The player Kobe Bryant has chased, emulated, and wanted to be since the day he entered the NBA was Michael Jordan. There’s many similarities to their game and many side by side comparisons show this. Two statistics in particular has been chased by Kobe relentlessly over the last few years. First are Jordan’s six rings, Kobe has five championships right now and since 2010 has been trying to at least equalize himself to Jordan’s total. However, the Lakers don’t appear to be in shape for any kind of title run soon which means that goal of Kobe’s will probably not be reached.
But there is one goal Kobe is able to reach and that’s the scoring list. Bryant is one of the greatest scorers to ever play the game. There’s not a spot on the floor he’s afraid to shoot and defenders have forever deemed Kobe the most difficult player to guard because of his knack for making impossible shots, but he never scored as much as Jordan.
Until tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irHKEVg96kI&feature=youtu.be
After years of work, fadeaways, post ups, and legacy arguments, Kobe has passed Jordan. After two severe injuries that threatened his entire career, Kobe has passed Jordan. Now, Kobe begins a new quest. Passing Jordan has only put Bryant third on the all time scoring list. Ahead of him are Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, sitting one and two respectively. Malone sits a good 4000+ points ahead of Kobe with no gurantee that Bryant has the ability to play long enough to catch him. But one thing is for sure, Kobe is going to keep scoring as long as he’s in the NBA.