Did MJ really go against tougher competition?

[Crafty_Veteran]

Good article on how hand checking and illegal defense rules were different in the Jordan and LeBron era...different times

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/3/25/5542838/nba-rules-changes-lebron-james-michael-jordan

[donnieme]

Good article on how hand checking and illegal defense rules were different in the Jordan and LeBron era...different times

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/3/25/5542838/nba-rules-changes-lebron-james-michael-jordan

One reason I always thought the rule change argument was overstated is because of this...Everyone played against the same set of rules. Whatever worked against you on offense worked to your advantage on defense. If Jordan gets handchecked then he, Dennis and Pippen would in turn get to handcheck the other teams best players. Handchecking could favour the team with the most elite man defenders.

[ropjhk]

It depends on who you're comparing MJ to. Compared to Lebron he had a significantly tougher path to the finals. Compared to Duncan and Kobe in the West his path was probably a bit easier.

[Pablo Novi]

Rapid league expansion with minimal foreign player pool. Very watered down league.

This is the best post in this thread because it EXACTLY addresses the OP's question.

You added 6 teams in 8 years, in both number of teams and, especially % increase of teams - this was HUGE.
N.B. Since 1996, the League has added ONLY 1 team in 21 years (while adding tremendous Int'l talent).

This explains, more than anything else, why the Bulls had those incredible records and why the Bulls opponents had better than other years type records.

The League was WAY watered down.

My biases? I loved MJ. (In 30 years of absolute marital bliss, the only time I ever got pissed at my wife was when, during the MJ-Bulls Finals she'd want me to babysit). I've always been a Lakers fan and loved Magic.

But again the Bulls BEAT the bleep out of the expansion teams (and the Bulls Conf. had MORE than the average number of them).

You can not IGNORE what adding 6 teams in only 8 years does to the general level of talent (and how much better it makes the top teams look) when they went from only 23 teams up to 29.

Particularly in these specific years:
89, 90, 91, 92, 93 (4 teams added);
......... 96, 97, 98 (2 teams added).

JUST LOOK HOW TERRIBLY THE EXPANSION TEAMS DID IN THEIR 3-4 FIRST YEARS, EXACTLY THE PEAK MJ-BULLS YEARS!
Also, (not shown here, but logically obvious): as the expansion teams got better, the top "Great" teams got worse. Hmmm.

98 (29 Tms): Bulls 62-20 East: Tor 16-66; ......................... West: Van 19-63 ............. EXPAN: .................... 17.5- 64.5 (2)!!
97 (29 Tms): Bulls 69-13 East: Tor 30-52; ......................... West: Van 14-68 ............. EXPAN: .................... 22.0- 60.0 (2)!!
96 (27 Tms): Bulls 72-10 East: TOR 21-61; ........................ West: VAN 15-67 ............. EXPAN: .................... 18.0- 64.0 (2)!!
95 (27 Tms): Bulls 47-35 East: Cha 50-32, Mia 32-50, Orl 57-25;West: Min 21-61 ............. EXPAN: 40.00 - 42.00 (4)
94 (27 Tms): Bulls 55-27 East: Cha 41-41, Mia 36-46, Orl 50-32;West: Min 20-62 ............. EXPAN: 36.75 - 45.25 (4) 43.0-39.0 (2)
93 (27 Tms): Bulls 57-25 East: Cha 44-38, Mia 36-46, Orl 41-41;West: Min 19-63 ............. EXPAN: 34.00 - 47.00 (4) 38.5-43.5 (2)
92 (27 Tms): Bulls 67-15 East: Cha 31-51, Mia 38-44, Orl 21-61;West: Min 15-67 ............. EXPAN: 28.75 - 53.25 (4) 29.5-52.5 (2) !
91 (27 Tms): Bulls 61-21 East: Cha 26-56, Mia 24-58; ............ West: Min 29-53, Orl 31-51 EXPAN: 27.50 - 54.50 (4) 27.5-54.5 (2) !
90 (27 Tms): Bulls 55-27 East: ............. MIA 18-64,ORL 18-64; West: Min 22-60,Cha 19-63 EXPAN: 19.25 - 62.75 (4) 18.0-64.0 (2)!!
89 (25 Tms): Bulls 47-35 East: CHA 20-62; ......................... West: MIN 15-67 ............. EXPAN: .................... 17.5-64.5 (2)!!
88 (23 Tms): Bulls 50-32

[Mbrahv0528]

Jordan is pretty overrated when you think about it.

