Lebron is Magnus is definitely correct.

OK. How much better is Luka Doncic than prime Shaq then? Shaq's best year was exactly 20 years ago. Luka is only 24. His peak BPM is almost exactly the same as Shaq's -- meaning statistically, they are at the same level of outlier relative to the NBA's average player.

Since the league improves an enormous amount in 20 years, Luka is probably a lot better than prime Shaq, right? I mean, based on this "continuous sport improvement with no outlier years in the past" model you guys have going on. I disagree with that reasoning, as you've seen, and therefore I think prime Shaq is probably quite a bit better than Doncic even though Shaq peaked exactly 20 years ago. If you, bacalo, sabr, etc. are internally consistent in your reasoning, you must believe Doncic is better. How much better is he, in your opinion?

Big no to the bolded. I'll let you elaborate on why you think it's inarguably true when you answer my Doncic vs. Shaq question.

No, I don't think the world record will be "troubled" by 2029. It MIGHT be, if there is another huge outlier athlete. THAT is the variance I'm talking about, actually; e.g. 1988 was a huge outlier year for the NBA. MJ was a huge outlier athelete. LeBron was as well, but less so.

So I mean yes, IF another dominant sprinter comes along, it MIGHT be troubled. That's a big *if*. What you guys are arguing, is that it is mathematically certain to be so if the time frame is ~20 years or more. That is of course nonsense.

Luka is quite obviously already better than peak Shaq.

Luka's only clear comparable going forward is Lebron.

OK, so you're pretty obviously just going to keep saying over and over again "the population is getting bigger and the sport is more popular" therefore it's somehow a mathematical proof that the NBA is better. I don't agree, so just answer this for me:

The longest long jump of all time took place in 1991 (29 years ago). The SECOND longest long jump of all time took place in 1968 (52 years years ago). The world population has increased by 44% since the longest world record jump took place. The world population has increased by 119% since the second longest long jump occurred.

If your hypothesis were true, we'd expect the 1991 world record to have been easily beaten (probably multiple times) by now. And the 1968 Olympic record, second greatest jump of all time, to have been absolutely crushed.

This hasn't happened at all. So don't we have scientific proof that it's not a mathematical certainty that sports/athleticism will substantially increase over the course of a couple decades, and there is a considerable amount of variation between years? (as we would expect by the laws of probability theory)

OK, cool. Your position is pretty clear and consistent, at least. I still am curious what sabr and banzai think because the idea that 24 year old Luka is better than prime Shaq, one of the most dominant players ever, seems hilarious to me just because he played about 20 years ago. So let's see.

Also, can you answer my long jump question in my previous post? Curious why you think that happened and why the records haven't been absolutely crushed yet?

EDIT: Also, bacalo, do you have Giannis or prime LeBron as better? LeBron's prime was about 10+ years ago in a statistical sense. Giannis (while maybe not clearly the best in the league by a significant margin), is obviously a significant outlier to the league average. If the average has to mathematically improve a ton in 20 years, it must improve a decent amount in 10. So since Giannis is a pretty big outlier with a 11+ BPM (BPM is measured relative to league average), he's gotta be better than prime LeBron right?

Crap, I meant Jokic, not Doncic. Nikola Jokic vs. Shaq. Getting my Serbian names crossed.

Same idea behind the question though; just going with the center since comparison to Shaq.

And anyway, Doncic is 20 years old. Are you saying a 20 year old is better than prime Shaq???? Like I want to believe you're trying to have a serious discussion but I can't.

You keep trying to argue the outliers when I'm talking about the level of the league as a whole.

You absolutely can use math and probability when discussing large sample sizes. More people in the sport is going to lead to more competition.

The league itself is the outlier. The average basketball player worldwide was not guarding Michael Jordan in 1988.

Everything you have been arguing implies Nikolai Jokic > prime Shaq (and it’s not that close, really, given how confident you are that the league is dramatically better in 20 years). And Giannis is at least as good as prime LeBron, probably better.

Does that sound off to you at all? And if not, how do you get around it?

