Everyone jumps in a time machine and play, Cavs beat the Bulls 90s rules or today's rules.

Give Bulls 12 months (plus a trade or two to adapt to today's understanding of the game), Bulls win 90s rules or today's rules.

If Phil makes them play the triangle full time... well... maybe not.

Lol, another one struggling with common sense.

If you're considering any answer an excuse, let's see how you answer these without giving excuses..

-why did Jordan lose in the early rounds so many times?

-why was Jordan not able to reach the finals without Pippen?

Remember, no excuses allowed.

- He was young and him and his team weren't good enough.

- He was young and him and his team weren't good enough.

The ones he mentioned aren't the same as those one (but you think are common sense apparently)...

"Wade wasn't nearly as good when he played with lebron"- that's an excuse (wade was only 28-32 btw)

He was really really good.

"lebron and wade werent a good fit together" - that's another excuse.

LeBron and Wade aren't a horrible mix fwiw

"Lebron had to play against better teams than Jordan" - that's yet another excuse

I'll pay GSW is better than anything MJ faced. It's a fallacy that SA 2013-14 were anything better than Utah.

So your position is Wade was as good, or better, during his run with Lebron than he was prior? Even during the last 2 injury plagued years?

So your position is Wade fit with Lebron as well as Pippen did with Jordan(because that's where the whole "poor fit" narrative has come from)?

i am not knocking on you but seem to me you are a bit all over the place ...

Was wade better or not than pippen ?
the last post you did 1 or 2 pages ago , the way i understood it, was pippen was as good if not better than wade. (which i totally disagree).


btw jordan face tougher challenge than lebron in the east i really do not think it is a discussion.

MJ face tougher competition in the east but had easier finals.
Lebron it is the opposite side.

imo that is telling because it just says whether jordan was in the east or west he would of won 6 nba title no matter what.
while lebron in the west is far from being sure he would achieve the same succes of not only winning the finals but just reaching it.

this is the main reason i really think the arguments of lebron reaching 7 finals was not a great arguments for being the goat.
It is a good arguements but putting all the weight on it is a mistake .
i mean reaching the finals is amazing and all but still not winning it means something to.
it means you had a great position to have success but not much else.

I'll explain.

if you have a bad team and get destroyed, your excuse is that you had a bad team

if you have a Finals team and get destroyed, you have no excuse.. assuming no major injuries of course

essentially, the whole "we got beat by a better team" excuse works best when you're a horrible 8-seed and get beat by a champion 1-seed in the first round....

it doesn't work when you're a Finals team, so lebron fans are grasping at straws when they try to defend his 3/8 Finals record

but let's say we allow Lebron fans to excuse away his 3/8 record by saying his team was too horrible to have a chance.. Then what we're really doing is excusing THE ENTIRE CONFERENCE, and saying the whole eastern conference is too bad and has no chance in the Finals..

But saying the East is too horrible to win the Finals undercuts Lebron's most impressive on-paper accomplishment: making 7 straight Finals... so as you can see, a little logic is all it takes to bust open the Lebron charade - of course, it's quite obvious that Lebron never deserved credit for making the Finals when the best team he must beat in the East is equivalent to the Grizzlies or Jazz out West (and of course for forming super-teams in one of the weakest conferences ever).

Hope that helps

Nah actually thx !
I just know how to react in the futur

Bulls
1991 Playoffs-11-1 in the EC playoffs; 1 lose in the semis
1992 Playoffs-11-5 in the EC playoffs, 3 losses in semis, 2 in the CFs
1993 Playoffs-11-2 in the EC playoffs, 2 losses in the CFs
1996 Playoffs-11-1 in the EC playoffs, 1 loss in the semis
1997 playoffs-11-2 in the EC playoffs, 2 losses in the semis
1998 playoffs-11-4 in the EC playoffs, 3 in the CFs, 1 in the semis

So in 6 years of titles, 18-0 in the first round, 24-6 in the semis and 24-9 in the CFs.