He would've lost against Duncan's Spurs or Shaq and Kobe lakers.

Not saying he isn't great but I just think it's funny that people think he's the goat, like it's an actual fact with no point in debating, which leads me believe that it was his marketability and popularity that led him to GOAT status

Nobody is going to take this post seriously, so why even bother? I'm confused as to what you're trying to accomplish here?

Sent from my 2PS64 using RealGM mobile app

[Pablo Novi]

PABLO'S GOAT TOP 5: (one player per position) *
1. KAJ (4 more Finals than MJ; 5 more great years than MJ, Skyhook - most unstoppable AND CLUTCH shot)
2. Magic (much better TEAM-mate than MJ)
3. MJ (he QUIT TWICE - he can't get credit for the years he didn't play; and quitting is NOT a recommendation)
4. LeBron (passed TD this year; imo, he's been passing one All-Time Great per year; probably will continue to move up)
5. TD

N.B. Of ALL the GOAT Top 20, KAJ, by far, had the worst public relations (he was a crap interview);
Equally, MJ, by far, had the best public relations (he was a terrific interview AND the marketing of him was sensational)

I'd be willing to bet that if KAJ had had MJ's GREAT PR; and MJ had had KAJ's horrible PR - the debate over the GOAT would be over.

* Seeing as the overwhelming-majority has MJ as the GOAT; I'm listing here MY reasons why I have KAJ and Magic ahead of him.

btw, In my opinion, THE biggest error that most NBA fans make is that making-but-losing in the Finals is a NEGATIVE.
But making (and losing) the Finals is surely better, much better, than losing in an earlier P-O round; or not even making the Play-Offs.

i.e., far from a big negative, imo, it is a tremendous achievement to make the Finals; and between two players with the same number of chips, for me, each addition Finals appearance is a BIG BONUS (including for tie-breaking purposes).

Same way I have Brady over Montana - both with 4 Chips, but Brady with additional Finals/SuperBowls.

[Cipoteman]

I doubt Harden, Westbrook, Curry, Durant or even Dirk will have a place on the top-10 ever list, while from the Shaq, Hakeem, Barkley, Malone, etc bunch there're possibly some. And many of those played with other great players on their teams as well.

[likashing]

MJ is right up there. Kobe benefited from MVP Shaq for his early runs. LeBron probably has a few more now but he is right at the bottom.

[parapooper]

To properly analyse this would take days.

B. Methodology
Since many of us use advanced stats to rank players the obvious choice seems to use the same stats to rank teams. For this one would just calculate the minute-weighted average stat of the team.
Since it’s a bit of work I only did it for top12ish players (minus Russel, Wilt and only partially for pre-74 KAJ due to lack of stats back then)

I had to decide which stat to use between a few widely available ones:
RAPM and similar - would be my favorite but only available back to 2000 --> have to use boxscore-derived stats instead
PER - has almost no correlation with defense, strongest usage dependence
So it was between WS/48 and BPM. WS/48 seems to be more influenced by teammate-quality – particularly defensively.
I also picked BPM because it’s independently verified by its much better correlation with RAPM, a completely orthogonal, non-boxscore stat:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm.html:
RAPM correlation:
PER 0.388
Win Shares/48 0.525
Box Plus/Minus 0.661

I’m sure there are going to be the usual replies along the lines of “BPM is trash – player X had a BPM of y in 19xx”. Fair enough, but there are always outliers and for the main approach here I calculate the minute weighted average BPM of a team between 15ish players in the RS and in the PS, average that, then do the same for the opponent and calculate the difference. Then I average that over 10+ years of a player’s career for some of the results below. So there is a lot of averaging going on that should even out the outliers quite well.

