How Kobe and LeBron would have worked together as teammates | Bleacher's report

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The Context

Although Bryant entered into the league seven seasons before James, they shared an overlap at the top of the world of basketball.

Bryant won both points in 2005-06 and 2006-07. James captured his first and only the following season. The Bryant MVP Award was presented in 2007-2008. The following year, James began his series of four MVPs in five seasons

The couple together somewhere between 2006 and 2008 is tempting, because both were full-fledged superstars at the time. ;time. Not to mention that each of them was a highlight waiting for their aerial exploits to turn hardwood into a Cirque du Soleil scene

. But balancing the two alphas at this time was perhaps an impossible task. James was in his early twenties and still established his NBA identity. Bryant feverishly pursued his post-Shaquille title O 'Neal and the legend of being the name of champion on a champion.

Spending a few years ahead, however, and 2010 seems to be the perfect time for

It's been the summer of The Decision, when James left Northeast Ohio to grow both as a person and as a player. Later, he described his trip away from home as "like a college for other kids". The exit also allowed him to take control of his career and get into a championship race.

Although he obviously chose the Miami Heat, he whispered that he had eyes on Los Angeles. Bryant, who had just won his second ring in a row and MVP finals, would surely have accepted help in approaching his 32nd birthday

Let's get James and Bryant on the 2010-11 Lakers, only with a major change: Phil Jackson can not be the coach. For beginners, Jackson's favorite triangle attack would fail to maximize James's talents. Plus, their relationship was messy even before you had one, so it's best to stay away even in the hypothetical domain.

James and Bryant would need a respected coach and adaptable enough to build a system around their skills. Someone like Tyronn Lue would suit. He was one year away from his playing career, but he had spent the previous season as Boston Celtics basketball development director.

Lue won an alliance with Bryant in 2001 t be broken, "according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN. When the Cleveland Cavaliers made Lue their head coach in January 2016, James said they were "friends since the age of 17," but he clearly said "he's still there." Coach, and I'm under him, "said Joe Vardon.

The story of Lue with both players gives him the best chance to hold them responsible and train them. With the head coach in place, our Lakers led by James and Bryant need an attack plan.

System

The system is a relative term for players of this ilk. Simpler strategies work better to allow superstars to take over

"You can drop me anywhere and I'll get you 25, 30 points, you know what I say? " Bryant told Sam Amick, of USA Today in 2012. "What the offenses really do, is that it must be something that helps the role players more than anything."

That said, there must be some sort of framework to put James and Bryant in the best possible position

., Lue would merge the systems that allowed these players to operate at their highest level

The basic model would be the five-out, no-position style, which Lue and Erik Spoelstra both used with James and Mike D. Antony Bryant.Find enough skilled fencers to demand defensive attention to the bow, and the track is cleared

Give James a clean floor in front of him, and he will use his eyes, his fake and his threats to let the defenses he is both a supernatural smuggler and a bulldozer of 6 "8" and 250 pounds, he has the same number of seasons with more than 2000 minutes and a percentage of attendance over 40 years as Isiah Thomas ( three ) and is the only other player that Wilt Chamberlain to score an average of at least 27 points and shoot more than 50% for his career .

Bryant, meanwhile, seeks to demoralize the defenders with his score. a smarter smuggler than some people think (4.7 badists per game), but he is the most at ease to reduce the game to one-on-one battles and tear off the souls of jesters. Kobe.

the two-pointers came out of the badists, even in his last season – when he missed 16 games and ha he is older (37) than the percentage of goals (35.8) – he ran the eighth largest number of isolations from the NBA

There would be an element "your turn, now my turn" of this attack, not very different from what James had with Dwyane Wade at the beginning of his tenure at South Beach. "He's a smuggler first, I'm a scorer, I'm a finisher," said Bryant when appearing in 2017 at the Court of Accounts with Geno Auriemma.

podcast (via Matthew Moreno of the Lakers Nation). "Bron is a facilitator by nature, and I am a finisher by nature. These two styles, I think complement each other extremely well."

Some triangle elements might come into play, as Bryant and James are both mortal around the high post. They also raged in the game against the weak side

However, the basic idea is to pbad the baton with low maintenance shooters and let the superstars go to work.

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