Jealousy is #NOTAGOODLOOK but there's no other explanation.

Oh noes he was a Yankees fan a few years ago and now he's rooting for the Indians in the World Series. What a doosh! Or how about the time in 2010 he did something insensitive to his fanbase for which he has since apologized. But jelly haters can't let those things go because they'd have nothing to cling to in their sea of sadness and they'd drown in their loser tears.

this lol. its obviously pretty close but when you read the arguments for jordan they are all so braindead illogical the the answer clearly becomes lebron.

Do you have the ability to think critically? This is so bad on so many levels

As opposed to your flawless logic "an Internet poster made a poor argument against Lebron, therefore Lebron greater den jorden."

Lebron is more physically gifted, and without adjusting for era, is way way way better. Adjusting for era, still better.

Lebron would be even better if he had the completely insane / maniacal mindset that Jordan had. I don't think Lebron has that and this is what bothers some people - that he's not a complete lunatic wrt winning that Jordan was. I don't ever recall Jordan having the weird disappearing / shook act like Lebron had in the finals vs the Mavs.

still, Lebron is the goat

if there were better arguments for jordan I assume people would be making them.

kbz just did a pretty nice summation of the argument for lebron. he's obviously the superior athlete and it seems reasonably clear that adding him to a team (or subtracting him) has a bigger impact than adding subtracting/jordan to the same team. the only "knock" on lebron is the lack of jordanesque sociopathic desire to win as kbz mentioned, and that likely cost him the 1 ring vs the mavs.

some people can't seem to get past that one knock but when talking about the GOAT I'm more interested in who is the actual best player than who has the best resume. jordan's resume is a little better since rings are super highly valued but it seems clear enough to me that lebron is the better player. both players are currently close in both categories though (resume/skill). If Lebron wins this year he will at minimum equal jordan's resume (i would argue surpass due to this warriors team being the most stacked team ever assembled), and that combined with his winning the skill argument should put the GOAT argument to bed. But it probably won't since olds have some irrational jordan nostalgia, can't get over "the decision" or whatever it is.

What is the criteria? Regular season numbers? Post season success? Who would win 1 on 1? All star selections? MVPs? Finals MVPs? Most popular? All around skills? With the way the game changes between eras it's completely unproveable.

If you could start a franchise with 1 player you can make a great case for 1971 Kareem, 2003 Duncan or 2000 Shaq. If it's not about post season success and only about skills you could call Iverson the GOAT.

Iverson is not the GOAT by any metric. He's worse than MJ/LBJ at literally every aspect of basketball by a significant margin.

I'ts a combination of all those criteria except popularity, with a heavy emphasis on skills/resume(playoff performance+rings) as I said in my other post. jordan supporters don't really seem to push the skill argument (because they know it's a losing one) and instead just try to make ridiculous arguments to detract from lebron's resume (or inflate jordan's).

Jordan being much better at PR / image (or at least living in a much better era for being good at that) is also a factor that influences people. "the decision" was a horrible mistake on all levels, whereas Jordan's 2 word "I'm back" sent the basketball world into giddyness. Jordan certainly has more universal love.

He might have had "pound for pound" over them. Might have been up there with the GOAT in that category. And I'm one of the people that think AI is one of the most overrated players in NBA history.

In pure skill level he might have them beat, but being 7 inches shorter and 50-100 lbs lighter hurts too much. He was pretty much only worse at genetics.

5'11" and 160 lbs and he managed to take a team with no other offensive options to the NBA finals, and steal game 1 off a stacked lakers team.

yeah for sure. but being good at PR should be ~a non factor when it comes to a GOAT discussion. and as others have mentioned, jordan might have a pretty different image if he came through this era of PR.

Yeah, being a teammate-punching, womanizing degenerate who welches on gambling debts wouldn't really fly in today's NBA.

