The 36-year-old Kobe Bryant passed John Havlicek’s all-time NBA mark for missed shots (13,418), reminding us that those nearly 32,000 points have come at a bit of a cost.
To put that in other point of view, a few have even attempted as many shots as Bryant has missed. Only 87 players in NBA history have taken more than the number of shots that Kobe has missed.
Kobe Bryant also passed Michael Jordan and moved into third place on the NBA’s all-time list for most career field goal attempts
Bryant finished Tuesday’s game against Grizzlies with 28 points on 26 attempts from the field—16 of them misses, including the one in the fourth quarter that earned him the record.
Havlicek—a sixth-man pioneer who won eight titles with the Boston Celtics—missed 13,417 field-goal attempts from 1962 to 1978.
Some will argue that he’s been something of a ball-stopper over the years, perhaps looking for his own opportunities at the expense of others’ offense. But that’s not how head coach Byron Scott sees it.
“I don’t care about that crap and I’m sure he doesn’t either,” Scott told reporters this week, including one reporter who was asking him about Bryant’s looming accomplishment. “I don’t mean to cut you off, but to me it speaks of his aggressiveness and his longevity.”
From Scott’s perspective, the surefire Hall of Famer doesn’t have much of a choice given the extent to which he’s pressured to keep the Lakers afloat.
“It’s almost damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he added. “The games that he don’t take shots, people ask why didn’t he take more shots. He can’t win neither way, which is unbelievable to me for a guy who gives it everything he’s got every single time he’s on the floor.”
Unbelievable, and yet totally predictable.
“You don’t get this kind of record without having a long career in which coaches and a franchise want the ball in your hands—and that doesn’t happen if you’re not elite, .. Everybody near the top of this list is in the Hall of Fame (Kobe will be).”