In AK’s rookie year, there was a half where Kobe went off for like 37 and hit a near half-court three at the half-time buzzer, then pounded on the hardwood. In the second half, AK guarded him and completely shut him down. I think he may have even gone scoreless. This was amidst all the AK hype, the fact that we had the tail-end of Stockton and Malone and managed to strike it rich in a draft-and-stash that turned into the ultimate Kobe-killer like we had never seen anyone do to Kobe before. We were elated for quite a while. The problem, however, is that AK never repeated it. Kobe never let that happen again. Had we never seen another match up, we would have assumed AK was the lifetime Kobe Killer.
Now Dante came up huge in the playoffs defending Harden. It’s impressive and it was long enough to say there’s something there. But we can’t neglect that there can be a lot of context added over time and, as awesome as that was, we have to realistically appraise that. When AK was doing that stuff, Don Nelson had approached Larry Miller saying that he’d give anyone on his roster for him. All of us agreed we wouldn’t even give him up for Dirk, and that wasn’t even questioned at the time.
We can’t do the same thing.
Now Dante came up huge in the playoffs defending Harden. It’s impressive and it was long enough to say there’s something there. But we can’t neglect that there can be a lot of context added over time and, as awesome as that was, we have to realistically appraise that. When AK was doing that stuff, Don Nelson had approached Larry Miller saying that he’d give anyone on his roster for him. All of us agreed we wouldn’t even give him up for Dirk, and that wasn’t even questioned at the time.
We can’t do the same thing.
