PejaTheSerbSnip
01-02-2024, 11:32 AM
Couldn’t think of a better place to post my manic review:
Got around to reading it a few months ago, was very eager to devour it as I just can’t get enough of this genre of book, even though there was almost certainly very little new ground to tread—had almost no hope of learning something entirely new about that many-times-rehashed soap opera, just thought I’d enjoy a fresh perspective on it. I also know Pearlman is not Zach Lowe and wasn’t expecting him to be tight on the nitty-gritty stuff internet autists like us talk about.
But…ho man…even as someone that has railed against the Kobe-glazing some of our resident “basketball purists” are guilty of…it was impossible to overlook how free of praise the book was about his ability to impact winning.
It gave the impression of someone that was trying hard to appear dispassionately fair-minded to correct for said “glazing”, and instead bungled the counter-signal by being completely UNfair and nit-picky. If an outsider read the book I believe they’d walk away from it thinking Kobe was barely even a net-positive on those teams. It’s a 400 page behemoth and there are maybe a few pages worth of praise for his play (without it being dampened via qualifiers and caveats).
It was maddening. I’m not asking for a hagiography here, but the ratio of praise to criticism did not seem remotely unbiased to me.
Many examples but I’ll focus on a few:
- When detailing his teammates frustrations with him in the ‘99-‘00 regular season, he framed a skid that brought their record down to 34-11 as bordering on catastrophic. This was Kobe’s breakout year. They were 55-11 in games that he suited up. Kobe was instrumental in their turnaround. Shaq did “level up” as well (hence his deserved MVP win), but Bryant blossomed into one of the best two-way players in the league that year. If I weren’t a basketball fan and only had this book to go on, I’d barely be any-the-wiser about that.
- The extent to which the Lakers struggles in the ‘00-‘01 regular season were attributed to Kobe’s shot selection was shocking. The Lakers offence actually chugged along at close to a league-best pace that year; they were 2nd in offensive rating. It was their defence (21st in drtg) that let them down. I know there’s more to offensive cohesion than these context-free #’s…I’m no poindexter here…but regardless, it does indicate that an inordinate amount of time was spent on the wrong root causes…
- So many individual games meant to highlight his recklessness were nit-picked, even ones where his shot attempts were actually under control. On p.223 he lists a game against the Grizz where he hoisted up 18, but failed to mention that: 1. that was a blowout win, 2. 18 shots for a perimeter superstar isn’t that high, 3. Shaq was out of the lineup.
…if the chief complaint is that Kobe broke the flow of the offence sometimes, that’s fine (and I’d agree), but the evidence adduced is often shaky. Here were some other specious assertions from that very same page, pertaining to the same matter:
“Yes, O’Neal was a teammate, but so was Fox, one of the NBA’s top mid-range shooters” <—- I found this didn’t line up with my recollection of Fox as a player, so I scanned BBRef’s shooting split stats just to confirm I wasn’t going crazy, and sure enough: they revealed that Fox had average shooting numbers for his career from the mid-to-long-range (38.8% from 3-10ft, 38.6 from 10-16, and 40.6% from 16-23)…and absolutely anemic ones that year (24%/30%/38%).
As well as:
“and Horry, a three point legend” <—- Horry’s production seemed to markedly improve in the postseason, and he was a big-game player who had hit some big threes in his career, but he was never a deadeye shooter in the regular season. Nothing “legendary” about a 34% career three point rate, which includes three seasons with a shortened line.
“and Horace Grant, a terrific guy to have in the blocks” <—- at that point in his career Horace really had no business shouldering a large offensive load. He was 35 and barely had more points than shot attempts in the previous year with Seattle, 8 points in 35 minutes a game on some of the worst shooting efficiency in the league. Again, rings as if he’s reflexively looking to knock Kobe down a peg rather than carefully examining the talent around him. Moving on:
“and Ron Harper, one of Michael Jordan’s favourite teammates with the Bulls. Bryant ignored them all, because in his mind this is how it was supposed to be” <— Harper was 36, a low-efficiency shooter who was afforded 7 shots per game in his waning years.
^ I don’t think one should start with the assumption that taking shots from the mid-30’s Harpers and Grants of the world is a bad thing. They were important parts of the team but, based on the available evidence, not suited to take on a larger scoring role. They were glue guys, not shot creators. Perhaps Kobe DID unduly neglect them to some extent, but not to the degree purported here.
They were also an aging team in ‘01, Fisher was injured (only played 20 games, came back and ripped it up in the playoffs), and their defence fell off considerably. Kobe’s shot selection was but one of many factors, and probably not a primary one.
Probably the biggest gripe: there no mention of the absolute trail of destruction Kobe left in the lead-up to the ‘01 finals, against three tough teams in a loaded conference (back then, as we know, the Western Conference Finals were basically the de facto finals)…in truth, he outplayed Shaq in the portion of the playoffs that the Lakers were credibly threatened, and actually matched him in overall postseason performance: 3.8 Win Shares (3.7 for Shaq), identical .260 Win Shares per 48 minutes, identical 6.5 BPM, a towering 30-7-6 with all-league defence…he was a monster…it was maybe the best basketball he ever played…and there literally not one mention of it.
Pearlman devoted an appropriate amount of space to Shaq’s awesome finals performance (against a team that, frankly, was not even as tough as either the Kings OR the Spurs, two teams against which Kobe was the best player)…but nothing for what was, again, arguably Kobe’s finest postseason performance.
I can go on, and on, and on, but I think I’ve made my point.
In sum: the basketball-specific stuff was way too egregious to ignore, and I say this as someone that will forgive a lot of shaky analysis if the story is good enough. Summer of ‘49 is my favourite baseball book and it is chock-full of dumb errors. This is something else entirely.
