i still dont like those utah teams. w/l record is hugely padded by a weak division

Fair enough comment. But in the period they had basically exactly the same playoff record as that SA team (late/post Duncan prime SA).

Really...
Well whether they suck or not, Karl Malone was MVP in 1997 &1999.
True not in 1998 but well ... because he finish second behind MJ !

Weak western conference or not, MJ did face the best ( behind him of course) player in the league during those 2 finals !
That team was good .

Ho yeah, in 1993 he beat another MVP in the finals , Barkley !
True in the other finals he did not play vs the MVP simply because he was the MVP ...

Saying MJ did not face tough competition in the finals is ridiculous when he actually face multiple time MVP caliber ....

Ps: Been said multiple time about regular season w/l..
Is Warriors this year weaker than last year ? Nuff said !

Like I said earlier in the thread, the biggest black mark against Lebron is losing to Dallas in 2011.

Miami had home court and came in to that series a 2 to 1 betting favorite. Lebron also didnt perform as well statistically in that series either.

I simply cant see Jordan's bulls losing to an equivalent strength team with home court.

Per ELO and SRS, all of the GSW teams are significantly better than any team Jordan ever faced.

Per ELO the '14 Spurs > any team Jordan ever faced as well, and per SRS the '14 Spurs and '07 Spurs are >>> the best team MJ faced (97 Jazz).

Per ELO, Jordan also faced 3 teams worse (91 Lakers, 92 Blazers, 93 Suns) than the worst team Lebron ever faced (11 Mavs)

Per SRS, the 11 Mavs are the worst team either MJ or LBJ faced, but that's mitigated by Lebron facing 5(!!!) teams better than MJ ever faced, including 3 of the top 7 of all time.

No matter how you judge it - Lebron has faced much stiffer competition in the Finals. Now, how much how easy road helped him, would take a lot more work, but it cannot be denied his Finals competition has been much harder.

Is this elo coming in to the finals or post finals?

I agree. It's a pathetic loss. However, its offset by beating the GOAT team in 2016.

How can a goat team lose ? Even more so when a better team already appeared?
Agree this year warriors could be considered goat tho.

Yeah this year's team was better but at the time, the '16 Warriors were either the GOAT or 2nd GOAT.

Either way, it's enough to offset the Mavs loss.

And the GOAT team can lose when they run into LABRON.

post finals.

Not sure how to sort by regular season (if it's even possible) so I put SRS in there as a complement to only factor in regular season

The 11 Mavs would be an example of a sick postseason run inflating the final ELO of the team

I dont think I need to explain why using post finals elo is extraordinarily flawed.

Elo after conference finals would be best. I remember seeing this historic stat somewhere but I forget where.

Another interesting fact seem to surface as well .
All the considered "goat" players in their respective time seem to be in the goat team as well ( which makes sense right if you are the best player who ever lived ?).

Why is lebron seem to never have been in a goat team ?
How strange?
I mean if his better than MJ, should not be hard to create a goat team with his massive talents and skills?

Ho yeah I get it... he rather avoids the tough western conference ,where all the other great players are ( which if he went in the WC , he could form a true goat team !), to have an easy path to the nba finals.

Then excuses are easy, well I faced a goat team in the finals 0o.
Of course you face team that have huge potential in the finals because all the good players are there !

Actually no, as soon he faced a player near his caliber ( Durant) in a good team , he got destroyed .

My mistake - it was actually composite ELO which is an average of Peak, Mean, and End season ELO. I agree not perfect, but not as bad as post Finals only.

If you figure out a way to do after conference finals let me know.

Lol. LeBron has beaten Durant in the Finals before, and in 2016 beat a unanimous MVP in Curry.

Ho yeah the famous Elo ratings...

Here is an example of Elo rating for determining the goat in tennis.
Hilarious

Who would you take ?
Durant or curry ?

Btw Durant was like 23year in his first NBA final, he did great for a guy that was facing the "goat" right?

