The problem with the theory of Kobe doing so much more to help his teammates when he's on the court (things that supposedly could never be captured in the box score) than James is that it's demonstrably not true.
If that were the case, it would be reflected in his adjusted plus-minus rating, which isolates his impact on the team's point margin when he's on the floor, controlling for his teammates and the level of competition. Kobe's +/- in the 2010 playoffs was +6.12, which is impressive until you consider that LeBron James' was +17.61. The problem for LeBron is that only one of his teammates had a positive +/- in the playoffs -- Anderson Varejao. And this isn't just in the Celtics series, this includes the Chicago series as well. Also, let me restate that this metric uses no boxscore stats, it simply records the player's impact on team performance when he's on the floor, indirectly capturing all of those "little things" that Kobe supposedly does to make his teammates better.
Unfortunately, this means the idea that Bryant does so much beyond the boxscore to make up for James' enormous stat-sheet advantage is simply false. There's really no way to provide evidence that Bryant is better than James without either resorting to subjective nonsense or assigning his teammates' accomplishments to him (i.e., the championship argument).
