It’s one of the greatest playoff runs and honestly if Kobe DID have a run like that it would be much more talked about than now.
-Duncan went through the ‘tougher’ Western conference
-Duncan beat a 60 win team during this run (2003 Mavs)
-Duncan beat Shaq and Kobe (both in their primes) during this run
-Duncan was the sole all-star on his team
-His second leading scorer was rookie Tony Parker with 14 PPG
-Duncan’s stats during this playoffs: 25/15/5/3
-Duncan closed out this championship run in a magnificent Game 6 with a near quadruple double putting up 21/20/10/8
-All-Stars Duncan went through: Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, Stephon Marbury, Amar’e Stoudemire, Penny Hardaway, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Shaq, Kobe, Jason Kidd
Let’s compare to Kobe’s best run which was 2010
-Kobe had Pau Gasol as an all-star teammate
-Kobe beat 4 50-win teams during this run but no 55+ win team (remember this when Kobe fans bring up the 50+ win teams he beat that they were mostly 50–54 win teams)
-Kobe’s stats during this playoffs: 29/6/5
-Kobe’s 2010 Finals is somewhat of a mixed bag. In typical Kobe fashion, he scored a lot of points but also needed a ton of rebounding assistance from Gasol and Odom in order to close out the games since he would miss a lot of shots. The Game 7 he needed Gasol’s 18 rebounds in addition to his own 15 in order to barely beat the Celtics by 4 points. A win is a win sure, but it’s not comparable to Duncan’s 2003 Finals. Nobody can imagine Duncan nearly shooting his team out of games.
-All-Stars Kobe went through: KD, Westbrook, Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo
In short, Duncan’s is more impressive. Kobe’s gets talked about more because he’s Kobe and his fanbase is like 50x that of Duncan’s. Which I don’t think is an exaggeration. For every Duncan fan, there’s probably 50 Kobe fans.
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