The 2021 NBA Finals, while not featuring teams many basketball fans predicted prior to the season would try to take each other’s heads off, is surprisingly entertaining. The Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks have traded blows in the form of home wins. The series is now tied. Chris Paul is just as close to choking a 2-0 lead as he is to kissing the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Adding more intrigue to the series is the built-in Kobe Bryant duel between Suns shooting guard Devin Booker and Bucks forward Khris Middleton.

That could not have been more on display than in Game 4 when each player put on the skins of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and staged their own Thrilla in Manila at Fiserv Forum.  Plus, knowing both guys are self-proclaimed disciples of the one and only Black Mamba —  Kobe Bryant — Middleton and Booker definitely lived up to the former Los Angeles Lakers star’s legend — at least for one game.

After four games in the 2021 NBA Finals, it feels like it's a good time to check in on the level of Kobe-ness of both Middleton and Booker to get a feeling of who’s making Kobe Bryant smile more from wherever he is watching the series.

Deer basketball…

Khris Middleton hasn’t been shy from showing his admiration for Kobe Bryant.  When he detonated for 51 points in a win over the Washington Wizards just days after Bryant’s tragic death in a helicopter accident, Middleton immediately paid tribute to the legendary bucket-getter, whom he tried to pattern his game after growing up. 

Via Kharima Winston of The Sheperd:

“Kobe was one of my favorite players—if not my favorite player—growing up, besides (Michael) Jordan,” Middleton said. “I took a lot from his game. To go out there and play and put on that type of performance, I definitely can dedicate that game to him as a thank you for what he did for the game.”

Middleton started the 2021 NBA Finals hot, scoring 29 points on 12-of-26 shooting from the field with five threes. He cooled off in Game 2, where he coughed up just 11 points (5/16 FG, ⅙ 3FG). He’s picked it up again the last couple of games. He had 18 points in Game 3, which was not much to write home about, but that turned out to be an appetizer for what’s to come from him in Game 5 when he went mano y mano with Booker and poured in 40 points (15/33 FG, 3/8 3FG), while also committing just a turnover.  By doing so, he became part of an extremely exclusive Finals statistical club that not even Kobe Bryant is part of.

But here’s the part where Middleton really cosplayed Kobe Bryant : he scored 10 of the Bucks’ 12 points in the final three minutes of Game 4, even managing to outscore Booker and the rest of the Suns during that span by two points. Without Middleton’s clutch performance, the Bucks would have likely been down 3-1 in the series, putting them in a near-inescapable blackhole. Instead, the Bucks assured themselves of one more game in Milwaukee.

The Devin Wears Mamba

There’s no second-guessing Devin Booker’s fondness for Kobe Bryant. He has taken the mantra “Be legendary” — handed to him by the Black Mamba years ago — seriously, using that as an additional source of fuel in the playoffs. Back in the first round, Booker torched the Los Angeles Lakers for 47 points (15/22 FG) in the series-clinching win. Speaking to reporters following that masterful scoring performance, Booker talked about Kobe’s influence, per Yash Matange of Sports News:

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“Honestly, I was thinking about Kobe and the conversations that we had,” Booker said postgame sharing his thoughts when he put his hands together and looked upwards [at Bryant's retired jerseys at STAPLES] while walking off the floor into the tunnel.

“Kind of about what we just went through, the postseason and being legendary and taking the steps to get there.”

Through four games in the 2021 NBA Finals, Devin Booker has managed to average 27.5 points per game on 45.5 FG%. That was considerably boosted by his scoring barrage in Game 4 where he dropped 42 points on 17-of-28 shooting from the field. Unfortunately for Booker, he scored just four points in the fourth period because he had to sit out almost half of the quarter due to foul trouble, but you can’t be a basketball fan if you couldn’t bring yourself to admire the variety of contested shots he splashed throughout the course of the contest.

Here is Booker giving Pat Connaughton a touch of the Jalen Rose experience

When Booker is on, there’s only so much a mortal defender could do to slow him down. Outside of foul trouble, only an asteroid hitting Fiserv Forum could have stopped Booker from cooking Milwaukee’s defenders.If you’re not a fan of either team in the Finals, it doesn’t really matter who’s more Kobe Bryant between Middleton and Booker. The important thing is that they’re spicing up the series. What’s certain is that nothing’s more precarious for Kobe Bryant on the basketball court than winning, so let’s just have the outcome of the Finals decide who’s Kobeness is more intense.