He would only be considered overrated to haters, because they make statements such as ‘LeBum is a whiner crybaby flopper so he’s not top 20 all time’ which shows how little they know about basketball. Notice they always call Bron childish names and don’t understand that flopping helps wins games.
The most overrated NBA superstar is Kobe Bryant. The reason why he is so overrated comes from his overzealous fans, who try desperately to put him in the GOAT convo where he doesn’t belong at all. Kobe fans do not use objective metrics for Kobe, they use subjective metrics which cannot be measured.
Reasons why Kobe fans put him as GOAT
He’s the closest to MJ in skill (but that doesn’t mean he’s close to MJ by any objective criteria.. the gap between them is 4 MVPs, 4 FMVPs, 1 ring, 8 scoring titles, DPOY, 5% diff in FG%, 5 PPG in reg season, 8 PPG in playoffs etc!)
He has “Mamba mentality”, “killer instinct” (these are marketing buzzwords not backed up by anything)
He has a legendary work ethic (work ethic cannot be measured objectively)
He scored 81 pts in the hardest defensive era ever (He shot 46 times to score the 81; the list of players to ever shoot that much in a single game is short, it was a regular season game against a bad team and it’s NOT the hardest defensive era ever by any metric)
Other NBA players call him the GOAT (but this is a minority of players; latest NBA players polls say 8% of NBA players think Kobe is GOAT, plus they rely on outdated and out of context quotes)
He beat the most 50+ win teams without a top 75 player (they won’t tell you that Kobe’s Lakers had 57 and 65 wins and were never the underdogs in any series, and top 75 is a list made up of all players in NBA history doesn’t mean Gasol wasn’t a HoF level player)
And that’s really it. They can’t really make any other case for Kobe cause he doesn’t have much of a case.
Reasons why Kobe shouldn’t be in GOAT convo
He has 1 MVP in 20 years
He wasn’t the best player for 60% of his rings
He has not one, not two, but THREE subpar Finals performances (2000, 2004, 2008) out of 7 whereas Jordan (1996) has 1/6 and Bron (2007, 2011) has 2/10.
His FG% goes down in the Finals to 41% which is terrible
He averaged 30+ PPG in only 1 Finals out of 7
He blew a 3–1 lead in the playoffs; something Bron and Jordan have never done
He averages 22 PPG in elimination games – this is below a long list of other superstars (Lebron and Jordan are #1 and #2 in this category respectively)
He is not even top 10 in 35+ point games in the Finals
He is #19 all time in playoffs PPG. Jordan is #1 all time and Bron is #6 all time.
He is 7/28 in clutch situations in the playoffs
He has always needed an all star big man + Phil Jackson to win. Bron and Jordan have won without all star big men.
He was considered an overrated defender not only by his peers but by his own coach Phil Jackson in his book The Last Season
He is #64 all time in WS/48. Jordan is #2 all time and Bron is #9 all time.
He is #29 all time in PER. Jordan is #2 all time and Bron is #3 all time.
His last 3 seasons he was the worst player on the team and the Lakers had the worst records in franchise history. The Lakers won a total of 17 games in his last season.
Psst… Kobe shouldn’t belong with those other two ^
So you see why people should stop putting Kobe in the same sentence as Jordan?? And why saying Kobe > Bron is literally the equivalent of saying that stats don’t matter? How is a player like this in the GOAT convo at all?
Kobe fans would have you believe he was the 2nd greatest all time after Jordan, because he’s ‘the closest to Jordan’.
You often see Kobe put into the GOAT convo by a lot of casual fans online.
The reality is that he is a fringe top 10 player. His fanboys will hype up every moment he has, especially all those regular season scoring games. Yeah his 5 rings and his 81 point game look cool to casual fans, but once you dig into his career more you would know how much of Kobe is just purely manufactured hype and myth. Here are the facts:
Kobe has 1 MVP in 20 seasons. What’s more, for everyone who thinks he was ‘robbed’ of MVPs, he only came in 2nd place for MVP one time in 2009. He was outside of the top 2 for MVP voting for 18 out of his 20 seasons.
