Originally Posted by SABR42
Ok good, so unlike fallguy you can at least admit that LeBron is superior to Jordan at some aspects of the game. We're getting somewhere! Now let's talk about the rest.
Defense. MJ was a great perimeter defender, but in no way did he have LeBron's defensive versatility. You could ask Jordan to lock down the opposing 1-3, but LeBron in his prime could literally lock down 1-5, he had the quickness to keep up with point guards, and the size and strength to hang with bigs. Of course old LeBron isn't going to have the energy to play defense all game, but as recently as 2020, during the Lakers title run, he switched onto Jamal Murray and handled him very well, when Murray was cooking the rest of the Lakers.
So how is MJ better defensively? Because he has a DPOY and LeBron doesn't? That's a crap argument, Tim Duncan also has 0 DPOY and he's far more valuable defensively than Jordan ever was. Furthermore, LeBron's best finish in DPOY voting was 2nd, he came second to Marc Gasol, who somehow won DPOY but wasn't even in the All-Defense First Team. Tyson Chandler and Joakim Noah tied in votes at the center position. So you can easily argue that LeBron should have 1 DPOY because Gasol shouldn't have won. Anyway...
MJ had more steals? Also not a good argument, gambling for steals isn't necessarily good defense. Allen Iverson had a ton of steals too and he wasn't a good defender at all. Stephen Curry and James Harden both had years where they led the league in total steals, and they are average defenders at best. Jordan was perhaps a better 1-on-1 defender vs guards than LeBron, but LeBron was a better team defender and more versatile. You could have asked LeBron to guard Karl Malone, Jordan couldn't have.
Scoring-wise, I'm willing to concede that Jordan was a more dominant scorer (10 scoring titles and all), but how much of that was simply usage and choice, rather than scoring skill? MJ was always going to be the top scorer and get his points no matter what, while LeBron has always been more willing to pass if a teammate was in a better position to score. By no means is LeBron a "pass-first" player, but he doesn't necessarily need to take the most shots, if that's not what benefits the team the most. LeBron gets a ton of hate for "shrinking" during the 2011 finals vs the Mavericks, and some of that hate is deserved, but the Mavericks specifically game-planned to try to shut down LeBron at any cost, therefore Wade was simply more open all the time in that series so of course he scored more points than LeBron did. Jordan always took the most shots no matter what, sometimes to the detriment of his team if he had an off-night.
Jordan was undoubtedly better at some aspects of scoring, such as mid-range shots, had an unguardable fade-away late in his career, and was very slightly better at getting to the line, and was a better free throw shooter. But it's not like LeBron is a liability at the line like Shaq, he's 74% for his career compared to 84% for Jordan. That's a difference of exactly 1 point per game, if you attempt 10 FTs per game. Negligible. Meanwhile, there are areas where LeBron is a better scorer than Jordan, such as at the rim, in transition (where his passing is also more valuable), and from 3. 39 year old LeBron is shooting 41% from 3 with over 5 attempts per game. He's legitimately one of the better 3 point shooters in the league right now, as he's not just waiting to catch-and-shoot, he's willing and able to pull up from deep and drain them.
We've already established that LeBron is a better passer and rebounder. He's also a more versatile defender, and even though Jordan was a more dominant pure scorer than LeBron, LeBron certainly had many areas where he was superior to Jordan.
So how exactly was Jordan a superior basketball player to LeBron James? The argument for Jordan has to purely come down to rings, 6 vs 4. Of course the goal of every basketball player is to win the championship, but rings have to be evaluated with context and degree of difficulty in mind. It's why Dirk Nowitzki gets so much props for winning a ring in 2011, meanwhile no one respects Kevin Durant's 2 rings in 2017 and 2018.
First of all, the 6-0 argument is pure bullshit, let's get that out of the way. Suppose Jordan was able to beat the Magic in 1995, but then lost in the finals to Houston. He'd be 6-1, is that worse than 6-0? No, it's objectively better than 6-0 because he would have won an additional series. So LeBron having a losing record in the finals is not a good argument against him, considering that most of the time he faced a team with far superior talent (2007 Spurs, 2017-18 Warriors) and thus he was expected to lose. Did LeBron James underachieve some years? Sure, but he also overachieved in other years, and on the whole, is one of the greatest performers in NBA play-off history. LeBron James is the all-time leading scorer in both the regular season and the postseason. And it's not even close, his 8023 (and counting) postseason points is more than 2000 ahead of second place, Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan obviously was also an all-time great postseason performer, but he wasn't flawless either, as many MJ fans believe. He faced his toughest opposition in the Eastern Conference back in the 80s, the Bird-McHale-Parish Celtics and the Bad Boys Pistons. Once those teams got old, and Scottie Pippen became good, the Bulls pretty much never lost again. People vastly underrate Jordan's supporting cast and coaching, because Jordan's scoring was always grabbing all the headlines, but the Bulls routinely won with superior overall defense (Pippen, Rodman, Harper were all very good defenders) and offensive rebounding (Rodman is the GOAT rebounder). Jordan's supporting cast was actually so good that sometimes they won even when Jordan stunk. The Bulls beat the Supersonics 4-2 in the 1996 finals, a series in which Jordan shot a miserable 42% from the field. He was clearly sub-par that series, but the 72-win Bulls still prevailed. And Seattle 1996 was likely the best team Jordan ever faced in the finals, can you imagine if LeBron shot as poorly as 42% from the field in a final series? He'd get swept if that happened (and it is what happened in 2007). Jordan never faced a team as good as the 2014 Spurs or the 2017 Warriors in the finals. That is a pure fact, and it's why not every championship is equal. LeBron's 2016 finals performance has to be "worth" double. He led both teams in every statistical category and defeated a 73-win team! That's unlikely to ever happen again.
Look, the bottom line is this. If you started a fictional NBA franchise, you really couldn't go wrong with either prime Jordan or prime LeBron. They'd both be 99 OVR players on NBA2K. You could argue for prime Kareem as well. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, though I'd argue LeBron is the most complete player, with the fewest overall weaknesses. But here's where LeBron separates himself from Jordan, and everyone else: Jordan retired twice and played 1251 total NBA games, including the postseason. LeBron James has played 1758 NBA games, and counting. That's a 40% difference, and it's only increasing. If two players have similar impact and one has simply played way more, he's the more valuable player. At age 20 LeBron was already one the best players in the NBA (younger than Jordan as a rookie), and at age 39 LeBron is still an all-NBA level player. No one's ever done that, and no one has even come close to doing that. That's what makes LeBron the GOAT. He's both the best young player and best old player in NBA history.
