By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

Kobe or Lebron? Lebron or Kobe?

To try to figure out who the best player in basketball is right now, you need to define what "best" means. Because every time someone sides with Lebron, someone says, "Well, all I know is if the game is on the line, and you only have time for one shot, I want the ball in Kobe's hands."

True as that may be, and I agree with it actually, how exactly do you figure out who the best player is? Kobe has four championship rings, four more than Lebron. Does that mean Kobe's better? In the last 15 years or so, our just-win culture has placed so much more emphasis on championships than there used to be.

What's complicated isn't determining who's better. The difficulty is actually in defining your terms. So what does "best" mean?

In my opinion, if you're the best player in the game, you:

+ Score many points
+ Pass and rebound well
+ Play good defense
+ Are dangerous at any point on the court
+ Involve all of your teammates
+ Make your team better than the sum of its parts
+ Win

Kobe doesn't really lack in any of these areas, but Lebron does the majority of them slightly better, which makes him more of a complete player. And in my book, that makes him the best player in the game.

The only knock I have against Lebron's game is that he'll put up a real ugly shot once in a while. But he can beat you in more ways than Kobe can, so Lebron gets the nod.

Is Kobe a brilliant assassin? More so than anyone in the league. And he certainly has that nice jewelry collection. But for the sake of cheap speculation, who's to say Lebron wouldn't have rings if Shaq -- in his prime -- was his wingman, and Phil Jackson was his coach?