For 10 GOAT-list players I calculated the following values for their own teams and their PS opponents separately and combined for the RS and PS of each of their prime seasons:
tBPM = team-BPM = minute-weighted average BPM of the whole team
sBPM = support-BPM = minute-weighted average BPM of the whole team, but with the GOAT-list player minutes replaced by a 0 BPM player (a reasonable replacement level that’s also easy to use in Excel)
pBPM = personal-BPM = tBPM - sBPM (basically how much a player bumps up a team's BPM [BPM and fraction of team-minutes determine this])
matchup toughness = opponent tBPM - own sBPM – how much a player has to lift his team to make it as good as the opponent
RS and PS versions of all of these
50/50-weighted RS/PS averages of the above

I could not do this for Russell and Wilt (no BPM) and pre74 KAJ due technically to absence of BPM and ultimately of detailed stats in general back then since other stats are calculate differently pre74 as well.
(For KAJ I did approximate his pre-74 pBPMs by scaling his 1974 pBPM according the the PER and minutes played before 1974 vs. 1974 - obviously I couldn't do it for tBPM and sBPM due to work amount).
I only did the calculations back to 1980 anyway since anything before seems hard to compare anyway and doesn’t interest me personally.
Obviously, despite the averaging there is quite a bit of +/- left in these numbers – the reason I calculated them to 2 decimals is mainly to have less confusing overlaps in the graphs below.
Really the only judgement calls were using BPM (with WS the only real alternative, which agrees less well with the only available orthogonal statistical method), weighting RS and PS 50/50 and using a replacement level BPM of 0. Those are about as neutral as one could possibly be and don’t inherently favour any specific player.

C. Confirmation of the validity of the method:
C.1. tBPM in advancing PS rounds
To check if tBPM is a good rough measure of team strength here are the average tBPMs of the opponents of the last 37 champions (who as champions had on average high seeds):
1st round: -0.06 tBPM
2nd round: 1.01 tBPM
conf. final: 1.49 tBPM
NBA finals: 1.71 tBPM
champion: 2.36 tBPM
----> So that increasing tBPM each round is a good indication the method roughly makes sense.

C.2. best tBPM ranking
The strongest champion teams (tBPM) since 1980 were led by:
MJ 1996 3.88
MJ 1997 3.26
MJ 1991 3.245
Kawhi 2014 3.04
MJ 1992 2.95
LAL 2001 2.935
Bird 1986 2.88
MJ 1998 2.66
KG 2008 2.595
LBJ 2016 2.595
----> looks reasonable as well

C.3. tBPM matchup results
To check in more detail if the minute-weighted tBPM is actually a good measure of relative team strength I calculated the tBPM difference in all playoff matchups these players were involved in in their primes and checked if the win-loss result "predicted" by that matched the actual result of the playoff series.
For the 366 playoff series I checked (I counted series that 2 or more greats played in multiple times to save work):
320 (87.4%) were predicted correctly, while only 46 (12.6%) were predicted incorrectly with an average tBPM difference the wrong way of 0.38 tBPM and not a single series with a tBPM difference >1 tBPM predicted incorrectly.
----> this is an extremely solid result, considering that there are always surprises and evenly matched series. Even if you had a perfect way of measuring team strength (not saying this is) you would not expect a success rate >90%


C.4. PS toughest matchup vs. title chances

For further confirmation of the method here are the statistics on how often these players (in roughly their prime) won a championship when their toughest PS matchup (x=opp tBPM – sBPM) was:
X < 0: 100%
0 < x < 0.5: 82%
0.5 < x < 1: 63%
1< x < 1.5: 42%
1.5 < x < 1.8: 33% (without LBJ: 18%)
1.8 < x: 0 %
(there is one example where x>1.8 was done (by a player not on this list): Wade 2006 [1.995]– but that was aided by some unusual refereeing)

D. Results:
1. Star performance vs rings
First a look at the pBPMs (50/50 averages of RS and PS values) of the star players chronologically:


And here ordered from best to worst:
RS pBPM:

Here we see MJ, LBJ and KAJ clearly separated from the other all-time greats

PS pBPM:

Here MJ and LBJ are also clearly ahead while KAJ is bridging the gap between those two and rest - having similar peak seasons but falling off more.

