Jayson Tatum Defends His Favorite Player Ever

The new generation of NBA players idolizes Kobe Bryant. While the guys who actually got to play against Kobe are being aged out of the league, the kids who grew up with him as their favorite player are taking over. American stars like Devin Booker and Jayson Tatum have been vocal about their love of Kobe. You can also see his style in their games. 

Recently, Jayson Tatum spoke about his hero, Kobe, explaining why he thinks the Lakers star is losing some of the respect he deserves.  

“I think it’s cowardly, to be honest. They didn’t speak about him like this when he was here… now that Kobe isn’t here, we want to bring up the times he wasn’t as efficient, or he shot long 2s, and now we want to try and shoot more 3s. If you ask anybody who played against him, they’ll all say he was the best in the league. Most terrifying person to guard, and he was the top-3 most influential players of all time, like everybody loved and respected, even from different sports, admired who he was. Now that he’s not here, you want to try and erase history?”

Kobe certainly does seem to be falling down the ranks of “greatest NBA players ever,” but is that because he isn’t around to defend himself? It’s probably more because we are just learning more about efficiency and advanced statistics.

The eye test is certainly important. The fact that Kobe’s peers feared him also matters. However, numbers don’t lie. Through advanced statistics, we can know things now that we didn’t understand while Kobe was playing. If he were alive, the numbers would be the same and would tell the same story.