Contended like the Boston Celtics or Rockets last year
Fake contender
Kobe wasn't ready to win as number one option until 07-08 when he started pacing himself, understanding the importance of versatility, and had more trust in his squad.
It's why he was losing 3-1 leads and having embarrassing performances against the Pistons despite having Prime Shaq.
Nah, a strong contending team around Kobe competes for titles. He was already an advanced player when he was young you're really selling him short given the tremendous amount of responsibilities he had during the Shaq years. He had the maturity to lead a championship squad since he was so singularly driven to be great.
Having more trust in your squad has everything to do with your squad playing up to par. Every time someone brings up the suns series it lets me know how fraudulent the "trust your teammates" argument is when it comes to Kobe. He had no choice but to trust his teammates in that situation and lost the 3-1 lead you just referrred to, mind you, that 3-1 lead was achieved with arguably the weakest team Kobe ever played on vs the #2 seed and at that point the back to back NBA MVP.
Once the team around him raised its level of play and got better this so called trust turned into success. It wasn't some magical eureka moment or something. You bring up the Pistons finals but that Lakers team was nowhere near as good as any of the 3peat teams. The bench was non-existent, the Kobe/Shaq/Phil/Buss schisms were reaching a boiling point, our starting PF was Slava Medvedenko going up against sheed. I'll be frank I still think they should've won but that's a lot to have stacked against you.
These bullshyt regurgitated espn talkin points don't speak to me breh. Kobe wasn't afforded the freedom LeBron got and still made the most of it. From what my eyes saw, Kobe was the better of the two imo.
