Was a bullet dodged missing out on kawhi? 3rd straight game missed with a knee issue , on top of being load managed every back-back, not even a month into the season
I believe the possibility. So who would the Lakers not have if they signed Kawhi? Definitely no Danny Green and KCP...who else was too expensive? I can see them struggling way more than the Clips on the non-Kawhi days with how thin that roster would have been.
The issue was always that LeBron was anointed the moment he was drafted and ESPN (along with most NBA media) spent the last 16+ years fawning over him while being critical of any shortcoming Kobe had and never fully giving him any credit for his accomplishments. He finished 4th in 2006 MVP voting for godsakes.
It was a resentment that our guy didn't get the respect he deserved while the other guy got nothing but praise.
That has no relation to reality. LeBron got criticism from the very beginning - there were media who said that he was overhyped when he was drafted, who said that Carmelo was a better player their rookie year. When he went to the 2004 Olympics and didn't get playing time for shyt because Larry Brown never plays young guys there were giant book-length "exposes" by mainstream media like Woj talking about what a terrible selfish young man he was and basically blaming him for Team USA's underperformance when he never even got a chance. He was criticized for getting swept in San Antonio when he was just 22yo and fukking Boobie Gibson was his #2 option. When he lost to Orlando in 2009 there was criticism, even though he averaged 40-8-8 and hit a game-winner people said it was his fault there was no Kobe-LeBron matchup and began claiming that he was just a regular season player who put up stats but couldn't win games in the playoffs. When he lost to Boston in 2010 there was massive media firestorm, crazy conspiracy theories, people ridiculously claimed he was a "quitter", etc.
And that's even before The Decision and then Dallas, the combination of which was easily the most media hate any basketball player has ever received in a single year. Kobe's rape year wasn't close - he got scrutiny but the total media volume wasn't CLOSE to as much as it was for The Decision year, and when he utterly failed in Detroit the main media narrative was that "the Lakers" had failed and the whole team got shyt on, while when LeBron failed in Dallas practically the entire weight of it got put on him alone.
And don't even talk about 2006 MVP, volume shooters on 7-seeds weren't getting MVP votes like that.
You're right that Bron got a lot more hype coming out of high school. But LeBron was
legitimately that good coming out of high school. He stepped onto an NBA court as an 18yo in his first game out of high school and was immediately the best player on the court. No one had ever done that before, that was insane. I can get how there was resentment because of how much hype he was getting, but in retrospect how can you not say that he was deserving every bit of that hype? It took 3-4 years for Kobe to become the guy that LeBron was straight out of the gate, you gotta give him credit for that.
You want a real comparison, how about the fact that LeBron going 20-5-5 and looking like the best player on the court most nights his rookie season still couldn't even make the All-Star game while Kobe averaging 15-3-2 on 42% shooting and not even cracking his own team's starting lineup was an All-Star game STARTER.
