'89 Jordan vs '18 LeBron

[letskissbro]

"LeBron didn't play defense in 2018" is the biggest lie. His defense didn't just suddenly tank and then magically become all-d level again at 36 just because he just started putting in more effort. The Cavs roster was in shambles. They were starting Kevin Love at center.

As a PF LeBron becomes more of a big defensively which means less hard close outs and less hounding guys on the perimeter, making it seem like he wasn't putting in effort. He'll still do that stuff when the perimeter guys can handle their own but with Cleveland playing some of the worst perimeter defenders in the league his hands were tied. His defensive numbers started recovering the minute they traded for George Hill and Larry Nance and it carried over into the playoffs.

He wasn't even perceived as a bad defender that season until RPM came out and Warriors fans started a psyop campaign posting his lowlights all over social media during Cleveland's January losing streak. When the Lakers nuked their roster for Westbrook in 2022 I made a pre-season prediction that LeBron's defensive rep would be back in the gutter again after finally recovering from 2018 and sure enough by the end of the year you had dudes on here calling him a borderline all-star because he was struggling to defend as a SF/PF being forced to play center alongside 40-year-old Melo. NBA fans are that predictable.

[VanWest82]

I'm continually shocked at the degree to which you guys are prepared to just re-write history.

[AEnigma]

Way to project your daily habits onto others.

Nothing letskiss said was wrong. People trashed Lebron’s defence because of scattered lowlights and thoughtless glances at plus/minus, and opportunists such as yourself extrapolated that into Lebron suddenly dropping like ten points on defence. It was never serious, and serious analysts never pushed it, because none of this has ever been based in synergy data and has always been a product of people who consume basketball through fifteen-second videos and the basketball-reference play-by-play tab.

[OhayoKD]

I'm continually shocked at the degree to which you guys are prepared to just re-write history.

History is that which has been proven. 80's and 90's mythmakers trying to gaslight everyone that Lebron wasn't a much better defender than you know who from 15-17 and then that Lebron wasn't even a good defender in 2018, in spite of what actual history shows is textbook revisionism.

One would think having to consistently be corrected on the team you proudly broadcast growing up with would have humbled you. But instead we're proudly broadcasting twitter memes because reality doesn't align with your made-up history

[VanWest82]

Why, you do it daily.

I've been watching NBA for four decades. I actually know what happened.

[AEnigma]

To whatever extent that may be true, it makes your perpetual rejection of what happened even more shameful.

More likely, you remember what you want to remember, see what you want to see, and grasp at whatever you can to paint the narrative you want to paint. It is dull. Plenty of us have watched as much or more basketball without making it a mission to inflate the legacies of our childhood heroes and tear down those supplanting them.

[VanWest82]

I'm continually shocked at the degree to which you guys are prepared to just re-write history.

History is that which has been proven. 80's and 90's mythmakers trying to gaslight everyone that Lebron wasn't a much better defender than you know who from 15-17 and then that Lebron wasn't even a good defender in 2018, in spite of what actual history shows is textbook revisionism.

One would think having to consistently be corrected on the team you proudly broadcast growing up with would have humbled you. But instead we're proudly broadcasting twitter memes because reality doesn't align with your made-up history

None of you guys have corrected anything. You just continue to broadcast disinformation and claim it as proof when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

The fact that you would claim Lebron was a positive impact defender for the latter half 2018 regular season just shows the degree to which you're prepared to sellout your credibility here and elsewhere.

[AEnigma]

The Cavs have outscored opponents by six points per 100 possessions with LeBron on the floor since Cleveland upended its team at the trade deadline, reversing a weird early-season minitrend that had them playing at the same sad level regardless -- a trend unfit for the king.

LeBron since that deadline orgy has been the league's best player. It was enough to surpass Davis and Antetokounmpo. He is going to play all 82 games and lead the league in minutes for a defense-less traveling soap opera that would sink into the lottery if you replaced him with a league-average small forward. His clutch numbers are something out of "NBA Jam." Kevin Love, Cleveland's second-best player by a comically wide margin in the wake of the Kyrie Irving debacle, missed almost exactly the same number of games as Houston's second-best player, Chris Paul. And Paul is better than Love.

If given a choice between game-planning for Harden or James in a seven-game series, 30 out of 30 teams would pick Harden within five seconds of being posed the question.

