Kevin Pelton analyzes Kobe Bryant's all-time #NBARank. Become an Insider today to read the full story
With Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant announcing his retirement from basketball at the end of the 2015-16 season, attention now turns to Bryant's legacy.
Just five months remain in Kobe's career, so this seems like a good time to ask about where he ranks among the all-time greats. In particular, is he one of the 10 best to play the game?
A close reading of the facts suggests the answer is no. As remarkable as his career has been, Bryant's résumé can't quite compare to that of the league's inner-circle Hall of Famers.
Win shares: Kobe ranks No. 15
Win shares, found at Basketball Reference, are our most complete historic NBA metric. They give us a way to compare players across NBA eras.
Although full box-score stats did not become available until 1977-78, when the league started tracking player turnovers, Basketball Reference estimates turnovers and other stats that were not recorded at the time (including steals and blocks before 1973-74) to come up with approximations for player value throughout league history.
Bryant is currently 15th among NBA players in career win shares (172.5), with an outside chance of surpassing Reggie Miller (174.4) by the end of the season, if he improves his level of play. Because he has started so poorly, Bryant has actually lost 0.6 win shares from his career total so far this season.
Expected championships added: Kobe ranks No. 20
As Miller's high ranking suggests, the problem with using win shares as a historic measuring stick is they tend to reward longevity over quality of play. To better reflect the impact players had on their teams, I've developed a model that relates their win shares each season to a typical team's chances of winning a championship.
This model shows value is exponential rather than linear. For instance, a season with 15 win shares (such as Bryant's 2005-06 campaign) is nearly three times as valuable as one with 10 win shares (such as his 2010-11).
A preliminary version of this model shows Bryant 20th all time in expected championships added (ECA), just behind Larry Bird and ahead of the late Moses Malone.
Why Kobe doesn't rate as well by advanced stats
Bryant comes out slightly worse by this method because of his lack of truly elite statistical seasons. Bryant's best season in terms of win shares, 2005-06, ranks 102nd in NBA history behind, for example, Stephen Curry's 2014-15 campaign.
That's fairly consistent with what other advanced metrics indicate. Bryant's 2005-06 performance did rank 56th all-time in PER, but his best season by my wins above replacement player statistic (2002-03, with 20.4 WAR) ranks 72nd, dating back to 1977-78.
ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) is even harsher. Because of the need for detailed play-by-play data, RPM is available only since 2000-01, but in that span, Bryant's best rating (plus-6.3 points per 100 possessions in 2007-08) ranks 80th in that span.
These all-in-one metrics are universally picking up that by the standards of all-time great scorers, Bryant was relatively inefficient. Bryant's best season in terms of true shooting percentage (.580 in 2006-07) would rank seventh in Michael Jordan's career, seventh in LeBron James' and behind five of Kevin Durant's seven full seasons.
Since Bryant wasn't an exceptional rebounder or distributor and has never rated especially well statistically as a defender, he would need to be better than his peers as a scorer to provide more value than they did. That was only the case in Bryant's very best seasons.
The verdict
Naturally, the arguments in favor of Bryant's greatness are likely to revolve around the five championships the Lakers won during his career. While it's a bad idea to credit team success to one individual, it is true that Bryant's postseason performance is a point in his favor.
He ranks eighth in career playoff win shares. Factoring in playoff value surely lifts Bryant's all-time rank from 20th, but it's harder to make the case that he should jump all the way into the top 10.
It's not just advanced statistics that are down on Bryant's best seasons. He won only one MVP award, which puts him behind the 12 players (including former Lakers teammate Steve Nash) who won the league's highest honor multiple times.
Although there's a case to be made that Bryant should have won in 2005-06, when he set an NBA record for usage rate and carried a limited Lakers team to the playoffs, Bryant benefited from something of a "lifetime achievement" factor in 2007-08, when he beat Kevin Garnett and Chris Paul for the award.
In terms of the share of MVP votes accumulated over the course of his career, Bryant ranks 11th.
Considering all those factors, I'd ultimately rank Bryant somewhere around the 15th-best player in NBA history. You might move him a few spots in either direction, depending how you value playoff performance versus regular-season success, peak value versus longevity and the league's quality of play over time.
But when it comes to cracking the 10 best NBA players ever, Bryant didn't quite accomplish enough in a career that now has a finish line in sight.
That's one insane eternally scared man