Heat/Cavs
2011-12-3 in the EC playoffs, 1 loss in CF, 1 loss in semis, 1 loss in first round
2012-12-5 in the EC playoffs, 3 loss in the CF, 1 loss in the semis, 1 loss in the first round
2013-12-4 in the EC playoffs, 3 losses in the CF, 1 in the semis
2014-12-3 in the EC playoffs, 2 losses in the CF, 1 in the semis
2015-12-2 in the EC playoffs, 2 losses in the semis
2016-12-2 in the EC playoffs, 2 losses in the CFs
2017-12-1 in the EC playoffs, 1 loss in the CFs

In 7 years of finals appearances and 3 titles, 28-2 in the first round, 28-6 in the semis, 28-12 in the conference finals.

Both teams lead by MJ and Lebron ran circles around their respective conferences. Both teams hardly struggled. You guys like to put up the EC like it was on some pedestal during the mid 90s; it clearly wasn't compared to the last 7 years. Lebron struggled a decent amount in the conference finals when he was on the Heat, more so than most years that Jordan was in the East leading the Bulls. They lost a combined 2 games in the first round so yeah, not that impressive. They lost 12 total games in 13 combined seasons in the 2nd round and 21 times in 13 combined seasons in the conference finals. While there were some good teams and most will argue the list of EC opponents in the 90s was some how more impressive and yet they never really stood much of a chance. Cavs have really just run rampant on the EC the last 3 seasons but I guess that's due to the fraudulent Hawks and Raptors being "good."

I don't agree that Lebron's most impressive on paper accomplishment is making 7 finals in a row. It's effectively being the best player in the league the last ~10 seasons. There are probably a few years where Lebron lead a team that wasn't the 2nd-4th best team to the Finals, likely the 2007 team and possibly a team in the last 7 finals appearances. With that being said, I think the Heat/Cavs teams overperform their regular season records in the playoffs with that being said they probably are still not as elite as some of the teams that ended up beating them in the finals.

I agree with your assessment but that's the issue with the current playoff format. I would prefer the 1-16 seed without conference affiliation.

2017-I'm going to find it tough to argue they are at worst the 3rd best team in the league and 2nd best if Kawhi is hurt like he was.
2016-Best team or at worst 2nd best team
2015-Second best team seems fair although you could argue the Rockets or the Spurs; despite Kyrie missing 5 games and Love missing the finals they take two from the Warriors without HCA but you can argue Grizz took two from them
2014-4th best team at worst? OKC/LAC have legit arguments for 2nd and 3rd best
2013-They won no real issue here--you can argue Spurs are the best team in the league
2012-They won, no real issue here-Boston/OKC/Spurs all look like they have some sort of claim at #1
2011-I guess you could argue Spurs (who got eliminated in first round to the Grizz) or OKC have some claim as being the 2nd or 3rd best teams

So what seasons are you going to argue the Cavs/Heat being 5th or worst best team because they play in the East. This conference **** is mad overplayed.

You can make arguments that in some years in the 2000s that the Nets/Sixers weren't top 5-6 teams in the league and made the finals but most of the teams since then have had legit top 3-4 team claim.

Those Detroit teams were quite good, as were the Celtics; maybe the Magic team that faced the Lakers weren't top tier.

It's hard to tell if Wade was as good. He certainly wasn't in his last year, but before that he wasn't far off it. When they joined up he was only 12 months removed from being the scoring champ. Being with another all time great is going to dent your scoring output, and he still averaged more than 26ppg over the first two seasons.

I'm just saying there's no reason to believe he wasn't as good as Pippen in those years.

Wade has had injury issues his whole career. I'm sure you are aware of that.

I think Wade and LeBron fit just fine. 4 straight seasons to the Finals. And as you mentioned if LeBron hadn't of choked in 2011 they would probably have 3 chips. That's a better clip than MJ and Pippen. I think the combo is just fine. They are both SG/SF combos. The only area of the game they worked significantly better on was on the defensive end.