But what happened before those two months, in Houston and Cleveland, matters at least as much as what came after. Harden and the Rockets played so well as to render their last 15 games of the regular season irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the Cavs collapsed amid infighting and embarrassingly listless play. LeBron in January could have galvanized his -- very much his -- dispirited team. Instead, he stewed in what almost amounted to a monthlong, on-court passive-aggressive rebellion.

We've seen Chill Mode LeBron. This was different. LeBron at times stood still instead of rotating on defense. He occasionally decided not to close out on shooters. During Cleveland's nadir, a couple of shooters caught the ball behind the arc, looked at LeBron as if expecting him to rush out, realized he had no plans to move, shrugged, and fired. Almost every other Cav played with the same sloth. It was, frankly, astonishing.

An MVP galvanizes. He lifts teams up and out of funks. LeBron didn't, or couldn't. There are people within the league who would use that midseason floundering to prop up LeBron's MVP case. They would frame it as part of some Machiavellian plot: LeBron realizing before his front office that Cleveland needed a shakeup, and scheming to make it happen in the only way he could, given his poisonous, reportedly nonverbal relationship with owner Dan Gilbert. That is a bridge too far, even if the new Cavs are better than their broken, discarded predecessors.

Harden may not be a galvanizer, either. He let his relationship with Dwight Howard a couple of years ago disintegrate amid silence and unmade passes. He wilted facing elimination last season. That is part of the reason Houston added some fire in Paul. There will be a crisis moment in the playoffs when the Rockets need Harden to galvanize them.

But they haven't needed much of it in blitzing through this regular season, and that is the period voters consider. Houston has been the league's best team wire-to-wire, and Harden its best player. He just wrapped the greatest season of isolation basketball in league history, acting as battering ram in Houston's blunt force attack: pick-and-roll, switch, back it out, fatality.

Harden is an offense unto himself. He is never going to be a plus defender. Even a disengaged LeBron, outside those outlier winter weeks of discontent, is a more impactful defender simply through the power of reputation and size. People fear the sudden appearance of dialed-in LeBron. They avoid him. They will never avoid Harden.

Wonder which zero-credibility hack tried to rewrite history with this.

[OhayoKD]

I'm continually shocked at the degree to which you guys are prepared to just re-write history.

History is that which has been proven. 80's and 90's mythmakers trying to gaslight everyone that Lebron wasn't a much better defender than you know who from 15-17 and then that Lebron wasn't even a good defender in 2018, in spite of what actual history shows is textbook revisionism.

One would think having to consistently be corrected on the team you proudly broadcast growing up with would have humbled you. But instead we're proudly broadcasting twitter memes because reality doesn't align with your made-up history

None of you guys have corrected anything. You just continue to broadcast disinformation and claim it as proof when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

The fact that you would claim Lebron was a positive impact defender for the latter half 2018 regular season just shows the degree to which you're prepared to sellout your credibility here and elsewhere.

This was literally a day ago buddy:

I also think Kareem was worth exactly zero wins to the Bucks between 1975 and 1976. Quite an interesting stat indeed.

35-30 —> 3-14 —> 38-44 when replaced with multiple new rotation players

Such a bold and inventive use of “exactly zero”!

No, because what happened is that the Bucks played at a 15-win pace without Kareem, and then they traded him for three immediate contributors on top of generally adjusting the roster a bit… leaving them still six wins worse than when they just had Kareem.

It is an obviously great signal, just like it is a good signal that the Lakers can trade those pieces and lose a few others while still jumping up ten wins, and then even more the following year with improved depth and Kareem playing at his absolute peak.

Your application of context is just you cherrypicking whatever before projecting your own lack of knowledge onto others. You find one year where lebron has a negative on/off when the sample barely exists, and then when we see a comically different result when the sample is expanded, you start spouting about revisionism like you watching memes get posted on reddit makes you a history major.

Nothing you've presented marks you as some historian-equivalent, and if you or the people you riff off presented your half-baked data/"context" to an instutition with actual academic rigor, you would get mocked in the monday meeting, and fired within the month.

[VanWest82]

Sometimes I can't believe we're talking about the same things. And like, I very much mean this, Lebron wasn't a bad player in 2018 regular season (ourside of three weeks when he wasn't trying in order to get his teammates traded). But he was clearly not moving and saving energy so he could carry the offense after cavs had traded all their ball handlers. He needed to do it.