Kobe was not ‘equal’ to Shaq. From 2000–2002, There were only 3 playoff series where Kobe outscored Shaq – 2001 vs Spurs, 2001 vs Kings and 2002 vs Spurs. That’s it. And Shaq of course more than double Kobe’s RPG in every series. Kobe fans who say they are ‘equal’ are basing this on a very few playoff games which is just cherry picking the exceptions. Shaq was a more valuable player than Kobe was and that’s why he was being double teamed and triple teamed not Kobe. I don’t care if he couldn’t hit free throws and Kobe had some nice moments here and there just because Kobe was a better closer doesn’t mean they are equal. Kobe fans just literally cherry pick everything for example he had one good game in 2000 Finals (Game 4) and Kobe fans bring it up constantly and completely ignore the fact that he sucked in every other game that Finals (both before and after Jalen Rose injured him).
Kobe has alot of these gaudy regular season scoring stats where he has these 50/60 pt game streaks. But he cannot duplicate this in the postseason when the teams get better and the defenses get tighter. His playoff high of 50 points is 31pts lower than his regular season high. His best playoff scoring average is 32 PPG – that’s still lower than Jordan’s career playoff scoring average.
Kobe’s not in the top 10 when it comes to # of Finals games scoring 35+ points
Kobe has only averaged 30+ PPG in 1 Finals out of 7.
Kobe’s not in the top 5 of most 40+ pt playoff games.
Neither is Kobe top 15 in playoff scoring average. He is #19 in playoff scoring average.
^ remember these facts when Kobe fans keep saying he’s the greatest scorer or most skilled scorer ,etc
Kobe was also not as great a defender as his 12x All-Def would lead you to believe. In fact, he’s been outplayed or outscored by many players in the playoffs. Just in the Finals alone, Jalen Rose, Rip Hamilton, Iverson, Paul Pierce, Chauncey Billups have all outscored or outplayed him. Gilbert Arenas, Jeremy Lin, Allan Houston and Stephon Marbury all had their career high in points vs Kobe. Kobe often has ‘duels’ with opposing players. Everyone knows he had that famous duel with Melo in the 2009 WCF. Well did you know he had a duel with Ty Lawson in the 2012 Nuggets series? All these duels point to the fact that he wasn’t as great a defender as people think. Once Shaq left the team in 2005, the Lakers dropped to bottom of the league in defensive rating.
Kobe’s also not as clutch as people think; he averages 22 PPG in elimination games and is 8–11 in those games. He has 1 playoff buzzer beater. He’s 7/28 in last 24s of go ahead or game tying playoff shots. He averages 41% shooting in the Finals. The bigger the stage, the worse Kobe shoots. He’s also blown a 3–1 lead in the playoffs before, something Jordan or Lebron has never done.
Kobe’s also had a lot more help than people realize; He’s needed an all-star big man (either Shaq or Gasol) in all of his championship runs. Lamar Odom is one of the best players who was never an all star. Kobe fans keep bringing up Smush and Kwame but Odom was averaging 19/11/5 a game in the playoffs vs the Suns they always conveniently omit that. And if people want to include a ‘full’ list of all-stars like they do for Lebron then for Kobe the list is just as large: He’s played with Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Glen Rice, Horace Grant, Dennis Rodman, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, Metta World Peace etc think about this the next time people say he beat all those 50+ win teams by himself. None of those teams reached 55 wins and the top 75 thing is just a list the NBA made so it doesn’t really mean that Gasol wasn’t a top 75 talent. He’s also never won any series as an underdog. He beat all those 50+ win teams with an even better 65 win Lakers team.
Kobe fans usually use quotes from NBA players. Kobe is usually listed in third place after Jordan and Lebron. So by this definition yes Kobe is a top 3 player. But this based on what NBA players think, and those players often grew up idolizing Jordan, Bron or Kobe. That’s why these players always get mentioned. Because of this bias towards popular players that they idolized, that’s why we cannot use NBA players quotes as some kind of objective metric.