RS/PS 50/50 pBPM:

Again MJ, KAJ and LBJ are so clearly separate that their curves are not even touching the curves of the rest.
This of course correlates well with those 3 being the pretty clear top3 GOAT candidates (disregarding Russel and Wilt)

Now to check how this personal performance correlates with titles:
RS/PS 50/50 pBPM, rings marked

Hmm, this looks like basically no correlation.

How about personal performance in the playoffs though:

There is a slight correlation (Bird won in his 3 best PS for instance) but overall it's hardly worth mentioning.

--> So the correlation between rings and personal performance of superstars is very marginal.
This may shock some in the “count the rings” camp but should not be a surprise to anyone capable of logical thought

2. matchup difficulty vs. rings
So what is logically the factor most likely to correlate with winning a ring? In my opinion the difficulty of the hardest matchup encountered in the playoffs.
So here I calculated matchup difficulty by calculating the tBPM (using RS and PS 50/50) for each playoff opponent of the 10 GOATish players I looked at and substracted the sBPM of their supporting casts that year (also using RS and PS 50/50) from that value.
The resulting value is the amount the star would have to bump his team's tBPM above the same team with a 0 BPM replacement player to make his team better than that particular opponent.

I considered adding the matchup difficulties over a playoff run, but ultimately the factor determining winning a ring or losing seems to be the difficulty of the toughest matchup that is encountered during a PS:


As you can see winning rings correlates exceptionally well with the difficulty of the toughest PS matchup.
For every player their rings are concentrated to an extremely clear extent in season when they had their easiest PS matchups and none of them won in their hardest couple of postseasons.

And the same is true when looking across all players (from above): the statistics on how often these players (in roughly their prime) won a championship when their toughest PS matchup (x=opp tBPM – sBPM) was:
X < 0: 100%
0 < x < 0.5: 82%
0.5 < x < 1: 63%
1< x < 1.5: 42%
1.5 < x < 1.8: 33% (without LBJ: 18%)
1.8 < x: 0 %

With that in mind, who among these stars actually had the hardest PS matchups:
(prime years except for KAJ pre74 - won almost all his rings in the 80s anyway)

This will certainly come as a surprise to some
In agreement with the overall theme the GOATlist guys with the easiest matchups on average also have the most titles (MJ's matchups rank as pretty hard because he had the hardest matchups in non-winning seasons (see below)

How about winning vs. non-winning seasons:
in non-title seasons on average:

So MJ actually had the toughest matchups in the seasons he didn't win. (roughly 99-03 Garnett level [overall Garnett is lower due to 04 and 09-12 (which I included here although questionably prime)
For perspective, the only one among these players who won a matchup with a tBPM-sBPM >1.8 was MJ in the first rounds in 88 and 89 (2.19, 2.41). That was somewhat facilitated by shorter series though.

in title seasons, on average:

The toughest matchup that was one by one of these players in a 4-win series was 2000 Shaq vs. the Blazers at 1.79.

Obviously this method cannot account for outlier performances in particular series – but as the correlation with rings shows it still works exceptionally well.

