What's Really Behind Kobe vs. LeBron

The National Basketball Association deserves a big fat hex for letting Lakers/Cavs get so cluttered. Shaquille O'Neal/Kobe Bryant hovers in the background, at least as cognitive baggage; Shaq/Andrew Bynum is torch-passing, however belatedly; and those dopey Nike puppet ads actively detract from the experience of watching the NBA's two most exalted perimeter players go head-to-head.

But last night was definitively Kobe Bryant vs. LeBron James for many marbles. Kobe was bone-chillingly on to start, but trailed off gradually and his Lakers (especially that Pau Gasol fellow) couldn't pick up the slack. LeBron gained momentum throughout before exploding in the fourth, turning to his jumper when. up to that point, he'd casually steamrolled LA inside, reliably finishing, getting to the line, or finding J.J. Hickson or Anderson Varejao for something wide open.

Between this wry shift in strategy, Bron's everywhere-at-once exuberance, and the smile on his face -- and Eminem lyrics in his mouf in the crucial closing minutes -- we got something akin to an LBJ manifesto. Contrast this with Bryant's hard-edged opening, where every jumper fell, every split-second alteration came off, and you felt like the world was about to end, but not in a good way. Those were the game's bookends, and while one had you running for cover, the other sent you out into the streets.

So it's Bron, right? After all, isn't the point of these heavily-hyped match-ups to determine the best player in the NBA?

At this point, not really. For one, they're at totally different points in their careers. It's to Kobe's credit that, although he entered the league seven years before LeBron, anyone still feels like it's worth comparing the two. Bryant's game, while it once traded in athleticism and flat-out sickness, today the man's pretty much about the academics of this sport. His highlights are clinics on what a fine-tuned, hard-thinkin' NBA star can be capable of if he commits himself to staying on top. James, on the other hand, is by general consensus basketball's best athlete ever, possessed of great court sense, basketball IQ, and all that jazz, and learns not to stay on top, but raise the bar for himself (and the league) higher and higher. I know Kobe isn't basketball's most sympathetic figure, but come on, give an old man a break -- and maybe even a pat on the back.

There's also the obvious question of style, even role. Kobe Bryant is a pure shooting guard. LeBron James is bigger than most power forwards but could readily handle the point for Cleveland. That's not to say, as some of my colleagues have suggested, that James is simply "more" than Bryant. But just as we never tried to compare Kobe and Duncan, or at least make a long-running sedar debate out of it, between the age gap and the difference in role, the comparison just doesn't hold water. Saying it's unfair to Kobe (the second time I've done this) would seem to cede this debate to James -- not deconstruct it. And yet Bryant casts a shadow over a game like only James can. When Bryant's at his best, you feel the fear in your belly.

Gut is out in scouting; belly, though, is a matter of life and death.

Here's the problem with all these apologetics, though: As noted, last night James did close out the game from the perimeter. Maybe he can only go inside against so many times; maybe he did want to show Kobe he could take him at his own game. Either way, he's mortal, and getting closer and closer to a player we might compare to Bryant. This also all presumes that Kobe is the generic star shooting guard, not -- at this point -- the methodology of Duncan grafted onto Jordan's fire-and-brimstone longevity. Maybe the comparison persists not because the two are roughly equivalent to each other, the "two best in the league," or, as much I hate to say it, the most likely heirs to Jordan. In his own way, Kobe is no less unique.

With all apologies to Duncan, Melo, maybe Kevin Durant, and last year's Dwyane Wade, no two players can take over a game like James and Bryant. They aren't the same player, but they're the only players in that league who exist on this plane of dominance.

Thus, it all goes back to those two poles of style, even personality. Master technician Kobe Bryant reliably manufactures a shot, finding the angle that leaves defenders off-balance. It gets you excited, but also a little anxious, because there's no way one man should be able to so reliably super-brain his way to a bucket. James is a basketball Mardi Gras who replaces Kobe's execution of the impossible with the feeling that they built roller coasters to make us happy, and that the game is all putting on a show that captures the win when it matters.

When we compare them, difference is assumed, right down to the tone of their game. It's not a question of who creates more efficiently (Bron), or which guy has more saboteur's tricks up his sleeve (Kobe), but which vision of sports you prefer. The evasive, strictly-business, contract killer ethos of Bryant, the one that makes you feel like basketball is all about cultivated terror, or LeBron's wide-open celebration of making plays, putting away games because it feels good, and knowing that a demi-god could walk among us and want nothing more than to go back to his locker room and burst out laughing.

Go ahead and call it good and evil. I like to think of it as love and hate.