By Hunter Felt/The Guardian

If Kobe Bryant has spent his career chasing Michael Jordan, then this past week may be the culmination of that quest in more ways than one. On Sunday night, in the 100-94 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard scored 27 points, putting him ahead of Jordan’s 32,292 career total. Bryant is now third on the NBA’s all-time points list behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (No1) and Karl Malone (No 2).
Earlier in the week, Bryant firmly cemented his reputation as an even more abrasive team-mate than the infamously prickly Chicago Bulls legend. On Thursday, Bryant went on an epic rant during off-day practice, ripping fellow Lakers for being “soft like Charmin”.
Immediately afterwards, he brought his complaints directly to general manager Mitch Kupchak, in front of gathered media members, saying “these [expletives] aren’t doing [expletive] for me.”
(The phrase, amusingly enough, comes off as even more profane when left as Mad Libs than filled in with the curse words in question.)
It feels fitting that Bryant would both out-shoot and out-trash talk his idol in such a short timeframe. In his possibly quixotic quest to compete with the man considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time, Bryant’s path has made him more aggressive than even Jordan ever was, both on and off the court.
Obviously, it’s hard to say he hasn’t had a lot of personal and team success trying to out-Jordan Jordan. Bryant is one of the 10 best players in basketball history. He’s a 16 time NBA All-Star who has won five championships with the Lakers. To even bring up the fact that he is headed to the Basketball Hall of Fame as soon as he’s eligible does disservice to his legacy. Of course he is. He’s Kobe Bryant!
Still, even though Bryant may be above him on the scoring list, there are few who would put him on par with MJ. Sunday night’s achievement comes with the asterisk that Jordan left some of his prime years on the table by leaving the game twice, once during the peak of his career, before finally retiring for good. Plus, Bryant came into the league straight out of high school while Jordan played three years of college basketball at North Carolina before making his NBA debut. In short,
Bryant has had more time to put up the numbers.
Beyond that, statistics tend to back the judgment that Jordan was the superior offensive player, particularly when efficiency enters the equation. Let his latest accomplishment not hide the fact that it was just last month that Bryant broke a much more ignoble record by setting the all-time NBA record for missed field goal attempts.
Defensively, there’s very little debate that Jordan holds a significant edge over Bryant. If one wants to go by championships, which is probably a silly measurement but it’s something we fans love to do, Bryant has five, Jordan six. Considering Bryant’s age and the current state of the Lakers, they are both equally likely to win another.
Meanwhile, Bryant’s off-the-court reputation suggests that he has been under the sway of the idea that a big part of what made Michael Jordan “Michael Jordan” was his almost sociopathic desire not just to win, but to crush and humiliate others while doing so. It’s telling that both have been (positively!) described as “two raving lunatic competitors that could really score the basketball.”
In certain NBA circles, they celebrate Jordan’s darker side, a side which clashes violently with the popular conception of Michael Jordan: Charismatic Winner/American Icon/Beloved Corporate Brand. The real Jordan would fight with team-mates, occasionally physically, hold grudges for years over the flimsiest pretexts and generally treat people like targets he needed to demolish. Some writers have theorised that these antisocial tendencies weren’t a toxic side product of Jordan’s basketball genius, but rather a necessary component of it. To be a winner, the Myth of Jordan proclaims, means having to be the bully, even towards those on your own side.
If that was the key to Jordan’s greatness, maybe Bryant’s attempt to outdo him in sheer unpleasantness was his way of attempting to best him. If Jordan could be contentious with team-mates, Bryant’s relationship with his was often downright adversarial. Bryant would unleash his wrath on both the scrubs – he once informed notorious league flame-out Smush Parker that he couldn’t even talk to him – with the same ease as he could with the all-time greats. His conflict with Shaquille O’Neal eventually forced LA to trade the massively popular centre to the Miami Heat.
The joke might be on us sceptics, after all Bryant did help lead five teams to championships. Again, though, it’s hard to say that his way worked better than Jordan’s. Phil Jackson, who coached both players to multiple titles, noted sharp differences between how the two functioned as leaders in his book Eleven Rings: The Soul Of Success. One of the biggest differences between the two stars from my perspective was Michael’s superior skills as a leader. Though at times he could be hard on his team-mates, Michael was masterful at controlling the emotional climate of the team with the power of his presence. Kobe had a long way to go before he could make that claim.
Bryant, of course, maintains that Thursday’s incident at practice was an example of him “challenging guys”. If one wanted to go the “correlation equals causation” route, it should be noted that in Friday’s game, Nick Young, the main target of Bryant’s abuse, made the game-winning three pointer in a 112-110 overtime victory over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs. Maybe if he hadn’t been compared to toilet paper the day before he would have thrown up an airball instead.
Even assuming that it works, is this kind of Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant approach really the best way for a team’s best player to get the most out of his fellow players? The current crop of NBA superstars, a generation removed from Jordan, seem to suggest that basketball greatness doesn’t necessarily require embracing one’s inner misanthrope.
Nobody could deny that LeBron James and the Kevin Durant have substantial competitive drives and the egos one would expect from two of the very best at their profession. Neither of them, however, seem to come from the same mould as MJ or Kobe. James has a more selfless, team-based approach to the game.
Durant’s humility shone through his 2014 MVP speech, where he thanked every basketball-playing humanoid he ever played with in any capacity.
Maybe it’s that times have changed. In today’s media-saturated environment, every perceived misstep immediately becomes the top trending topic on Twitter. Considering this, it’s hard to see any current or upcoming MVP caliber NBA player challenging Bryant when it comes to cultivating a combative public persona. At the very least, it would be an ongoing PR nightmare for handlers.
Who knows? It might not even be possible for a player to go any further. Hours after Bryant’s rant went viral, Charmin’s official Twitter account made it into a punchline, a sign that he may have crossed over into the realm of self-parody.
Bryant has taken Jordan’s “killer instinct” and pushed it to its absolute limits, into the realm of absurdity
Yes, Bryant has established himself as Jordan’s true successor, surpassing him on the all-time points chart only confirmed this. The fallout after Thursday’s embarrassment, however, suggests that this line of succession has already reached its end. We may not see another NBA superstar base their game on the concept that you can bully your way to greatness. As many predicted, Bryant was, in fact, the Next Jordan. He also could be the Last Jordan.
That might be for the best.