Kobe will never be understood/properly appreciated by youngins, ESPN drones

GS4Life 2 hours ago#1 True basketball fans who seek to learn more about the game will know the truth, drones who just dismiss past players and blindly follow the narrative of LeBron and Curry being the best players we ever seen have a limited understanding of a very complex game.  Now I'm not claiming to be an expert analysis that could breakdown every aspect of the game but I recognize basketball is a complicated sport that goes beyond pts, rebounds, assist, and PER. There's so much more to it footwork, understanding where you should be and cuts to make, knowing opponents tendencies, post moves, floaters, hook shots, various types of layups from reverse to the underhanded Dr. J scoop layup, the game is as mental as it physical.  Current Lakers have talented players, it's not like '05-'07 when Kobe and Odom were the only guys on the team that have talent, but they don't win much because they have a very poor understanding of the mental aspect and competing for 48 minutes. That is a big part of what made someone like Kobe so amazing, nothing was going to stop him, break him, slow him down. Yes he'd miss shots and have rough nights but you'd have to compete with him the whole time, and I don't think there is any other players that studied film better than him. He kept going through countless injuries and while if you go back and watch games where he was dealing with certain injuries you could tell they affected him, but he didn't let them beat him or keep him from being the most dangerous player on the court over and over again. And the feud with Shaq, is almost a non issue. Could they have won more Championships together if the stayed? Yeah I'm sure. And while I was salty at Shaq for a while between joining the Suns/Celtics and some of the things he said about Kobe I realized in the bigger picture the two of them brought us years of the best play we've seen from a Basketball duo. True Shaq was the better during the threepeat but very few could replicate Kobe's play and how good he was in crunch time. I'm still waiting for anything KD and Curry do in the postseason to even sniff that '01 run. Shaq and Kobe were two alphas with chips on their shoulders, they both had something to prove without each other and they both went out and proved it. I respect that over wanting to form stacked teams and trying to find easier paths to rings, they wanted to prove they were individually the best and compete with the best. Neither Shaq nor Kobe are angels, we are starting to see that more with Shaq on social media and TNT but it's hot blooded stuff from wanting to prove themselves over and over and over again. It wasn't like say Dwight who wanted catering. And Kobe shoots a lot we get that, but taking difficult shots is different than being inefficient it goes back to competing for 48 minutes. And Kobe is very willing passer. He very, very often tries to take over but when it comes down it he trust guys like Shaq, Horry, Fisher, Fox, Gasol, Odom, Ariza and gave up the ball to them in big moments plenty. He played with very few ballhandlers Fisher could do some but his strength was more leadership, shooting, and hustle. Nash was almost 40 and severely physically limited but still averaged 6.7 assist next to Kobe all things considered that's pretty impressive. Kobe played with post players, and that's what he adjusted his game to letting guys like Shaq and Gasol do work down low and being able to work down low himself.