Kobe Bryant is the closest thing to a Michael Jordan replica that NBA fans have ever seen. The two defenders share a similar competitive spirit and are known for their ability to lead their teams to victory. Fans are also lucky that the two stars have had some crossover in their careers, and they’ve faced off against each other on a handful of occasions.
Of course, Kobe was at the beginning of his career while Jordan was nearing the end. So while both stars were elite shooters, we never saw them match up in their prime. Therefore, we need to look at their shooting data to determine which player is the top scorer.
Unfortunately, Jordan played before advanced shot tracking took effect, so we can’t look at things from a segment-by-segment perspective. Instead, we’ll focus on multi-tiered scoring to see which player is truly the better “shooter.”
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2 point range
Michael Jordan had a slight advantage with 2 points. The superstar guard has a career two-point shooting percentage of 51.0%, making 11,611 of 22,759 attempts. Kobe Bryant shot 47.9% on two-pointers, making 9,829 of 20,654 attempts.
3 points range
Neither Jordan nor Kobe were in the NBA when the three-point revolution was taken to the next level, as evidenced by their combined attempts. Jordan took a total of 1,778 three-pointers in his career, including 581, with a three-point shooting rate of 32.7%.
Kobe shot 5,546 times from beyond the arc and scored 1,827 times, with a success rate of 32.9%. Therefore, Kobe narrowly beats Jordan in three-point shooting percentage.
penalty
Bryant’s career free throw percentage is as high as 83.7%, and he has made 10,011 free throws, 8,378 of which were made. Jordan trails Kobe by 0.2 percentage points in this area, with a career free throw percentage of 83.5%, taking 8,772 charity stripe attempts and making 7,327 of them.
Kobe and Jordan were neck and neck in scoring, with Jordan having a slight advantage due to two-point field goal percentage throughout his career.
Discover the rivalry between Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan
Every time Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan faced off, it felt like a torch was being passed from one ruthless rival to the next. The two have played against each other a total of eight times.
The first game took place in 1996, when the Chicago Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 129-123 on December 7. Jordan scored 30 points in that game, while the young Kobe only scored 5 points.
The next game came two months later, and the Lakers won, with Kobe again dropping five points in a game on February 5, 1997. On December 17, 1997, Chicago avenged Jordan’s death with another victory. Leading Kobe 2-1.
However, this advantage was short-lived. On February 1, 1998, the Lakers defeated Jordan and the Bulls; Kobe scored 20 points. The duel between the two stars ended in a 2-2 draw.
The Lakers won the next two games, with Bryant leading Jordan 4-2, both of which came while Jordan was playing for the Washington Wizards.
The two met twice more, once on November 8, 2002, when the Wizards defeated the Lakers, and again on March 28, 2002, when the Lakers won. In this way, Kobe defeated Jordan with a record of 5 wins and 3 losses.