Kobe Bryant's career comes to a close in less than a week's time. It's a time of reflection on the career of one the game's greatest, and to take stock of what he's meant to the game.
Bryant's career spanned into the era of advanced analytics, and those numbers, focused on the value of efficiency, were never kind to Bryant. Efficiency was never really part of his concern. He was always the one willing to take the shot. But his efficiency wasn't as low as some would have you believe.
In fact, considering his volume, his efficiency has always been pretty impressive. So if there are at least a few prisms through which we can evaluate Bryant's undeniable greatness, then this particular one -- his place as something of a crossover between the isolation scorers of a previous era and the more equitable, balanced approach of the league's current superstars like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry -- is perhaps the most fascinating. And maybe the most important.
Bryant, after all, is the counter to most modern offensive models. Isolation is out. You don't see many two-guards operating in the post and mid-range areas these days. Kobe is a career 33-percent 3-point shooter. None of this adds up to greatness on paper anymore. Yet to criticize Bryant for his relative inefficiency, as has become the vogue stance to take, is to irresponsibly diminish his overwhelming production. The bottom line is he carried teams time and again with his unrelenting offensive force. Scoring. Rebounding. And yes, at times, passing.
For the entirety of the 2008-09 season, for example, when the Lakers eventually beat the Magic in five for their first post-Shaq championship, Kobe was a passing savant. With a more modest usage rate, he posted the highest offensive rating of his career that year, and even that doesn't tell the whole story of just how expertly he blended his own relentless force with an understanding of balance, flow and trust. This was the best of Kobe Bryant.
The flipside was 2005-06, when Kobe scored a truly ridiculous 45.6 points per 100 possessions. That year, he shot -- wait for it -- 2,173 times, making 978, both by far the highest totals of his career and only the second season since 1977 in which a player has hoisted more than 2,000 shots, the other being Michael Jordan in 1993. This, of course, was the year Bryant scored 81 points against the Raptors. The Lakers were also bounced in the first round. This, in my opinion, was the worst of Kobe Bryant.
What's interesting is that Kobe's offensive rating was the second-highest of his career in '05-06, which raises perhaps the most important point when trying to corral the Kobe Bryant legacy: it's not really about the stats. It's about the eye test. Anyone who watched him play in '05-06 and '08-09 saw two different players. It's why, I believe, his legacy is likely to be diminished over time as fewer people remember what watching him was like. They'll just turn to the numbers, and again, those don't always tell as efficient a story as they ultimately will for, say, Kevin Durant.
With that in mind, let's take at some of the numbers that perhaps best capture who Kobe Bryant was as a basketball player.
1: The number of players in NBA history with 11,000 made field goals, 7,000 rebounds and 6,000 assists. It's Kobe. That's it. This stat more than any other reflects Bryant's career. He did more than anyone else in NBA history on the offensive end of the floor. Included in that statement is no consideration for shot selection, turnover ratio or offensive efficiency, but these numbers still speak for themselves. They also show how Bryant was quietly more versatile than he often gets credit for. Bryant is a scorer, that's who he is and who he's always been, but along the way he also snagged over 7,000 boards and dished 6,000 assists. He's in a class by himself.
1: That's Kobe's ranking for all-time missed field-goal attempts. No one has ever missed more shots in the NBA than Bryant. Not only that, but Bryant leads No. 2 John Havlicek by over 1,000 missed field goals. Additionally, Bryant is No. 1 in playoff missed field-goal attempts -- holding that record by more than 170 clanks.
1: Kobe is the all-time leader in playoff field-goal attempts, with 4,499 postseason shots, two more than Michael Jordan.
Looking at the larger narrative, these numbers illustrate the complicated legacy that Bryant leaves behind. Bryant's one of the sport's greatest winners, and will be remembered for the huge shots he's hit, and even more so, for his sheer willingness to always take the shot. His raw numbers are mind-blowing, awe-inspiring. His efficiency was always poor enough to suggest that he could have done more for his team, but his individual scoring's so great as to suggest he was often carrying his team.
This duality is part of the enduring legacy of Kobe Bryant. His career ends in just four more games, but the debates about his place in NBA history will continue for far longer.
3: Bryant is one of three players in NBA history to attempt 25,000 field goals, along with Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He has the lowest field-goal percentage of the three for his career, but just the fact that he got that many shots up is impressive.
5: In many ways, you can forget all the other numbers. Kobe Bryant won five championship rings. That's a big deal. It's a lot of championships.
10: Bryant's ranking in points per game and total points in the Finals. Given that Bryant played in 37 career Finals games, that's remarkable.
25: Kobe Bryant is 25th all-time in career player efficiency rating. On the one hand, this makes perfect sense. Bryant was never a prolific rebounder, and his field-goal percentage was never hyper-efficient. The odd thing is that typically PER rewards volume shooters. Simply getting shots up is a good way to boost your PER. Bryant's also 149th in career offensive rating, suggesting that his teams were never great offensively as a unit. This isn't to blame Bryant, it's just a mark of how different Bryant's career has been from players like Durant and Curry.
33,515: That's the total number of points Bryant has scored in his NBA career as of April 7, 2016 -- a truly stunning number, and the third-most in NBA history behind Kareem and Malone. There was some confidence even two years ago that Bryant would eventually pass Abdul-Jabbar for the No. 1 spot, but his body simply didn't hold up. Bryant's inability to get there suggests that perhaps that mark will never be topped.
After all, when it comes to scoring, if Kobe Bryant can't do it, you have to think nobody can.
That, probably, is the most accurate way to remember him.
