MJ was forced to take a lot of tough shots because look at the stats of his teammates - they were low-producers that frequently didn't have it going, so this required Jordan to "take over" and carry the offense on many possessions.

This is common knowledge and also intuitive - MJ"s crazy shot highlight reel is another demonstration of his weak help.

Furthermore, the only real decision is to decide NOT to dominate the ball and allow the team to run a ball movement offense instead (allow the team to be coached) - knowing how to execute the best brand of ball, chemistry, teammate development, high assist teams and #1 offenses - that's "high IQ"... Otoh, finding the open man is just vision, which gets conflated with IQ (understanding and executing the best brand of ball and chemistry that elevates teammates)

If young Jordan wasn't a "willing passer", then why did 80's Jordan average equal assists to young Lebron in the regular season and more assists in the playoffs, while teammates grew by leaps and bounds alongside him?

Lebron has no history of teammate development, while Jordan has a tremendous history of teammate development during the 80's, while averaging the same assists as Lebron in the regular season and more in the playoffs.

It's a completely false narrative that young Jordan wasn't a "willing passer" - this misperception began in the 80's when the media needed a reason for why Jordan didn't win like Bird and Magic, without acknowledging their respective casts.. The narrative took off from there but everyone actually knew that Jordan was a great passer by 89' when the 26-year Jordan was a 1st-time point guard and instantly the league's best PG - that's goat talent for the game of basketball.

Are you too dumb to answer this question yourself?

Yeah perhaps it's much harder to score at the rim now with substantially more talented rim protectors around, who knows.

These don't look legitimate - they literally don't add up to MJ's actual verified stats:

MJ's 3P FG% during those 3 seasons: .338.
MJ's 3P FG% according to shot-tracking in a post from a deleted account: .383

These games also imply that MJ averaged 24.8 FGA per game, when he actually averaged 23.0. I'm going to assume that either some MJ fan made stuff up or a lot of games are available online specifically due to MJ's performance (who the hell cares about random Bulls games from the 90's otherwise), which adds a ton of bias here.

Also looks like people found that his tracking was way off when it comes things like on/off:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/vie...6762#p75906762

So I'm guessing the guy is no bueno when it comes to tracking things accurately (or youtube games create way too much of a bias) which makes this whole data set rather suspect.

In particular, he has MJ at 629/847 at the rim, but just 679/1021 for at the rim + short mid-range (I assume this is within 10 feet). So did MJ really just shoot 50/174 or .287 from 3-10 feet in the literal physical prime of his career? I guess that's not impossible especially now that we've seen twog's GIFs and what they imply about MJ's tendency to take some terrible shots from this distance. But I have more respect for MJ than that and I'm fairly sure (assuming this is a legitimate effort) that this is due to the tracker being biased towards thinking that misses were not at the rim and the makes were at the rim.

This whole thing is quite funny given twog's proclamation:

MJ career 3-10 (in the tracking era) FG%: .377
Ant career 3-10 FG%: .382
MJ 3-10 at the peak of his powers according to the data set quoted by twog: .287

Just for fun:

Lebron career 3-10 FG%: .428
Lebron 3-10 FG at age 35+ (i.e. post MJ 2nd retirement age): .460

Again, I don't think it should really be that controversial that modern players legitimately have so many advantages and access to so much information that allow them being far more skilled earlier in life than MJ and his generation. Tons of good high school players nowadays have literally mastered lots of moves that were practically unheard of during MJ's time. This isn't unique to basketball - high school baseball players nowadays literally have access to training and knowledge (pitching, swinging mechanics, pitch design, etc) that weren't available to the professionals in the 90's.

This does not diminish MJ's greatness - it's just how the sport has evolved.

The only real sense in which this affects the GOAT debate is that it makes Lebron somehow still being competitive with the new generation while nearing 40 even more impressive. Because his generation didn't really benefit from this skill revolution. But Lebron is already the GOAT without taking any of this into account, so this is just icing on the cake.

Today's high school players learn dribbling moves but rarely have fundamentals and effective moves that previous eras mastered like jump hooks and jab steps and upfakes.. These are short cuts to the "moves" that you speak of - the final part of a "move" is the actual shot and final footwork - previous eras mastered these parts better than today's era and that's all that mattered.. All the fancy dribbling before that means nothing and is actually a bad brand of ball that loses.