Here are the rings were won by these GOATlist players ranked by toughest finals matchup:
(unless something really unusual was going on my over-the-thumb estimate from calculating all these numbers is that they are probably +/- 0.3ish correct, so please don’t reply with “haha 2012 harder than 2016” when we are talking about a gap of 0.02)
LBJ 2012 1.735
LBJ 2016 1.715
LBJ 2013 1.605
Magic 1988 1.525
Hakeem 1994 1.265
Magic 1982 1.245
Bird 1984 1.195
TD 2003 0.945
Hakeem 1995 0.875
Kobe 2010 0.86
Shaq 2000 0.835
Magic 1980 0.77
MJ 1991 0.74
KG 2008 0.69
MJ 1997 0.59
MJ 1992 0.565
Kobe 2009 0.475
Magic 1985 0.24
Magic 1987 0.215
MJ 1993 0.21
TD 2005 0.21
MJ 1998 0.16
Bird 1986 0.075
TD 1999 -0.04
TD 2007 -0.305
Bird 1981 -0.38
Shaq 2002 -0.395
MJ 1996 -0.44
Shaq 2001 -0.745
TD 2014 -1.19

And here the same with toughest PS matchup instead of finals matchup:
Shaq 2000 1.795
LBJ 2012 1.735
LBJ 2016 1.715
LBJ 2013 1.605
Magic 1988 1.525
Hakeem 1994 1.265
Magic 1982 1.245
Bird 1984 1.195
Hakeem 1995 1.13
Kobe 2010 1.08
TD 2003 1.05
TD 2007 1.01
Shaq 2002 0.96
Bird 1981 0.91
Magic 1980 0.77
TD 2005 0.75
MJ 1991 0.74
KG 2008 0.69
Kobe 2009 0.595
MJ 1997 0.59
MJ 1992 0.565
MJ 1998 0.245
Magic 1985 0.24
Magic 1987 0.215
MJ 1993 0.21
TD 1999 0.195
Bird 1986 0.08
Shaq 2001 0.06
MJ 1996 -0.44
TD 2014 -0.87

And here is how much these players lifted their teams during their championship postseasons, chronologically:


Here we can again see that winning rings correlates extremely strongly with this “toughest PS matchup” criterium (obviously a strongly negative correlation)……

…….and basically does not correlate at all with personal performance:

Bird is the one exception here where rings actually do clearly correlate with personal peformance- he played a lot better than usual during his title postseasons - but even for him the correlation between rings and matchup difficulty is stronger.
KAJ was actually a lot worse during his title seasons – probably because he won a bunch of rings when he was old and won nothing at peak bball age [yet another classic example for rings correlating with support-performance, not player performance]

E. Some additional thoughts

First of all to repeat the main point from above:
Overall, there it is very clear that once a player has superstar impact him winning titles or not correlates _extremely_ well with the quality of his supporting cast and has almost no correlation with the variation in his personal performance (yes, there are counter-examples, but this is the overall-view.


Conclusion for this thread:
MJ's title runs were the 2nd most cakewalky after KAJ
In all of MJ's non-title season except '95 he had basically zero chance to win a title.
The difference in difficulty between his early and late seasons is gigantic and dwarfs LeBron's and even Garnett's

[rumdiary]

To properly analyse this would take days.

B. Methodology
Since many of us use advanced stats to rank players the obvious choice seems to use the same stats to rank teams. For this one would just calculate the minute-weighted average stat of the team.
Since it’s a bit of work I only..........

Jesus tapdancing Christ is this your job or something?!

You just won RealGM

[Heej]

The Utah Jazz were the best teams MJ faced and they scored 54 in Game 3 of the 98 Finals. 54 freaking points. They never eclipsed 90 that entire Finals. They wouldn't be better than a healthy Clippers team in the league right now. The competition Lebron faced was on another level compared to what MJ had to go through. The league was watered down in the 90s for 3 main reasons:

1) unusually weak late 80s drafts
2) expansion
3) foreign play hadn't taken off

There's not a chance in hell MJ wins 6 rings in today's nba. He might have won 2011 vs the Mavs but he could never provide the 2 way play Lebron played in 2016 to bring the Cavs back from the brink. LeBron produced GOAT wing defensive impact last finals. MJ is not rattling off Games 5 and 6 and leading every player in every counting stat category no matter how much you lionize him.

[KingDavid]

We would also have to consider different types of rules. Aka lots more hand checking etc. Defense back then was no joke. Games were in the 70s. Also wasn't the 3 point like farther?

