Serious question and it isn't rhetorical, but are there any other NBA players in history that combine Jordan's individual (statistics and awards) and team success? I can't think of any. All the ones that are close have some obvious flaw in their resume that Jordan does not.

- Kareem has 6 rings and amazing individual accomplishments. But only one or two of those rings came at his peak. For 4 of those rings he was 34+, and he was no longer the best player on his team (eclipsed by Magic).
- Russell. GOAT team accomplishments. GOAT defense. But his individual offensive stats are far from elite and he won his rings in the 50's and 60's when there were 8 teams and arguably much weaker competition. And his team was stacked (though to be fair he was clearly their best player).
- LeBron. GOAT overall athlete in NBA history possibly with size, strength, athleticism. GOAT combo of longevity + sustained production. Peak statistical production top tier. But some major team failures/disappointments that some attribute to his style of play and only 3 rings.
- Wilt. Crazy individual accomplishments and statistics. Season with 50 ppg and 26 rebounds/game wtf. I don't care what era you're in that's hard to wrap your head around. But only 2 rings in what most would consider a "weak" era for basketball (compared to now). Has the issue where it looks like his style is *great* at accumulating individual stats but hurts championship probability. I'd argue LeBron has this problem, just to a lesser extent.

Then you got Magic, Bird, Duncan, Shaq, Olajuwon, etc. All top tier but not really in the GOAT discussion.

Then you have MJ, who, for all my fan tendencies, honestly looks like he is in another tier altogether. 6 rings. ALL where he was very clearly the best player and leader of the team, and the best player in the NBA. His peak production is pretty clearly GOAT. His only ding is he chose to retire at 30 for almost 2 full seasons and again at 35 which is relatively young. But again, that's not health or basketball related, he was easily the best player in the world at 30 and still pretty easily at 35.

Like how is he not in his own tier altogether?

In all seriousness he is for me.

Jordan
Gap
LeBron
Small Gap
The rest

The war of attrition is won.

And no twd , you dont need to repeat 2 separate things 4 times In the same post just to get your point across

I like that .
I’m still tore between lebron and KAJ tho .

Ps: I just think it makes no sense to rank players that are not retired .
Will see for KD and kawhi later .

my top-5:

1. mj goat
2. the admiral
3. wilt
4. cp3
5. neil johnston

Alright twog, you got even me to put on my LeBron hat for a minute. Bolded doesn't seem fair. Yeah Wade and Irving had similar usage% in those title years in the playoffs but LeBron played way more minutes. I mean he was clearly their best player and it's not close.

And he wasn't an underdog '11-'14. They were the top or close to top team and they titled 2 out of 4 of those years. Yeah maybe that Spurs team or whatever was the favorite going into finals but still it wasn't a huge difference. And I think they were preseason favorites (meaning it was acknowledged LeBron and that team were awesome).

He doesn't take as many contested jumpers because that's not his style. I agree being less able to hit those is a weakness (compared to like Jordan), but the other things he does are super valuable.

The only reason we get to be picky with LeBron's skillset and resume is that we're comparing him to Jordan's absurd resume. 3 rings and LeBron's numbers are still really amazing, and if you rank him outside the top 5 it's pretty crazy.

You misses Jordan against Seattle in 96 who were the best team and best defense outside the Bulls.

27/5/4 on 41%

Looks good enough to me. In my life I have never seen an athlete dominate his sport like MJ. Saying he's the best player in NBA history is still an insult. He is the greatest athlete in the history of ALL sports. And here's the thing. When Lebron retires, he won't be missed. I mean he's a great player. Top 5 for sure. But the NBA and fans will quickly and easily move on without him. Nobody's really gonna care when he's gone. Now go ask anyone who watched Jordan's career. Odds are, like me, they've been stuck in a Jordan hangover ever since his retirement. Like the pain of him being gone simply won't go away. No athlete has ever had that kind've mass effect, but there has never been an athlete like Jordan and there probably never will be.

I think a major part of the the Jordan hangover effect is because he retired in his prime to go play beisbol for nearly 2 seasons.

win a 3 peat... go for 4!?!? and more!?!?!

Nope.. go play AA beisbol b/c you got banned by Dave Stern.

Like I said , players still playing makes no sense to be included and about choking ....
You put wilt at number 3 .....
If lebron ain’t good enough to be number 2 or 3 , no way in hell you can put wilt number 3 .
And a lot of lost by Lebron , like mj early in his career , couldn’t be won like the last 2 vs the warriors .

Yes I dislike lebron but not to a point to disregards his talents and facts .

I think the NBA will definitely miss LeBron when he is gone just based on how massively polarizing he is alone. You got people in this thread that think he is the GOAT, you got others (well 1 other) that don't think he's top 10. There are a lot of people that think he is massively overrated. Needs to pick his own teammates, plays in the East, can't close games like other legends, complains too much, annoying passive aggressive, etc

People love LeBron and they love to hate him in a way that I'm just not sure we're ever going to see again. I don't see a Giannis or Doncic or some other guy evoking that type of passion.

