OhayoKD wrote:1989 Jordan and 2000 Shaq is reasonable if you think if you think PER is basketball(ie: think all that matters is what happens at the end of a possession), it's not a serious debate if you actually bother to look at the game beyond the final part of ap lay, or base your opinions on actual results, or look at what the players have managed to do at other points in careers, or even look at playoff translation(paticularly with the 2000 Laker's defensive(and overall) collapse and paint-protection numbers)
Which is why I'm guessing you have continually refused to engage when actual evidence is produced, or with film-tracking, or the actual skillset comparisons, or the "context" in how the data even functions(guess which one of the four spent a big chunk of their prime staggering with their co-star)
89 Jordan surrounded by defensive specialists produced the same defensive results(and had even worse real impact signals) than 15-17 Lebron in the regular season with his foot off the gas surrounded by kyrie irving, kevin love and "defenders" who were negative or nuetral on the teams they were traded from(mosgov). Yet you're seriously trying to present them as tricky to seperate.
If you are not PERing, there are multiple iterations of Lebron that straight up cook all three with cold data(basically whenever he's playing his natural position) and it's very very easy to see why Lebron is consistently outpacing the pack in actual winning if you pay attention to how assists and points are coming rather than just how many:
Yes, because offense is just passing and scoring. CR7 = Messi. If it was so huge a "huge difference maker", then Jokic should have already lead a goat-level offense and/or shown more impact than any offensive player ever.
No it's not. Even with RAPM artificially curving down outliers(aka Lebron), Lebron clears Duncan and KG typically by margins(paticularly if you consider volume/possessions played) who shaq and jokic always look worse than. Jokic does not even clear Giannis or Embid in RAPM and besides just taking his career number(at a much smaller possession count), Jokic doesn't even grade as a rival for the duncans or the garnetts using that approach. Either you pick the right box-components or Jokic and Shaq are not peers. Over 3-years Jokic was not even a match for Embid and with age-adjustment to the one career set he's ahead of giannis and embid in, he's 7th comfortably behind the big 3 despite a big possession disparity.
RAPM favors Lebron pointblank.
Nope. 2016 Cavs Lebron was the only all-star and off course that team by any emperical approach was worse without Lebron than any team the other 3 won with(against a better opponent obviously). By impact winning, second-cavs Lebron is a comparable rs player and blows clear jokic and shaq in the playoffs. Peak Jordan(you can go 88-84/86 or 92-94 or even 92-95) doesn't even match in the RS(though he scales better than shaq does in terms of po translation) and the cavs see goatish playoff lift with lebron lineups.
This is an especially absurd line of argument when we consider surrounding years where Jokic could not come close to competitiveness with teammate injuries while Lebron in a down year was sweeping the hawks and taking the 67 win warriors to 6 with barely any kyrie play and no kevin love play.
Jamal Murray saw their numbers jump to superstarish in 2023 despite Jokic's ast% dropping and his on/off dropping and his tov% increasing. In 2020 he outscored and outassisted Jokic. Jamal also demonstrated higher rs impact than kyrie and Jokic's team suffered far more without him than the Cavs suffered without Kyrie.
And, as you keep ignoring for some reason, the "defensive gap being so large is absurd" is completely justified by results where Lebron's
13-year average beats out Jokic's
2-year one overall by a margin.
He never showed a "goat level peak" by any not skewed by offensive counting numbers data. His RAPM is nowhere near. His on/off lags behind, and his best stat(raw signals/wowy), still see him at best as a peer for the likes of
2015 Lebron.
Lebron spent 6 seasons averaging 58-wins without his best teammate(wade, kyrie), and was dramatically more competitive with the same injury context Jokic was getting outscored by .500 opponents in during his MVP years.
You are just giving him flowers for things he has never actually proven.
He has never even contended with the quality of guys Lebron had in his first or second cleveland stint(where he led a top 40ish 3-year team statistically)
Unfortunately winning disagrees, strongly.
