Kobe Bryant, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, has been fairly prolific since retiring after the 2015-16 season. Bryant’s post-NBA career has mirrored his playing days when he was one of the most fearsome competitors and renowned bucket-getters in the NBA from the moment he entered the league.
Despite his reputation as one of the greatest scorers in NBA history whose brilliant basketball mind has led to the “mamba mentality” that has influenced scores of younger players as well as his ESPN+ venture “Detail,” which focuses on various players in the NBA currently, and how they are able to play so effectively.
One area in which Bryant does not approve is the NBA’s focus on analytics, which he decried in an interview on ESPN during Tennis’s U.S. Open with John McEnroe.
“I hate it [analytics],” Kobe said on the show. “It’s ridiculous. What numbers don’t tell you is they don’t tell you the emotion. I don’t like analytics. You see the numbers, but the numbers don’t tell you how or why they are the way they are. You have to be able to feel that, to sense that. Tendencies.”
Certainly, Kobe’s analytical profile through his career is not the most glowing in NBA history. For one thing, his career true shooting percentage was 55 percent, which is only league average these days. His highest number in that category was 57.6 percent per Basketball Reference in his MVP season of 2007-08.
Of course, quoting analytics in a story about Kobe disliking analytics might be a little tone-deaf, but despite Bryant’s protestations… the numbers don’t lie!
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