they don't win 55 games with him

They went from being one of the best ALL-TIME teams to a top 8ish team in the current league. If you don't think that's much -- I don't know what else to say. We obviously aren't going to agree on much.

A 47 win team plus adding a 25 year old Bosh (coming off a 24/11 season) is a pretty solid team.

Even if LeBron hadn't of gone there, there would have been no reason not to think they were a good chance of coming out of the East.

Again you overrate titles. Bulls had the 3rd best record in the league the previous season and won the title. While the three year accomplishments of the bulls are great, from year to year which is what we're talking about aren't very relevant. Bulls second peat is a lot more goatish.

Sounds like we agree, then...

They were a solid team without Jordan. With Jordan, they were a 3-peat dynasty. That's a pretty large drop.

Seems to me your overrating season wins. I mean the Cavs won 51 games this year. That's terrible for any team with LeBron (and two other All Stars) on it. But it appears they have done the right thing to make sure after 2 grueling seasons (more in LeBron's case) to be ready for the post season. But on talent they are a 60-65 win team.

If LeBron left and they had a whole offseason to sort themselves out, including some recruiting (like the Bulls did when MJ left), Cavs probably still win 40-50 games. No one would say "LeBron is only worth 5 or so wins". No he's worth a lot more.

How do we rate teams then? It's solely by titles or how many they won in a row? How dominating they were in the playoffs? The bulls as mentioned took the knicks to 7 games in the eastern conference semis without Jordan. The bulls lost to the Same team to the rockets who won the title to 7 games. The gap between the bulls and the rockets that year probably wasn't that great but not saying records are transferable. Let's say the bulls team beat the knicks and lost to the rockets in 7. Are they insanely better or hardly better than the team that lost to the knicks? The bulls were extremely competitive with likely the second best team in the league in a 7 game series. I just don't think the drops between nearly titles and titles is that dramatic. Just like I don't think the heat who beat the spurs in 7 or the Cavs who beat the warriors in 7 are so much better because there was a one game difference in their playoff seasons. I'm sorry I don't fall for the title or nothing narratives.

Two teams get the privilege of playing for the title, the guy who wins every time when he makes it there with a large sample is better.

This **** ain't rocket science

6 is a large sample? Do you realize the issue with sports are the lack of sample size and variance or is that too complex to you? Variance is what makes sports fun but it's also what makes it stupid to argue about many aspects of it.

Sports aren't a computer simulation to be filled in by fan fiction, weren't not going to be able to run these back 100,1000, or 10,000 times for your scientific analysis. This is the beauty of sports.

1993 Bulls are not that high on the all-time list. If Charles Smith can get a shot in under the basket in Game 5, the Bulls are probably out in the ECF. The '93 Bulls with Jordan win with that bit of variance, the '94 Bulls without Jordan lose to the Knicks without that bit of variance (the arguably bad foul call).

The issue with sports is we cannot neatly fit the results that we want to because arguing against facts that don't serve our narrative isn't easy.

The fact that regular season NBA wins is one of the greatest arguments against MJ/for Lebron proves that this is not even a close fight. It's always amusing to see how much emphasis the Lebron slap pies put on REGULAR SEASON NBA wins.

Pro Jordan posters have to be some of the worst posters on 2p2. Not because of their side of the argument, but just because they're really really bad posters.

You are right. But honestly, LeBron guys aren't great either.

The whole, Bulls aren't that much better when Jordan wasn't there argument is pretty terrible. It's never mention by them that the Bulls were a 500 team before MJ returned and turned them into the GOAT 72 win team.

And the reason both sides arguments aren't great is because you are talking about the two GOATs. Any "anti the other guy" posts are going to be terrible, because there's a reason they are seen as the best two players ever.

I say this as a guy who has argued for both LeBron and MJ.

I don't think people ever bring it up as a way to criticize Jordan's abilities, or that anyone actually believes the team was almost as good without him. It's almost always brought up as a counter argument to RANGZ or general team success, which makes sense, that team was much better without Jordan than any of Lebron's ever were without him.

Not all people are making that argument like that.

And as I mentioned before I think 47 win Heat plus Bosh is still pretty good. 50-55 wins wouldn't have been unrealistic. Which is what the Bulls team was.

LeBron shoots more FTs per 100 possessions (11.0-10.6) but Jordan shot more per 36 min (7.0-5.6) because of the pace. Did teams just shoot the first semi open shot they had and try and fast break every play? Bad defense probably plays into the pace not sure if it's a correlation or causation.

The teams didn't suck, lol @ people who said that. There were a lot of great teams in the 90s that came away emptyhanded because they weren't the Bulls or Rockets.

1991 - Bulls were probably the better team but the Lakers were decimated by injuries and still nearly (and should have) led the series 2-1. Further, the Lakers even getting to the finals required a huge upset over the Blazers, who theoretically would have been a better (or at least healthier) opponent. On the other hand...

1992 - the NBA and NBC spent the entire season pumping up Clyde Drexler as Jordan's top rival and possibly a threat to his crown (if you weren't old enough to remember this, it actually happened and was very lol). One small problem, Drexler was a massive playoff slanker as already evidenced by letting the Pistons roll them in all three games on the road in 1990 and then losing to a clearly inferior Lakers team the year prior. Just like David Robinson, Drexler didn't ring until he deferred to someone else.

1993 - Bulls shouldn't even have made the finals. Knicks were a #1 seed who gave the series away thanks to Charles Smith. Too bad - I was at the Suns - Knicks fight game that year and it was a classic. Would have been intense. Suns were a decent opponent but played like little bitches the first two games before making it a series.

1996 - 72-10 Bulls were the story, but Seattle was a way better team than most people remember. Like maybe the best team not to win a title in the 90s. They just picked the wrong year to peak.

1997 - 1998 - I don't remember the east playoffs that well other than Indiana took them to seven games in 1998. Utah certainly didn't suck though.

I already covered this in a long post that nobody probably read. The short version is that people who think that they would have won eight straight are idiots who don't understand how egos and salary caps work.

Genius Sonics coach George Karl didn't put GP on MJ until they were already down 3-0, MJ was terrible the next 3 games but they lost in 6. Nice coaching George. Maybe if his dad set a better example he would've adjusted sooner.

He wasn't terrible in Game 5.

It was by far his worst Final Series though.

26 points on 22 shots, 1 assist. Below average game for him for sure, and the other two games he was straight up awful.

How did I know you'd find a way to sneak David Robinson in this post lol. Utah was really good especially in 97. Both Utah and Seattle are clearly better than any of the runner up teams in the early 2000s.

This is a pretty good argument. Sprinkle on top Jordan's weaker finals opponents and that LeBrons peak is going to be longer than Jordan's career.


Let's face it, there's only 2 major arguments left against LeBron.

1 Double threepeat
2. No major series under performing.

First one is slipping away because he has a chance to go back to back twice against way better teams.

2nd one will never go away. Obviously all the Jordan lovers will put way more emphasis on that than needs to be.

Like if we are drafting, LeBron goes 1 right? 12 year peak compared to injuries and early retirement. Jordan's absolute peak might be a little higher (like .7 PER, .03WS/48) but having 4/5 more season of excellence over rides that.

If LeBron wins this year, and doesn't fall off a cliff, its over. However if he never wins another title again as the best player, cant put him above him imo.

Definitely below average, but he wasn't terrible. Did shoot 50% from the field. It wasn't a great series from him. Easily his worst Finals appearance.