Last night Kobe Bryant dropped fifty points in a lame NBA game. The national sports media made a big deal about it ... again.
Hey, it's just not earth-shattering that a dude who shoots every time he touches the ball has had multiple fifty point games. When the ball goes to Kobe, Kobe shoots. No matter what.
Scoring fifty points in an NBA game used to be a really big deal. Michael Jordan had several fifty point-plus games in his career. But when Jordan dropped fifty, he had to contend with good defenders, like, you know ... guarding him. It was really tough to score like MJ did back in the day. And, after 1990, Jordan played on well balanced championship teams. Although Jordan was a "one man team" in the 1980's, the Bulls of the 90's were absolutly stacked. Jordan didn't get all the shots, as Kobe does. His fifty point outings didn't disrupt the flow of the Bulls' offense. Jordan's big games came with in the flow of the triangle offense. And he had to really work for his points.
In today's NBA, the fifty point game is no longer the milestone that it was in the 1980's, 90's and early 2000's. Make no mistake, I'm not saying that it's easy to drop fifty in an NBA game, but scoring fifty just isn't what it used to be (hell, Jamaal Crawford goes off for fifty every so often).
Don't tell that to the sports media. Recently, one of the TVs in my health club was tuned to NBA TV. Said network actually devoted two hours (the debate raged for the two hours that I spent in the weight room with the TVs - it could have gone on longer, for all I that I know) to debating whether Kobe or Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time.
The Kobe love is out of control. So forgive me if I'm just not that impressed by the uber ball hogging Lakers star's output. The dude shoots every time he touches the ball. People don't work very hard to defend him (Jalen Rose, you know what I'm talking about: your matador "D" was responsible for Kobe's 83 point out pour in a game last year, but hey, you got your thirty points, so you were cool with it - the smart money says Jalen probably uttered something to Kobe along the lines of: "hey dawg, I'ma let you get yours if you let me get mine"). Guys pace themselves until the fourth quarter. The NBA regular season is, largely, garbaggio. If Kobe wants his points, he'll get them because nobody's going to do much to stop him.
Kobe Bryant's gaudy scoring totals are not on par with what Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain did in their day.
Please (all you national "media types"), ease off Kobe's jock.
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