Before the judges go to their respective scorecards let’s take a look at the quotes.
First, Bell weighed in. ‘If he’s going to take 31 shots to get 40, then that’s pretty much all you can do. Anyone shooting 31 shots should score 40.’ Bryant had his say as well. ‘He can’t stop me. He knows that. But he’s good enough to make it interesting.’”
If you were being generous and say that most NBA players should be shooting around 45% from the field if everyone took 31 shots they would make about 14.
If you added a few three pointers from the guard position that would give you 31 points.
Average Superstar gets around 7 free throws a game and makes 5, that would put your final tally at 36 points.
So Raja isn’t that far off.
But while technically sound in his reasoning Kobe’s retort was a straight right hand, left hook KO. Mainly because it is true, but the fact he points that Bell is just good enough to make it interesting is so diabolically dismissive of Bell’s skills I am going to have to award Bean the victory.