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Former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas had an interesting take on Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, claiming that in 2000, Bryant wasn’t one of the 15 best players in the NBA.
Arenas brought up Bryant’s scoring average from the 1999-00 season and said that the Lakers icon “wasn’t him yet.”
“Kobe wasn’t even top 15 then,” Arenas said. “… He averaged 22 points, bro. He wasn’t him yet.”
During the 1999-00 season, Bryant averaged 22.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.6 steals per game across 66 matchups for Los Angeles. The 1999-00 season was the first of the Lakers’ three-peat with Bryant and fellow franchise icon Shaquille O’Neal leading the way.
It’s interesting that Arenas thinks that Bryant wasn’t a top 15 player during the 1999-00 season, as the Lakers guard finished 12th in the NBA’s MVP voting that season. In addition to that, Bryant was an All-Star, made All-NBA Second Team and was fifth in voting for the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award.
So, while it wasn’t the best scoring season of Bryant’s career, he still was clearly viewed as one of the top players in the NBA.
A five-time champion, Bryant is a Hall of Famer and led the Lakers to a ton of success in his career, including the magical three-season run in the early 2000s that resulted in three of the Lakers’ 17 titles.
During his playing career, Bryant was named to 18 All-Star teams and won two scoring titles. He won the NBA Finals MVP award two times and played every game of his career with the Lakers.
Bryant showed a relentless fire during his career up until his last game when he scored 60 points in a Lakers win over the Utah Jazz. For his career, he averaged 25.0 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game while shooting 44.7 percent from the field and 32.9 percent from beyond the arc.
While the 1999-00 season might not have been the peak of Bryant’s career, one could certainly argue that he was indeed among the 15 best players in the league by then, even if Arenas seems to think that he wasn’t.
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