For people who say ‘Kobe always found a way to win’ why did he miss the playoffs in the middle of his prime? Why couldn’t he get past the first round until he got Gasol? Why did the Lakers have a franchise worst 17 wins in his last season? I thought he always found a way to win?
So now Kobe is not a top 3 player. You can say he’s super skilled or hard working or whatever, but his career just isn’t top 3 all time. He’s a fringe top 10 player that’s been overhyped by the media and his fanboys along with other NBA players that grew up idolizing him.
I’m not a hater, these are just the facts. If I was a hater, I’d bring up the rape trial and his off court stuff along with the all time missed shots stuff, but I won’t because those are unrelated to his actual career or related to longevity, which unlike Bron haters I won’t weaponize against him (they use his all time turnovers against him). Kobe is an all time great, no doubt. But he’s for sure overhyped and overrated and made out to be much more than he actually was.
I seriously don’t think he is a hall of famer without Bron.
Here’s Chris Bosh’s entire career without Lebron James: 2 first round exits. That’s it.
His career before Miami: 5x All-Star, 1x All-NBA, 20/9/2. Is that hall of fame? I don’t think so. Amar’e Stoudemire has a better career (6x All-Star, 5x All-NBA, 19/9/2) and isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
So it’s clear that Bosh’s HoF credentials lie in the 2 rings he won with Miami. So how did he do in Miami? Well.. although he had more All-Star selections in Miami (6x All-Star) his production rarely justified that. He averaged 18/7/2 in Miami and 15/7/1 for them in the playoffs. Those are not really all-star numbers.
You don’t see any great Bosh Miami games because there weren’t any. Against old KG, old Duncan, even Joakim Noah in the playoffs, Bosh would consistently disappear against them and be outplayed, out hustled etc.
What Bosh did for the Heat in those playoffs aren’t any better than what a typical role player big would do in most playoff teams. Heck, we’ve seen Bam Adebayo do better for the Heat than Bosh did.
But all these Bron haters online would make you believe Bosh was this all time superstar that was part of Bron’s ‘super stacked’ teams, if you really dig into it, you would know how overrated Bosh was.
He basically rode the ‘Clapton is God’ fame for a while, and his best work was his early years with the YardBirds, John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominoes (notice that he never stayed too long in any one group?). After that he ventured more into pop and blues-pop.
But even then he’s never really been that great creatively and technically. What’s the most technical and creative Clapton song? His limit is basically Wheels of Fire with Cream and his Robert Johnson covers.
He’s certainly no Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix completely embarrassed him in front of Cream when he sat in on a song. Clapton was shell shocked for a while after that.
As a guitarist, his blues and fusion contemporaries Rory Gallagher, Alvin Lee, Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Duane Allman, Michael Bloomfield, Gary Moore and Peter Green all outclassed him both technically and creatively.
Later on in his career we can see him barely keeping up with Robert Cray, being clearly outplayed by SRV, and even John Mayer showed him up in his Crossroads Festivals.
Yes he’s very very influential, but as a guitarist he’s always been a bit overrated, he’s the mainstream’s idea of a good blues guitarist but he’s never been able to really keep up with other guys in either a creative sense or technical sense. It says a lot that many of his most well known songs – ‘Cocaine’, ‘Who shot the sheriff’ and ‘Crossroads’ are all covers.
Edit: People seem to be not really reading what I wrote. I mentioned that Clapton is indeed a very influential and successful guitarist. I’m saying he’s overrated based on his creative and technical skills. NOT on his success and influence. He’s called a top 3 guitarist of all time. That I’m not so sure is warranted in terms of his actual guitar ability. Not saying anything against his influence.
For example, Let me know when Clapton has ever played something like these:
It’s not. Japanese culture is underrated if anything. IMO Korea is the country with the overrated culture.
Why is Korea overrated?
