LeBron James On Kobe Bryant’s Recent Comments ‘He Knows He Don’t Suck’

If you were to put a number on it, Kobe Bryant thinks he’s roughly the “200th best player in the league right now.” It feels weird to even suggest or accept such a thing, seeing as Kobe is one of the all-time greats, but no one is harder on the Mamba than the Mamba himself. “I can’t make a shot,” Bryant said after his Lakers fell to 0-3. “I freaking suck.”

Statistically speaking, his hyperbolic comments sourced from frustration aren’t that far off, according to FiveThirtyEight.

However, if you ask LeBron James about Bryant’s struggles this season—Bryant’s averaging 17.3 points per game while hitting 31 percent of his shots and about 21 percent of his three-point attempts—he’ll tell you Bryant is just being hard on himself.

While talking with Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal, LeBron downplayed Bryant’s age as a contributing factor to his decline and chalked it up more to Bryant setting high standards for himself:

As James continues to soar in his prime, the man he continues to hunt down is struggling. While James smashes the 37-year-old Bryant’s milestones at a time his Lakers are struggling, he’s dealing with age and injuries and he can’t make a shot. Bryant referred to himself as the 200th best player in the league and added, “I freaking suck.”

I asked James about Bryant’s struggles this season and James laughed. “What I see is a challenge to himself,” James told me. “It has zero to do with his age. Zero. I think at one point in my career, in my 20s, I felt like I sucked. It’s all a personal challenge. I know him. He knows he don’t suck. C’mon man, it’s Kobe Bryant. But it’s a personal challenge to him. That’s all that is.”

But even the greats reach a point in their career arc when things stop ascending and start descending. No amount of time off from practice to clear your mind will change that. At some point, LeBron’s going to hit the same point. A nagging back injury would suggest, in some ways, it’s already starting. It happens. It’s not a reflection of a player’s overall career.

LeBron has Bryant’s back and that’s completely understandable. But Kobe’s not making any excuses for himself and a majority of people aren’t, either.

(via Akron Beacon Journal)