Talents like MJ and Lebron are going to light up any era their in. How they'd transition is not a concern but their weaknesses would show up too. Lebron has a career 34% shot percentage outside the paint in the postseason. Teams back then would rough him up inside in a much more physical game and try to get him shoot some jumpers. On Jordan's end he'd likely have to improve his 3 point shooting today which was streaky back then.
In the last 3 years he has shot like 47% between 16ft and 3pt line - which is ridiculously good. You can't just let him shoot jumpers. And I'm sure MJ would have learned to shoot 3s if he played in this era.
...and unlike many scorers - Lebron is a better passer than he's a scorer. If players were dropping in the paint to "rough" him up - he'd make the right play and pass the ball.
In the last 3 years he has shot like 47% between 16ft and 3pt line - which is ridiculously good. You can't just let him shoot jumpers. And I'm sure MJ would have learned to shoot 3s if he played in this era.
...and unlike many scorers - Lebron is a better passer than he's a scorer. If players were dropping in the paint to "rough" him up - he'd make the right play and pass the ball.
Jordan and Lebron would have dominated any era.
I said he would dominate. I'm not questioning that just noting he does have flaws over the course of his career that could be his undoing at points. He's improved the past few years but like in 14 he shot 26% outside the paint. But it goes for MJ too. There's parts of his game he'd have to improve to overcome other great players today.
Yes, I did see Russell play and in no way is he the GOAT or are his 11 rings the benchmark for greatness. Wilt was the more dominant player who didn't have the talent around him like Bill had.
I also disagree that you have to have seen a player play to deem them one of the greats. Are you saying an 18 year old kid cant have looked at stats and YouTube and say MJ is the GOAT? I never saw Ted Williams play but would have to be an idiot not to recognize him as an all time great.
Do you really think that Willie Mays cant be considered as the best player ever because he won only 1 WS or couldnt be in that discussion if the Giants hadn't won in 1954? I think that is incredibly shortsighted
I saw Wilt go up against Russell many times, it was the best matchup ever. Russell knew how to get into Wilts' head. When you talk about the GOAT if Championships are not part of the equation then stats are the primary factor? You have to be lucky to get into the big games and produce under extreme pressure. That's what makes greatness. PS, my first baseball game was at the Polo Grounds in NY and Willie was in centerfield.
Even Bill Simmons, the biggest Celtics homer of all time, has Jordan over Bill Russell in his top 50 players list.
Originally posted by 4ML:
So much for Lebron's defense fallen off the cliff:
Lebron is currently 48th in the postseason in defensive win shares. That's an improvement over the 309th number he posted in the regular season, but again the field is shortened tremendously. This is part of playing in the East, though. He gets a seven game ECF where the opposing team's best players are missing. The only legit competition he will face this entire playoffs will be the Ws. He annually gets one team worth a damn he has to play due to the lopsided nature of the NBA today.
IMO the top tier big men should be moved into their own category. Being 7'0+ is a pretty significant natural advantage. Feeding the ball down low to a big man to dominate the paint seems far less impressive than the things Jordan did.
Originally posted by 4ML:
MJ is the Goat but let's not get too crazy. You can't give credit to MJ on offense by saying he played when hand checking was allowed and then also give him credit on defense. Imagine if Lebron was allowed to handcheck.
Plus, 90s didn't have shooters like we have today. Lot easier to play defense when you know no one is gonna pull up from 27ft for a jumper.
As Kerr said on TNT a while back - before he became HC - Lebron would be even more dominant in the 90s than he's today because you wouldn't be able to stop him with handcheck (bigger, stronger and faster) and you couldn't play zone defense back then.
Lebron has been to playoffs 13 times. Jordan went to playoffs 13 times too.
Lebron has higher DWS, WS and VORP than Jordan. Frankly, it's not that close either
Yes, Lebron does take plays off on defense - but he doesn't have Pippen run the offense and Rodman dominate on glass. He doesn't have the luxury to just focus on scoring and defend.
