There is merit to the system thing.

LeBron is so ****ing good it makes sense that they run everything through him, but it means his teams struggle when he's off the court as their system is not build for the average human to run.

I know this, because we have the same problem when Steph isn't on the floor. We run a system that generates offense off one guys individual brilliance. When he sits the system doesn't work very well.

Or cherry picking ?
Don’t check how easy it was to reach finals tho .
2007 you could reach a final by beating 41 wins team , 41 win team win and 53 win team while LeBron had a 50 wins team .
Amazing accomplishment.
Why you think he got swept in the finals ?


And you don’t hear the mega fail (?) of playing in that east with 66 win team and 61 win team for LeBron and not reaching the finals !!
You can come up with all the excuses in the world ( common with LeBron case) for his failure , I can’t even imagine the comments here if MJ would of fail not reaching the final with a 60+ win team ....

I mean MJ without an all stars lose twice vs goat Celtic and 3 times vs goat pistons not reach the finals and he get blame for it , go figure .....

There is a reason finals get played and winning is important .
It’s put to rest those bias of weak conference which LeBron cheerleader totally discards

Why would a coach choose to run an inferior offense?

Coaches of Lebron are forced to run an inferior offense (lebron-ball) because lebron lacks the skill to run the #1 offenses that the Warriors, Spurs or Jordan's bulls ran.. Those offenses require off-ball and elite jumpshooting skill, which lebron lacks.. Blatt tried to install such a system and got fired for it.

Otoh, Jordan, Kobe and lots of guys could play Lebron's point guard style and average 30/8/8, but they would have inferior offenses like Lebron, and mostly lose regardless of cast, just like lebron.. But fortunately, they had the skill to play off-ball and run superior team offenses, so they won much more.

Ultimately, it's a skill-deficit.. Lebron's skill restriction to ball-dominance imposes spot-up roles that stall young players, thereby needing ready-made stars to win (talent-based winning).. Talent-based winning loses to organic ball movement, so lebron has a lottery record against the Spurs, Mavs, and Warriors.

Thanks! You as well.

Regarding the post, I agree SRS isn’t a perfect metric (it underrates the 2018 Warriors as well, for example). It’s a regular season stat and if players get injured or they rest (way more common in current era) it won’t capture all that. To be fair, I used composite ELO as well at the time of the post (2017) and all my data was accurate/current per that timeframe.

I disagree that my post was disingenuous or dishonest though. I was responding to a post about MJ’s Finals opponents, not his overall playoff competition. I even mentioned that - if we are talking playoff competition overall, it’s a different conversation. Especially early in his career, LeBron played in a weaker conference relative to the league at the time, and led his teams to higher seeds, whereas Jordan generally had lower seeded teams (making his opponents tougher). So yeah, it’s fair to bring that up if we are talking non-Finals opponents.

But to be completely fair here, even taking a really generous interpretation of MJ’s finals opponents and less generous of Bron’s, I think we can agree that basically every Warriors team LeBron faced was >> any team MJ faced. We are talking a 67 and 73 win team that then added Kevin Durant. And the 2007 and 2014 Spurs were pretty loaded too and imo better but i suppose that’s close/debatable with the 97 jazz or 96 Sonics. That’s 6 teams. Even considering the “weak” Mavs team (which I think is underrated by SRS for the reasons you note) and a weak Heat team, that’s a really high disparity in terms of high-end opponents. Not to mention he played against them on the tail end of an 8 year Finals run with zero rest, whereas Jordan at least got to take some years off to rest a bit and refresh his mental health. I think that was a pretty underrated aspect of Jordan’s success. It’s really mentally draining to do it year after year - Steve Kerr even mentions that the Warriors basically combusted in 2019.

No, the posts I am referencing were about the individual eFG% of LeBron compared to Kawhi, Harden, and Durant. You’re not reading the posts properly (or confusing them with another set of posts). You need to re-read and then maybe you’ll understand.

Lebron's "decision" created a top-heavy league, including a 3-star vs 3-star format in the Finals that Jordan didn't have - Jordan's teams only had 2 stars and faced 2-star opponents because the talent was more evenly-spread around the league (parity)...

With only 2 stars required to make the Finals, there were more Finals-caliber teams and therefore a tougher path than Lebron's path (being 1 of 2 Finals-caliber teams with "big 3's").. The parity that MJ faced has always been the most optimal competitive environment.