And yet you guys are claiming he wasn't a drag on Cavs defense...while he wasn't moving and conserving energy. What in the hell are talking about??? I'm in the twilight zone with you guys where nothing is real. I guess it makes sense because nothing you guys claim about Jordan jives with what I experienced either.

There are Lebron fans on here like Cavsfan who I believe was actually watching basketball in the 80s/90s/00s/10s etc. I may disagree with them, but I'm pretty sure they watched NBA based on their posts. But with you guys it's like you came along in the last few years and built arguments based on back-tested data to support your position which just doesn't jive with what actually happened, and I don't know how to interact with it. I'm lost, and I don't have the energy to do it anymore.

[VanWest82]

This was literally a day ago buddy...Your application of context is just you cherrypicking whatever before projecting your own lack of knowledge onto others. You find one year where lebron has a negative on/off when the sample barely exists, and then when we see a comically different result when the sample is expanded, you start spouting about revisionism like you watching memes get posted on reddit makes you a history major.

Nothing you've presented marks you as some historian-equivalent, and if you or the people you riff off presented your half-baked data/"context" to an instutition with actual academic rigor, you would get mocked in the monday meeting, and fired within the month.

Unreal. I bait them and call them out for suggesting mid-70s Kareem had a great wowy signal while at the same time in many previous argumements suggesting mid 90s Jordan should be essentially disqualified in GOAT discussions for basically the same wowy signal, and you use it to suggest it's evidence that I don't know what I'm talking about. El Oh El.

Also, I'm not claiming to be some historian. I'm just a dumb NBA fan. The fact you can't get your arguments past someone like me who watched a lot of games and remembers a good amount of them over several decades says more about you than me. God help you against someone who really knows what they're talking about.

[lessthanjake]

The answer here is pretty obviously 1989 Jordan. LeBron was great offensively in the 2018 playoffs, but he was a weak defensive player that year and, likely not coincidentally, his impact data that year wasn’t very good at all. It was a down year for LeBron overall, and 1989 Jordan was obviously better.

[AEnigma]

Sometimes I can't believe we're talking about the same things. And like, I very much mean this, Lebron wasn't a bad player in 2018 regular season (ourside of three weeks when he wasn't trying in order to get his teammates traded). But he was clearly not moving and saving energy so he could carry the offense after cavs had traded all their ball handlers. He needed to do it.

Correct, we are not talking about the same things, because that is what happens when you filter what you see through a vendetta. This paragraph is fine and not dramatically at odds with what anyone has said (“not moving” is extreme and incorrect if taken literally, fair enough criticism if rhetorically comparing him with his peak defensive self). No one has submitted that Lebron was actually a DPoY giving maximum effort and functionally indistinguishable with his younger self. What has been submitted is that he was not bad and that seizing upon on/off numbers and a few clips you saw on Reddit/Twitter is not a real way to assess defence.

And yet you guys are claiming he wasn't a drag on Cavs defense...while he wasn't moving and conserving energy. What in the hell are talking about??? I'm in the twilight zone with you guys where nothing is real. I guess it makes sense because nothing you guys claim about Jordan jives with what I experienced either.

See, this post is a great example.

To whatever extent you watched the team, it does not seem to have been for anyone other than Lebron. That myopia can get to you “Lebron seems pretty passive —> Lebron is a drag”, but to be a drag you need to actually be pulling others down. For most of the year, that was a terrible defensive roster that a truly locked in Lebron could have improved defensively by maybe another point and a half. But a lackadaisical and selective Lebron still qualified as one of the team’s most reliable defenders.

But with you guys it's like you came along in the last few years and built arguments based on back-tested data to support your position which just doesn't jive with what actually happened, and I don't know how to interact with it. I'm lost, and I don't have the energy to do it anymore.

Again, hilarious projection; we all see you do this daily. You would have much more energy if you did not spend it all twisting anything you could find as either an attack on Lebron or a defence of Jordan, and as a side benefit, the rest of us would be a lot less bored reading those posts.

[1993Playoffs]

MJ for regular season. Playoffs are LeBron

[Superjohnstarks]

18 LeBron team won 50 games in a superior East and completely collaped when he left I'll go with him

[Statlanta]

I'm lower on this LeBron than most. I think '15 LeBron was better than this season.

