Mitch Richmond was a decent shooting guard during the 1990s, earning six All-Star Game selections and five All-NBA nods. He was a rock-solid shooting guard who could score with the best of them, as evidenced by his run with the Golden State Warriors as a member of Run-TMC and his turn as a star for the Sacramento Kings.
Despite being at the top of his game for most of the decade, he could concede that two shooting guards played better than him. Those were Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant , the two players deemed the leaders for the shooting guard position across the NBA's history.
"If you didn't make Michael work, he was gonna embarrass you. One thing, you know, he was coming at you every night. You know, Kobe had that same thing," Richmond said in an interview. "All of the greats had that; they were thirsty to score. It was like, I gotta get that bucket. You have to make the defenders go, 'This dude is crazy.' You gotta have that mentality like I'm gonna get a bucket."
Michael and Kobe were the ultimate competitors
Since Richmond played against both players, he got the full brunt of their competitiveness. Mitch even got to play with Kobe late into his career, winning the championship in 2002 with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Mitch saw how much MJ and Kobe competed at levels ahead of any other shooting guard. It came from Richmond, an elite player in his own right who scored over 20,000 points in his NBA career. However, he thinks no one compares to the excellence of Jordan and Bryant during their primes.
The two superstars' obsession with winning games and championships made them unique from the rest of their peers.
They worked hard behind the scenes by constantly training and working on their game. Both superstars were up early in the morning to work on their games, and that paid off during games as they implemented their practices in the NBA games.
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You had to go at Michael and Kobe to beat them
Any team would have won more games against MJ and Kobe if they had not feared them. They needed to be more aggressive because they were elite defenders, but tiring them out could have limited their offensive production.
Unfortunately for the other teams, Jordan and Bryant became consummate winners, as the former won six titles and the latter five. They have secure legacies as two of the greatest winners and shooting guards ever. Whenever people bring up the shooting guard position, they are the first two people who are spoken about.
Richmond thinks so, and most of the NBA community agrees. The shooting guard position and the rest of the NBA would not be the same without MJ and Kobe, who became the most elite players of their generations.
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