Hmm. Well, I think Kobe is an inner circle Hall of Famer, so it's hard to be far better than that, but I think James is already significantly better than Kobe at his peak of a few years ago. By that same token, though, I don't buy much into this "We still haven't even seen James at his prime" argument. I don't think James has a lot of upside left, because there just isn't much higher a player can go, realistically. Like Jordan, I think James has fulfilled most of his potential extremely fast. He may improve a little and have a season or two that are better than this, but I think this will be around his level until he declines.
And while James may be a little overrated defensively, I thought the same about Kobe. It's simply a fact about sports observer psychology, IMO: any fantastic offensive player who shows any competence/effort on defense will tend to be overrated at least a bit on the defensive end. For the first half of Kobe's career, he had an intimidating defensive presence behind him in Shaq. Shaq's man defensive skills had declined due to weight gain and lack of effort, but he still possessed an intimidation factor to slashers. Kobe was able to play tighter man defense, because being beaten off the dribble was a less of a concern with Shaq behind him. That led to the perception (and, to some extent, reality) of a hounding, pressing defender who contested everything...but he had an advantage that allowed him to do that. Since Shaq left the Lakers, I think he's been like McGrady was before the back problems or like Durant is now...generally average on defense with the ability to turn up the defensive pressure on select possessions.
You say that Kobe is in the "Magic Johnson/Larry Bird" tier of skills, which is a notch above James...I simply don't see what Kobe does/did better than James. Magic Johnson has long been one of James' most common comparisons. I think James actually has the claim to being "the most skilled player ever" for one big reason: in addition to possessing the full complement of wing skills (passing, ball-handling, vision, shooting) he also has true high post and low post skills (beyond merely being able to shoot fade-aways out of the post). That makes James extremely unique in the "skills" department.
I think a lot of Kobe Bryant. I've always defended him against claims that he was a selfish player, or that he couldn't/wouldn't distribute the ball, or that he was nothing compared to Jordan. I just think he's "merely" a top-20 player or so (like Duncan or Garnett in his own time), whereas James is one of all-time transcendent players.
