I bet LeBron stays on 16 against an ace while Jordan doubles it

And Pippen would plow the 16 in front of Jordan while he watched

I've noticed that MJ supporters never give his supporting cast enough credit, in order to make MJ seem better.

Imagine thinking that the greatest perimeter defender of all-time is worse than Kyrie Irving, lol. Worse at offense sure, but lol PER and lol at acting like defense doesn't matter.

Nobody doubted Michael. That's the most important statistic.

Lots of people doubted Jordan, until they didn't.

Before Pippen came into his own, the prevailing narrative was that you couldn't win with a perimeter scorer as your best player because big men win championships. Also Magic was often thought to be the superior player because of his passing and team play.

FWIW I think Jordan probably is the best player of all-time, but it's pretty clear that LeBron will have a more valuable career. Ultimately Jordan only played 41K minutes in the NBA, while LeBron will probably have 54-59K, depending on how long he wants to play. Jordan isn't better by enough to offset LeBron playing 6-7 more seasons at a high level.

is a top five player of all time joining the 2nd best team of all time variance?

or Corona Virus wiping out 2 seasons?

bc we all know you wouldnt be in here chirping if there was a playoffs this season.

When LeBron gets to 7 is he the best ever?

Variance for what? # of championships won by LeBron that are above/below expectation? Not really: no one expected LeBron to beat the Curry/Durant Warriors team, and LeBron can't win a championship if the playoffs get canceled. When we're saying LeBron is running below expectation we mean statisticians have taken championship odds and found that LeBron has won fewer than one would expect based on expectation, but Jordan won more. This mainly comes from his time with the Miami superteam where he only won 2 rings.

Do you mean is it "bad luck" for LeBron? I mean, maybe. But we don't know that LeBron would have won otherwise, so who knows. Certainly no more than Jordan breaking his foot or his dad getting murdered, influencing his decision to step away from the game for 2 years.

That's why we look at total career accomplishments to determine who is the better player, to reduce the uncertainty due to variance. This is why we know Jordan is the superior player -- after the BPM update, he's actually ahead of LeBron (even including his old Wizards seasons). And he has twice as many rings in two fewer seasons.

See, when you look at the total careers of both players, you don't have to blame variance for a bad break or two, because it evens out. And when one player is superior both statistically and in team success, it's obvious that player is better (Jordan).

LMAO DPOY. Tim Duncan has never won DPOY. You gonna claim that Jordan is a better defender than Tim Duncan too?

Look, if Pippen is so mediocre, why is it that Jordan won ZERO playoff series without Pippen?

The inverse is not true btw, Pippen as the best player on the Bulls took them to the second round in 1994 where they lost to the Knicks in 7.

Sounds to me like Jordan's supporting cast was actually really good, even if Jordan did most of the scoring when he played.

The problem with this argument is that these are still bad shots. Yes, MJ and Kobe excelled at making these difficult shots, which have value in terms of bailing out possessions running out of time or against very tough defenses. Being good at making bad shots means you can always create something out of nothing, but most of the time this isn't how you plan to run a play.

LeBron bullying his way to the rim for a lay-up or kicking out for an open 3 is going to score more points per possession.

Well this is important...

Lebron is 3rd team all-time. Nothing to sneeze at.

Magic
Michael
Larry
Wilt
Kareem

West
Dr. J
Olajuwon
Russell
Shaq

James...

I mean, maybe? In addition to the DPOY award Jordan has, he was all defensive first team 9 times in 15 seasons to Duncan's 8 in 19 seasons. You've gotta be WAY underrating Jordan's defense if you think that's a ridiculous claim to make.

Bigs are generally more valuable than wings on defense, but steals are crazy valuable and Jordan is 3rd in career steals. He averaged as high as 3.2 steals/game in a season which is insane.

I mean, I don't think Pippen was mediocre. Overall he was great, but he wasn't great at all at the beginning of his career. It really took him 4 seasons to develop.

Jordan probably won zero playoff series without Pippen because his team was terrible and he was playing good/excellent teams first round. . LeBron did miss the playoffs entirely several times in his career you know, so not sure what your point is.

That team was really really good and well balanced. They had Pippen, Grant, BJ Armstrong, Kerr, Kukoc, etc. Plus coming off a 3 peat they were a well oiled machine.

Jordan's early team's second best player was Orlando Woolridge and then..... Dave Corzine? I don't even know looking at that roster. And they didn't have Phil Jackson, not coming off multiple titles, so they obviously didn't play as well together.

So again, not sure what comparison you're trying to make here.