It's simply impossible to compare teams in a 2-star vs 2-star format (90's) to a 3-star vs 3-star format (10's) - instead, we should look at which cast faced talent-deficits, and Lebron's rarely did... he was actually the pre-season favorite in 15' and 16' with more experienced, decorated sidekicks than 16' Curry, that still matched up well to KD's sidekicks in 17'.




Lebron had Wade and Bosh, so who cares who he faced - no opponent had as much talent as the Heat.. The Heat simply failed to be the juggernaut that everyone anticipated, so people concluded that future HOF's Wade/Bosh were actually bad players, and all opponents were infact juggernauts.. This line of thinking became the standard in explaining Lebron losses, instead of seeking a legitimate explanation for the consistent losses or underdog status with super-teams.

Ultimately, Lebron hand-picked the pre-season favorite in 11', 15', and 16' but then proceeded to become the Finals underdog and even loser... Essentially, his losing and producing of weaker teams is praised over producing great teams and winning every year (jordan).. its a weird jedi mind trick that has futilely caught on



Lebron never beat a top 5 SRS team with poor scoring and efficiency from a sidekick, so he has zero carry-jobs against good teams in 2 decades of playing

The Spurs team that the Heat lost to had 4 future HoF...how did they not have as much talent? Even the Thunder team they beat had 3 first ballot HoF (including two of the best 20-25 players ever, KD will approach top 10 by the time he’s retired), and a fringe all-star first team all D in Ibaka. The Thunder were actually favored to win that series.

By 2014, Wade and Bosh had declined pretty considerably due to injury too. At least in 2012 Wade was still an all-NBA player, by 2014 he was pretty washed. He posted a 2.9 regular season and 0.9 playoff BPM that year. He never posted a better regular season BPM after that either, so it’s not like LeBron’s ball dominance had anything to do with his decline, he just got old and the game kind of passed him by.

The Heat had 4 HOF

Bosh and Wade were all-stars through 2016, so they hadn't declined sufficiently... Wade averaged prime Pippen stats the entire time

Heck, Wade carried the Heat in the 2014 ECF as an equal partner to lebron, and then was a star in the 16' Playoffs

The Spurs simply exploited the bad fit between Wade/lebron in 14'... but otherwise, Wade was great including the 13' Finals, 14' ECF, and 16' Playoffs.. and Bosh was great the entire time, but lebron simply destroyed him.

It's funny because you're complaining that Wade was no longer a top 5 player like 11' and 12' (top 5 PER, VORP, BPM, etc), so you're spoiling lebron.. lebron can't win with a sidekick getting Pippen stats?.. he needs a top 5 player like 11 or 12' Wade?.. that's weak
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Sure, if you don’t understand basketball. Prime Pippen averaged 6+ BPM over a 5 year span (in the regular season and playoffs) from 94-98 whereas declining Wade from 13-17 averaged 2.8 BPM while resting a ton (reg season VORP was 28.9 to 12.4 in that timeframe).

To be clear, my position isn’t that Wade wasn’t good in 2011 or 2012. He was all-NBA level those seasons. Just not afterward. Nor was Bosh.

Can someone lay out how Lebron is a better defender than MJ? It seems to be contentious.

This is a false dichotomy that I already addressed. MJ didn't disproportionately play with stiffs that couldn't shoot and Lebron didn't disproportionately play with good shooters. We're not comparing these teams in terms of their absolute TS%, but in terms of TS% relative to the league. MJ's era had far more players that weren't skilled, so you tend to find them on MJ's teams too and Lebron's era has way better shooters so you tend to find more shooters on Lebron's teams. But Lebron's never had elite shooters relative to the league on his team while MJ played with multiple elite shooters (Craig Hodges, BJ Armstrong, Steve Kerr). Though I guess people erroneously thought at one point that Mo Williams and Daniel Gibson were elite shooters while they played with Lebron. Relative to the league, both players generally played in conventional lineups - if anything, Lebron's teams tend to play big relative to the league and rarely sacrificed size for shooting. It's just that Lebron's big men (most of them weren't good shooters - consider Ilgauskas, Varajeo, Wallace, old Shaq, Haslem, Joel Anthony, Birdman) weren't very good at offensive rebounding.

It's kind of disingenuous to ignore MJ's 3-point shooting because there weren't many 3-point shooters back in the day, then to turn around and talk about how MJ's teams had good offensive rebounding because they sacrificed shooting for offensive rebounding, while citing a few non-shooters as though that wasn't how most teams were constructed back then.

