yeah but Cavs pretty clearly are not a "true" 51 win team. they are a closer to a 60 win team if they actually (Lebron) tried all year.

feels like without Lebron they should still be Bulls-esque

ah true, 40-45 wins sans lebron if they tried could be reasonable. if they replaced Lebron with a league average player even moreso.

They're like a 18-20 win team pace without Lebron since he returned, and love/Kyrie played most of those games

Going to be interesting to see what the Warriors do and end up paying their players going forward.

Curry should get 5/205; not exactly sure but Durant 4/152 (27M option next year). Klay is making 37 over 2; Dray has 52 over 3.

Iggy is a FA
Looney/Jones/McCaw are the only other players on the roster for next year and already 40M is tied up and up to 66 with the Durant option in 4 players.

Cavs have 130M locked up for next year but everyone key but Korver is locked up and the year after 130M but Frye is addition.

My point, which was apparently unclear, is that the dollar value of teammate contracts is totally irrelevant because of how salaries have changed. The quality of their supporting casts has been debated ad nauseum already.

Maybe lebron does have better teammates. I disagree, but there could be some decent arguments that he does. I just think it's funny and ridiculous to say "of course lebron has better teammates, they get paid more". Someone like Mozgov probably made more this year than every non Jordan starter combined on the first bulls championship team. It's meaningless.

But how much would those vintage cigarettes be worth now?

Putting this here just cause I was curious enough to look it up, the Cavs are -1.3/100 in 1149 minutes with Lebron off and Kyrie/Love on since the return via NBAwowy.

Lebron has played with 4 #1 players from other teams and all were in the prime of their careers at the time. MJ's second best teammate was Dennis Rodman who was never better than the third best player on any team he ever played for.

This is misleading. Rodman > Love, Rodman > Bosh. Rodman is also probably better than Kyrie, but we'll see how Kyrie's future looks. Wade was not in his prime anymore when LeBron played with him.

Furthermore, Rodman's strengths really complemented MJ+Pippen. The same can't be said of Love or even Bosh (Bosh had to change a lot to be as useful as he was in Miami). And Wade's strengths were redundant. He was still awesome, but didn't add as much value as others could've.

Rodman led the 1991-92 Pistons in PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, VORP. Third best tho.

He was terrible in the triple threat

Quick followup, Cavs are +6.1/100 in 1878 minutes with Lebron on and both Kyrie/Love off.

Jordan played with the 95-96 version, the one popovich punted off a 62 win team for Will Perdue.

Not really sure what relevance rodmans pistons stats from four years before they played are good for. Rodman played 33 more games in the league over 2 seasons after the second three peat.

Seems perfectly relevant when people are referencing Bosh as a #1 that Lebron played with.

Bosh was a 26 year old who came off a 24/10 season.

Rodman was really good his first year back with Jordan but declined a decent amount the next two years. Bosh was never a true #1 and Rodman was a better fit with MJ's skill set but I think it's fair to say Bosh > 34-36 year old Rodman for value purposes.

Pippen >>>> Wade though for sure. I think the gap is greater than people realize too.

"Lebron had Wade on his team!" (...) "That's not the version of Rodman that Jordan got to play with!". Great arguments guys, top notch.

I figured out who Gerb Ill is......Barkley said Kobe > Lebron legacy wise right now and Lebron might pass Kobe if he beats the Warriors this year. The strength of Barkley's argument is Kobe has 5 titles, Lebron only has 3....LUL.

lol this is the kind of ******ed **** i was referring to when i said it might just be impossible for lebron to pass jordan in the eyes of mainstream media. but then barkley started raving about him being the best player on the planet so now im confused.

Its cool to see mainstream media starting to entertain this debate. Especially in contrast to the absurd Kobe/Lebron debates of prior years, its clear that everyone has gotten a lot sharper and that makes for a much more entertaining discussion.

If forced to pick a side I'd go with this long-winded, caveat-filled response: Right now its really close if you're talking who was actually better over the course of their careers. If you want to neglect the inherent variance in sports and give more weight to accomplishments over simply asking "who was better at basketball?", then MJ certainly pulls ahead. But I think that in 10 years from now it won't be particularly close- I predict Lebron to have an elite aging curve(his size/passing/court vision/bball IQ/ability to hit 3s well enough to force D to guard it will all age great and his body type seems to be >>> all other humans in regards to holding up to wear and tear...he'll basically be some crazy Karl Malone/Nikola Jokic hybrid late into his 30s). The Jordan/Kobe player type, meanwhile, seems to age horribly due to the inability to thrive as a second or third option(perhaps in large part due to an ego which was initially necessary to spur them on to their greatness).

With all that said, I don't feel super strong about those opinions. I mostly just wanted to chime in with a few talking points which I feel like gone somewhat overlooked. These are all pro-Lebron points, but thats only because popular opinion seems to still greatly favor MJ and the points in MJ's favor tend to already get mentioned by the mainstream....