I mean it's common knowledge the guy would lose high stakes golf bets and stiff or slow pay

That's routinely brought into boxing discussions. Ali didn't have the greatest record, low KO % and did everything humanly possible(successfully)to avoid a rematch with Foreman, he's definitely not beating Lennox or the Klitsckos at his size. But many say he's the GOAT because he did so much to advance the sport. He made people who didn't care about boxing watch boxing, MJ did the same with getting people who didn't care about the NBA to watch the NBA.

Sure you can argue what he did was more impressive physically but he's still objectively worse at everything in absolute terms. He's not even the GOAT 6' player though.

Ha, that's why I love MJ so much. Such a total ****ing maniac, insanely competitive at the expense of everything which wasn't winning. Makes me wonder how much less great he would have been if he had the mindset of a "normal" player.

MJ is probably the reason I started watching the NBA. LeBron is currently the only reason I keep watching. Don't think either is particularly relevant to the GOAT discussion tho. lol boxing i guess.

Wait, what?

It gets almost glossed over in here a bit because of the god awful "6/6", "Never lost finals woo" stuff, but Jordan still won SIX times. 6/6, 6/15 who cares, he still took home the championship 6 times. And didn't come close to losing in any of those 6 (I don't mean that in a stupid 'he never lost' way, just that he won comfortably in all 6 of those years). LeBron is 2 very tiny bits of variance away from being on 1. I get that there is more to it than just that, opposition, situation, etc. But if you're talking strict resumes, it's not even close (yet).

ya but something something regular season winz in a watered-down garbage league where 90% of the teams are trying to tank

comes down to how much you value rings on a resume. and i said jordan's resume was currently better, we're talking about a hypothetical where lebron beats this warrior team this year and gets to 4. those 4, given the context/competition and other stuff he's done (like '07) would be at least equal to jordan's resume imo.

Yeah, by team metrics Jordan has a few more titles. Team resumes when judging players especially when the crux of your argument is team achievement is silly. I know at this point it's the "only" thing that separates the two so that's why it's argued so hard.

4 MVPs vs 5 (Jordan got his last at 34) but we all know both were basically the best player in the league during most of their tenures so actual awards are a joke.

13 All NBA vs 11 All NBA for Jordan
6 All D vs 9 all D--Jordan get's the edge here
13 All Star vs 14--I expect Lebron to pass Jordan in 2 years
2nd in Career PER vs 1st-I expect Jordan to maintain #1 status
3 Finals MVPs vs 6--If Bron wins this year, he'll have 4 which will be the same as MJ at 32 years old
I expect Lebron to pass Jordan is almost every counting stat and he'll do it pretty soon.
I expect Jordan's Bulls to have more titles than Lebron will likely have especially as #1 option. With that being said, I wouldn't be shocked to see Lebron win titles as a lesser option in his twilight if he wants.

Something interest me to know the asnwer here.

Lot of you here says the NBA is incredbly tougher than it was in the 80-90, with much better player and all.

But than when we speak about Lebron, everyone seem to think Lebron never had a great team and team mates.

So why no great player wanted to play with Lebron than ?
Where are the good players because i often hear the east is very weak and it is a freeroll for Lebron to the final for a lot of times.

So how can the league be so strong but at the same time a free roll for Lebron to the final and he never had good players with him like Jordan did?

ps: if Lebron so great, why not more mvp for him in the finals even when he lost while Jordan always was the best ?

Well Jordan has much better points per game, better free throw shooter and FG% is basically equal and this is putting the last 2 years of Jordan season which was much lower than what we usually seem from him.

Lebron has the edge on the 3pts shooting but i guess this is due to the current playing system because Jordan did not really need it to do it.

Continuing to use "at this age" is an extremely disingenuous tactic to try to put the two on equal footing.

A poor attempt at manipulating an argument in one's favor.

Jordan entered the league at 21, LeBron at 18. Jordan played 15 seasons total, 13 with Chicago and his two Washington seasons during which he turned 39 and 40. LeBron is in his 14th season. Jordan absolutely without a doubt did more in his 13 Chicago seasons than LeBron did in his first 13 seasons.