You can't say that LeBron can't play the point (even though he's really good at it) because he's a SF, and then not say Michael Jordan can't play in the post (even though he is really good at it) because he is a SG.

so Lebron should have less time of possession that Kyrie ****ing Irving, and then we could say "how could he possibly be the GOAT, look at him deferring to a crappy teammate"

I'm going to give you a hint, LEbron is better than kyrie and it's not even close.

jordan wasn't impinging on anyone's role, whereas lebron is

the bulls didn't have any bigs to play the post scorer role - jordan filled that role - whereas lebron already had a ball-dominant guard whose play-making he reduced

so jordan's post-dominance wasn't redundant, whereas lebron's ball-dominance is..

even worse, the ball-dominance uses a high time of possession - so lebron's presence as a 2nd point guard with high time of possession gives his teammates less time with the ball than guys on other teams, whose forwards have normal time of possession.

in addition to impinging on his teammates' time of possession and guards' playmaking, the extra pick n' rolls that he consumes takes away from his pf's post/playmaking opportunities... and his preference to play pf/c on the defensive glass over perimeter defense on his man (3 fmvps for his assignment) reduces his bigs' opportunities on the def glass

MJ is allowed to play oop, but LeBron isn't.

Even if it is for the benefit of the team.

Gottcha.

jordan never took post-ups away from bigs - play-finishers like cartwright, longley, rodman, grant got the same number of post-ups alongside jordan as they got on other teams and that their play-finishing capability warranted.

otoh, lebron reduced his guards' assists and playmaking - infact, every key teammate saw their assists go down alongside lebron, so the team ranks low in assists and teamwork, and needs super-team talent to win

btw, the triangle allowed everyone to post up because the offense was initiated with a pass to the post on every possession

the post player would have the option of handing off to a cutter, passing, or creating a shot.. play-finishers like cartwright, longley, rodman, grant, kerr, paxson or bj generally handed it off or passed, while creators like mj/pip shot/created more.. that's why it was called an "equal-opportunity" offense (EVERYBODY caught it on post with chance to create), and mj/shaq's dominant post game fit it like a glove


it isn't for the betterment, because teammates saw their assists go down alongside lebron, so the team ranks low in assists and teamwork, and needs super-team talent to win

and they still lose most years

why can't the cavs' all-pro veterans have a top brand of basketball like the teams that beat them? (mavs, spurs warriors).. the coaching argument only works for popovich - who is kerr other than fortunate and not even there half the time, and who is carlisle other than a 1-hit wonder

a star's playing style either allows a top brand of basketball, or it doesn't, and lebron's simply doesn't - his style doesn't allow great teamwork, so he needs super-team talent to win.. otoh, mj/kyrie/love, or mj/wade bosh would be dynasties because jordan's north carolina game allowed goat teamwork.

remember how much talent those big 3's actually are - before bosh/love joined lebron, they were superstar #1 options with better stats than pippen ever had - they were arguably the best at their position, just like pippen.. yet they were lebron's 3RD options!!!.. lebron still had wade/kyrie, smh..

Maybe Lebron is playing point.

Maybe Lebron is reinventing the traditional positional roles and you are trying to pigeonhole him in tired 1990s concepts.

the man thinks Iguodala and Kawhi won their finals mvp's because Lebron doesn't defend on the perimeter, why are we still responding to his posts?

lebron's defensive assignments in the Finals scored far above their normal averages - specifically, leonard, iggy, and durant scored 5 ppg, 9 ppg, and 9 ppg above their RS and playoff averages.

compare that to jordan, who locked up drexler and held magic to his RS averages

in addition to lebron blowing his perimeter assignments, he averaged 11 rebs compared to tristan's 5 in the Finals.. so one can conclude that he should expend less energy grabbing tristan's rebounds, and more energy being a lockdown perimeter defender like mike was

When did Lebron play with pippen or a pippen-esque level defender. Wade was good but he isn't going to effectively guard big 3s and some 4s.

Again the game plan was to let iggy score and Lebron wasn't always on Durant. Kawhi likely won that year because wade was so awful not because Lebron was. Lebron averaged 28/7/4 on 68% ts% and an average game score of 22.5. Kawhi had 18/6/2 on 60% ts% and an average game score of 16. But 4 players on the spurs had over a 10 score while wade had a 8 and bosh had a 10.9. Spurs won because 4 players played well while the heat had 2. Likewise, Kyrie and Love missed the finals where Iggy won FMVP; Curry did average 17.6 game score; Lebron 24 despite mediocre shooting from him. Iggy averaged a 13. LEbron averaged 35/13/9 on 47% TS%; Iggy averaged 16/5/4. Lebron also played 46 mpg which didn't help.

You're very results oriented and overly focused on players performance when winning is much to do with team performance. Sometimes Lebron can play great his teams lose and it doesn't always have to do with Lebron.

Kawhi 2014 Regular Seas:.. 12.8 ppg
Kawhi 2014 PO first 3 Rds:. 13.4 ppg
Kawhi 2014 Final Round:. 17.8 ppg

Iggy 2015 Regular Seas:.. 7.8 ppg
Iggy 2015 PO first 3 Rds:. 8.0 ppg
Iggy 2015 Final Round:. 16.3 ppg

Durant 2017 Regular Seas:.. 25.1 ppg
Durant 2017 PO first 3 Rds:. 25.2 ppg
Durant 2017 Final Round:. 35.2 ppg

those are big differences between all primary defenders, and lebron as their primary defender

and think how much better their abnormal scoring boost made their team
.

