Why would we claim 4 when Shaq wouldn’t have made it through the West without Kobe? Btw, when is Shaq gon start claiming one ring since he either shared the spotlight or was an outright sidekick for his other rings?
It doesn't make sense to give Kobe 5 titles in the "ring-counting" but not give Scottie any at all.
That’s ridiculous, it was much more clear that Jordan and Pippen were one and two whereas those lines were blurred between Kobe and Shaq during the second title run.
Moreover, we have a decent sample size of Pippen without MJ and he had none of the success Kobe had without Shaq. Not even the same level player that Kobe was gtfoh.
Obviously rings aren't won by 2-man teams so I can't say that those teams would have "worked" or "not worked" without knowing what the full team and coach would be and how they would have gelled together. But as Kobe's biggest vice is volume shooting, it wouldn't be at all ideal for him to have been matched up with another scorer fighting over those shots, without someone like Shaq to rebound the hell out of the ball, put the other team in foul trouble, and man the middle on defense.
Bad argument breh. Kobe willingly sacrificed his game and the volume scoring for the sake of the team and winning titles which is also grossly overlooked by the likes of you. Kobe was more than capable of adjusting his game to play alongside other great players without missing a beat himself. KD and Steph like to shoot, no problem there right?
Btw it’s pretty hilarious you brought Shaq up in this seeing as how he’d refuse to rebound or play defense if he didn’t get his touches and score his points. Yet somehow Kobe was able to make it work with a volume scorer like that. Imagine that...:hugohmm:
None of those guys you named (other than Duncan) would have had a chance of winning with Kobe in 2000 if the rest of the team was the same.
They probably would have all lost in 2002 as well.
2001 I think there's a good chance that Duncan's Spurs beat them.
You can only argue 2000, outside of that you have no argument breh. Kobe doesn’t drop off without Shaq and Vice versa. You act as if Phil wouldn’t have reconfigured to Triangle to go through Kobe and create more of a Kobe/Pau dynamic with bigs like KG/Dirk or more of a MJ dynamic with Pierce and T-Mac. Also, they aren’t on the clock to win right there in 2000 because Shaq was the one with the pressure to win it all not Kobe. Kobe could’ve grown together with those players and won a slew of titles.
Pau outplayed the best player on the other team in BOTH of the title years. Context matters - there was no dominant team in that era, if your SIDEKICK is outplaying the best player on the other team then you are in a very, very nice situation.
Cause Kobe shot them out of games.
Another terrible take breh. What does Pau beating his matchup have to do with anything. Pau never sniffs any of that without Kobe. We can save the myth of Kobe’s Game 7 for another thread but that’s also a bullshyt talkin point.
Kobe did shoot us out of some games, he also shot us into a lot of wins too.
I'm only partly joking. The only year that Shaq had more than 1 other all-star in the starting lineup was 1997. That year they faced the Jazz in the WCSF and Nick van Exel shot 42%, Eddie Jones shot 38% and Kobe shot 31% with the above shown airball game among them.
Hard to brag about having "hella allstars" when those three all-stars are combining to shoot 35% from the field.
Bad game on their part, but perhaps as the aforementioned top dog it wasn’t enough for LA and they needed another top dog that could help Shaq out with that. Once those air balls turned into makes Shaq won. Funny how he needed more to win than Kobe did without him but the narrative is so insanely skewed.
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These bums lost 4 straight even though they were an incredible team 
Name 10 players better than Kobe. Realistically
