It’s pretty sad, you can legit look up the stats—Lebron is a career 73% fg% from 0-3 feet—yes I said career. Zion who has only been in the league 2 years is at 70%.

Zion does take 70% of his total shots from the paint while Lebron is in the high 30% but finishing isn’t lebrons problem from in close. It’s almost as if your blind hatred shows that you think he’s not great at something when he clearly is.

for comparison sake, Shaq is at 74%, Gobert is at 73% so these numbers are very high. Durant is also in the 73% but much lower % volume than these other players. Deandre Jordan who has the highest fg% all time is at 73% but an insane 80+% of his shots come from the inner paint.

Nobody denies that LeBron is a physical specimen and gifted athlete. He's a mental midget with a fragile ego that couldn't bear to put the work in to win in case he never won.

LeBron found a hack in putting together super teams. Hacks are typically lazy, try to take shortcuts, and are usually gutless cowards. I've never considered him or Katie a champion and never will. Most fans will be happy when they are out of the NBA, so competition can resume.

NBA history is dominated by superteams. The only hack is Lebron set them up instead of the org. Oh the humanity.

You don't think the following teams were super?

Lakers in the 80s--it's the reason why we have the lottery now they essentially got gifted the top pick.
Boston in the 80s--again, a team traded for the first overall pick John Barry Carroll and gave back what ended up as McHale and Parrish
Bulls--MJ and Pippen
Lakers-Kobe and Shaq
Boston-Big 4
Heat-Lebron and Wade and Bosh
Cavs-LEbron, Love and Kyrie
Warriors-Curry, Green, Klay and then KD
Nets-KD, Kyrie, Harden

Before that you had the Boston Celtics in the 60s.

It's just NBA to have 2, 3 and even 4 superstar teams. Get over it. Nowadays KD is forming his own as well. Woop de do. You're not mad at Kobe for forcing his way to the Lakers? Or Magic doing the same thing, same thing with Kareem.

Did Kobe blow a 3-1 lead to a 73 win team, and then join them the following year?

The difference is now at the beginning of the year, there are MAYBE 4 teams that have a chance to win the title. Is that fun? Not sure why the other teams even play, when, without major injuries they have 0% chance to win.

that's how it's always is. nobody has a realistic chance in most seasons in most sports.

how many teams do you think have more than 1% shot during most seasons? you're naïve if you thinks it's much more than 4. nba is top heavy and always been.

who are the surprise title winners in the last 40 years?

detroit after the lakers setup their big 4 with malone, GP, kobe and shaq
mavs maybe
warriors year 1 was a shock
toronto maybe but they had kawhi and Klay and KD got hurt

that's just how the nba and most sports are. it was a giant shock when leicester won the EPL, why is that--cause only one of 6 teams normally win every year.

the point is kobe forced his way to an elite org which had a HOF level center. nobody knew he'd be an all timer but super teams are formed all the time. this is just another example of it.

Great teams (“superteams”) consisting of 2+ all-nba level players generally win the title each year. Of course. That’s basically a tautology.

The difference is in how they are formed. Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant developed alongside Jordan. They were drafted by the Bulls. They were not very good their first 2-3 years in the league. They got there eventually and that team completely dominated the 90’s.

There is a fundamental difference between that and LeBron signing with the Heat with Wade AND bringing in Bosh. Jordan did not suddenly choose to team up with Charles Barkley or Hakeem Olajuwon and bring in Dominique Wilkins as a 3rd option, after losing to the Pistons 3 straight times. Why is that? There is a fundamental difference in mentality here when it comes to competition.

Note I’m not saying this as a knock to LeBron as a player. It doesn’t change how good he is on the court. For me, the knock is that he only won 2 with this first really handpicked superteam, when after the signing and celebratory stage dance off, he was talking about winning 7. That I found both funny and a minus for him in the GOAT debate (not the dance party, but the 2 rings).

