What are you smoking ?
Again Malone was mvp in 1997 and 1999 !
1997 to 1999 was literally prime Malone being mvp twice (97/99 and second in 98) and nba1 and def1 …
Duncan wasn’t in 2014 .
Saying Duncan at 37 was better than Malone mvp at 33-34 is nutz ….

Those jazz won 64 and 62 games while sweeping team like shaq (61 win ) and a team of 3 HoF younger then 2013/2014 spurs .
Did you really check that Houston team in 97 ?
That isnt as good then 37 years old Duncan spurs ??
To me Houston = spurs and Jazz beat them twice …

But hey you are entitled to your opinion …
Fidstar right , the narrative on the Jazz would changed drastically if they would have beat those bulls since they beat everybody else but the goat .

Ant will also be an elite FT shooter very soon. And he'll just get even more whistles as he staples himself within the league.

Hey fallguy,

ANT will never be Jordan. No one will EVER be Jordan. So stop comparing everyone to JORDAN.

Try watching a whole game if you can stomach it. The NBA has never been better!

Imagine being so delusional in your Jordan obsession that you make that post after one of the best playoff performances ever.

Malone shouldn't have won that MVP in 1997. Duncan in 2014 6th in DRB% and was top-10 in DWS and defensive +/-, despite only 2158 minutes. He was the best defensive player on a team with Kawhi Leonard. Chris Bosh barely got 10 shots a game and 5 boards in those finals. Malone wasn't a slouch, defensively, but he was even old Tim Duncan in 1998. And, again, Kawhi Leonard in 2014 is a guy I'd take over any Jazz player in 1998.

Malone's PPG was sexy, but those Spurs locked down the Heat to an 87.4 pace and nearly seven points per 100 under their season rate. You can't have it both ways. LeBron was surrounded by an all-time great cast and this all-time great cast was still not as great as the Spurs. Because those Spurs were also an all-time great cast. A greater one.

Here's a question:
Better team the 2014 Heat or the 1998 Jazz? Bearing in mind that the 2014 Spurs were better than the 2014 Heat.

1997 was probably the year that Jazz had the best shot at cracking MJ's code and couldn't do it. Measure them up against the 2014 Spurs or 2011 Mavs? Maybe not, but measure them against the Warriors that beat LeBron? Hell, no.

Malone is a child rapist. Let no one forget it.

Ant is 22 man.

This is such a perfect encapsulation of TWOG’s “the passion of the Mike” position. It just will never be anyone else, it is Michael Jordan and 90’s basketball until the heat death of the universe.

I'm not deeply familiar with Ant's game, but I'm quite familiar with MJ's (and did follow him in real time during his prime) strengths and weaknesses and from more of a scouting perspective, don't see why Ant couldn't have been a better MJ if he had to play during MJ's time. Ant right now might also be close to MJ's best case scenario if he had to play in today's NBA without completely reinventing him as a player.

Ant is bigger, more powerful and stronger (and more explosive than MJ after MJ bulked up to be close to Ant's weight), his bag of moves is much tighter than young MJ's and doesn't have to improvise as much to overcome sloppy setup, he's a far better 3-point shooter, a much more willing passer and less selfish than young MJ. He's not quite as long (which mainly impacts him on the defensive end, especially as a help defender) but is more disciplined and a lot stronger on that end.

Ant, who in many ways is a better MJ, being not even a clear top 20 player in the NBA says a lot about the evolution of basketball over that time period.

John Lennon beat his wife and abandoned his son!

Ant is a basic shot-maker compared to Jordan - he's all power and hops - no polish or variety

Show me where Ant's shot-making ability is on this level:

[IMG][/IMG]

It's just a different level from anything we've ever seen, and guys like Ant only make MJ look even better because MJ makes them look basic... Ant's moves and shot-making is like Zion-level, not MJ-level

Having more weight doesn't always mean stronger or more powerful.

Of course, Shaq or Kemp were more powerful but still inferior because basketball is about SKILL.

And the reality is that MJ is taller, longer, bigger hands and broader shoulders than Ant, despite being skinnier - MJ would look bigger than Ant if they stood next to each other due to bigger bone structure (despite being skinnier with more capacity to add muscle).

Just look how often Ant falls down - he's a lot like Iverson or Wade in that way - I guess falling down is a short guy thing

Ant's first 3 seasons were as follows:

1) lottery
2) 1st Round loss (2-4)
3) 1st Round loss (1-4)

So what's worse - lottery and then 3-8, or no lottery and 1-9?