With more maturity look what happened vs a peak lebron on top of it right ?
Since he was the defending champs defeating the goat team ..

2016 Curry is the best season by a decent margin between the two players so Curry then. KD might individually be better, it's a tricky question. I think the Warriors get worse losing Curry than losing KD, so it's close.

Either way, your comment is idiotic because LeBron beat KD before and 2016 Curry was certainly "near LeBron's caliber"

KD couldn't even make the Finals again after losing to LeBron without joining a 73 win team featuring the reigning 2 time MVP and 2 other all NBA players.

Don't know much about ELO rankings.

Someone tell me I'm reading this wrong ...

09' Lakers rank 5th

3-Peat Lakers with Kobe & Prime Shaq rank:

20th, 30th, 176th?!

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ording-to-elo/

Why did you say anything about GSW when I made it clear they were the best team either Cavs or Bulls faced.

Spurs from 14 and 07 had a SRS of 8.35 and 8. Apparently that's >>> than the 97 Jazz who had 7.97? lol. I even wrote that maybe 07 Spurs were better. But now looking at the SRS there's not much in it. So I take that back.

Pick which scale you want to use and stick to it.

Ignoring the Warriors (who I said were better), it's like this...

Teams with an SRS between 7.4 and 8.4 - SA 07 and 14, Jazz 97 and Sonics 96
Teams with an SRS between 6.4 and 7.4 - Thunder 12 and Spurs 13, Lakers 91 and Blazers 92
Teams with an SRS between 5.4 and 6.4 - Jazz 98 and Suns 93
Teams with an SRS of lol 4.4 - Mavs 11

Looks pretty even to me.

Here's a fun one for total SRS for each champions competition on the way to the chip. https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment..._championship/

Why use a single scale when all individual metrics will be flawed in some way when you could use 2? Honestly, the more the better. If you have some other ones, offer them up. Better to use a bunch of different scales and sort of average them out rather than a single one, no?

How can you ignore the Warriors when they are 3/8 of the teams LeBron has faced and the 3 best teams either Lebron or Jordan faced? That seems like quite a lot to ignore or discount. I'm struggling to try and see the point you're making here - ignoring the 3 best teams out of 8 trips, their competition is equal? Surely that would make it an argument for how much more difficult LeBron's competition has been if it takes removing the top 37.5% of his competition to level the field?

Curry defended RWB for a whole series, he was not hurt, or the warrior's medical staff didn't think so at least

Fidstar that's a good reddit link btw. '16 Cavs and '17 Warriors would be 7th and 20th respectively on that list.

Definitely supports Jordan side about his tougher roads to Finals, especially given East weakness in '13 and '14. That is much weaker than I would have thought. Obviously the gaps in SRS matter more as you scale up (for example the diff between a 10 SRS and 8 SRS matters more than beating a 2 SRS instead of 0 SRS in the 1st round) but Jordan's conference Finals competition was clearly much more difficult than LeBron's

Because you responded to a quote I made...

"Golden State is the only team he has faced that's better. And maybe SA in 2007.

SA = Utah
Dallas/OKC = any of the other ones"

So, you know, let's talk about what I wrote (like most conversations work). I never said LeBron faced the same competition. Reading it makes it pretty obvious that I agree that LeBron overall has faced better competition. So, we are in agreement there. I was rating the rest. So, let's rate the rest.

By taking the Warriors out of the equation, you are also now comparing apples with apples. Teams relatively equally ranks.

Through 5 games of that series Curry had defended 25 of 109 of Westbrook's shots. So, he is defending him 20% of the time. I would be surprised if they weren't mainly on switches. Can't find the numbers for the last two games, but I would expect a similar result. Don't let facts get in the way of your story though.

Curry was hurting. His shot was fine, but he had problems getting to the basket and creating a lot of shots. Having watched every game Curry has played in the last 5 seasons, I'm a pretty good judge.

I'm not using it as an excuse. Cavs won fair and square. But that doesn't mean Curry wasn't hurt.