Why This Was Kobe Bryant's Favorite Move (Ft. A Legend and A Lot of Practice)

Kobe Bryant has every NBA, basketball move down, but which was his favorite move? #Kobe #NBA #move
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Here’s a shot chart, depicting every Kobe shot, all 30,669 of em. And this doesn’t tell us much to be honest other than the fact that Kobe took every type of shot imaginable from everywhere on the floor. A lot of people would go with the turnaround fadeaway and while that could maybe his signature shot, it doesn’t have to be his favorite. Signature and favorite are two different things. To narrow it down, I found this quote from Kobe breaking down his own game.

"I know, if I have a chance, I'm going to go right and shoot. You know I want to go right and shoot, because now I've gone right two times, made it and you're expecting me to go right. Now, I control you. Now, I'll fake right, go left. (Then), I go left, and you're like, 'Oh, you're going to make another one.' Now, I pump fake, you jump — pfft, now I draw a foul."

So I went and charted every single Kobe Bryant game winning/game tying shot attempt and what he did to get to that spot. All the shots Kobe took with 24 seconds or under over a 20 year career. That’s a lot of games and a lot of shots...huh over 100 games.... Alright then. Sometimes, you take what the defense gives you, other times, you just go to what suits you best anyways. Now these are going to be tough shots regardless because the defense knew who was taking the shot and at times threw their whole defense on him.

And here’s the results. This excel is long. The shot chart this time actually helps. If we take away the misses, you can actually see that this area, Kobe had no makes and he’s also just not attempting that much either. Even a lot of these threes that Kobe made on his left side, he was going to his right. Out of the over 100 shots, Kobe would take a jumpshot 88% of the time, yeah. Of the 55 makes on this chart, he made a move to his right 30 times and he made 32 on his right side and 23 on the left. He was more of a threat from all over the right side and there were actually a decent amount of high double teams that wouldn’t let him go left. Teams would be straight up scared. The misses are spread throughout, a lot of 3 point misses with heaves over 2 people. It’s almost a 50/50 split on right vs left.

And from seeing the variety of shots, he liked his left foot to be forward and dig in, and then he would completely rotate his body midair to square up. This is different than a staggered stance for shooting where one foot is slightly ahead of the other, nah Kobe really be out in the fields with that left foot. It creates a lot of space for him, but this body control is ridiculous. Michael Jordan also had it, but Jordan also just had more leaping ability. Kobe focused on training his hip joints a lot to be able to rotate mid air. By squaring up in the air, he doesn’t need to square up on the ground meaning he instantly raises up from whatever angle, even extreme angles.

That ain’t to say he can’t make other types of jump shots with other footwork, it’s Kobe. He’s worked on every shot possible, he’s the most skilled player in NBA history. But he preferred that left foot to be significantly forward and angled so he could always shoot to the right side of him or falling away. For example, here, after getting the defender in the air, a lot of guys might try to shoot going left away from the defender, or jump into the defender, but here Kobe just raises above and a bit away from the defender. This gives him enough space to release the ball.

The signature turnaround fadeaway, yeah that was only used 4 times out of over 100. Not what you were expecting, right? Neither was I. Most of these situations actually were Kobe handling the ball with freedom to go into the post if he wanted, but he didn’t. All of these aren’t easy. To get to his spot, he often just used a simple hesitation or a hesitation skip step, and it worked to get his defender moving quickly towards the hoop just so Kobe could just stop on a dime.

So what was Kobe’s favorite move? It was a hesitation followed by a drive to the right into a pull up jump fading away just a bit. And he could hit that anywhere on the court. That was the move that came up the most, and it’s one that he was just comfortable with. And it was pretty. It’s no wonder that this game winner is one of, if not his most famous shot.

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