Most importantly - Ant has an All-NBA teammate and another teammate that is candidate for goat defender - Jordan 3-peated with less

It's remarkable that the shorter guy (Ant) is the power guy with less scoring and shot-making variety, while the taller guy is actually the more skilled player with unlimited shot-making diversity, polish, and finesse

The best part is that all these guys just show how great MJ is - I didn't realize how great MJ was until I compared Ant's rudimentary shot-making - it makes MJ look like a completely different level

Ant regular season Age 22 stats per 36:

26.6/5.6/5.3 on 57.5 TS%

Playoffs:

30.1/7/5 on 65.6 TS% (5-0 team record)

MJ first two seasons (age 21 and 22) per 36:

27.2/6/5.3 on 58 TS%

Playoffs:

29.2/4.9/6 on 57.5 TS% (1-6 team record)

MJ CAREER per 36:

28.3/5.9/4.9 on 56.9 TS%

candybar is right - the evidence is pretty clear that Ant is very similar if not > MJ on an absolute basis right now. Obviously the league as a whole has gotten much more efficient, so MJ was superior on a relative basis, but numbers don’t lie.

yeah only fallguy lies itt (mostly to himself).


the numbers do NOT.

Nature of highlights, those aren't good possessions(maybe the layup) but you just ignore the 70% of shots like that he missed, I mean sometimes you are forced to settle for contested shots but if you force those types of attempts a lot you'll win since he's going to miss a ton

Except for the facts that scoring today is far easier and stats are boost up ….
Anyone knows mj would be scoring more in this era like any other players.

How can a guy have all-time "IQ" but have a long history of bad chemistry, bad fits and turning guys into spot-up shooter, which never developed a single young player in 2 decades (zero young players grew from low producer to meaningful producer on his watch)???

The reason that everyone thinks Lebron has all-time "IQ" is that everyone conflates IQ with vision, even though they aren't the same - vision is being able to find the open man or set up a teammate, while IQ is understanding how to execute the best brand of ball, fits, chemistry and how to develop young players.

The proof is in the results - Lebron has zero #1 offenses in 21 years and low ball movement (low assist teams) - the common thread in all of Lebron's playoff losses for the last 10 years is massive deficits in team assists - he gets beat by better brands of ball and chemistry (Spurs, Nuggets, Warriors, Mavs), thus confirming that his own brand and chemistry is consistently inferior.. So Lebron lacks all-time IQ because he doesn't understand what the best brand of ball is (ball movement) and certainly cannot execute it as the biggest ball-dominator and turnover king in the history of the game.

(Lebron decreases everyone's assists and increases their play-finishing, aka assisted rate, so he does infact turn guys into spot-up shooter, hence the weak chemistry and young player development)
.

Congrats on not reading the post, impressive stuff.

MJ was barely more efficient in the regular season and worse in the playoffs - a 1.7 TS% is not a meaningful single year gap at all. They were very similar players on an absolute basis at the same age, and that’s with being generous to MJ.

^^^ Nonsense

85' MJ.............. 25.8 PER... 7.3 BPM... 7.4 VORP.... 0.213 WS/48... 28.2.. 6.5.. 5.9.. 2.4.. 0.8.. 59.3 TS
24' ANT........... 19.7 PER... 3.3 BPM... 3.7 VORP.... 0.130 WS/48... 25.9.. 5.4.. 5.1.. 1.3.. 0.5.. 57.5 TS

MJ's efficiency was superior despite facing max defensive attention (carrying scoring load), while Ant has a developed team (4th year team) and All-NBA teammates to take defensive attention away from him.. Meanwhile, Ant can exert less defensive energy by virtue of having the GOAT defender on his team...

All-NBA teammate + the goat defender = more help than MJ 3-peated with.... So it looks like another fake debate

MJ's scoring and shot-making diversity was 2nd to none - Ant is basic by comparison... MJ is the only goat athlete with goat-jumpshooting on either 2's or 3's
.

