Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 3:59 pm  |  207 responses

Can Kobe Age As Gracefully As Jordan?

by Tzvi Twersky

Yep, they’re comparing Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan again. Nope, the debate has nothing to do with G.O.A.T status. This time, on the heels of Kobe’s 32nd birthday, they’re questioning whether Bryant’s curtain call years will mirror Jordan’s.

The L.A. Times is the forum for debate:

Now that Kobe Bryant’s turned 32, how much of a decline can we expect in his game over the next few seasons?

The only player to compare Bryant’s 30-something performance with, of course, is Michael Jordan. But it’s not a simple comparison because by the age of 32 MJ had been retired for almost two seasons while he tried, and failed, to make it as a pro baseball player.

So, when Jordan returned to the Chicago Bulls late in the 94-95 season—at 32—he’d played only 778 NBA regular season and playoff games. By comparison, Kobe Bryant has already played a whopping 1,219 games, 57% more than Jordan at the same age. Kobe is clearly the NBA version of a Ferrari with high mileage.

What happened after Jordan’s 32nd birthday? MJ led the league in scoring in the next three seasons before another retirement attempt.

Still, age forced some adjustments in MJ’s game—and we might see the same from Kobe.

…

Late in Jordan’s career, he’d often pace himself to save something for the fourth quarter. Even then, MJ was great, he just wasn’t the airborne legend of his youth.

As Kobe—a hoops historian—readies for his 15th Lakers season, he’s probably got this MJ stat memorized: After Jordan turned 32, he won three more NBA titles.

Jay rhymed a while back that 30′s the new 20. Let’s see if 32 is still 32. 

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  • dopax

    with that finger? i’ll give him 3 years

  • Eric

    What people don’t understand is. yes, jordan did retire for a season and a half. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. He altered his body to gain weight for baseball.. and it messed up his body and athleticism for basketball and he had to work his way back into bball shape. In many ways, that 1.5 years retirement may have even accelerated Jordan’s losing of his athleticism even more. For example if he didn’t retire and kept his body the same.. his athleticism probably wouldn’t have seen much drop off in the 94 season after they won their 3rd straight. So yeah.. that retirement in some ways was a hindrance and not always an advantage.

    And ppl also forgot that Kobe had the luxury of not always being the man or having to carry all the big time load. He played with Shaq for a long time who was able to take more of the load. And his team now is actually more stacked than any of the Jordan’s team in the past. Jordan never had the luxury of playing with a star bigman like Shaq or Gasol. And his teams were never this stacked. So MJ had to carry much more of a load on the court and on paper for his team for his career. Kobe in the last couple years could really take a back burner. One example was last year’s finals against Boston. Kobe pretty much only averaged a measly 40% from the field for the series (jordan never averaged that low in any series in his career). Kobe did almost nothing in the 4th quarters of most games in the series, but they still won because he had a very stacked team with gasol, artest, fisher, bynum sometimes, odom and all. Jordan never had this luxury.

    And one last thing people forget is the NBA rules now are MUCH softer than the old NBA rules. Today’s NBA rules are tailor made to soften up the defense so perimeter players like kobe can score much more easily. And this already makes Kobe’s decline much less evident. Remember kobe was shut down completely in the finals against the pistons with the older style rules. And lastly, there’s just no competition out there in the West anymore. So the Lakers will have a pretty easy time each year until the finals.

  • KC

    I’m going to have to question how old some of you are that are saying kobe does anything better than mike. Did you guys see the guy play?? Kobe does nothing better than mike! Nothing!!!! He is a watered down copy. Lets please stop comparing him to Jordan just because shaq won him some rings early in his career.

  • ron

    if the Wizard years counted, MJ’s retirement wasn’t that graceful anyway.

  • k

    You Jordan n*t s**kers make it hard to have a decent conversation. Jordan was the man no one is debating that, but yall get so insecure whenever kobe comes up and always use revisionist history whenever analysing Jordans career. I’ll just comment on the three point shooting, kobe is a better shooter period. Don’t just look at the percentage, but also for a majority of Jordans career the 3 point line was moved in closer to the basket compared now to today’s 3 point line that kobe is playing with.

  • Gogs

    Great as Kobe is he doesn’t have the post game that Jordan had. After the first retirement most of Jordans points came in the post with that fade-away he had/has. Jordan didn’t have to expend half the energy Kobe does to get a good look at the basket.
    Once Jordan slowed down he refined his game and became a much more efficient player saving energy and picking his times to take on the defense.
    Kobe doesn’t do this to the same degree is less efficient with his offense. As he ages he’d better pick his spots a bit more and learn when to assert himself and when to back off.
    To all the people saying Jordan didn’t have the same support obviously never saw the Bulls play for the second three-peat, Jordan wasn’t alone on these teams the whole team contributed and played very very good defense, Jordan was the centre piece but he trusted his teammates to take the load aswell. remember the bulls had Scottie pippen Rodman Kucok a whole heap of foul fodder in the tall white men department and one of the best coaches in NBA history

  • http://www.slamonline.com c_cantrell

    some of you ppl are completely f*ckin stupid

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