Kobe Bryant is calling it a career, and what a career it was. His 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers included five championships, two Olympic gold medals, 18 all-star selections, 11 first-team all-NBA selections (tied with Karl Malone for the most), nine NBA first-team all-defense selections and an MVP award. Bryant scored more than 33,000 points (third behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Malone) with the most memorable being an 81-point performance in 2006 against the Toronto Raptors. And only two players have more playoff points than Bryant’s 5,640 – Michael Jordan and Abdul-Jabbar.

But you have to wonder if Bryant hung around too long.

He’s averaging 0.85 points per possession on 35.4 percent shooting, missing two-point shots almost as readily as he does shots from beyond the three-point line. It’s so bad, Bryant is about to become the first player in NBA history to take more than six three-point shots per game while shooting 30 percent or less from long range. Bryant is also shooting 40.4 percent on two-point shots, of which he takes 9.5 per game. The only two active players who fit that profile are Emmanuel Mudiay (2015-16) and Brandon Jennings (2009-10).

Defensively, the Lakers “hold” opponents to 114.4 points per 100 possessions this season with Bryant on the court. That improves to 105 when he is on the bench. He is at his worst when trying to guard a hand off, a play the opposition scores with more than half the time (56 percent).

In win shares, an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player, Bryant is on pace to cost the Lakers more than a half-win, making him the only player in NBA history to be in the red despite using better than 30 percent of the team’s possessions. Age is a part of it, but Bryant is producing the lowest win shares for any player during their age 37 season, beating the mark set by Tom Chambers during the 1996-97 season (minus-0.4). In Jordan’s last two seasons, which occurred at ages 38 and 39, he produced 3.3 and 6.2 win shares, respectively.

Bryant’s drain on the Lakers is also part of the reason why the team is so bad right now. For example, the Lakers won 45 games in 2012-13, when Bryant produced 10.9 win shares. In the three years since, Bryant has cost Los Angeles a total of 0.8 wins, which could have been more if Bryant didn’t miss 140 games to injury.

Despite this year’s struggles, Bryant’s legacy as a hall-of-fame player remains intact. He is the only player in NBA history with 11,000 made field goals, 7,000 rebounds and 6,000 assists. But you have to wonder if he hung around a year or two too long.

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