project 4

Podcast Script

Hey guys and welcome back to NBA Talks and Im your host, Keandre Hamilton. Today we are here to review another one of Dan Shaughnessy's articles. This time he talks about Mr. Kobe Bean Bryant’s legacy and where he ranks amongst the greatest players of all time. During the time the article was written, Kobe Bryant had just passed away, as he states in the first sentence of the article, he says “ Hopefully it’s not too early to take a stab at assessing Kobe’s place in basketball history” which seems to me he thinks it is, but he wants to be one of the first ones to publish an article about him after his death. So he already starts off assertive . He publishes this article knowing how it may make people feel, so to me he is also kind of bold for doing it so soon.He tries to give everybody his reasoning as to not only why Kobe Bryant was not the greatest of all time but on how he was not even a top 5 player.

The author uses a tone where he’s not too aggressive for the rest of his article. He gives information on Kobe’s career and accomplishments to set you up for his argument. In the article he says Kobe Bryant is a top 10 player of all time but not the best ever.

He lets us know early who the number one player is in his opinion, which was Wilt Chamberlain. So he gave his reasons to why he thought so, which was a good use of the ethos method. The author says that Wilt Chamberlain was the best because of all the records he has (72), and the fact that they had to change the rules because he was so dominant.

He also voices another opinion from the Hall of Famer, Larry Bird. Larry Bird was asked who was the best ever, Larry Bird responds with and I quote “That’s easy. Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 points. Bill Russell won 11 championships. It’s right there in the record books.’’ (10). All though I believe this was said to the author he doesn’t provide when this was said, so it loses his credibility. That could have been said to him last week or last year or last decade, the point is he doesn’t have proof of this even happening.

The author acknowledges all Kobe’s big accomplishments in (p.6) “Some of it is quantifiable. Kobe is the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history. He is second in All-Star appearances (18), won five championships, was MVP once, and averaged 25 points per game. He also was named to the All-Defensive team 12 times, second-most in league history.” He says (p.13) “Scoring 81 points, which Bryant did in a win over the Raptors in 2006, came with a far greater degree of difficulty than Wilt’s low-post, free-throw-filled 100-point game.” These are only things he says about Kobe’s career in the NBA which is not enough to convince people that he wasn't the greatest player ever.

The article was pretty short, so with that being said he doesn’t really go into depth on anybody's career really. He says a few things about Wilt and a few things about Kobe. You can tell when you read the article that he is more against people saying Kobe was the best, then trying to provewhy he chose to put Kobe in the spot he put him. It would have helped if he compared stats between the two or provided more stats period.

Overall this article could have been put together better because it seemed rushed. It doesn't make it any better that the article was extremely short, he didn't show any credibility to Larry Bird and he provided little to no evidence to back up his claim as to where Kobe ranks. Only good thing about his article is that, it was totally an opinionated article so he didn't really have to provide us with it. He obviously has a biased opinion and you can tell because he doesn’t really try and change his view from his perspective to the audience’s.

I suggest that you guys check out the article and call in and give us your opinion on it. But that wraps it up for us on NBA Talks, My name is Keandre Hamilton and you guys tune in next Tuesday for another article review. Alright thanks.

Works Cited

The Article

Dan Shaugnessy. “Where does Kobe Bryant rank among the greatest NBA players?” Globe Staff. January 28, 2020. 1 page.

The Podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKRKXr36q-Q