If Jordan teamed up with Olajuwon and Dominique after losing to the Pistons 3 times straight, and then only won 2 rings with them, I DEFINITELY would not have him as GOAT. Some LeBron stans do, for LeBron, because he is a superhero in their minds and none of his career negatives count, I guess. And that’s ok, but I’m going to argue with people when they say LeBron can create perfect offenses at will, because that’s ******ed and I find it hilarious.

so you just care how they were done. it's a different era, there wasn't really even that much movement or FA in the 80s or 90s. so if a team rips off another team and wins a bunch of title good or drafts really luckily. if a player sets up his team-bad. why do you guys think that? why do you give a **** how the teams were formed? these are lazy people arguments.

lebron has also had to deal with the KD decision to jump on the warriors. so he's benefited from superteams and also potentially lost titles because of it.

it's part of the game, lebron isn't cheating--you're just making it into cheating, i'm shocked. MJ is also lucky Pippen didn't mind getting paid under market value for years and being a sidekick, kyrie did mind. you only like to tear down lebron for this, over and over. mj ran good all over the place. ran good that when he won 6 titles, the super teams from the 80s fell apart. ran good with injuries for the most part. you guys just like a story book story of how MJ sat around and got a great team around him. great for him. too bad lebron's org sucked ass in cleveland and couldn't figure out how to do the basics. boo hoo, he formed his team, he's the worst.

I mean, I kinda care how they were done. Or, more accurately, how successful/dominant the team was and how much the specific player in question contributed. Pippen/Grant were good but not on the level of Wade/Bosh. And Jordan/Pippen/Grant did far better than LeBron/Wade/Bosh. Jordan just flat out contributed more on a team that was more successful.

Like I said, how the teams were created doesn’t affect my opinion of LeBron as a player (more my opinion of him as a competitor). It’s the fact he only won 2 rings with his superteam that affects my opinion of him as a player.

maybe those bull teams were better teams. they had a more well rounded team from 1 to 10. also compared to their peers, the bulls teams were extremely talented. the heat team was formed on the fly, the rest of the roster was kind of put together haphazardly. they didn't get years to form chemistry. the downside of superteam building is the rest of the team is normally not great. in a team game this is extremely important, again it's team, and we keep associating that with the individual. bulls teams were better than their peers in comparison to most of lebron's teams.

don't get more wrong lebron's teams were very good but the bulls had a lot going for them: had MJ, had another star in pippen--had good top level role players in rodman, kukoc and had stability at coach. as i mentioned, the celtics, lakers and pistons all started to get old just when the bulls got going. the duncan lead spurs weren't ready yet nor was Shaq really (although they did beat the Bulls when he was in Orlando). you didn't need a 3 player super team to win in the 90s-2 did it while 3 was needed in the 80s and the 2010s for the most part.

we can say similar stories in cleveland take 2 and the lakers. you guys think it's easy to build superteams over night that crush the league and can be done in 1 offseason, it's clearly not the easy most of the time.

Both guys had pretty great teams, Bulls org is obviously more superior to their peers during the title run, but the Heat, Cavs take 2, and Lakers aren't awful just not as good as their peers. The only time where I have a big issue with the org is his first stay with the Cavs but they did win a lot of regular season games, they just weren't built to win it all in the playoffs.

I mean the Nets have 3 of the top 5 players are gonna roll through the championship barring an injury. Lakers won last year in LeFraud and AD's first year. It actually seems pretty easy to get there if you are a superteam.

When 60% of the starting lineup is a future HOFer, I think it's pretty easy to win, and isn't really impressive. LeBitch has the ego of the dude in North Korea who needs to be told he's a winner, when in fact, he's just a coddled loser.

Mj Pippen and Rodman are hofers...weird. 60%, good for one, abuse by another.

Calling Lebron lazy makes your mostly clueless baseball posts look good.

I mean, maybe the Bulls teams minus Jordan were better than the Heat teams minus LeBron, but I really don’t think so. Taking the years before each won their first ship (I’m just sorting by VORP here since it accounts for minutes played):

Bulls 1990
Pippen, Grant, Craig Hodges, Paxson, Ed Nealy
Critically, Pippen was not good yet. He was averaging 16.5 on .528 TS%. He was a solid starter, nothing more. And they took the Pistons to 7 games. Probably would have titled if not for Pippen’s migraine.