Love how you make the assumption that taking assists away from Kyrie, Smith, Wade etc is a bad thing. I'd rather have the ball in the hands of the best passer/Playmaker/Bball IQ in the league.

Like how can you turn one of the greatest skill sets that's ever played the game into a negative thing. Oh I know. TWOG

The fact that Lebron played more of a rim protector role while defending a lesser option in the Spurs/Warriors offense is not a negative thing. Iggy and Kawhi got open shots, that's perfectly fine, it happened by design.

Kawhi mins 29.1 reg season to 36.7 finals

Iggy went from not starting, 22mins, to starting, 37mins

KD 36mins to 42mins.

Nice half truths again bro.

remember how much talent those big 3's actually are - before bosh/love joined lebron, they were superstar #1 options with better stats than pippen ever had - they were arguably the best at their position, just like pippen.. yet they were lebron's 3RD options!!!.. lebron still had wade/kyrie,smh..

so lebron should have dominant dynasties with these guys!!!!!

and why doesn't he have dynasties with this talent??.. because his teams lack dynasty teanwork - every key teammate saw their assists go down alongside lebron, so the team ranks low in assists and teamwork, and needs super-team talent to win

God we already shat through that theory. Next.

it's called exploiting a weakness, in this case lebron's defense - indeed, they ONLY played that much against lebron

smh.. keep ignoring the obvious to defend lebron

Out of all the stupid **** you have said, that might take the cake.

if it was anyone else I'd say he's just trolling or being caught in trying to win an argument online, but he writes so much, for so long, on so many accounts, that he's probably lying to himself

Keep repeating it.

Doesn't mean it's right.

Maybe the fact that's he's faced really good teams in the finals. He's faced basically 2 dynasties--Spurs and Warriors for 6 of his 8 finals. Love is a very good 3rd option but obviously flawed. The biggest issue is he is very flawed against the Warriors, you know the team they played the finals 3 times in a row. Bosh is a great 3rd option as well. The Mavs series was definitely Lebron's fault but the 2nd Spurs series, the rest of the team sans Lebron didn't play that well, so they lost.

Again you can just harp on his team's talent levels but those teams despite being very good are both flawed--they lack great depth at times especially if one of the big 3 get hurt and they also lacked luck in that in 1 of the finals 2 of the top 3 missed it and they've gone against the best 3 year period a team has ever had in the regular season and they've met that team in the finals 3 straight years. It's almost if you can't understand context and situation and harp on the same dumb **** over and over. Are you fuming at the mouth?

based on each player's absurd efficiency, these guys all played far better against lebron than anyone else

the warriors and spurs shouldnt have gotten away with showcasing guys that were normally role players

clearly, lebron's individual perimeter defense was not good - .. it's 3 guys so thats a pattern.. you act like iggy didn't repeatedly burn lebron.. ditto kawhi and durant

keep in mind that lebron held kawhi to 9 ppg for the first 2 games and it was a competitive 1-1 series.. but then kawhi exploded for 24 ppg on 69% for the last 3 games, all blowouts - his emergence as the spurs' #1 option for the first time in the playoffs unlocked the spurs optimal, best offense for the first time in the playoffs

Yeah, his teams are terrible.

Yeah Kawhi "exploded" for 24ppg but LeBron is a bum for scoring 28/8/4 on 65% TS or whatever on Leonard's nuts. Nice facts.

When GP holds Michael it's "he wasn't trying" or "didn't care and was too relaxed"

When LeBron gets held it's "lol lebum sucks"

before bosh/love joined lebron, they were superstar #1 options with better stats than pippen ever had - they were arguably the best at their position, just like pippen.. yet they were lebron's 3RD options!!!.. lebron still had wade/kyrie.

and why doesn't lebron have dynasties with this talent??.. because his teams lack dynasty teamwork - every key teammate saw their assists go down alongside lebron, so the team ranks low in assists and teamwork, and needs super-team talent to win

^^^ what part of the above is inaccurate


"there's nothing anyone could've done, we just got beat by a better team"

that 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 your primary argument to defend 3/8 is actually best-suited to defend an 8 vs. 1 seed loss, and LEAST-suited to defend Lebron's losses with Finals teams.

and btw - if you're saying Lebron's teams had no chance in most of their Finals, then the entire East has no chance and is therefore a trash conference.. you can't have it both ways - you can't say lebron had no chance in most of his Finals, but then say the East ISN'T trash... because if the East has no chance most years, then they're trash.. which of course guts his consecutive finals achievement


the heat were 2-time defending champs in 2014, so they were the ones with dynasty talk at the time..

and the spurs didn't have more talent, so their record margin of victory reflects the gap in teamwork between the 2 teams..

indeed, lebron's stats were achieved while his team had the biggest teamwork deficit ever in a finals.. therefore, his stats can be criticized as "empty", and his style of play as self-serving


his current cavs are loaded - tristan thompson, kyle korver, r jefferson, jr smith, deron williams and more.. that destroys jordan's team's depth

the heat had ray allen as 4th option, birdman, haslem, battier, r lewis - all reputed role players and better than the stiffs jordan had coming off the bench

yeah jordan had kukoc for the 2nd 3-peat, who averaged 13 ppg with horrific D.. but that's it

and who cares - role players are largely replaceable - it's the top talent that counts - like, if you assemble three superstars, it should be an automatic dynasty - the only thing to stop it is insufficient teamwork