Part of this is that Steph's literally one of the best offensive players in the history of the game (at this point he's ahead of MJ) and part of this is that the Warriors don't stagger their top players as much as other teams (especially Curry + Draymond) - +/- is generally going to be a bit inflated in that case. Lebron's teams tend to stagger their top players more because Lebron + anyone crushes, so you might as well play Lebron with the bench a lot and Lebron still crushes +/- because he's the GOAT.

I think the main sense in which this applies to the GOAT debate is that we don't know if MJ could succeed consistently without Phil Jackson. Playoff basketball is very matchup-dependent and tactical and have a fair amount of variance to boot, which is why consistent success - whether Lebron making 9 Finals in 10 years or MJ winning 6 titles in 8 years - is remarkably difficult. Dynasties in basketball have been ones that have found some consistent style and identity that multiple players and the coach have bought into that is highly matchup-proof. I'd argue that Lebron and Bill Russell are the only players where you could argue they were the system but even Bill Russell never won without Red Auerbach (first as a coach, later as a GM). MJ not only never made the Finals without Pippen and Phil Jackson, but Phil Jackson won twice with Kobe and Pau. When Mike Brown (a coach that Lebron took to the Finals) took over that Lakers squad, they still had a lot of the same talent (and they were favored to come out of the West) but put up just a +1.6 net rating.

Meanwhile, there's no question about Lebron being a system onto itself - he took 5 different coaches to the Finals and only Spo ever made it back there without him.

So if you take the best thing MJ does, on-ball defense against guards, relative to the era, they are probably comparable or MJ may come out even a bit ahead. The problem is that there's a lot more to defense than that:

Transition defense: Lebron is better
On-ball defense against big people: Lebron is way better
Help defense: Lebron is better
Rim protection: Lebron is way better
Communicating: Lebron is way better

And Lebron's advantages get bigger in the playoffs. The main thing Michael Jordan excelled at is mugging mediocre ball-handlers - well better teams in the playoffs tend to have better ball-handlers that aren't as prone to turnovers and in repeated matchups, can take advantage of overly aggressive defenders. Statistically, you can see that MJ's steal rate goes down in the playoffs (while Lebron's goes up) because his style isn't as effective against better teams. Lebron's versatility is also more helpful in the playoffs since playoff basketball is much more about matchups and adjustments - Lebron's versatility means he can do different things depending on the matchups and any lineup with Lebron has fewer weaknesses to exploit. Lebron's superior understanding of the game also means Lebron's defense gets better as the series goes on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDViQIwOtY8&t=393s - here's a nice graph about how Lebron does better as the series goes on - MJ the opposite). Lebron being able to go from guarding Derrick Rose and Tony Parker to plugging holes in the back like Draymond on defense, only bigger, stronger, quicker and faster is insanely valuable in the playoffs.

Pippen had a 2.0 BPM in the 93' Playoffs and lower career BPM than Kyrie, Wade and AD

So Lebron had 3 teammates with better BPM than Pippen... But BPM is a garbage stat - PER and WS/48 are better, but Pippen was lower in those stats too.

13' and 14' Wade had simply been reduced to Pippen stats, so you think he sucked - now you know why I think Pippen sucked - his production equaled 13' or 14' Wade.

And Lebron had a 2nd star teammate in Bosh, so he had 2 Pippen's and destroyed both.. both Wade and Bosh didn't fit with Lebron because lebron is just a ball-dominator

Losing the Finals means you wouldn't make the Finals in the other conference, so Finals appearances are conference-dependant affairs and only winning them matters.

So lebron's Finals appearances mean nothing - Iverson, Dwight and Kidd took weak casts to the Finals, so lebron's runs with super-teams means nothing and amounts to cheating

Making the Finals means you beat a 2nd Round winner - that's nothing compared to beating Finals teams

Probability, how does it work?

The probability that I'm arguing (that Finals losers wouldn't make Finals in the other conference) is the overwhelming favorite - that's the most likely scenario by far - whereas you're pulling for the longshot and trying to appear legitimate.. it's ridiculous to refute that the sky is blue.

Otoh, how does it work that you equate making the Finals with winning it?

And you don't differentiate winning with 1b's vs winning with true 2nd options that have low statistical peak and average far less in every Playoffs?