And keep in mind – I’m saying this while being someone who loves Korea, learned Korean, moved to Korea to live there for a few years, and have more Korean friends than American/Canadian friends. Korea culture was previously underrated – but now it’s overrated due to all the Kpop/Kdrama stuff going on. Their culture is fairly derivative and copied from either China/HK, Japan, or US and wrapped it in a pleasing aesthetic to sell to the worldwide audience. Effectively Korea is one of the best at marketing their cultures to the world – but Korean culture at it’s core isn’t as deep or original as they make it seem.
Their music is derived from Japanese idol culture and USA 90s pop culture. Their movies are derived from 1980s HK films and 1990s Japanese films. Their food are just a subset of Chinese foods, modified to suit their tastes (i.e made more spicier or adding a grill). And their fashion is overall very clean looking and elegant but not diverse and overly too dependent on trends. Koreans have a culture of conformity which prevents them from showing their uniqueness or from having true passions. When you look around in Korea, everyone is always doing the same things either studying or working menial jobs, and very few Koreans seem to want to break out of that box they’ve been taught to live in their whole lives. (Don’t hate me Koreans, I still <3 your country, but this had to be said).
Now, why is Japan underrated?
There are elements of Japanese culture that have become overrated like ramen of example. Everytime there’s a new ramen shop opening up in the West, people go nuts over it. It’s just ramen, guys. It’s not some super special food. But for the most part there’s a lot of Japanese cultural elements I feel go unnoticed or under appreciated by people.
For example, Anime. Yes, everyone knows the big hits. Dragonball, Gundam, Sailor Moon, Naruto, One Piece, Studio Ghibli etc but there’s also alot of really cool Anime that most people don’t really know.
For example, Millenium Actress by Satoshi Kon (and his other films too) is one of the greatest most deep animes I’ve ever seen, and it’s hardly known outside of anime enthusiasts. Most Japanese anime contain far more mature themes and graphical sex or violence compared to most American cartoons, which are mostly geared towards kids and contain very simple messages in comparison.
Classic Japanese cinema from the 1950s by masters Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi etc rivaled even the best American cinema films of the era and had a massive influence on American films later on. For example, did you know that most Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s were directly influenced by Kurosawa’s samurai works? The Magnificent Seven (1960) for example was directly inspired by Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954).
And it’s not just the golden age Japanese films. Even current day Japanese films are rather overlooked.
Hirokazu Koreeda for example is an incredible modern Japanese director and I’ve been impressed by all his films and the storytelling and the depth and emotional connections he creates. Everyone knows Parasite by Korean director Bong Joon-ho, but Koreeda’s films make it look Parasite look like a shallow pretentious work by comparison. I encourage everyone to check out Koreeda’s films.
Of course then there’s Japanese food, which Japanese have been downplaying for a long time.
Wagyu is no longer a secret – but for the longest time, Westerners never knew about how good Japanese beef was. It was Japan’s secret for a long time. And trust me, I love my Hanwoo beef and I think it’s underrated and amazing, but there’s a reason why A5 Wagyu is so famous now. In the 1970s, foreigners starting finding out about it, and by the 21st century, everyone knew about it.
Or a remote Japanese ramen shop that has been run for generations with their own twist on their recipe?
Alot of Japanese foods are unique and have special characteristics and properties, but they are rarely known outside of Japan (unless it spreads by word of mouth which is what happened to wagyu)
Lastly, I want to talk about Japanese craftsmanship mentality
No matter what they do or make, whether it be making a pair of jeans, or forging a katana or nurturing a bonsai tree, or a serving up a bowl of ramen, Japanese people are some of the most dedicated craftsman I’ve ever seen. They dedicated their whole lives to making something as good as they possibly can. And profit and money comes secondary to them. That’s what I admire about Japanese. It’s ingrained into their culture. Western companies always put business, money and profit margins first ahead of anything else. Marketing makes up a huge chunk of their budget, and if they have a long history like with a lot of European countries – you bet they are going to hype up their history.
With Japanese, they don’t really hype up their history nor are they going to put a lot of money into marketing and try to nickel and dime you like Western companies. They just focus on making the best things that they possibly can. Even if they are expensive, they are expensive because of the labor intensive costs not because of marketing and heritage hype.