Jordan has better efficiency than Ant despite a much heavier scoring burden (facing greater defensive attention) - Ant doesn't get doubled like MJ or at least I didn't see it in Game 1 - doubling Jordan was a standard gameplan for literally every opponent that MJ faced.. The main gameplanning was the doubling schemes on MJ.. Ant simply isn't nearly as lethal a scorer... Go youtube "Jordan total reverse" - Ant is nowhere near this level of shot-making - no one is

So I've been thinking about the talent pool thing, especially in light of the fact that the former D-1 player from the 90's ITT that seems to think moves being executed at a level commonly seen in AAU U12 tournaments are some amazing next-level stuff. Then embarrassingly posts about Ant while comparing to early MJ, posting videos of MJ improvising random shots that are mainly demonstrative of MJ's poor decision making and lack of counter-moves to get separation that modern top players would have easily managed. While of course ignoring the fact that Ant literally is doing a bunch of things that MJ couldn't dream of, not to mention that Ant pulls off a lot of the same moves MJ did (um, you know, good ones, not the garbage stuff posted recently) with crisper execution.

That made me think - one key reason as to why the effective basketball talent pool has exploded that we don't talk about often enough is the internet. From a baseball thread:

We can see the velocity improvements in baseball as a fairly objective measurement of the effective increase in talent pool. We know the human body hasn't changed that much and raw athleticism can't have improved that much, yet velo at the highest level (or for that matter any other measurement of pitch quality) has gone up substantially even over the last 10 years. We also know hitting has improved significantly because somehow scoring isn't down that much despite absolutely crazy improvements in pitching. And we know that all of this is largely due to significantly better training at the youth level.

While it's difficult to measure this for basketball the same way, the same is likely happening.

Kids are simply exposed to much higher quality instruction much earlier, because the internet democratized access. This likely started in the early 2000's as the internet started to become mainstream but likely significantly accelerated since then. Basketball is also one of those sports where natural talent is so important that so much innovation happens outside of the NBA, and the internet facilitated these skills to be transferred across the world - there are tons of moves that are in wide use today that were either not invented yet or were highly obscure in the 90's. Since learning the game early at a high level increases the skill ceiling, this massievly increased the effective talent pool over that time period. Which explains why the last generation that grew up largely without the benefits of this aged so terribly:

From the standpoint of how they learned to play, not much changed from MJ to Lebron. However, because Lebron was basically part of the last generation before the internet changed everything, he had to compete against the next generation that was far more skilled. This meant Lebron's generation, as a group, appeared to age extremely poorly. Yet Lebron still remains a top player.

I think this is also an underrated part of what we think of as the 3-point revolution. Sure, coaches and front offices were sometimes being dumb about mid-range shots, but a huge part of this was that there just weren't that many good 3-point shooters and because there weren't that many good 3-point shooters (not just NBA, but all levels), and basketball tactics around utilizing 3-point shots were somewhat primitive. It's probably not a coincidence that the 3-point revolution only really started as the new internet generation (i.e. KD and Curry age cohort) came into their own in the league.

How can a guy have all-time "IQ" but have a long history of bad chemistry, bad fits and turning guys into spot-up shooter, which never developed a single young player in 2 decades (zero young players grew from low producer to meaningful producer on his watch)???

The reason that everyone thinks Lebron has all-time "IQ" is that everyone conflates IQ with vision and also memory, even though they aren't the same - vision is being able to find the open man or set up a teammate, while IQ is understanding how to execute the best brand of ball, fits, chemistry and how to develop young players.

And the memory stuff is BS because every basketball player is supposed to learn the opponents' plays and coaches have their team simulate the opponents' plays in practice - some players are better than others at remembering the plays but this was something I was really good at.. Peers simply talk about Lebron's memory because some of the stuff on all these podcasts is bullshit -:this is one of those things - not everything these guys talk about is real.

The proof is in the results - Lebron has zero #1 offenses in 21 years and low ball movement (low assist teams) - the common thread in all of Lebron's playoff losses for the last 10 years is massive deficits in team assists - he gets beat by better brands of ball and chemistry (Spurs, Nuggets, Warriors, Mavs), thus confirming that his own brand and chemistry is consistently inferior.. So Lebron lacks all-time IQ because he doesn't understand what the best brand of ball is (ball movement) and certainly cannot execute it as the biggest ball-dominator and turnover king in the history of the game.

(fyi regarding Lebron turning teammates into spot-up shooter - it's statistical fact - Lebron decreases everyone's assists and increases their play-finishing, aka assisted rate... So he does infact turn guys into spot-up shooter, hence the weak chemistry and young player development).

Oh joy. Another copy pasta from fallguy.

Get some new material.