was a chucker

they were almost teammates that wouulda been something

kobe prob wouldve been a better player without all that psycho a-dog pop psychology bs he built his image on, which is ironic

i mean kobe was obviously a legit great player, but also he was a chucker

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:29 PM (twenty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

that was also an era thing tho. and as kobe aged he got worse and the chucking stood out even more as teams/players were getting smarter and more analytically sound. watching old kobe/iverson highlights is hilarious so many shots with their heels on the 3 point line.

kobe prob wouldve been a better player without all that psycho a-dog pop psychology bs he built his image on, which is ironic

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:31 PM (thirty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

also funny cos he became a big ol softy as soon as he left the game. makes you wonder if he woulda been ok with a different approach to the game.

i think cp vs wade comes down to whether you have the discussion on holistic career consistency and longevity terms vs i’m playing some theoretical basketball game and i’m picking guys based on a 7-8 year peak or whatever. there were some up and down seasons in wade’s run & he was done as an elite player by like age 32, but you look at the years after he established himself in the league and he’s putting up 28-5-7 with 2.5 spg & 1 bpg, couldn’t shoot at all from three but was well over 50% from inside the arc, got to the line like a maniac, crazy athlete, major playmaker on both ends of the court. it’s totally fair to say that guy was better than even the best of chris paul, imo

he was a freaking psychopath that willed himself to be as good as he was. I don't think he could have operated in a different way.

thats the story he told

i do think he was legitimately a psychopath tho or something like that

kobe is prob a more efficient and “better” player on paper if he has a different personality but idk if i’d wanna take his maniacal drive & general psychotic state of existence away from him. i mean there’s something that separates him from like tmac & james harden and it’s not just injury luck

also if you're talking "influence on the game"; I actually think Kobe was a bad influence on a lot of players. when Brandon Jennings was chucking up 30+ shots a game for the Bucks including every crunch time basket I have no doubt he was thinking about Kobe the whole time

can we step back from the bryant corp pr for a moment

yeah i mean kobe wasn't necessarily physically gifted or anything

Kobe was the best player in the nba for one season. At one point Pau was the best player on the Lakers.

also if you're talking "influence on the game"; I actually think Kobe was a bad influence on a lot of players. when Brandon Jennings was chucking up 30+ shots a game for the Bucks including every crunch time basket I have no doubt he was thinking about Kobe the whole time

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:39 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he ruined tatum, for one.

Kobe was the best player in the nba for one season. At one point Pau was the best player on the Lakers.

― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:41 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

by this metric how many seasons was cp the best player in the nba? how many were both in the top 5.. or 10?

there was a deadspin post on this exact topic wrt kobe

https://deadspin.com/who-was-the-actual-best-player-in-the-nba-every-year-du-1770857828

cp3 and kobels actually similar in that they were both good for very long

jesus

2005-06 LeBron James, 9.5 (Kobe 6.5, 5th)

2006-07 LeBron James, 7.6 (Kobe 5.3, 6th)

2007-08 LeBron James, 10.1 (Kobe 6.0, 3rd)

2008-09 LeBron James, 11.6 (Kobe 4.9, 6th)

2009-10 LeBron James, 10.9 (Kobe 4.0, 13th)

2010-11 LeBron James, 8.2 (Kobe 4.1, 12th)

2011-12 LeBron James, 7.6 (Kobe 2.4)

2012-13 LeBron James, 9.8 (Kobe 5.1, 7th)

this James guy might be good