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From 06-10, the Cavs had higher-ranked team defenses than the 85-90' Bulls and better offensive sidekicks than Pippen

(05' Zydrunas, 05' Hughes, 06' Zydrunas, 09' Mo, and 10' Jamison had better PER, WS/48, scoring and efficiency than 90' Pippen).

So Jordan had less help on both sides of the ball, yet nearly beat the champs in 90' (a "migraine" stopped it), while Lebron was swept (07'), lottery (05'), and lost as the league favorite (09' and 10')..

Ultimately, 85-90' Jordan played in a conference that required a super-team to win it with less help than 05-10' Lebron, who played in a conference that 1-star teams were routinely winning

Gotta wonder where you are coming from on this one. The only point of my post, in comparing the finals record of MJ v. LeBron, was what factors are at play perhaps distorting a 100% win rate versus a 40% win rate, and how that relates to how great each player is. I am not on the Bron is better side, not even close, and I have clearly outlined the awesome inter-conference competition Jordan faced. No cherry picking here. But massive suppositions and unwarranted extrapolations on your end.

My Celtics and Pistons comment is about the early "unsuccessful years" of Jordan's career, when these GOAT candidate teams were indeed eliminating the Bulls continuously. As far as Zeke saying Jordan wasn't his competition, that's about like Chamberlain saying Russell wasn't his competition. The feud between the two, and jealousy, is clearly the reason for the comment, at least once the Bulls ascension began. Before that, of course it was the Lakers and Celtics, and this is Isaiah's escape hatch in the comment. It was true, before Jordan, Magic and Bird were the threats.

Jordan "not so much" concerned in terms of winning as a team. Hmm. Can you explain the rising of the Bulls past two or three GOAT type teams to six titles and a record breaking 72 win season, undefeated in finals? This was some kind of secondary effect ... not exactly and precisely a searing desire to win?

Nothing wrong with gambling away at night, as opposed to watching movies or playing video games or cards in the hotel, as is standard fare for the players. As long as he gets his sleep ... ZERO difference. And as we know, casino games get your mind off of ALL pressures and worries better than almost anything, so perhaps it should be recommended instead of stupidly condemned.

As far as not being "truly competitive" if you walk away in your prime, to your list let's add Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Bobby Jones, Dan Gable. And Michael Jordan. Hmm. Quite a list of not truly competitive athletes. Go fish.

You have mentioned 3 shooters MJ played with, with none of them playing together. **** you've used Hodges who was good for about 5 minutes, and regularly got DNP-CD for half his time playing in Chicago, before dropping out of the league.

So, he had one good shooter on the court for less than half the minutes he was out there.

Anyway, my point is that using EFG% and TS% rather than Offensive rating is obviously stupid.

Draymond is super effective because of Curry. He becomes a lot less effective when Curry is off the court. So, that's a bad comparison. That's just good coaching.

It's like saying a corner 3 point shooter specialist is out there with LeBron. They're effective because of LeBron. They're not so effective when he's not out there.

Thompson basically plays all the (non garbage) minutes Curry isn't on the floor. Before and during Durant's stay.

Durant played a lot of minutes with Curry to be fair. I think that was more to do with letting Thompson get his own being that he gave up a lot because of Durant's arrival. I don't think it inflated Curry's numbers though.

You're missing the point - the point isn't whether this is effective or not. The point is that this leads the +/- #s to be inflated, because it's combining the impact of multiple good players, since that level of overlap (Draymond's minutes overlapped with Curry 88% in 14-15, 85% in 15-16, 87% this season) is rare.

This is not true at all. In 14-15 and 15-16 (those are the years Curry's +/- numbers were at their peak), Klay Thompson played 82% and 85% of his minutes with Curry respectively. That's a very high level of overlap for the top 2 offensive options given that Curry is not a high-minutes guy in the first place. For Lebron (and most other players I suspect), the numbers are more around 60-70% with his #2 options, depending on the health of the of the other guy.

But you didn't do anything to support your point. You're insinuating that the Bulls put together a roster that sacrificed TS% in favor of Offensive Rebounding - but where's the evidence? Maybe it's more that they had a bunch of good offensive rebounding role players but their #1 option didn't do enough to increase scoring efficiency due to his style.

This is like comparing QBs by their team record and total point differential and when someone points that the QB with a worse record consistently led a much better offense, immediately deflecting and saying that that's because the other team chose to invest more in their defense. Maybe, but then you have to show the evidence.