2/10, wouldn’t recommend.
Got around to reading it a few months ago, was very eager to devour it as I just can’t get enough of this genre of book, even though there was almost certainly very little new ground to tread—had almost no hope of learning something entirely new about that many-times-rehashed soap opera, just thought I’d enjoy a fresh perspective on it. I also know Pearlman is not Zach Lowe and wasn’t expecting him to be tight on the nitty-gritty stuff internet autists like us talk about.
But…ho man…even as someone that has railed against the Kobe-glazing some of our resident “basketball purists” are guilty of…it was impossible to overlook how free of praise the book was about his ability to impact winning.
It gave the impression of someone that was trying hard to appear dispassionately fair-minded to correct for said “glazing”, and instead bungled the counter-signal by being completely UNfair and nit-picky. If an outsider read the book I believe they’d walk away from it thinking Kobe was barely even a net-positive on those teams. It’s a 400 page behemoth and there are maybe a few pages worth of praise for his play (without it being dampened via qualifiers and caveats).
It was maddening. I’m not asking for a hagiography here, but the ratio of praise to criticism did not seem remotely unbiased to me.
Many examples but I’ll focus on a few:
- When detailing his teammates frustrations with him in the ‘99-‘00 regular season, he framed a skid that brought their record down to 34-11 as bordering on catastrophic. This was Kobe’s breakout year. They were 55-11 in games that he suited up. Kobe was instrumental in their turnaround. Shaq did “level up” as well (hence his deserved MVP win), but Bryant blossomed into one of the best two-way players in the league that year. If I weren’t a basketball fan and only had this book to go on, I’d barely be any-the-wiser about that.
- The extent to which the Lakers struggles in the ‘00-‘01 regular season were attributed to Kobe’s shot selection was shocking. The Lakers offence actually chugged along at close to a league-best pace that year; they were 2nd in offensive rating. It was their defence (21st in drtg) that let them down. I know there’s more to offensive cohesion than these context-free #’s…I’m no poindexter here…but regardless, it does indicate that an inordinate amount of time was spent on the wrong root causes…
- So many individual games meant to highlight his recklessness were nit-picked, even ones where his shot attempts were actually under control. On p.223 he lists a game against the Grizz where he hoisted up 18, but failed to mention that: 1. that was a blowout win, 2. 18 shots for a perimeter superstar isn’t that high, 3. Shaq was out of the lineup.
…if the chief complaint is that Kobe broke the flow of the offence sometimes, that’s fine (and I’d agree), but the evidence adduced is often shaky. Here were some other specious assertions from that very same page, pertaining to the same matter:
“Yes, O’Neal was a teammate, but so was Fox, one of the NBA’s top mid-range shooters” <—- I found this didn’t line up with my recollection of Fox as a player, so I scanned BBRef’s shooting split stats just to confirm I wasn’t going crazy, and sure enough: they revealed that Fox had average shooting numbers for his career from the mid-to-long-range (38.8% from 3-10ft, 38.6 from 10-16, and 40.6% from 16-23)…and absolutely anemic ones that year (24%/30%/38%).
As well as:
“and Horry, a three point legend” <—- Horry’s production seemed to markedly improve in the postseason, and he was a big-game player who had hit some big threes in his career, but he was never a deadeye shooter in the regular season. Nothing “legendary” about a 34% career three point rate, which includes three seasons with a shortened line.
“and Horace Grant, a terrific guy to have in the blocks” <—- at that point in his career Horace really had no business shouldering a large offensive load. He was 35 and barely had more points than shot attempts in the previous year with Seattle, 8 points in 35 minutes a game on some of the worst shooting efficiency in the league. Again, rings as if he’s reflexively looking to knock Kobe down a peg rather than carefully examining the talent around him. Moving on:
“and Ron Harper, one of Michael Jordan’s favourite teammates with the Bulls. Bryant ignored them all, because in his mind this is how it was supposed to be” <— Harper was 36, a low-efficiency shooter who was afforded 7 shots per game in his waning years.
^ I don’t think one should start with the assumption that taking shots from the mid-30’s Harpers and Grants of the world is a bad thing. They were important parts of the team but, based on the available evidence, not suited to take on a larger scoring role. They were glue guys, not shot creators. Perhaps Kobe DID unduly neglect them to some extent, but not to the degree purported here.
They were also an aging team in ‘01, Fisher was injured (only played 20 games, came back and ripped it up in the playoffs), and their defence fell off considerably. Kobe’s shot selection was but one of many factors, and probably not a primary one.
Probably the biggest gripe: there no mention of the absolute trail of destruction Kobe left in the lead-up to the ‘01 finals, against three tough teams in a loaded conference (back then, as we know, the Western Conference Finals were basically the de facto finals)…in truth, he outplayed Shaq in the portion of the playoffs that the Lakers were credibly threatened, and actually matched him in overall postseason performance: 3.8 Win Shares (3.7 for Shaq), identical .260 Win Shares per 48 minutes, identical 6.5 BPM, a towering 30-7-6 with all-league defence…he was a monster…it was maybe the best basketball he ever played…and there literally not one mention of it.
Pearlman devoted an appropriate amount of space to Shaq’s awesome finals performance (against a team that, frankly, was not even as tough as either the Kings OR the Spurs, two teams against which Kobe was the best player)…but nothing for what was, again, arguably Kobe’s finest postseason performance.
I can go on, and on, and on, but I think I’ve made my point.
In sum: the basketball-specific stuff was way too egregious to ignore, and I say this as someone that will forgive a lot of shaky analysis if the story is good enough. Summer of ‘49 is my favourite baseball book and it is chock-full of dumb errors. This is something else entirely.
2/10, wouldn’t recommend.