Kobe’s shooting percentage

Our reader Jeffs raised an interesting point/question about Kobe Bryant’s shooting percentage, and why it’s not higher. It’s now .446 this season, which has caused his career shooting percentage to dip slightly to .452. You-know-who, the dude from Chicago, had a career shooting percentage of .497.

I think it’s a product of a couple things. First, Kobe has never been a spectacular shooter, in terms of pure numbers. He has never shot better than 46 percent in a season. He takes a lot of shots and he’s streaky. He can miss a lot in a row, but of course when he starts making them, look out below.

But I think there’s a couple things you can look at in the last couple years. These are just my observations and I welcome everyone’s input. One, I don’t see Kobe attacking the basket as much as he did previously. That’s a product of him simply getting a little older and dealing with a lot of nagging injuries, particularly with his knees. That explosion to the basket, it’s still there from time to time, but it’s not quite the same. It doesn’t make him any less of a player, just a different one. The other thing, and this is more of a criticism, is that I think Kobe tries too hard to draw contact. Sometimes it works really well, when opponents bite on his pump-fakes and moves, but if they’re not biting, or the refs aren’t calling it tight, he ends up throwing up a lot of bad shots. That, in turn, leads to him getting frustrated and maybe taking himself out of the game a bit.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?