I have always had a hard time comprehending the argument that Tim Duncan is better than Kobe Bryant.

Throughout my childhood, Kobe was always the best basketball player in the world.

To be fair, I don’t remember Michael Jordan; I was 6 when he retired for the second time in 1999. So, for all my life, I have seen Kobe as the pinnacle of basketball talent.

Whenever I played pickup basketball games and attempted crazy shots, I would yell “Kobe!” So would my classmates. Kids at my school had Bryant, not Duncan, jerseys. Kids could tell that Kobe was a once-in-a-generation talent.

Growing up, I watched Kobe win five championships. I saw him score 81 points in a game. I saw him make crazy shots and completely ridiculous dunks. I witnessed as he averaged at least 22.5 points per game for each of the past 14 seasons, on his way to becoming the youngest player in league history to score 30,000 points. He is a 15-time All Star and 11-time first-team all-NBA player. He is the best scorer for the best franchise in NBA history.

But, in today’s NBA, everyone judges players based on the number of championships they win. By that standard, Kobe’s five rings surpass all others in his generations. Sure, Duncan almost won a fifth championship quite a few times, but that’s the thing: he didn’t and Kobe did.

Kobe never hid his desire for seven championships. After winning his fifth, he made it known that his fifth championship was one better than Shaq. He has always wanted his seventh to beat out Jordan.

Kobe was able to climb to the top of the mountaintop with two entirely different teams; he didn’t have the luxury of having the same hall-of-famers next to him for all these years. He had to learn how to be teammates with many different players, and he was able to win with all of the personalities.

Some people try to minimize Kobe’s championships because he wasn’t able to win them without the help of Shaq and Pau. But could anyone else have won five championships with just Shaq and Pau? In today’s world of Big Threes, winning a championship with just two superstars is almost unheard of.

On a different level than the NBA, Kobe was able to do something that Duncan never could: win a gold medal. Duncan was a part of the failed 2004 Olympic team in Athens that took home a bronze medal. Kobe took the gold home in Beijing and London. He was able to blend in with a team of superstars, leading in 2008, taking more of a supplementary role in 2012 because he just wanted to win. Kobe was a star among stars, winning a record four All-Star Game MVPs, for what that is worth.  

Duncan is inarguably a great basketball player, but he’s not the best player of his generation. He’s not Kobe.

To me, it makes more sense to have an argument about whether Kobe is the GOAT, not just the greatest basketball player of his generation. 

Johnathan is a junior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @jhett93.