reading through this thread i've noticed every "argument" for lebron is either an excuse for his shortcomings or an ad hominem attack against the jordan side.

Eh you’re way closer to being right on this than your other arguments, but still not there yet.

One, someone informed me that PER is a trash stat (in this thread actually!) and I actually kinda agree with him. Maybe not trash but not great either. BPM and VORP are the best single combined metrics we got. MJ best 3 season peak in VORP (BPM adjusted for minutes, so best stat we got) so MJ best all time again.

Also, the 3 season thing is arbitrary. Best to take the prime years of both players. Gotta leave out fluke injury years. This tells you best peak or best player in relevant years (before productivity drops too much). Again MJ beats LeBron and Shaq again.

Combine that with team success (6 rings), 6 fmvp’s, and 5 mvp’s and Jordan comes out on top in every way you can measure objectively.

So when considering career in most objective way possible MJ comes out as the clear winner and superior player. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of ad hominems and excuses tho, and that’s what makes this thread go round.

LeBron does have longevity in his favor though. He’s basically a better version of Robert Parish.

Yes, Lebron, who has made 11 straight first team all nbas, 4 mvps, and countless years in top 5 mvp voting, 3 Finals MVPs is slightly better than Robert parish who has 1 2nd and 1 3rd team all nba and 0 mvps or 0 finals mvps.

Sort of how Jordan is a better version of joe dumars or something.

Just stop. It's okay to say "damn I guess I never realized the elite level of scoring that LeBron has produced over his career". It's not just a mistake you make. It happens all the time. A lot of people completely ignore him when talking about the greatest scorers in the modern era which is insane.

Go back and read what I actually wrote before the other side decided to go full ******.

I’ve said over and over and over again that LeBron is an elite scorer. I just said he was not THE best and others have been close to him, equal to him, or better at various times in his career.

25ppg over n+1/y^2 years is arbitrary and just bc LeBron has more 25 ppg seasons doesn’t make him a better scorer than Durant or Jordan.

Nah man I’ve been told longevity is all that matters, so now I’m sorting by number of seasons with 3 ppg or higher scoring.

See how easy it is to make the other side look stupid when being deliberately obtuse?

Oh wait you’re the Bieber guy. Sorry I thought you may have noticed what I was doing there but probably not.

Add Rodney Hood to the long list of players who hate being teammates with LeBron

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...h-lebron-james

Nah, the only thing I see is you proving your historically elite stupidity across a wide variety of topics.

You’re the better version of a paste eating 6 year old.

Hood said nothing about Lebron in that article

He didnt need to, it's completely obvious what he's implying

lebron james is now too hard on his teammates? lol, mike jordan slappies going to no stops is cracking me the **** up.

If anything it’s the pussification of America at work. MJ punches and screams at his teammates, they must have loved it. Hood won’t play in garbage time, so lue won’t play him and now that’s lebron's fault. Kyrie is a *****, lebrons fault. I get it now. Lebron should have been better at finding a subservient #2 like Pippen.

a bit surprised a stat nerd finds labron to be russell westbrook on steroids. pretty interesting article

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...ammates-better

Nah it's not that he's too hard on them. It's that he literally doesnt even allow them to play. It's not like hes mean to them and they are butthurt

The guy went from playing 30mpg and averaging 17ppg and has been a star since he was probably 6 years old.

He's a very good NBA player . And he's out of the rotation because he doesnt play in the exact way that optimizes LeBron's statistical output. Playing with LeBron is a career killer for a youngish player unless they're happy to stand on the 3pt line and never dribble the ball.

Jordan ainec

And I get Rodney Hood is not a superstar and you're probably going to say he should get over himself but it's going to potentially cost him tens of millions of dollars.

This is pretty much entirely wrong from a pure logic perspective. It is entirely possible for a better scorer to take fewer shots than a worse scorer and it be completely optimal. Here is an example using made up numbers to show how:

Say the best ever scorer could always take a shot and be 60% to score, whereas the next best scorer would be 55% in the same situations. Now lets say that the better scorer was also a better passer, and passes from him resulted in his teammates making shots at an average of 61%, whereas the next best player could only create opportunities for teammates that would be scored at a 50% rate. Clearly in this example it would be optimal for the better scorer to be passing much more than the next best scorer.

Now obviously this example is a massive over simplification and the reasons for why passing more vs shooting more would be optimal are vastly complex - depending on passing ability, teammates, defenses faced etc - but the point is to show that it does not logically follow that a better scorer should always shoot more than a worse scorer.

How exactly this applies to Lebron vs other scorers is open for argument but your assertion that "if he was a better scorer he should (correctly) pass less by definition" is false.