And MJ would have been even more dominant today if you couldn't handcheck him. He's a much better midrange shooter than LBJ and better off the dribble. It was comical in Game 1 the other night to hear people whining about LBJ not getting foul calls. Yeah, he was getting bumped, but that's what MJ had to deal with every night of his career. Teams initially started playing variations of zone in the NBA to combat Shaq, not slashing perimeter players. Teams rarely play true zones in the NBA now, as it's a difficult concept to master if you don't run it almost exclusively the way Syracuse does in college. The tradeoff between zone defense vs no handchecking would tip wayyyy in MJ's favor, though. This dude would average an additional 10 FTAs easily in today's NBA.
As for the handchecking rules and their effects on defense, LBJ doesn't have the footspeed anymore to stay in front of people. You can make excuses all you want, but Kevin Love led the NBA in rebounding 4 straight seasons in MN, and Kyrie was a guy who was obviously capable of pumping in 40 points in critical Finals games while handling the big shots and functioning as the closer in those series. Let's not go too crazy with the Lebron martyr complex without acknowledging that he is the de facto GM and coach of that team and has made life incredibly hard for the organization with all of his melodramatic short term contracts and strongarming the front office into signing his guys to stupid contracts like Tristan and JR. I also don't consider the propensity for people to chuck low % deep threes as an indication that defense would be tougher to play.
As for the other metrics you quoted, I'm honestly not sure where you're getting them. I'm looking at MJ's complete seasons as a Bulls player. I'm not counting his second year where he played 18 games or his "45" return when he played 17 games for obvious reasons, and I'm not counting his time as a 39 -40 yr old with the Wizards.
MJ is better than LBJ in WS, DWS, and VORP.
Maybe you are confining it just to playoffs, which again is skewed because MJ was running up on teams like the Larry Bird Celtics in the first round while LBJ missed the playoffs entirely his first two years and then got to play cupcake teams like the Washington Wizards in the first round three straight years. If you want to try and understand the discrepancy in opponents, consider that Jordan never missed the playoffs and thus had to play teams that averaged 62 wins his first three seasons, while LBJ missed the playoffs for two years and then got to play three Wizards teams that averaged 42 wins. Then consider that it was the Bird Celtics and the legendary Bad Boys that eliminated Jordan in the East before he ascended to his undefeated Finals run. LBJ personally constructed is own superteams in the East beginning in Miami in 2011 and continuing through his second Cavs stint. He stacked the deck in his favor in what has been a pitifully weak East, and even when his team hasn't been stacked like this season, he gets bailed out because he's literally playing a team missing its two best players in the conference finals, which is just unheard of and an indictment of the weak East once again.
Then there's the fact that Jordan led the league in steals 3 different times, was second once, was third three times, and fourth once. All while leading the league in scoring. Unbelievable but he did it like that on both ends. Jordan also had 4 seasons where his individual defensive rating was higher than Lebron's best ever single season defensive rating. It's pretty insulting to MJ to try and compare them defensively. There's a reason one of them was first team all defense 9x despite missing two seasons in his prime while the other has been first team defense 5x and has been trending downward since 2014.
[ Edited by TheBlueHell on Jun 3, 2018 at 10:21 AM ]
Originally posted by Jiks:
Curry is about to have as many rings as LBJ and probably will end up leading his team to more. What he's doing is far more Jordan-esque imo.
Don't buy it , Curry has two of the greatest shooters in the history of the NBA to play alongside him.
Curry is about to have as many rings as LBJ and probably will end up leading his team to more. What he's doing is far more Jordan-esque imo.
Yeah, let's not go overboard. Can you seriously imagine Jordan losing finals MVP to iggy? Pippen was Iggy on steroids and he never got one. He's also constantly getting attacked on defense. I don't see it, man. Unless you're saying Jordan was the 2nd best player on his team.
How can you be considered in the goat conversation when you lose twice as many times as you've won on the biggest stage? I wonder if he becomes the biggest loser in nba finals history by the time he retires? After this series he'll be two championship losses away from catching Elgin Baylor and Jerry West for most losses all time.
He again got called out tonight by JVG and Jackson for lack of defensive effort. Damn, ESPN just did a splitscreen on LBJ showing him dogging it on defense and not even bothering to go to the other end while KD wound up with a dunk in a halfcourt set.
[ Edited by TheBlueHell on Jun 3, 2018 at 8:09 PM ]