Heat 2011
Wade, Bosh, James Jones, Mario Chalmers
Wade was peak Wade. WAY better than 1990 Pippen.

I take this Heat foundation over the Bulls any day.

Let's not forget Kukoc.

Kukoc's BPM in his 4 seasons with MJ: 4.5
Wade's BPM in his 4 seasons with Lebron: 4.6

Yeah like you'd stay in ****ing Cleveland under the same circumstances (organization FAILING over and over to put a contending team around you) instead of teaming up with your friends in South Beach, lol.

Are you.... trying to cherry pick stats to show that Toni Kukoc is as good as Dwyane Wade...? I think we have reached peak candybar. Nowhere to go from here folks. We have entered the LeBron stan vortex from which no light can escape.

For what it’s worth, that would be a pretty good argument that Jordan raises his elite teammates’ ceiling (due to the pressure he puts on the defense with his offensive skills, freeing up players like Kukoc) better than LeBron (who is a better passer but also dominates the ball too much. And defenses know he’s looking to pass first rather than attack. Which, one could argue, hinders his elite teammates’ efficiency).

Somehow I doubt you were going for that though.

Well, when you're in a playoff series, "the foundation" doesn't matter, it's about whether you actually have a group that can play well together. That roster (minus James Jones who didn't play in the Finals) just wasn't that good. It's not just about having enough talent to win at the highest levels - there isn't enough outside shooting and this directly led to the Mavs being able to scheme Lebron out of the series. If you have a big 3 where only one (Lebron btw) is a passable 3-point shooter, the rest of the roster needs to have plenty of shooting to stop the other team from packing the paint. James Jone was their only reliable 3-point threat and he was injured before the Finals.

This has already been examined and unsurprisingly Lebron is better at making his teammates perform better.

Amazing.

Candypantsssss

What you just quoted, but the opposite since it’s LeBron supporters that are actually doing that.

Kukoc had the best efficiency of his career while playing with Jordan. Unsurprisingly, having the greatest scorer of all time on the floor with you takes defensive resources off Kukoc and other teammates. And these teams WON. 3 peat with Kukoc. 3 peat with almost an entirely different roster 2 years prior.

MJ also “carried” them in the sense that he was by far their best player and their only elite scoring option for all 6 titles. Doesn’t mean he also didn’t make their offensive efficiency better.

LeBron sometimes has the same effect, but to a lesser extent than Jordan. Which is why his teams are less successful. You might have an argument if he went 4/4 in Miami.

Matt:

Also Matt:

And just to confirm, for the funnies, are you or are you not saying the following? Simple yeses/nos will suffice:

When LeBron lost in, for example, in 2009 (Magic), 2010 (Celtics), 2011 (Mavs), 2014 (Spurs). Was it because, in ALL cases, his teammates were bad and the only reason they got there was because he carried them? Candypants yes or candypants no.

When he won in 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2020, was it because he carried his teammates and players like Kyrie Irving and Dwyane Wade weren’t as good as Toni Kukoc? Candypants yes or candypants no.

Yes, exactly. When Kukoc played with Jordan he was more efficient. When he didn’t he was less efficient offensively. When Dwyane Wade played with LeBron his efficiency dropped.

When you do statistics properly and average these stats over multiple seasons under multiple teams/circumstances, you can get a really good approximation of player overall value. That and how well their teams perform when they’re in the lineup. This is how we know Wade was a lot better than Kukoc.

Do you understand statistics? Candypants yes or candypants no

Seriously though, I don’t think you’re dumb. But you do this thing where you have a conclusion in mind (LeBron is the best and u know it in your feels of feels) and cherry pick and misinterpret data to support that. It’s literally the definition of cognitive bias.

Then you somehow strip away the context of what I’m saying every time and do the candypants switcheroo and pretend Jordan fans are doing it. Might want to look into that. Lifegoals.