As Kobe Bryant recovers from his torn achilles tendon, the question of Bryant’s greatness arises again. Is he the greatest NBA player who ever played? Is he better than Jordan, Bird, Chamberlain, O’Neal, Abdul-Jabbar, James, Dr. J or Bill Russell? Do his achievements compare to the greatest in the game? Does he even deserve being in the conversation of the greatest ever?

“Kobe Bryant is the greatest ever! No questions asked. He could’ve beaten Jordan,” said junior Varag Abed. “The only person on that list that even compares to Kobe is Jordan, and he still falls short,” added junior Jonathan Nabifar. But is Kobe Bryant really the greatest?

To this date Kobe Bryant has averaged over 25 points per game in the 17 years he has played in the NBA. He has been selected to play at the All-Star game for 15 years and still counting. He has led the Los Angeles Lakers to five championships and has won the two Finals M.V.P. Awards for his achievements.

He has also won the regular season M.V.P. Award, an honor very few have won. He has also been selected in an All-NBA Team for most of his career. These are just a few of Bryant’s many achievements in the NBA. He was also the youngest player to reach 30,000 points.

Kobe Bryant has won five championships, impressive as it is, but it still does not compare to anywhere near the other greatest champions. Bill Russell has won 10, Sam Jones has won 10, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar has won six, Scottie Pippen has won six, Robert Horry has won seven, etc. But does the amount of championships won correlate to greatness? “Bill Russell is the greatest ever,” said sophomore Levon Gevorkian. “He has the most championships. That obviously means he is the best.”

“Anyone is crazy if they don’t think Wilt Chamberlain is the best ever. I mean the guy scored 100 points, averaged over 48 minutes a game for a season, and had the average of 50.4 points a game for a season. He is the greatest ever,” said junior Joshua Valerio. But since Chamberlain won only one championship in his career with the help of Jerry West and the Lakers, the argument is that he cannot even be considered in the argument for the greatest ever.

“The King, Lebron James will be the greatest in ten years. Mark my words! The guy already has two rings and he is nowhere near being finished. He’s clutch, unselfish, and better than Jordan,” said junior Raffi Terteryan. Yes, Lebron James is on the path to greatness, but who really thought he was great until he teamed up with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh to form the super-team we currently know as the Miami Heat today? Anyone? Those who consider James great are completely stat-driven.

And then the million dollar question comes to be, how is greatness measured? Is it by the amount of championships won? Is it completely stat-based? Is it by the amount of records broken? “The only true way of measuring greatness is by championships,” said junior Robert Agajanian. “Championships prove who was the best at that time in the league. The sad truth is if you couldn’t win championships, you obviously weren’t the greatest.”

But are championships really only the true measure? What if super-teams like Jordan’s, James’s or Johnson’s in their respective time periods ruined the chances of the likes of the Charles Barkleys, the Kevin Durants,and the Larry Birds of the world to ever be considered great. Are championships really the true measure?

The only way to really determine the greatest player is to find the player who is the best in all the categories stated above. I’ve narrowed down the list to three players that have exemplified the league in championships won, records broken, and high career averages; Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. These three men have won several championships and have all scored more than 30,000 points.

To narrow down the list farther would almost be impossible. These three players have all revolutionized the game in their own ways. “Yeah, that seems right. Jabbar, Bryant and Jordan have all changed the game. They have proved to be the cream of the crop,” said junior Aram Atamian.

Although Bryant may not be exclusively known as the greatest player the game has ever seen, he in somewhere in the Top Three. “Kobe Bryant’s track record has proven to everyone that he is at least the third best player the game has ever seen. And to some like me, he has proven he is the best in the game. He has shown his greatness through his ridiculous stats and the number of rings he has. Kobe Bryant is truly the greatest NBA player,” said junior Mina Zaki.