Overall, today's era is better 3-point shooters because they practiced the shot, and this is mostly spot-up shooting of open shots (today's spacing strategy yields mostly open threes)... In addition to threes, today's players are also better ballhandlers because ball-handling is perfectly correlated with the amount of carrying and traveling allowed, which has steadily-increased over time.

Otherwise, our spaced-out, hands-off beginner format means that players develop a drive-and-kick skillset - that's all they're learning in high school - so they're inferior at other formats that involve post, ball movement or lesser spacing/quicker instinct... The proof is in the results - international players solve our beginner format and achieve goat stats despite being extremely slow (Jokic, Luka, Embiid), or unskilled (Giannis).. So what would guys like Bird, Duncan, Kareem, Hakeem, Robinson, and Shaq do? .. It's impossible that today's best is better than previous era's best..




Lebron and MJ both won at 35 years old... But after that, Lebron isn't competitive because he barely makes playoffs with AD and a stacked cast, or gets completely embarrassed repeatedly by the same opponent that only has 1 good player.

That isn't "competitive"... It's underachieving with a stacked cast because he's old.. And the reason they're underachieving is because Lebron must play a weak brand in old age to get his stats - this includes lumbering to the hole in a driving/posting-up sort of fashion that expends the team's entire possession to get him a drive..

He's always lacked expert jumpshooting skill and instinct to play off-teammates (off-ball).. This skill deficit is exposed more in older age and is causing his teams to underachieve by more than they did in his prime - none of his previous teams were this this beatable, which is really saying something because every team that he's ever had was extremely beatable and mostly lost... But these Lakers take the cake.. Of course the coaching carousel tells the story of his career - a bad and uncoachable brand of ball that yields the worst fits and chemistry of any all-timer.

I never needed PHILA's data - I brought that up for you since you never saw MJ and maybe this guy's numbers would get you to accept the historical record.. The historical record of course is that MJ was a goat finisher at the rim prior to his baseball stint... MJ posterized bigs much more often than Lebron or Ant and that's just one aspect of his at-rim superiority - Lebron was only better at the bully-ball aspect, which is often a style detrimental to team chemistry, and tons of guys are much better at bully-ball than Lebron, so it's a weak argument to begin with.

Regarding Anthony Edwards, in addition to his poor mid-range efficiency, he's bad at paint shots outside the restricted area due to the touch and shot-making diversity required, while young MJ was elite at every level except threes...... And threes weren't used by any team back then (not part of the game) and Ant isn't elite at threes anyway.

Meanwhile, prime MJ was elite at literally every level including threes whenever he had today's volume (3+ attempts).. Specifically, from 85' to 93', Jordan shot 36.4% on threes in regular season games where he had 3+ attempts, and he shot 39% in series with 3+ attempts (regular line only) - this is mega-elite for that time period and since he was shooting 36-39% without practice, he would shoot over 40% today WITH practice in today's game.. Btw, MJ had no regular season games or playoff series with 3+ attempts in 98', so 85' to 93' is the only relevant period at the regular line.

Btw, the reason the Bad Boys said they tried to hurt MJ when he came to the hole is that a regular foul or bump did nothing to MJ - he would just absorb it and hang in the air - you had to literally take him out of the air to stop him, which is why MJ is the only player in history where his opponents said they tried to hurt him.. You never heard Russell or Hakeem say they tried to HURT wilt or shaq.. Only MJ's goat combination of quickness, power and finesse required such treatment... Just look at the power on MJ's drop-step - it's completely unparallelled among perimeter players... Btw, it's interesting that MJ had the goat first-step, jab-step, hop-step and drop-step (among perimeter players).

So, you've refused to answer this twice. I'm assuming you've never watched a full game of Ant's. Yet you are an expert.

that is interesting. i was skeptical of this claim so checked out historical stats for said steps and he is indeed #1 in all of them

Yes I do and thx specifying today in the paint it’s harder then when mj played to compare ant and mj at the rim lol …

Ps: What can I say , I trust more a guy like KD & Kobe opinion on mj greatness than a bedroom coach like you .
Especially when u claim so much crazy **** on MJ …..

Yeah especially when he actual made it .
Pretty much summarized this thread.
Mj success and skills ends in failures and LeBron lack of success and always differ to lower skills players on a though shot is the utmost success .

Because the goat shouldn’t thrive in tough spots .

