With Lakers guard Kobe Bryant becoming the fifth and fastest player in NBA history to score 30,000 points, Dime is looking at all angles of the five-time champion’s career today. (Hey, we already called him the greatest player since 2000.) It’s equal parts celebration and examination of one of the NBA’s most polarizing and talented players in history.
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In the not-too-distant past (also known as: last night), Kobe Bryant broke 30,000 points for his NBA career. It’s a milestone only four others have done, but today we’ve talked about Bryant’s place in the present day NBA quite a bit. So, forget last night. Gaze into the future. What do you see? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar‘s NBA scoring record of 38,387 points. Can Bryant reach this record? We debated.
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YES, HE’LL BREAK IT
We’ve watched Kobe Bryant go through an illustrious NBA career. He’s had his share of strong years in the league, to say the least, and his on-the-court efforts have been spectacular. Really, his only moments of weakness have stemmed from things that have manifested off of the basketball court. When Kobe’s on the floor he’s a different guy.
He’s always been a hard-working player throughout his illustrious career, never showing a stretch where Bryant hasn’t been considered one of the top five players in the league aside from the start of his career. Bryant’s potential when he came into the league was that of a superstar’s. He was the first guard that was ever drafted straight from out of high school—that speaks volumes to how scouts viewed him. With all that being said, Kobe worked hard on smoothing out the edges of his game.
While the competition around him started to drop, Bryant did nothing but improve. His rivals like Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter and Allen Iverson lost their niche because they lacked the longevity that Bryant did. Bryant worked hard in the offseason through strength and conditioning training to assure himself that he’d still be able to play once he hit the mid-30s.
Obviously, this training has paid off for Bryant as he’s still producing jaw-dropping numbers to this very day. Very rapidly, Bryant is approaching 30,000 points. Right now he’s only 13 points away from that 30,000 mark that he’ll surely hit in the Lakers’ next outing tonight at New Orleans.
Now that he’s growing ever so close to 30,000, I think it’s time that we think about Kareem’s record of 38,387 — something that’s plausibly well within Bryant’s grasp. His seasonal average of total points right now is 1,874 points. From Bryant’s current mark and that point total average, it’ll take Bryant five more seasons to surpass Kareem’s record.
Right now, Bryant is 34 years old but we’ve seen great players play at high levels until they’ve hit their high 30s. Even Jordan was able to play at a high level at the age of 40 — when he was voted into the All-Star game and scored more than 20 points per game for Washington.
The question shouldn’t be whether Kobe can do it or not, but rather if Kobe can last long enough to do it. Bryant says he’ll only play for two more seasons — I don’t believe it at all. He will end up going for this record, especially with the rejuvenation that he’s had this season. His new team can definitely extend his career.
But it’s Kobe’s longevity that will get him there some day. In a few years we’ll be writing about how history has been made by Bryant. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny his scoring prowess. That’s all that it comes down to. It’s become second — actually, maybe first — nature for Bryant. That’s not going to change throughout the rest of his career.
NO, HE CAN’T CATCH KAREEM
I’ve seen too many Bryant crossovers to know not to bite on the first move. To know he’s setting you up for a fall, for an advantage he’ll exploit to render the self-proclaimed Kobe Stoppers and the reluctant defenders alike null. When he says he’s contemplated retirement in 2014 upon the end of his current contract, I expect him to follow with, but then I realized at 36, I could still kick everyone’s ass here.
Well, it isn’t a question of whether he wants to be on the court kicking said ass and stealing more pride. I wonder about the viability of the knees he’ll need to make those crossovers. He’s deployed them against defender, media and fans alike in his 16-plus seasons, and often. I just don’t know if five more seasons — four in a best-case scenario — are feasible when the condition his knees were treated for in 2011 is still not widely accepted in the United States. For every recovery such as Bryant’s — which, next to Bruce Wayne‘s magical knee brace in The Dark Knight Rise, ranks as one of the fastest, ever — Dr. Peter Wehling has a Brandon Roy, Tracy McGrady and Andrew Bynum for whom the treatment hasn’t worked. Wehling once boasted, without any hint of a joke, that “I am the only one to have found a way to cure arthritis.” Maybe that cure works in us mere mortals whose livings aren’t predicated on running and jumping, but even faced with the evidence Bryant is having one of his finest seasons ever, I don’t believe the success will last as the pounding on his body continues.
I wonder, too, about where Kobe fits in future offenses. I say four or five seasons is enough time to break Abdul-Jabbar’s record, but that’s at his career rate of 25.4 points per game. If he wants to play on past 2014, know this: There will be a home for a 36-year-old Bryant on an NBA roster. It seems hard to believe he’d stray from the mold of lifelong Lakers Jerry West and Magic Johnson and with the very core of my being, I don’t believe Bryant would escape to another continent to find playing time. Leaving Los Angeles for Bryant might as well feel as foreign as another country, but much as Karl Malone‘s one-year Los Angeles tenure in 2004, you can find another house to live in but not have it feel like home. Unless he lands with the league’s worst teams — and why would Bryant ever go there? We can debate his scoring pursuit but his drive for wins and wins only is unquestioned — it would seem few would construct an offense around a player in his 18th season. He’s scoring at one of his highest rates this season with one of his lowest usage rates, ever, but I don’t have faith he can continue this Prius-like run of using less but producing more. Thus, scoring drops per game and he has to play longer, which brings into question his health again.
Bryant has always fascinated me for his hunger to, and his success at, not only trying to win the war but to fight every battle along the way as if it were his last. The all-time scoring title is the kind of big game he relishes bagging and his drive to get it isn’t the thing in question here. What I have a hard time shaking off is the effect of the pure effort he’s poured into his 10,455 field goals and 7,538 free throws. Eventually, the attribute that endears him to his critics and lovers alike, his stubborn relentlessness, will undermine his chase of the bigger picture.
What do you think?
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