Who would you rather have on your NBA team: LeBron James or Kobe Bryant?

LeBron

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by RNorrisFaulkner

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If it's management or as a teammate, the easy answer is LeBron. If you look at just basketball players, it's a close call. But I think you have to look at this debate from an organizational and social point of view. Those issues have to be included.

Kobe and LeBron are the two best players in the NBA and it's a huge gap between them and the rest of the league. They are that 'bad'. Both are match-up nightmares for anyone in the league. Two truly unique, talented, acrobatic and gifted showmen, but different types of basketball players.

Kobe is a special player with an extraordinary skill set. He just toys with other great players. In most circles he is considered the best and is at his peak as a basketball player. He is simply magnificent offensively, a show-stopper that can be a one-man-gang on any given night; he is unstoppable, especially when the game is on the line. Kobe is also a superior defender, one of the very best in the league. But, he does not elevate his team if they are ordinary in talent.

LeBron is also a special talent with an endless ceiling. He too has the 'wow factor' and is a handful offensively. He has an ever improving perimeter game which makes him almost as unstoppable as Kobe. He is also becoming a game closer in the Kobe mode. The way he's starting to finish off games looks pretty darn easy; he's right there...behind Kobe. LeBron is also a good defender, just not nearly as good as Kobe, he has improved, but has a lot of improving to do. No player has come directly from high school and made a bigger splash in the league than LeBron. Not Kobe. Not Kevin Garnet. Not Dwight Howard. These are not scrubs, these are three of the very best players in the league and are as good as any at their positions. LeBron James is that special. What he has done so soon after high school is the stuff that legends are made of. And he has a lot less talent players to play with. But he led one of the least talented teams in recent memory to the finals. And he makes those ordinary teammates weapons, because of great court vision and unselfishness. He makes basketball fun and easier for the 'little guys'.

In my opinion, if you switched Kobe from the Lakers to the Cavaliers the success would turn to failure. The Cavaliers would be a lottery team, Kobe wouldn't trust this group of Cavaliers to throw the ball inbounds. Kobe doesn't trust the 'little guys'. He doesn't trust Lamar Odoms all that much and he is a very talented player. If LeBron moved from the Cavaliers to the Lakers the successes would be greater. The Lakers would be better. If LeBron trust teammates that probably should be playing overseas, imagine him playing with a more talented team and a championship coach.

Lebron understands that teams win together and teams lose together. LeBron teammates probably feels like "He's one of us, we belong." Kobe teammate probably feels like he's a "do-it-yourselfer, he doesn't think much of us"...if the cast of characters are not up to his standard.

Trust is what makes a winning basketball team and elevate a team to a championship contender. Trust is the central dynamic of strong leadership, honoring contracts, respecting the decisions of ownership and the deals that the front office make or don't make. Trust is huge in professional sports from the top of the organization to bottom. But Kobe trusts nobody but Kobe, when things aren't going good. When there is no trust, there is no winning together and no losing together. What you have is a divided team. Divided teams don't go very far.

And people want to defend Kobe's outburst and trade demands because "Kobe just wants to win." So does LeBron. So did Kevin Garnet. So did Dr. J. Every great player wants to win. The face of any franchise wants a certain commitment from ownership/management . Sometimes there are differences of opinions between management and star player how to go about building a successful team. But it's never the players call. A player doesn't pull strings for management. Management decides whom to draft, whom to trade for or trade away. Running a franchise is a tough business. Somebody tell Kobe.

There is a way to handle your business: respectfully and privately, they call it being professional. Kobe has been in the league for more than a decade and he just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that demands, promises and guarantees are made before you re-up. But after a professional contract is signed, it is to be honored until it expires, is terminated, or violated by the other party. A man word is his bond. Where did all of the honorable men go?

Another argument against LeBron: no jewelry. Kobe has them (3 rings), but with Shaq O'Neal as a teammate, who happen to be at that time the most dominant, imposing and difficult player to defend maybe in NBA history. On top of that he had/has a championship coach that has coach 9 of 10 teams that made the finals to the championship. So many people fail to realize, to win a 'team championship' you have to have the horses, great chemistry and a coach or manager that knows how to win big games. LeBron has never had another all-star, let alone another great player to run with him. He has never even had what is considered an elite coach let alone a hall-of-famer.

There are other issues that must be considered: Kobe is reportedly a loner; he dogs teammates, disregarding that 'they are men first', his attitude has to be a cancer in the locker room; his public venting and challenging management has put them between a rock and a hard place more than a time or two; lets not forget the public scandal (he said, she said sexapade/rape drama)...a black-eye to the organization and for the NBA. He has brought scandal to himself and shame to his family name. But this is Kobe Bryant. It does a lot of things tacky.

With Kobe, an organization has to cross their fingers that he doesn't go-off the next time things don't go his way. The 'little guys' (teammates) in the locker room will always be on edge. With LeBron you have a great player that also wants to win, but his approach to business and the game are far more honorable and professional. And not only that, LeBron is six years younger, a leader and more mature than Kobe is right now...on and off the court.

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