Hell, the ESPN/FS1 shows have built a cottage industry around guessing/analyzing his every move.

I really think if lebron wouldn’t of claim himself the goat or his fan since 2013 ( what kind of sick idea was this to think in 2013 lebron was already at mj level with the start of this thread....), we wouldn’t talk sooo much about lebron imho .

The polarisation coming from him mainly his attribute to his fan from disregarding facts instead of his playing abilities and success on the court .

Imo , no he won’t be miss that much when you have kawhi and kd still in this league for example .
Yeah Doncic, his still early but damn I can’t wait next season to see where he will be at if he keeps improving !

Ps: i think lebrons fans has hurt him more than anything else ...

League is much stronger than it was two decades ago because the player pool is an order of magnitude better than it was. Comparable stats against better competition means better players.

Ginobili was better than jerry west. Pau was better thanartis gilmore and half the nba is better than doc rivers.

Lebron 11th lul, bird 2nd....jfc.

Well the nice thing is that you don't have to read a word he types again

This is obv a joke. Love and Kyrie have done nothing without LeBron. They just aren't very good.

Still, LeBron actually meets this criteria. LeBron/Irving/love did actually beat curry/Klay the only time they faced off. The other years love was out and Irving only played game 1 or Durant joined up.

An "order of magnitude" better? 10x? You're one of those people that just says stuff that is outlandishly wrong and presents it as fact. How would it even be remotely possible for the ability of an entire population to increase TEN FOLD over the course of 20 years? I think that probably violates fundamental laws of physics or something. I don't know how you're saying something so wrong about basketball that it violates science, but somehow you did.

You're making like 3 obvious mistakes here (probably more, but 3 obvious ones):

1) Making some weird (impossible) assumption that a pool of players can increase in ability 10 fold in 20 years. To see that this is outrageously wrong look at world record progressions in track and field and see how many are still from ~20+ years ago, and for records set in the last few years look at the % improvement from ~20 years ago. More accurate still; look at the average gold medal winning time/distance from 20 years ago compared to today. The variance overwhelms the difference between the years.

2) "Comparable stats against better competition means better players".

No. One, the players aren't better. Look at the All-NBA teams from then vs. now. It's a tie at best [Edit: and just to be sure I actually looked it up. The All-NBA team back then was actually way better than the one in LeBron's best statistical year). In Jordan's best statistical years there were 23 or 25 teams (about 120 available starting positions across the entire league). In LeBron's best years there were 30 teams (150 starting positions).

Which is better: the average player among the 120 best players in the world? Or the average player among the 150 best players in the world? If the answer isn't obvious, then take a more extreme case. Is the average all-star better or is the average player across the world better? The more teams and starting positions you have to fill, the more the talent will be diluted and the average player will be worse; unless other factors majorly compensate.

Jordan, on average, played against the average of the best 120 players in the world. LeBron, the average of the best 150. LeBron is NOT playing against "better competition on average".

This is where you argue there are more international players now, while forgetting about guys like Hakeem Olajuwon (the best international player of all time), then when I mention Hakeem you say that doesn't count or something. The best international players in the 80's and 90's played in the NBA. Hakeem was drafted 1st the year Jordan was drafted for Christ's sake.

3) Better stats even against the same competition doesn't mean you're a better player. Look at Russell vs. Wilt. Or Wilt vs. anyone. The goal of basketball isn't to accumulate $tat$, it's to win games and the championship at the end of the year.

Your Manu > Jerry West comparison is weird given your "comparable stats" argument. I've never watched old film of West so it's whatever, but a quick scan of their stats shows West was a 27/7/6 guy @ .550 TS% and Manu is 13/4/4 @ .582 TS%.

Aaaand holy **** after I looked up those numbers I just realized bacalaopeace is a huge troll. Good work bro. You actually had me until I looked up the stats on your examples .

Leaving the rest of the post I wrote because whatever, I already wrote it.

Anyway, because I already looked it up:

Jordan's best statistical year was 1987-88. All-NBA team that year:

F Charles Barkley
F Larry Bird
C Hakeem Olajuwon
G Michael Jordan
G Magic Johnson

LeBron's was 2008-09. All-NBA team:

F Dirk Nowitzki
F LeBron James
C Dwight Howard
G Kobe Bryant
G Dwyane Wade

So, seriously though, like what the f are you talking about? (ignoring the fact you're a troll at the moment just for fun)

LeBron > Barkley sure. Barkley was in fact an MVP and 5x all-nba first teamer though (and 5x second team) and a top 20'ish player of all time so whatever.