Isn't that half the game?

The issue is both are ball dominant scorers who love being in the paint and are better on ball then off. Wade and Lebron despite playing with each other are both top 12 in career usage (Lebron 6th and Wade 12th) and there isn't a stat that's readily available but both prefer the balls in their hands. They were very good, I think a better pairing is to have a scorer and a shooter. Curry/Durant are both ball dominant but I think both are better off ball then Wade/Lebron. Lebron/Wade aren't going to be great pure catch and shoot guys.

Yes, but I'd argue Wade is light years ahead offensively to Pippen. I was just pointing out an area where it was in MJ/Pippen's favor.

Is Pippen really that good off the ball? Not really. He's not a shooter. He's not a spacer. I guess he gets some points on slashes to the basket.

Michael Jordan really isn't known for his catch and shooting either.

They are both better with the ball in their hand as well. Pippen is definitely best with the ball in his hands. He just didn't have it in his hands as much because of MJ.

I see the combo being pretty similar in a lot of ways. Pippen is a poor man's LeBron and Wade is a poor man's MJ.

You are 100% right about Curry though (more so than Durant). He's perfect off the ball.

Wade/bosh were both top 3 defensively at their position, not sure why people forget that. Heat were probably the best defense in the nba.

I still think that the East back then is stronger than the East of the last 7 years (though the last seven years wasn't nearly as bad as the early 2000s - yuck!)

I really wish that 2015 Hawks team had of not fallen off the cliff come Feb. Before that they were awesome. Thought it was going to be an amazing ECF that year. But they were **** from Feb on. Finished the season 20-14 and then struggled to get through the first two rounds against 38 and 46 win teams. Then they were no match for the Cavs in the ECF.

Two years later and everyone is gone.

Sad what happened to that team.

Jordan was also the best player in the league for ten years

10 scoring titles

This is a very smart well thought out post.

This really gets down to the core of just "what exactly " has lebron accomplished to be considered the Goat.

The answer; not nearly enough

All the Bronies must have late game muscle cramps and are unable to post

Have enjoyed the fidstar, capone posts. Fidstar has convinced me about Wade. It's easy to knock him down because he's not very good now, but those first two years (and the third year in the playoffs), he was amazing.

It's been nice to see which arguments don't work too well and which work better. It's pretty clear to me that MJ and LeBron are the top 2 of all time.

The east was way tougher back in jordan days. I wonder which teams are better Detroit's bad boys, Knicks with Oakley, Mason, Ewing, Starks, Mark jackson, kiki vandeweghe. Boston's Bird, Mchale, Parish, Dennis Johnson, Walton. The Cavs lead by Brad Daugherty and Mark price. The Pacers lead by Reggie Miller and Rick Smits. Playing against Bad boys, knicks, celtics especially would rough you up bad if you ever dare come near their basket. If Lebron tried lowering his shoulder and barrelling to the basket back then he would be on his ass all night. More like after the first time he came to the rim Oakley would deck him stand over him and Lebron would never dare try again and he would just shoot his inconsistant 3's.

This while Lebron's toughest competition is the Wizards, Celtics with zero superstars, and the Raptors who have some talented kids but never enough to compete with Lebron's hand picked superteams.

The whole point of the thread is to pick 1.

Copone post are awful, scroll back a few more pages.

Fidstar made a fool of most all the lebron supporters.

None of them are even close to in the same league as Bird in the same league as Bird. Kevin Love obv not good because LeBron doesn't have enough good players

Larry bird blows so does Michael. Cavemen

There now you all know the truth boo hoo

Are Nash and nowitzki not good either? I was responding to someone who said no good white players except those two since bird which is clearly false. All of those guys are HOFers, I didn't say any were as good as bird but it's shocking you feel as you do and continue to post like a donkey.