It's a pretty awesome video of the two of them going at it. It shows some good, some bad, but really the development of Kobe into basically the closest you could possibly be to Jordan. The media is doing their damnedest to forget Kobe existed so they can prop up LeBron, but this video shows the growth of Mamba through the years against his idol. I love it.
Haha. Yeah, I was just now looking at some head to head footage bacause I wanted to take another look at Kobe at 19 (thinking of Russell and all the hype he has to learn to deal with) and I found this (nice quality, interviews during the game--little Mike included, and KG, Timmy, Dirk now in the twilights of their careers): I think it would behoove russell to watch this stuff before approaching Mr. Bryant for some pointers.
Great stuff. The two best shooting guards of all time going toe to toe. It was always fun to watch Kobe bring his A game to play Michael. He was so pumped. He was chasing the greatest and going at him full force. He never backed down to MJ - only challenged him. I thought Kobe played some of the best defense on MJ that I had seen. They were a great match although such a large age difference. I love this.
I loved seeing Kobe drive past Pippen and make a move past Jordan in the paint. Just brilliant. Those are two of the world's greatest defenders and they were playing at the height of their careers... Just wild potential. It's going to be hard sometimes to take Russell out of context after watching Kobe grow the way we have.
really surprised the Kobe explosive (I think it was 56 pts against Jordan and the Wizards @ Staples) was not included in this video. That was the game I felt that Jordan was like he's officially the reincarnation of me. Edit:^ @RasAlgethi was already on it with his post above mine with that game I was talking about.
I think it was more to see the growth than the overcoming of Jordan. I mean watching the older Jordan clips, Kobe looks so much like that now it's ridiculous. That baseline fade? The footwork? It's a carbon copy.
