Kobe Bryant is regarded as one of the greatest players to have ever stepped foot on an NBA court, and he accomplished so much during his time in the league. Kobe’s resume includes five championships, two Finals MVPs, 18 All-Star appearances, and he also finished second all-time for All-Defensive Team selections.
Despite all of this, though, Bryant only ever won MVP once in his career, which was back in 2008. He was in the mix for the award a few times during his peak, but 2008 was really the only time that he gained any serious consideration for the award. While that has always upset his fans, the man himself said back in 2006 in an interview with Chris Myers that MVPs don’t mean anything to him.
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“I never thought about being an MVP. Coming into the season, I never even think about it. There were two things that I wanted to accomplish, these were goals of mine, were for us to improve as a team and to get back on First Team All-Defense. Those were the things that I really focused on. The MVP stuff doesn’t mean a thing to me, at the end of the day it’s all about championships.
You wouldn’t expect any other response from Kobe than this one. All he cared about was winning championships, and everything else was secondary. The season in question here was 2005-06, where Kobe averaged a career-high 35.4 PPG, but he only finished fourth in the voting behind Steve Nash, LeBron James, and Dirk Nowitzki. The biggest reason for that was that the Los Angeles Lakers only won 45 games, as the roster around Kobe wasn’t really any good.
Kobe Bryant Revealed The Two Things He Loved Doing The Most On The Court
While Kobe was synonymous with scoring the basketball and had some incredible scoring outbursts, he once revealed that scoring isn’t what he loves doing the most on the court. Bryant said that he’d rather get his teammates going by passing them the ball and added that he loved playing defense more than anything else.
While many would scoff at the notion that Kobe wanted to pass the ball, what you can’t deny is that he loved defending. Bryant took a lot of joy in shutting down opposing guards, and it is a real shame that he never won Defensive Player of the Year, as that has led to his excellence on that end of the court being forgotten a little bit.
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