Except Kyrie never did what you just said about Hood. Kyrie thrived with Lebron.

Lebron also played with Chalmers and Norris Cole at PG and neither lived on the 3 point line and both were really young when they played major minutes with Lebron.

Seems like your story doesn't check out.

Drew Gooden, who wasn't a great player, had by far his best years as a young player with Lebron.

(edit: holy **** I didn't think I typed that much)

Well the concept is not Lebron specific, and in MJ vs. Lebron it might apply more to MJ in a different way, but the fact that Maravich got called for three offensive fouls in a game and Lebron gets called for three per season should say something about the evolution of the game. It's the funniest example I could think of.

Does this mean Lebron wouldn't crush in the Maravich era? Lol no, but it'd be hilarious to see him foul out of a dozen games in the first quarter before he adjusted. Every player you stick into a different era would need to adjust in some way. One of the amazing things about Lebron is that he retains much of his dexterity, agility and coordination after packing on muscle but I think if he played in an earlier era he'd drop 20 lbs of muscle on purpose. Except super-skinny Lebron, he'd still be bigger than Malone.

But, you guys seem to be forgetting that a big reason the eras look different is because of what in hindsight has been the rules slowly but drastically changing, in a way that hasn't happened in any other sport. And that while players are more athletic now, a main point of basketball is that the biggest, strongest, fastest dudes don't automatically win. Obviously that second part is subjective but the rule changes have happened to make the skill parts easier in order to let the athleticism shine.

Basically, a good percentage of my favorite players play right now so I'm not one of those dudes who thinks we should go back to era of Cousy, but you don't want to be one of those dudes who doesn't realize Cousy was sick because he looked goofy for having to keep his hand on top of the ball.

Anyhow, I said this might be more about MJ so forget Lebron stiff arming dudes like a running back, here's a take: MJ clearly marked the transition to where they really didn't give a **** if a player carried or traveled every other play, because MJ couldn't actually dribble a basketball.

James has been top 3 in the league in scoring in almost every one of the last 14 seasons. He's averaged over 25 ppg in every season of his career except the first. His career scoring average is fourth, behind Wilt, Jordan, Elgin Baylor, and just ahead of Durant, so you might say second in the modern era, first since the end of illegal defense rules.

He's certainly one of the most dominant pure scorers the league has seen. And he can do everything else.

His shooting percentage has improved to ridiculous levels not ever seen in elite scorers of the Kobe/Iverson/Nique mold (shoot, shoot, and keep shooting), and that reflects that his shot selection is superb. His 2pt shot percentage is probably the best ever for someone who was not a post player (the only other guys comparable are Durant, who is absurdly tall, and Magic).

TIL Rodney hood is a very good NBA player, he's not even a starter on most teams woodman, keep the nonsense coming

Hood's minutes only dropped 2 minutes per game from Utah to the Cavs during the regular season.

The issue like Clarkson is that Hood has been absolutely awful in the playoffs. They've basically been a dear in headlights.

Hood had a 12.3 PER on 53% TS% during the regular season after 15/55% in Utah. In the postseason this year his PER dropped to 5.8 on 46% TS%. He was playing 15 mpg before his outburst in the Toronto series. Hood's playoff stats dropped considerably in Utah as well--they went from 12.4/52% in 2017 regular season to 4.7/43% in the playoffs. Guy seems to suck against playoff level competition.

Maravich was truly a great player with nothing around him. Imagine if he had gone to Golden St, Boston or Washington how many titles he would have shipped and he'd be in the GOAT discussion.

You are correct about pre MJ era carrying the ball was illegal, now it's standard, basketball needs to go back to making carrying the ball illegal.

Yeah, I mean obviously moreso than other sports the NBA walks a fine line between sports and entertainment with subjectivity to the rules. As time goes this has changed more than other sports (NFL has changed a ton as well but the NFL-media apparatus doesn't eat off comparing past teams/players to current ones so it isn't much of an issue)

In the late 80's/early 90's, there was an explosion in revenue for the NBA and how big of a commercial entity it became. Since then the stars have gotten more favoritism form officials. LeBron, Kobe, MJ, AI, etc

The reasons for post play fading in significance is because of the pace and space, analytics, more pick and roll, the illegal defense rules being phased out, etc

But another reason is simply players are allowed to rape bigger/elite players in the post because nobody wants to watch Shaq or Tim Duncan be the best player in the league. The game is socially engineered to maximize profit/fan interest, absolutely.

It's like this: Iverson didn't carry the ball. I 100% endorse Iverson ballhandling. We don't need to take it back to Cousy.



Compare that to now with every goofy putting their hand directly underneath the ball for that ****ty hesitation dribble.