And if the mean (of whatever you are choosing as your population; I have a feeling this is going to keep shifting along with your goalposts) is improving every year, Then why are there examples of the best in the world not improving after 52 years as with the long jump? Like if the mean is 10x better, then the top of the distribution has to be way better as well. Mainly because the top isn’t 10x better than the mean anyway, so arguing otherwise would be completely inconsistent and ******ed. But I’m not holding my breath with that because I’m guessing bacalo is going to start arguing time travel to explain the 1968 Olympic long jump record still standing.

Oh and the bolded is another thing that's super duper wrong, and may be why you're coming to these weird conclusions.

The 10th best player on a team hardly plays. They are almost never on the court when Jordan and LeBron are on the court. And when they are, they aren't guarding them. And if they do happen to guard them, they aren't diminishing their offensive output because they are relatively terrible.

The elite players get waaaay more minutes than the average and worst players. Therefore they have a waaay disproportionate impact on relative competition in a given year. And since I've shown the top of the league was better in 1987-88 than in 2008-09 (and likely the average starter as well), then that proves that 1987-88 was an outlier year in terms of NBA talent and the competition was very likely better. i.e. we can immediately see the claim that LeBron's stats were worse than Jordan's because of better competition was wrong.

So yeah the 10th best player on any team might be better (I don't know, I haven't looked), but that point is totally irrelevant to the claims that were made.

just look at tennis if you want to see how fast sports evolve. these mid-late 30s legends can barely keep up with these young, evolved kids anymore.

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Please God end these Covid-19 times and bring back the NBA.

No, but Jordan was being guarded by many mediocre to average NBA players. Who did he hit his famous shot against? Craig Ehlo? That guy is pretty much the definition of a mediocre NBA player. Jordan was not guarded by Sidney Moncrief and Michael Cooper every game like you seem to be implying. He faced plenty of mediocre defenders (by NBA standards). And if the level of what a "mediocre NBA player" is rises, it becomes harder to dominate the league.

This is a giant strawman. Shaq should have been the unanimous MVP in 2000. Jokic is around the 10-12th best player in the league. They are not comparably dominant. If they were equally dominant, then yes I'd argue that Jokic is better.

You're back to arguing the same thing which I already addressed. The NBA is more than 1 player. The NBA has roughly 300 players getting meaningful minutes. Take the top 300 long jumpers from 1970 or whenever and compare them to the top 300 long jumpers now. Which group do you think would average a longer distance?

You've not shown that.

I mean, let's be honest here. I've given way more evidence for that claim than the claim the NBA is 10x better (or whatever multiplier we're at now) now than 20 years ago.

That's funny, because this was talked bout in the last dance episodes this week. Ron Harper was PISSED they put Ehlo on Jordan. Jordan was like wtf. Everyone knew it was a dumb coaching decision.

But anyway, similarly LeBron isn't being guarded by Kawhi every night. Or 38 year old Jason Kidd. He was only guarded by 38 year old Jason Kidd in the 2011 NBA finals and got locked down . I'm guessing that means 38 year old Kidd >>> prime Moncrief at D for you since this was like 20 years later or something.

We (or whoever it was; bacalotroll?) were talking about the statistical production of LeBron vs. MJ. Not MVP voting. Because the question was MJ/LeBron relative stats "adjustments" due to massively improved competition. BPM specifically measures player efficiency per 100 possessions, relative to the league average.

Shaq's peak BPM was 9.3. That was in 2000. Jokic's peak BPM was 9.1 in 2019. 19 year difference.

Your argument (that you act like you have proven, when you've actually given precisely zero evidence and just keep claiming it over and over again), is that over a 20 year time scale the league is way better. Like unquestionably better.

Jokic, at 23 years old, statistically produced relative to the league average in exactly the same way peak Shaq did in 2000. This all follows from the definitions of BPM.

So by your own argument, Jokic (at 23 years old) > Shaq (in his best ever season), by exactly the same amount the league has improved in 20 years. Which you claim is undoubtedly substantial.

If you apply your reasoning consistently (and not only when you want to argue MJ suxxxxx), then 23 YO Jokic is clearly substantially better than prime Shaq.