Hand checking alone should end this topic.

[Heej]

We would also have to consider different types of rules. Aka lots more hand checking etc. Defense back then was no joke. Games were in the 70s. Also wasn't the 3 point like farther?

Hand checking alone should end this topic.

You're buggin if you watch games today and think Lebron doesn't get handchecked every play

[alebaba]

We would also have to consider different types of rules. Aka lots more hand checking etc. Defense back then was no joke. Games were in the 70s. Also wasn't the 3 point like farther?

Hand checking alone should end this topic.

I find it hilarious people think hand checking is overrated prolly has never play basketball in their life. We got a 20 year old dropping 70 points and klay dropping 60 points in 30 mins, yall think this crazy out burst of scoring was because people just got way better? give me a break.

[alebaba]

The Utah Jazz were the best teams MJ faced and they scored 54 in Game 3 of the 98 Finals. 54 freaking points. They never eclipsed 90 that entire Finals. They wouldn't be better than a healthy Clippers team in the league right now. The competition Lebron faced was on another level compared to what MJ had to go through. The league was watered down in the 90s for 3 main reasons:

1) unusually weak late 80s drafts
2) expansion
3) foreign play hadn't taken off

There's not a chance in hell MJ wins 6 rings in today's nba. He might have won 2011 vs the Mavs but he could never provide the 2 way play Lebron played in 2016 to bring the Cavs back from the brink. LeBron produced GOAT wing defensive impact last finals. MJ is not rattling off Games 5 and 6 and leading every player in every counting stat category no matter how much you lionize him.

Prime Jordan with Wade and Bosh? no way they are losing, good luck with that. Unlike Lebron, Jordan is amazing at playing off the ball.

[Ballerhogger]

If you wanted look at his greatness, look at his failures first.

[Heej]

The Utah Jazz were the best teams MJ faced and they scored 54 in Game 3 of the 98 Finals. 54 freaking points. They never eclipsed 90 that entire Finals. They wouldn't be better than a healthy Clippers team in the league right now. The competition Lebron faced was on another level compared to what MJ had to go through. The league was watered down in the 90s for 3 main reasons:

1) unusually weak late 80s drafts
2) expansion
3) foreign play hadn't taken off

There's not a chance in hell MJ wins 6 rings in today's nba. He might have won 2011 vs the Mavs but he could never provide the 2 way play Lebron played in 2016 to bring the Cavs back from the brink. LeBron produced GOAT wing defensive impact last finals. MJ is not rattling off Games 5 and 6 and leading every player in every counting stat category no matter how much you lionize him.

Prime Jordan with Wade and Bosh? no way they are losing, good luck with that. Unlike Lebron, Jordan is amazing at playing off the ball.

That was a typo I fully believe MJ would've won 2011. But I find it telling that you chose the most insignificant part of my post to refute.

[Furinkazan]

You guys run away from mental asylum

[KingDavid]

We would also have to consider different types of rules. Aka lots more hand checking etc. Defense back then was no joke. Games were in the 70s. Also wasn't the 3 point like farther?

Hand checking alone should end this topic.

You're buggin if you watch games today and think Lebron doesn't get handchecked every play

Lol ok. So because it happens to LeBron and a lot of other players on occasion today, it's fair to compare when it was allowed under rules and done constantly? Are we really about to debate this? It's nonsensical to compare it.

[KingDavid]

We would also have to consider different types of rules. Aka lots more hand checking etc. Defense back then was no joke. Games were in the 70s. Also wasn't the 3 point like farther?

Hand checking alone should end this topic.

I find it hilarious people think hand checking is overrated prolly has never play basketball in their life. We got a 20 year old dropping 70 points and klay dropping 60 points in 30 mins, yall think this crazy out burst of scoring was because people just got way better? give me a break.

Defenders using their arms to point you where they wanted you to go. Good luck getting a shot off from distance with a hand on your hip right in line with your shot pocket. Handchecking was awful for offense.