And it’s not just the everyday items. Everything from Grand Seiko watches to Sony speakers you can tell how much engineering went into it and how passionate they are about the process. The process of making it, not just the results. This is quite different than China and Korea which I find when they manufacture items they focus more on the results than the process.
This old man dedicated his whole life to growing the rice, his own curry and putting it inside one vending machine in the countryside. That’s all he wanted to do, his whole life. That’s the Japanese mentality and dedication.
And again.. I love Korea, but I have to be honest, they are not like this. They live cookie cutter lives where study to get into a SKY school then try to get into one of the big 4 companies (Lotte, Hyundai, LG, Samsung) and that’s their goal. For girls, their dream is to be an airline attendant. They all have similar aspirations. With Japanese, you can see how each and every person has such specialized ambitions and how unique they are with their mentality.
That’s why I think Japanese culture, as much admired as it is by the West, is actually still underrated and I think Japan and Japanese still deserve more props than they get.
I’d say he’s properly rated by the media, but underrated by fans because he gets overhated on.
He’s easily the most hated athlete online, and lots of people on social media basically make a living off of hating on him.
For example.. just going off of what I saw on social media, easily the most liked posts are the ones that are making fun of Lebron. These two posts I just saw today have a combined 100k likes. All they are is cherry picking some image of Lebron to make him look silly, and then cherry picking images for Jordan/Kobe to make them look better. That’s it. No analysis being done or any actual logical comparison. It’s just some dumb memes meant to make Lebron look bad.
So this is the problem with NBA fans, most of them are uneducated honestly, don’t have the attention span to actually read posts analyzing anything and are easily misled by things like quotes or images. So what haters can do is easily brainwash them into believing false Lebron narratives (i.e he’s a stat padder, he isn’t clutch, he’s afraid of the moment), or always bringing up his worst moments (2011 Finals, outscored by Terry) or eliminating context and focusing on the end result (Ray Allen/Kyrie Irving saved his legacy, 4–6 in the Finals etc). They make up stupid childish words like ‘Lebum’ and ‘Bronsexual’, talk about ‘mickey mouse ring’ and some dumb stuff like that. They count the number of all stars Lebron played with without giving any context of whether or not they were actually healthy or in their prime, they make Bosh and Love out to be some kind of superstar to make it look like Lebron had so much help (when in reality Bosh and Love never did anything superstar level in the playoffs), They never bring up Lebron’s best moments of course or all the quotes that other basketball players say praising Lebron.
For example, here’s a quote Allen Iverson said about Lebron:
“LeBron, I think, to me is the best overall basketball player that we’ll ever see. If you look in the dictionary and look up basketball player, there’ll be a picture of LeBron…..But LeBron is just everything that you want in a basketball player. He’s a total package. He’s God’s gift to the basketball world.”
You will never hear this post spread online. Instead, you hear some Larry Bird quote from a 2012 interview taken out of context saying how he’d ‘rather play with Kobe’ or a Jordan quote from 2013 saying how ‘Kobe is the only person that can beat me 1 on 1’ and that gets spread everywhere.
Like.. imagine if this was being done for Jordan and Kobe. Imagine if nobody ever talked about Jordan’s 63 points in the playoffs or Kobe’s 81 points and instead just focused on their worst performances like Games 4–6 of Jordan’s 1996 Finals oh he was outscored by Shawn kemp. Or Kobe’s 2004 Finals oh he was locked up by Tayshaun Prince. Imagine if that’s the only thing people brought up about them. And then they make some memes with Kobe and Jordan and cherry pick the images and stats to make them look bad and then cherry pick Lebron’s best moments and best images and post them. Imagine if people did that to them. That’s what they do to Lebron. That’s why Lebron is ultimately underrated by the typical casual fanbase is because you see nonstop biased posts against Lebron everyday from haters which brainwashes uneducated NBA fans to think Lebron is overrated or not that good.