I bet you are excellent at poker

He didn’t reply because he didn’t have anything to copy/paste for the 6978th time.

I've watched hundreds of MJ's games (we're probably around the same age) and unlike you, I remember how his game and body evolved over time, whereas you either forgot due to poor memory or perhaps don't really know the game well enough to understand the differences.

When Jordan was down 0-2 in the 93' ECF, Game 3 was over after the 1st quarter - the Bulls were up 15 after the 1st quarter where MJ had 8 points and 6 assists (6 and 0 for Pippen)... So as usual, MJ carried the Bulls in the meaningful minutes when the game was contested, while the rest of the game was garbage time - that's why the intro to Game 4 said the supporting cast rallied around Jordan (here) - Jordan went on to drop 54 in Game 4 to disrupt the series - it forced the Knicks to throw the kitchen sink at him in Game 5, which led to ball movement.. So does that mean Jokic will go off for 54 and then get 20 dimes in Game 5?.. It's happened before for a defending champion and potential dynasty.

Bulls were up 11. For those playing at home 11 point lead at quarter time is over.

Also for the lols I watched the first quarter. MJ wasn't good. Brick after brick. You know he's allowed to have bad games and he can still be the GOAT.

MJ has less bad and more great playoff games than Lebron. Lebron just wasn't that dude.

I would absolutely love to see the analysis of this. I've not done it either but I would bet my house on Lebron having more "great" playoff games than Jordan, considering he has played more than 100 more and has been an elite player throughout.

I would also wager my house that he had more bad playoff games than Jordan as you say.

LBJ - 11 games with 45+ points (1 with 50+)
MJ - 23 games with 45+ points (8 with 50+)

LBJ - 30 games with < 20 points (2 < 10) 36% games won
MJ - 6 games with < 20 points (0 < 10) 33% games won

LBJ's - 90 games with 5+ TOs (27 with 7+)
MJ - 43 games with 5+ TOs (7 with 7+)

LBJ - 24 games with 4+ steals
MJ - 35 games with 4+ steals

LBJ - 24 games with 3+ blocks
MJ - 12 games with 3+ blocks

Jordan is the only constant in the thread title - Lebron was defeated and Ant is next tomorrow night .. Wemby was always a joke and not serious.. Many 20 and 21 year olds were far superior - he isn't "on track" at all

So again, everyone is compared to Jordan - the only constant in the thread title

13 points by Jokic is a bad game

8 points by Lebron is a bad game.. Or 6 points.

Accordingly, 22/8/11 isn't a bad game, especially when Jordan ended the game in the 1st quarter - I watched that game - it was common knowledge BEFORE the game that the Knicks would mail it in and focus on Game 4.. They knew that they wouldn't go up 3-0 in Chicago Stadium..

Again, this was common knowledge at the time.. The Knicks were going to come out hard but if the Bulls jumped out to a lead, they would conserve energy for the next game.. This is common strategy in many playoff series.

Maybe this was a bad decision, but it's the decision the Knicks made and it's common strategy in many playoff series to mail in a specific game to save energy.

And again, the only quarter where the game was contested saw Jordan get 8 points and 6 assists, compared to 6 and 0 for Pippen, so MJ clearly made the statement and ran the show.. That's why the intro to Game 4 said the cast rallied around Jordan.




The issue is that everyone is carried compared to Mike, even Jokic:

1993 ECF

Jordan................. 32.2... 6.2.... 7.0... 2.5... 1.0... 2.2 tov... 113 ortg
Pippen................ 22.0... 6.5.... 4.0... 1.8... 0.5... 4.0 tov... 103 ortg

^^^ this is near Pippen's playoff high and among the closest that Pippen ever got to Jordan in a series

Accordingly, Jordan carried the Bulls in virtually every series, such as 10-30 ppg more than Pippen in every series, while also averaging more APG for RS, PO and Finals.. Jordan also got equal or more DPOY votes for 7 of 9 seasons...

People underrate the ability to play goat offense and defense simultaneously, but only Wilt and MJ did it for their entire prime - it takes goat energy.

I didn't reply because I've described the difference in Ant and Jordan's game in writing and GIFs without needing to watch 200 games like Fidstar.. That's what pro scouts do - they report their findings after watching a player for less than 1 game.. on film or in person

So you've never watched a full game by Ant. Sounds like you haven't even watched a full quarter.

But excellent work in finding some highlight gifs of MJ.

smh