“With LeBron, no team would have been as bad as the Lakers were at one point” – Stephen A. Smith defends why he won’t put Kobe ahead of LeBron in the GOAT debate originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Many former NBA players put Kobe Bryant ahead of LeBron James in the GOAT debate. Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury are just two of them. They argue that Bryant was the closest thing we saw to Michael Jordan, not just in pure basketball ability but also in killer instinct. On top of that, Kobe has one more championship ring than LeBron.
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ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith says he understands where the likes of Iverson and Marbury are coming from. However, if we look beyond rings and similarity with MJ, Smith argues that Bryant isn’t better than James.
“He’s a five-time champion, and you have a lot of people out there that put him ahead of LeBron because of that,” SAS explained. “I think Kobe was a killer. He’d give it to you. And not to say that he didn’t play defense because obviously, in his prime, he was an elite defender. The flip side to it, however, was that when you’re playing with Shaq and the rest of the crew and then ultimately Gasol and Bynum, and the rest of the crew, you had a crew. When you struggled, you really, really struggled.”
Kobe did not find success when he did not have a crew
Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, three with Shaquille O’Neal and another two with Pau Gasol. But while Kobe showed he could win without Shaq, and even outpaced him in title count, he was still miserable when left on his own.
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The Lakers won only 34 games and missed the playoffs in their first year without O’Neal, and were eliminated in the first round in the next two seasons. In his final three years in the league, the Lakers won a combined 65 games, including a franchise-worst 17 during Bryant’s swansong season.
“That was never LeBron. You look at him along with the four championships and what have you, and you say you can’t take that away from him because, as bad as the Lakers were as they descended in Kobe’s final few years there, would that have ever happened with LeBron? The answer is no. With LeBron James, no team would have been as bad as the Lakers were at one point,” Smith added.
Four out of the five worst Lakers seasons happened with Kobe
While both Kobe and LeBron missed the playoffs four times during their NBA careers, James never had a season where he won fewer than 33 games, with or without a supporting cast.
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Although the Cleveland Cavaliers missed the playoffs in LeBron’s first two years in the league, they won 35 in Year 1 and were 42-40 in Year 2. With Ilgauskas as his best teammate, a 21-year-old LeBron led Cleveland to a 50-win season in 2005-06. A year later, he took the same team to the NBA Finals.
The Lakers won only 37 games in James’ first season in L.A. and were 33-49 when they missed the postseason in 2021-22. However, four out of the five worst seasons in Lake Show history happened during the Kobe era, including that forgettable 17-win campaign in 2015-16.
Smith makes a solid point here, but he overlooks that Kobe’s final three seasons came after his Achilles injury. One could argue the Lakers prioritized celebrating Mamba’s 20th year in the league over competing, especially since he didn’t have much of a supporting cast at that stage. Meanwhile, LeBron’s team won 50 games in Year 22, but he had Luka Doncic as his co-star.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 17, 2025, where it first appeared.