Leave Kobe alone

We all know by now that the Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Lakers Tuesday night to win the NBA Championship.

Ok, they didn’t beat them, they crushed them…destroyed them…embarrassed them.

But please, I don’t want to hear anyone say, “See, Kobe can’t win without Shaq!”

It’s one of the dumbest statements in sports, and it just goes to show the double standard we have against guys who admit to trying to “be like Mike.”

We have put “His Airness” so high up on a pedestal that we now mistreat other players just to make sure his legacy remains one of a kind.

Someone could come into the league and win 15 titles going one-on-five and we would still find a way to discredit him.

Could Paul Pierce win without KG or Ray Allen? Nope. He was so great that his team was the second-worst in the league last season...but there was nary a word about that.

How about when Magic won all those titles with the Lakers? You’re right; he didn’t have anybody…other than Kareem and Worthy.

Bird was pretty much a one-man show, too…I mean, that is unless you consider McHale and Parish any good.

David Robinson was 0-fer before some guy named Duncan, and yet we could care less.

Even Jordan had, and I would argue, needed, Pippen, who was one of the 50 greatest players of all-time, and easily No. 1 on the all-underrated list.

But nobody got on those guys for not being able to go it alone … nor should they have. I think each and every player mentioned above deserves credit for what they were able to accomplish, I just don’t understand why Kobe isn’t treated the same way.

I’m not for discrediting teams that win championships with multiple stars. In fact, I think the front offices and scouts for those organizations deserve a lot of credit for what they were able to construct.

But why should a guy catch heat when he can’t win with a bad team? I could beat Johnny Chan in poker heads up if I had pocket aces and he had rags. Does that mean I’m better? No way. It just means I had more to work with than he did.

Who did Kobe have? Please don’t say Pau Gasol, because that would be insulting to people that know anything whatsoever about the game of basketball. Bynum looked like he was going to be a force and then had to sit for the year with an injury. Lamar Odom is great until you actually get in his face or put an elbow in his back, and Sasha Vujacic, the self-proclaimed “machine,” spends too much time working on his Euro-soccer-style flopping, and not enough displaying the hard-nose defense he credits himself so much for playing.

Sure, Kobe hasn’t won without Shaq, but would the Diesel have won without Kobe? Would he have won without D-Wade?

I remember Shaq making the Finals in 1995 with an in-his-prime Penny Hardaway, and they got smoked by the Rockets who had, you guessed it, two future Hall-of-Famers in Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

Wilt had West, Dr. J had Moses Malone, Frazier had Willis Reed, and Russell had Cousy.

Good things come in pairs in the NBA, and everyone is fine with that, except when it comes to Kobe.

The fact that the Lakers made the finals with this team is a testament to how good Bryant is - that is how we should remember his season.

Shaq had Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire on his team this year, and he couldn’t win more than one game in the playoffs.

For some reason everyone wants No. 24 in the purple and gold to be able to win everything solo.

Sure, he brings some of it on himself by demanding trades and then relenting, by letting his ego get to big for both him and "The Big Aristotle" to co-exist in the "City of Angels," and by daring to say that he wants to be in the same conversation as the man who wore No. 23 in Chicago when it’s all said and done. But I’d rather have a player of his caliber dare to be the best than settle for anything else.