The GQ Scottie Pippen article is pretty hilarious:

https://www.gq.com/story/scottie-pippen-nba-bulls

3ball,

How would you compare Westbrook and KD in terms of their ability to score inside?

Did MJ ever win a playoff series with his major costars sidelined due to injuries? Drawing a blank on that one.

Totally, if only Orlando Woolridge stuck around, MJ would have like 10 rings. Oh wait.

MJ averaged 25ppg on 40% shooting in that series outside Game 3.

Bulls smashed them in Game 3 so MJs performance wasn't really that important in that game.

What does that have to do with anything? Why did this team, with MJ and Woolridge, two volume scorers go 38-44, while the Pippen/Grant Bullls without MJ went 55-27?

You never answered my question - how good was Ron Harper?

3ball, you seem to be saying this never happened?

This is a complete non-sequitur. Your entire schtick is that scoring is the best kind of help and equal scoring partner or whatever is the best way to judge the supporting cast. MJ had that and won 38 games and bounced out in the first round. Pippen didn't have it - the next best scorer after Pippen on the Bulls, Horace Grant, averaged 15.1 PPG in the regular season and 16.2 PPG in the playoffs. Yet, the Pippen Bulls won 55 games, outscored the Finals-bound Knicks in a close 7-game series, who in turn outscored the eventual champions Rockets in a close 7-game series. Was Pippen that much better than a 21-year old MJ that he was able to do so much more with so much less help? Or is this a flawed way of judging one's supporting cast?

MJ never won a single playoff series without a top-30 all-time player in Pippen. Lebron won multiple playoff series with the likes of Mo Williams and Delonte West as the next best player (it's kind of hard to say who really was the next best player because they were pretty much all role players at this point - in some sense, the defense gets to choose who would put up the stats, so role player scoring volume isn't heavily correlated with skill).

So Ron Harper, who was arguably the best player (he led the team in BPM, VORP, total points and points per 100) on the team that you laud as the team of the decade when MJ beat them was something like the 4th or 5th best player on the Bulls during the second three-peat. How crazy is that?

You called Wade an equal-scoring partner for Lebron, right? Difference in PPG during their championship seasons:

11-12: ​5.0
12-13: 5.6

Difference in PPG between Woolridge and MJ

84-85: 5.3

That seems like "equal-scoring" by your standards.

He scored the most points, he had the highest BPM and VORP and he was also one of their best defenders (good defense is generally underrated by advanced stats). How was he their 4th best player?

Pedantry aside, by your logic, MJ had far more scoring help in 84-85 than Pippen in 93-94. Do you agree or disagree?

So the Bulls system was so good that it was literally championship-caliber with *no* talent? Sounds like that team would completely crush the league if you add a top-5 player right?

Your point was that Phil Jackson's coaching at the time was so amazing that he was able to coach a bunch of role players with no talent into a championship-caliber team? How would such a coach do with real talent?

Was it someone else that was talking about how Lebron at 20 (nearly 2 years younger than MJ in 84-85) had an all-star center (as though Big Z deserved to be an all-star) and didn't make the playoffs and that was somehow a bad thing? Btw, that team went 42-40, which was 4 games better than the Bulls in 84-85 and this was a 25-game improvement over the 02-03 season, Big Z's first all-star season.

If Jordan is a goat-level finisher at the rim, why is his actual FG% at the rim so low? All available evidence points to MJ being Westbrook-like and not particularly close to KD, let alone Lebron, at the rim. Statistically (and the eye-test confirms this), in terms of scoring inside, it's Lebron >> KD >> MJ.

MJ shot less than 50% in that game. Bulls win that one easy with an NBA replacement player (they were up by 24 points at half time).

Yeah, MJ fell in a hole once it came to closing out the series. Almost cost them big time. Lucky to win Game 6 really.

He could have closed it out with one good game in Game 4 or 5. Just shat the bed instead. Then got lucky in Game 6 after being terrible in game 4 and 5.

I didn't bring up LeBron in my post, yet you want to talk about him. You have a problem.

That's all taken into account by BPM, yet:

Harper: 4.7
Price: 4.5
Nance: 3.9
Daughtery: 2.0

Price was 24, Daughterty was 23 and Harper was 25 that season. That season was Price's first all-star appearance and Daughterty's second. Harper was clearly one of the best players on the team. And if you look closely at the advanced stats and +/-, Harper was clearly a mega-elite role player (much like Iguodala on the Warriors) during the Bulls 2nd 3-peat.

It's almost like adding inefficient bulk scorers to GOAT efficient scorers doesn't help much.

Kinda like how Larry Hughes was a liability. And how many of us predicted a decline in the Cavs when they picked up Jamison bc he would take minutes from AV.

Btw, Scottie Pippen is taking some well-deserved criticism for his shots at a bunch of people, but he isn't wrong that there was more KD could do - at least in comparison to someone like Lebron - to take advantage of others in the series against the Bucks. If we're comparing KD to MJ, sure, losing a playoff series with his co-stars injured isn't a big deal, since MJ never even had to deal with that in his career, but part of why Lebron's 8 straight finals appearances is a big deal even if he was generally on the best team in the east (though largely due to his own overwhelming talent) is that most superstars aren't as lucky as MJ to have his supporting cast be healthy every single year.

Lebron had to win a bunch of playoff series while dealing with similar circumstances as what KD had to endure. Both 2012 and 2013 championship runs involved both Wade and Bosh dealing with major injuries on the way to the Finals. Bosh and Wade were not physically at 100% throughout the 2014 playoff run either - it was clear they were being load-managed due to uncertainty regarding their health, leaving Lebron to carry the load. Then in 2015, with Love missing most of the playoffs and Kyrie also missing a big chunk, Lebron still won two playoff series against the Bulls and the Hawks. Lebron even won the 2016 Finals, with Kevin Love concussed for the most of the series putting up 8.5/6.8.1.3 on a .468 TS%, effectively becoming a mediocre role player. In 2018, Lebron didn't have anyone on the team who was good enough to matter that much if they were injured, but Kevin Love still had the courtesy to get injured very early in Game 6 of the ECF with the Cavs down 3-2 in the series. Lebron still managed to rally this group to win 2 straight elimination games.

Individually, sure, these were all winnable, just as the Bucks series was for the Nets (which is why attaching a huge amount of significance to the loss is a mistake, they could've won) but the fact that he won practically every series despite these injuries, only ever losing to the Spurs in 2014 and the Warriors dynasty is a huge part of his legacy and why this super-team talk is absurdly silly. MJ's 6 finals runs, on the other hand, were generally drama-free - they were the better team in every single series and if MJ was merely a top-5 player in the league, they still would've the better team. Lebron won a bunch of playoff series where if he was merely a top-5 player, his team would've been a heavy underdog.

This is the best post I’ve read in this entire thread.

You are grate and should feel grate.

completely agree, watching KD average a gazillion efficient points and still lose the series really reminds us how insanely impactful Lebron is, on a completely different level to everyone else that ever played the game

you really need to learn how to read before copy pasting something from your archives

Imagine being this dense and thinking the fact that your number two sucked and your team won easily is a good thing.

That graph isn't as impressive as you think it is.