1. This doesn't really apply to MJ or Lebron, but we should stop using "number of rings" in the GOAT argument and start using "number of rings as the undisputed best player on the team." Everyone seems to intrinsically understand this when discussing someone like Robert Horry, but it never gets brought up with Kobe's first 3 titles or Shaq's last or quite a few other examples. Obviously those players deserve more credit than Horry for their team success in those years, but I don't think you should get to "point to the rings" when some of the rings came as the second best player on your team.

2. Players were allowed to hand-check(and play much more physical in general) in MJ's era. Players are not allowed to hand-check in Lebron's era. This somehow gets used as a talking point against Lebron, and that blows my f*cking mind. I mean, I get it- people pay way more attention to offense than defense, so they only think of the disadvantage MJ had(having to be defend by players who could hand-check him) rather than the advantage it gave him(getting to hand-check when you're defending). Regardless, this shouldn't be all that complicated- allowing players to be more physical benefits the bigger/stronger/more athletic players. It benefits Lebron perhaps more than anyone else in NBA history. This should be common sense.

3. I think its legitimate to criticize MJ's shot selection/3 point shooting. The pro-MJ crowd will argue that "the league didn't shoot 3s back then like they do now, so naturally this shouldn't be used against MJ." I get that, but I'm not sold on it. There wasn't some rule against shooting 3s back in the day- the players didn't execute optimal strategy because neither they nor the coaches understood optimal strategy. This unawareness of optimal strategy is a part of how MJ performed, and I don't think it should necessarily be excused because his contemporaries were similarly unaware. Its not comparable to something like evaluating old movies where certain filming techniques weren't even invented yet so you must only judge in comparison to contemporaries. Nothing prevented Jordan from shooting more 3s other than his own incompetence at understanding proper strategy. "Would Jordan be better than Lebron if he had all of the advantages of modern training/coaching?" is a different question than "Was Jordan better than Lebron?".

4. "MJ was the best player of all time."

"There is ample evidence to suggest that MJ got lucky to run higher than expectation in high leverage situations which allowed media/fans to create after-the-fact narratives pertaining to an ability to raise his level of play in clutch situations which may or may not actually be true."

I think its important to note that these two statements are in no way mutually exclusive.

also, illegal defense rules of jordans era would benefit lebron immensely. the mavs and celtics beat lebron by playing defense that would not have been allowed in the 90s.

why ?

You think each year the best player on the planet is automatically close to a Goat ?

Anyway referencing Barkley as mainstream media is pretty funny.
Even he his in the media i think he knows a lot more about basketball (he was a monster in his prime) than a lot of us around here and other "reporters" in the media...

It is just not about winning championship, he said he reach has many final as Lebron btw, but he got a 5-2 record and Lebron a 3-4 record.

Did Barkley some how forget Kobe had Shaq or even Phil? If you ignore being the best player as the crux of your argument when it comes to GOATs and titles, then you would go down the Horry/Russell path.

MJ and LeBron have very similar stats (PER, TS%, WinShares/48, etc.); MJ's rate (ppg) and some of his counting stats are slightly better and his finals record is obviously better. LeBron has better rebounding/assisting and will likely have a much longer career than Jordan. We can also talk about era/situations when it comes to MJ/LeBron and the final records and how important that is as well as era/situations are where the grey areas are. I guess MJ fans can also bring up the "killer instinct crap" as well. LeBron fans can bring up multiple retirements in MJ's prime.

Conversely, MJ and LeBron statistically are significant better than Kobe in basically all aspects except finals record between Kobe and Lebron. MJ and LeBron have more MVPs, more finals MVPs, etc. Moreso, Kobe's first 3 titles came on the back of Shaq as the best player on the team; likewise, the difference between Kobe and Pau in the last 2 titles wasn't that great--they were almost 1a/1b. I think Kobe is a great player but he has no business being in the same air as MJ or Jordan. I'm not even sure which years you could earmark Kobe being the best player in the league (Shaq/Duncan/LeBron/MJ all have arguments during Kobe's years in the league) while you could possibly do that for 10+ years for both MJ and Lebron.

It's not worth arguing. Even the most delusional anti-Bron haters ITT would acknowledge Bron > Kobe.

Barkley is a Skip Bayless level troll. His analysis of the Warriors has been awful for years as well.

Kobe won without shaq twice being final MVP.
And did Kobe always had the better team ( when shaq left) when he won compare to LeBron ?
If I am right , LeBron was the season MVP that year in 2009 when Kobe won so ...
Not saying LeBron below Kobe but it is close and it is a bit of a counter arguments of the :
Well LeBron reach 7 final and Jordan 6 ( better to lose in first round than the final ..)
Well Kobe reach as much of LeBron but with a better score.
Now LeBron reach a 8th final and if he won will be 4 and 4 and would beat a monster team so yeah makes sense he would "definitely surpass Kobe".