Stephon Marbury was a guest on Mark Jackson's 'Come And Talk 2 Me' podcast. When asked about who he thinks is the GOAT, Marbury named Michael Jordan. After that, he went off on a tangent about the discourse surrounding the matter, and why he thinks LeBron James isn't ahead of Jordan or Kobe Bryant in the GOAT debate, pointing out Kobe and Jordan's early years and their lack of physical gifts compared to James.
"[Michael] Jordan... This question is great for every podcast. It should be a standard question... I love other people's answers, when they say different players. If they say someone other than Jordan, and LeBron. I never put LeBron with Jordan. I used to always say it's between Kobe and Jordan."
"The mirror of that is so unbelievable, the human being can literally use the basketball and make the same moves and have the same mannerisms. For somebody to do that is unbelievable. I pick Jordan first but I think I pick Kobe second because he's a copy. It wasn't original, but he had originality in his game. Don't get it twisted."
"When I look at Kobe, I'm like 'How is LeBron better than Jordan when he is not better than Kobe?'. I'm just trying to figure that out. They get mad at me, and say I don't like LeBron because he said something about my shoes. This is basketball. I go by your brain when watching basketball."
"When you watch Kobe play and you watch LeBron play, it's two different styles. LeBron is a 6'8" pure juggernaut, 280. Different... Let's think about how articulate Kobe is, because he speaks another language, he sees the world differently. The wisdom that's inside of him from living abroad along with playing soccer - his footwork is completely different..."
"It's an art to shoot those crazy a** shots that he made... When you break this dude's game down and look at it, he has the same type of ideology as Jordan has... No disrespect to LeBron because he supersedes that, he did it all the way from high school. I'm saying he supersedes all of what these guys have done because of that. As a basketball player, it's not the same."
This is far from the first time Marbury has made this point about LeBron James. He said a very similar thing during an interview earlier this summer.
Marbury claimed in this interview that he has nothing against LeBron James, but that isn't entirely true if we look at how he speaks about him, saying earlier this year that James doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Michael Jordan.
Marbury's False Argument For Kobe Over LeBron
It was hard to understand much of what Marbury was saying, as he kept going off on different tangents at points. Furthermore, he used several strawman arguments to make his point, many of which are just not correct.
For example, he claims that LeBron James has a higher field goal percentage than Kobe Bryant because he gets to the rim way more often. James has a career 50.6% field goal percentage, whereas Bryant has a career 44.7% field goal percentage.
But the reason for this isn't just as simple as James getting to the rim for dunks and layups more often. It also has to do with shots attempted and shot quality. Bryant, for as great as he was, for notorious for chucking up shots that made no sense for him to shoot. And while he made a good number of them, he did have his fair share of misses.
Bryant averaged 19.5 field goal attempts per game in his career. Meanwhile, LeBron James averages 19.6 field goal attempts per game. The difference between their shot attempt averages is almost none.
Yet James just has a significantly better field goal percentage. Perhaps this just comes down to Bryant making some poor shot selections in his career, while James made the best play possible for his team.
At the end of the day, it comes down to James just adapting his game much better to the modern NBA. James' shooting, both inside and outside the circle has improved leaps and bounds over the years. And that was crucial to his sustained success, as the NBA began prioritizing shooting far more than interior play during the 2010s.
As for Bryant, he spent the final few years of his career as a high-volume scorer on a bad team. That is by no means a criticism of him, but it does go to show just how many opportunities a game he had to shoot the ball, and how despite his strong numbers, his inefficiency led to the Lakers being underwhelming in the 2010s after their championship win.
Marbury can of course have a preference for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant over LeBron James. But his arguments in favor of Kobe Bryant do not hold up to any kind of scrutiny.
