The Nerds Back Me Up, Lebron Is Four Times the Player Kobe Is

Ok, so this is my last Kobe post for a while. Last night there's no doubt Kobe played well, hitting some clutch shots in the 4th quarter to send the game to overtime before he fouled out and the Lakers lost in the second overtime. So Kobe was the key. And like I said, Kobe's good, just not as good as the hype. Well now I found the stats that back me up.

It all comes down to adjusted plus/minus. (Without bringing up the lame arguments my brother and I get into, I finally concede he was right on this one even though I'm still not clear how using 'fractals' proved his point. However, it was an informative 10 minutes tonight while he explained what they hell 'fractals' are while I looked at pictures of them online.) So the idea behind adjusted plus/minus is that it tries to isolate an individual's contribution to a team based on the point differential when that individual is on the floor. This seems like an obviously superior measure of a player's value than scoring, rebounds, blocks, etc. because it captures the intangibles (Yes Joe Morgan fanatics, in the team game of basketball, unlike the one-on-one match-ups in baseball, there are a whole host of intangibles like defense, tipped passes, altering shots, spreading the floor, etc. that aren't reflected in the stat sheet.) and helps quantify what instincts should tell us, that defensive specialists who own the championship bling like Bruce Bowen are more valuable then scoring machines who shoot a low percentage like Stephon Marbury.

Anyways, you can check out these stats yourself even though I know you readers (Mom) aren't going to since you don't care about the NBA, but thanks for driving me to all those practices and going to my games. You were always so supportive even though I was too short for the game. Also, if you got time, could you pick me up from the airport on Friday?

Lebron's the best in the NBA and four times the player Kobe is.

Lebron being entirely responsible for the Cavs success because every other player is average or below average.

Odom is more valuable to the Lakers' success than Kobe is.