Yeah they were really good. Enough to win 6 titles. Pretty comparable (but probably not quite as good) to Wade/Bosh. Pretty similar to Kyrie/Love. Weird that LeBron only got 3 titles out of those teams. Chalk it up to variance I guess.

LOL seriously? You think an over-the-hill Zydrunas and Mo Williams are sufficient help for LeBron? Ilgauskas had his best seasons before LeBron became an MVP-level player. By the time LeBron hit his prime Ilgauskas was averaging 12 points a game. Mo Williams was a very marginal 1-time all-star, not unlike B.J. Armstrong for Chicago during MJ's time. LeBron had **** teams in Cleveland and needed to dominate the ball in order for the Cavs to be competitive. If he was drafted alongside another competent perimeter scorer he might have developed differently. If he had sufficient help he wouldn't have needed to score 25 straight points vs the Pistons in 2007 to will Cleveland into the finals.

Pippen is a consensus top-5 SF and top-30 player of all-time. LOL at that being "standard help" that every team gets.

This is the type of disingenuous argument that makes you sound like a biased hater. Of course Jordan had fewer all-star teammates because he played on ONE team so he had fewer teammates in general. And that 1 all-star he played with is a top-30 player whose skills complemented Jordan almost perfectly.

I dunno how much of LeBron you actually watch but to say he doesn't attempt jumpers is just flat out lying.

Go watch his game 6 vs the Celtics in 2012 or game 7 vs San Antonio in 2013 and look at how many of his shots are fadeaway or turn-around jumpers. He's not on Jordan's level from mid-range, but almost no one is.

I've already agreed with this. Being good at shooting fade-away jumpers from 18 feet has value, but 90% of the time it's not a useful skill because you don't go into possessions looking to shoot a fade-away from 18 feet.

I'm not underrating Jordan's defense. Both he and Pippen were GOAT-level perimeter defenders. Pippen also averaged as many as 3 steals a game for an entire season.

But all the most valuable defenders of all-time are bigs because guarding the rim is more valuable than man-to-man defense and an occasional steal from jumping the passing lanes. No perimeter defender can come close to the impact of Bill Russell, Tim Duncan, or Hakeem Olajuwon on defense.

LOL sort by points/rebounds/assists, become basketball expert? What's next, Carmelo Anthony is better than Pippen cause ppg?

Pippen was an MVP candidate in his lone season without MJ. He was an elite passer and defender, hence why MJ didn't do **** in the playoffs until Pippen became good.

I honestly think you are trolling at this point, because for someone who quotes a lot of stats (usually cherry-picked to support Jordan) you make statements that show a total lack of understanding how basketball works.

I didn't think you were dumb enough to actually think Carmelo Anthony was better than Scottie Pippen so I mentioned it as a joke, but you fully ran with it, wow.

What do Carmelo Anthony, Bernard King, Alex English, Dominique Wilkins, and Adrian Dantley all have in common as players? They were all ball-dominant isolation scorers who didn't play defense. Perhaps not coincidentally, none of them made it to the NBA finals in their entire careers.

Dantley was particularly egregious as an offensive black hole as he was known for posting up for 15-20 seconds before shooting. Carmelo is another offensive black hole. Dantley spent years as a dominant scorer in Utah, but when he was actually on a contender (Detroit) he was such a bad fit that they shipped him out of town in less than 2 years and got better after he was traded.

You say all these guys would be great with Jordan because they scored near 30 ppg in their primes. What you are missing is that you have 1 basketball, so who are you giving the ball to? Dantley so he can play iso-ball for 20 seconds while you take the ball out of Jordan's hands, or Jordan, while Dantley is useless off-ball and a defensive liability? All 5 guys you named are alpha dogs who need to shoot a lot to be happy, and in order for them to shoot a lot, they cannibalize Jordan's offensive game instead of adding to it. Do you think Dantley would be happy if you limited him to 20 ppg instead of 30? He would pout and request to be traded. All of the above reasons are why Pippen was an ideal fit to Jordan and why Pippen is considered a superior player compared to those guys.

Again, sort by ppg, become basketball expert, LOL.

STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!
STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!
STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!
STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!
STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!
STOP FEEDING THE TWOG TROLL!

Is this guy actually for real?

How many accounts and posts is he up to now? You have to admire his dedication on some level.

Don't even know why I bothered checking, but bolded is a lie if we're talking finals. Shaq avg'd 22.4 more points than Kobe in the 2000 finals. Jordan never avg'd 20+ points more than Pippen in a finals series (19.8 in 93 was closest).

People that think Lebron is/was a “greater” player than MJ are clueless. People that think MJ was a “better” player than Lebron are naive.

It’s similar to people thinking the original dream team would beat the 2016 Olympic team. Lol, Ok.