whoops, i forgot to delete wade.

For Jordan:

Finals:
Malone
Stockton
Payton
Drexler
Magic
Worthy
Barkley

EC:
(never beat Bird) but Bird/McHale/Parish
Thomas/Dumars
O'neal
Ewing
Miller
Zo
Wilkins

Probably forgot others.

You see Jordan made me feel good when I watched him play. Then LeBron came along and took those feels away from me and reminded how old and irrelevant I am.

Lebron also beat them the year before. Stockton and Malone were in the same age range when Jordan beat them.

Jordan's eastern conference teams were better. Faced HOF Pistons, Knicks with Ewing, Pacers, Miami Heat with Zo

But LeBron's finals competition >>>>>> Jordan's.

Dynasty Spurs 3x.
An OKC team with 3 future MVPs (They backdoor swept the 20-0 Spurs in 2012).
Dynasty GSW 3x.

it took jordan four freakin tries to beat the HOF Pistons though. ewing knicks and reggie pacers are just elevated to help jordans legacy and because they were cool games on nbc. ewing was obviously very good, second leading scorer was a tweener chucker who got a rep because he was undrafted scrappy player in biggest media market. bulls took the knicks to 7 WITHOUT mj and got fkd out of game 5. outscored them in that series, and that was probably the knicks BEST team. pacers lol. never even had a top 10 player. reggie is like klay thompson level. a couple 3rd team all nbas. best teams jordan faced in the east once he started ringing were 95 and 96 magic, lost once and beat them the next year

and i dont think lebron has faced relatively tough teams or many true stars in the east either. im not sure who has had it tougher, and i dont care, i dont see how it would matter. if anything, it would hurt mj stan argument if lebron had more competition because it would likely help his finals record.

And I'm saying that's ridiculous. 4 < 6. 4 MVP < 5. Talking like Lebron's 4 is better than Jordan's 6, when Lebron was SO SO close to losing two of them, is insanity.

Don't get me wrong I'm not some hard "MJ is GOAT" person I think it's super close in the overall argument. But resumes, as of a hypothetical July where LeBron is up to 4, it's still clearly Jordan (though I would probably agree in that case that Lebron would be favourite to surpass him by end of career in resume too).

Beating this Warriors team twice (if he equals/surpasses last year's Finals performance) would be more impressive than Jordan's entire resume imo.

Reggie was way better than klay thompson....

Obviously Jordan faced better relative competition in the playoffs. LeBron just cakewalks to the finals every year and then gets tested against the best team in the West.

Equally obvious is the fact that Jordan played on way better teams. He was surrounded by much better players relative to the era, and Phil Jackson was so much better than any coach LeBron had it's laughable. Pippen was MVP caliber when Jordan was playing baseball. The Cavs couldn't make the playoffs when LeBron was in Miami.

I think if LeBron can keep playing at this level for a few more years and get a couple more titles, he'll go down as GOAT.

Kyrie and Love were career losers until LBJ came along. When LBJ doesn't play since he returned, they're like 4-21 or something hilarious.

Wade was already declining when LBJ came along and hasn't had any success whatsoever without him since.

I agree with the thread that despite Jordan facing tougher conference competition, that Lebron has faced MUCH tougher Finals competition. His team's betting odds of winning the Finals, on average, is significantly lower than Jordan's. He will be an underdog once again this season. He's also so good that he makes solid teams look like YMCA scrubs, so that doesn't help.

When this discussion started a few years back, as an old I laughed and thought it wasn't even worth discussing. Now I think it's way closer than I ever thought it could be. 1a/1b as others have said.

Only reason I have Jordan ever so slightly ahead is because he never gave you the impression you could beat him. I'm trying to think about another athlete in any sport that I've seen that refused to give an inch, anywhere. He also redefined not just his sport, but SPORTS. And by virtue of doing that first (which is not Lebron's fault), he sort of gets this defacto GOAT title. But it's certainly not because of his ability to play the game better than Lebron over the course of a whole career.

If you asked me today to draft players and build a franchise, I take a 19 year old Bron #1 overall. If you asked me who I give the ball to with 11 seconds left down 1 in the 4th in game 7, I take Jordan.

rafiki with an entirely reasonable post

Guess it's just difference of opinion but when you go up against the greatest regular season team of all time and beat them and then they go out and sign the 2nd best player in the entire league and you (hypothetically) beat them again, that's worth like 5 rings right there imo.

^^

This is about as reasonable of a pro-jordan post as I've seen ITT. Seems a little unfair that Lebron basically needs to super-definitively surpass jordan in multiple ways since jordan came first and redefined sports as you say (and i agree with that statement), but that's probably how it will be looked at by a lot of people. maybe i underrated the Ali element that was brought up earlier.

I guess after reading this, it's possible I'm even selling Lebron short on the "ball in his hands to end the game" argument: http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2015/5/1...-winning-shots

So this may really be a tie for me now.

I think if LBJ beats this Warriors team he will have redefined sports in a way. He will have basically said "you cannot artificially put together a team that can beat the one I'm on." Jordan, for all his admitted unbeatableness in the 90s, never stared down the barrel of a superteam AND then stared the down the barrel of a genetically modified superteam and didn't blink.

The fact that, as Brad Stevens pointed out after Game 1, LeBron seems to be getting better almost makes me wonder if he has 4-6 years left of auto-Finals appearances. Not the 2-3 commonly believed before the Playoffs started this year. If that's the case, he has much better odds of getting to 6 or 7.

FYP

Saying Lebron beat the warriors last year is like saying "MJ beat half the Dream Team" if the 92 Dream Team scrimmaged each other and MJ's side won. the talent disparity was barely noticable if there even was one at all Love completely outplayed Curry last year the Cavs were basically not even guarding Harrison Barnes and he still shot 3-37 or something atrocious like that and Anderson Varajeo and Festus Ezeli were playing crucial minutes for them. This year is obv a lot different.

warriors fans are the best

Kevin Love and his .468ts on 18usg outplayed Curry with .580 on 31 usg. Kevin Love had a 95 ortg while playing with Lebron freaking James

Amazing. This is what happens when people have a preconceived notion and are determined, by any means necessary, to stick to it.

LeBron didn't beat the Warriors last year. Two things lost that series. Dray getting suspended, momentum shift. And then Kerr playing Ezili and continuing to play Ezili in one of the worst handful of minute stretches of basketball I've ever seen from one player in my life.

Warriors in 5/6 is inevitable, accept it. If you're stocking up on Cleveland because you think they "flipped the switch" I have a banana I want to put in your tailpipe.

Cliffs: LeBron might be GOAT if he can win this unwinnable series.

those damn momentums keep shifting by themselves

also Curry & Iggy were clearly playing hurt

but hey, a win's a win

seriously dude. cancel your account. try again. every post is horrible.