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goddfather40 made some excellent points. Personally, I am not a Kobe fan, and if this were a thread comparing his career to that of other great players in NBA history, I would be all for pointing out his shortcomings in that context. However, this is about his performance last night, which was an amazing feat.
His scoring craze brought his team back from a huge deficit, an appropriate time to go on a scoring binge.
For the naysayers, Morris Peterson is an average to above average perimeter defender. Mike James is a good perimeter defender. If Jalen Rose was guarding Kobe all game, then that argument about playing the Raptors and poor defense might hold a little more water. Kobe got to the line 20 times, and I am sure many of those attempts were a result of going to the basket and being fouled by help defenders. It is not as if the Raptors were playing matador defense. In addition, he hit 7 of 12 shots from downtown. Kobe has a share of the record for most 3 pointers made in a single game (12). When he gets hot from downtown, the type of defense being played on him is a null point.
Yes, he had only 2assists, but that’s better than the 0 assists he posted in his 62 point outing earlier in the year, a game where his team was ahead the entire time and not distributing the ball despite a huge lead could be considered selfish. Again, because his team was down last night and he shot so well from the floor to bring them back, not having that many assists really doesn't matter.
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