Unless, well, the league isn't substantially better. Which is what I'm saying, Then we can revisit that ridiculous conclusion.

I don't know. Do you actually want to do the analysis and report back? Or do you want to keep making stuff up?

Hint: Just for funsies, I looked at the Olympic 100m finals in 2016 vs 1996. Want to know what I found?

And you're still making the same mistakes in reasoning over and over again. Do you not understand that it's the elite players and the (at a minimum) significantly above average players that are guarding Jordan and LeBron? That maybe the 10th best player for the Memphis Grizzling doing the EuroStep isn't shutting down LeBron? The 300th minutes played player played in like 50 games and averaged about 14 minutes. Think he's in the game at crunch time guarding LeBron on the perimeter?

Think kd is like your boy Naka, AIM. kinda feel good for him the way he is playing in the magnus invitational. class act that i didnt think he had for just letting go the "controversy" in the Armageddon vs magnus.

For those that don't know, back in the day AIM used to give Hikaru Nakamura a fight over 64 squares.

I've never said that the NBA is 10x better than it was 20 years ago. I'm very close to putting you on ignore if you keep straw manning me.

The gist of my argument is this: the level of competition slowly rises over time due to an increase in overall available talent as well as improvements in strategy and training. As the average player gets better, the same hypothetical player will put up worse numbers against better competition than against worse competition. Do you disagree with this?

No, this is cherry-picking a stat that overrates Jokic. BPM is not a perfect stat.

Shaq was indisputably the best player in 2000. Jokic is not even close to being the best player in 2020. Therefore this analogy is not valid.

I don't care to look it up because I don't care about track and field records.

I will use a baseball analogy since I am much more familiar with that sport. Nolan Ryan threw 100+ mph 45-50 years ago, and likely no current starting pitcher throws harder than Ryan did. Justin Verlander a few years ago was probably at a similar level in terms of fastball velocity. The maximum fastball velocity has not gone up over the last 50 years, because humans simply can't throw much faster than 100 mph without their arm falling apart. HOWEVER, the AVERAGE velocity has gone up significantly in the last 50 years due to improvements in training, medicine (TJ surgeries), as well as bigger talent pool. This is not anecdotal, we have lots of data to show the average fastball velocity going up in just the last 15 years, never mind 50 years.

Using your logic of only looking at the very peak outlier (say Ryan and Verlander) you'd conclude that pitchers aren't throwing harder than they did before, when they obviously are if you look at the whole league.

This is probably the case with the NBA as well, with the whole league being better at shooting, ball handling, pick-and-roll defense, etc... compared to 30 years ago.

Look, if you disagree with me that players get better over time, then Jordan is NOT the GOAT.

Wilt Chamberlain is the GOAT because he put up better numbers than anyone. That is the reductio ad absurdum of your argument.

Try to give someone the benefit of the doubt and they hit you with "so you must think Jokic is better than peak Shaq!" lol. Wtf was I thinking posting ITT.

Lebron as Magnus o0 ?
When did Magnus ever failed yet ?
And furthermore when Magnus ever failed miserably ?

Lebron is more like Karpov with some great dominance for 10 years between 1975-85 but too many lost as well on the grandest stage.
Alekhine comes to mind as well lot of win and some terrible losses
(Vs euwe) .

Yeah I think alekhine is the best fit .
Could dominate in any kind of games Too , very versatile.

LeBron is Magnus because he's current GOAT, all-time GOAT and endgame EXTREME GOAT

Jordan blunders his queen like he's playing in the first round of the playoffs

He also left his queen and she got PAID.

So you claiming Magnus is the goat ?
Lol ok .....

Not the first time you show how delusional you are .

Ps: Jordan in the first round did a play off record (63 points)vs one of the greatest team ever vs like 4 or 5 hall of fame players , basically alone .....and yes he still lost .
He was in a lot tougher spot and impossible winning situation than some of lebron james lost .

While lebron couldn’t make the play off the first 2 years ?
I mean u got any more nonsense arguments cause I can do some as well ..