Beyond that:
Bird > Dirk
Hakeem >>>>>>> Dwight Howard
Michael Jordan >> Kobe
Magic >> Wade

Like the 80's and 90's NBA was among the most loaded eras, talent-wise, in the history of the NBA. If you think the 80's and 90's were weak, I'm sorry but you've never watched basketball and the most you've played is probably some NBA2k on your xbox.

You obviously don't watch soccer, because Messi is much more dominant than Jordan was.

The player pool has expanded from 250 million in the US to 300 million in the US plus 700 million in Europe, a billion in Africa, and 1,5 billion in China, so, yeah, an order of magnitude bigger. You think 1990s Serge Ibaka was part of the 1990 potential player pool?

You have some serious, serious flaws in how you think.

- The population of potential NBA players is not the entire population. You're including women, children, and geriatrics. The potential player pool consists of males ~20-35. C'mon man.

- The population expansion is mostly due to people living longer. The number of 20-35 year old males is about the same.

- Yes, a 7 foot tall basketball player from the Congo would be in the potential player pool in 1990. Are you serious?

- You mention the 1.5 billion population of China (nevermind that includes 80 year old women) as tilting the strength of competition in the NBA to favor 2020. There have been 6 total Chinese basketball players in the NBA ever. Six. The last one played from 2017-2018. Are you arguing Zhou Qi tilted the competition in the NBA so much that Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon (that's not an American name bro) couldn't possibly compete?

You legit have no idea how to think. Like my head hurts right now.

Just comparing the top players is not representative. Depending on the year, they may have been slightly better at times in the 90s.

But more important is the league average players and the league replacement level players. Can't really argue they were better in Jordans era.

Comparing eras for me is negated by the 3 point shot. The game changed so much in the late 2000s especially with how many are shot and subsequently how much better the average 3 point shooter is. Yea, players at the guard positions are likely stronger but everything else it's hard to argue.

So, it's more about the change in coaching and style but if it was taught to kids to practice 3s everyday all day in the 70s, 80s, and 90s I have little doubt those guys would have been just as effective if not more effective shooters and by extension better scorers/players. Hyperbole? I guess. But if bird, jordan, magic, hell even the guys who were known as shooters like joe Dumars or mitch Richmond were told to let it fly the level of scoring would be nearly the same

No. No. And no. Jordan and LeBron aren't getting checked by "replacement level players" that come off the bench for 10-20 minutes a game. They're getting checked by the opponents best defender. As you can see by my listing of the most relevant players, the best players in the league in Jordan's best (statistical) year were better than in LeBron's best statistical year. Of course that's not a measurement of defense blah blah blah, so it's a little more complicated than that, but it immediately proves the claim that Jordan's era was much weaker (bacalotroll said "an order of magnitude" looool) completely wrong in the most clear and obvious way possible.

And anyway, let's do a corrected version of what you said. Rather than take the top guys (the ones mostly facing off against Jordan or LeBron), let's take the average starter. Surely you can at least agree Jordan and LeBron play the bulk of their minutes against starters and high minute reserves, right? Anyway:

Jordan's best statistical year 1987-88; 23 teams in the league; 115 starting positions available for players to fill.

LeBron's best statistical year 2008-09; 30 teams in the league; 150 starting positions available.

Player ability is correlated with minutes played, and BPM is as good of an advanced stat as any, and VORP incorporates both. So we'll use VORP.

The median starting player in 1987-88 would be around the 57-58th best player in the league. The median starting player in 2008-09 would be the 75th best player in the league

A sampling of the median starting player in Jordan's best statistical year (player around #57-58 in VORP):

Robert Parish, AC Green, Dennis Johnson, Rolando Blackman, Sleepy Floyd, Kevin Johnson, Tom Chambers, Terry Cummings.

LeBron (average starting player around #75 in total VORP):

36 year old Grant Hill, Leandro Barbosa, Amar'e Stoudamire, Paul Millsap, Mike Miller, Rafer Alston, John Salmons, Richard Jefferson, Brad Miller.


I mean I don't know for sure which team constructed of those players would be "better", as they are both entirely mediocre (as you would expect), but the 1987-88 group seems better to me. Then once you account for the fact the top of the league was better in those years (Hakeem, Magic, Bird, Barkley, Jordan), the competition Jordan faced was clearly superior.

So yes, I am going to argue the competition in '87-88 was better than in 2008-'09, because it obviously was for anyone that bothered to actually think about the right way to analyze that claim and look at the players.

Honestly though. I feel like you guys confuse 1950 NBA with 1990 NBA. You know there were airplanes back then and scouts, right? Like the best player in Nigeria (for example, Hakeem Olajuwon) would get a chance to play in the NBA in 1990. You know how I know that? Because the best player from Nigeria played in the NBA in 1990. You can check facts and stuff on the internet these days.