This season had so many chemistry and underperformance issues that plagued the whole team. MJ while overrated in his defensive accolades gave more for the total season.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Sometimes I can't believe we're talking about the same things. And like, I very much mean this, Lebron wasn't a bad player in 2018 regular season (ourside of three weeks when he wasn't trying in order to get his teammates traded). But he was clearly not moving and saving energy so he could carry the offense after cavs had traded all their ball handlers. He needed to do it.

And yet you guys are claiming he wasn't a drag on Cavs defense...while he wasn't moving and conserving energy. What in the hell are talking about??? I'm in the twilight zone with you guys where nothing is real. I guess it makes sense because nothing you guys claim about Jordan jives with what I experienced either.

There are Lebron fans on here like Cavsfan who I believe was actually watching basketball in the 80s/90s/00s/10s etc. I may disagree with them, but I'm pretty sure they watched NBA based on their posts. But with you guys it's like you came along in the last few years and built arguments based on back-tested data to support your position which just doesn't jive with what actually happened, and I don't know how to interact with it. I'm lost, and I don't have the energy to do it anymore.

Does that mean you're leaving forever?

[Superjohnstarks]

The answer here is pretty obviously 1989 Jordan. LeBron was great offensively in the 2018 playoffs, but he was a weak defensive player that year and, likely not coincidentally, his impact data that year wasn’t very good at all. It was a down year for LeBron overall,

Also really wierd coming at lebrons defense like jordan plus a bunch of defenders wasn't literally average in 89.

obviously playoffs isnt really a discussion. Lebron swept toronto while the bulls had to throw everything to handle the banged up and even more fraudluent cavaliers. That series is probably higher impact than any Jordan has ever played his whole career.

Lebron had kind of a down-year, but Jordan is just obviously. Lebrons impact is probably higher every year of his prime except 2014 and 2011 and even then, unless he's having a whole meltdown, Lebron is an easy pick in the playoffs.

Lebron was horrible on D in 2018. Even if you want to say that he was on MJ's level offensively in the playoffs (numbers are a wash) I think considering defense and the much better RS from Jordan, it's not particularly close. I recently watched the Knicks and Pistons series in the 1989 playoffs to track plus minus and MJ was a fiend on defense. Against Detroit, he shut down Isiah at times and generally made life very very difficult on him. It is one of his finest defensive series.

Comparable offense? Yeah definitely not beating the bbr allegations with this one.

Everyone on toronto admit bron straight outcoached casey when he sweeps a better team than the one MJ needs a buzzer vs. But MJ is the same because he begs stat counters to help him pad triple dubs? That's just a bad look.

Don't know i can take your eyetest serious if you're out here pretending these 2 are the same on o.

[lessthanjake]

.

Your quotes in your post got screwed up, so I’m not quoting your whole post, but will reply to what I *think* was your response to me.

I’m not sure what your point is when saying the Bulls defense was average. It’s true the 1989 Bulls defense was roughly average in the regular season (note: they were a good bit above average in the playoffs). But the 2018 Cavs defense was ranked 2nd worst in the league! And it was actually an above-average defense in the minutes LeBron was off the floor! There’s nobody on the 2018 Cavs team that the defense did better without than LeBron. Depending on if we look at basketball-reference numbers or NBA.com numbers, the 2018 Cavs either had a 6.0 or 8.3 worse DRTG with LeBron on the court than off the court. Of course, sample sizes for a single season aren’t enormous (especially the “off” samples) so in theory this could just be random bad luck rather than reflecting real defensive weakness. But it comports with the eye test, in which LeBron wasn’t putting much effort in on the defensive end. And, FWIW, it also is consistent with the playoff data too, where the Cavs had either a 6.6 or 13.0 worse DRTG with LeBron on the court than off the court. Single-year playoff data is super low sample size so I don’t think that is worth much of anything on its own, but the fact that the playoff data on this was awful too lends more credence to the fact that LeBron really was just weak defensively that year, by adding even more to the sample size of the awfulness.

There’s no parallel here to Jordan in 1989. By all accounts, Jordan was a very good defensive player that year, and it’s worth noting that using the Bulls overall data in those years is not a great way to assess what was happening with Jordan on the court because the Bulls in that era were absolutely awful with him off the court. We have plus-minus data on 122 of Jordan’s pre-title-years games, and his on-off in those years was +22.24 per 48 minutes, with the Bulls having a -18.85 net rating per 48 minutes with Jordan off the court (and those numbers were even more stark for the games we have from 1988-1989 specifically). Using a team’s overall DRTG against a player that we have good reason to believe had a massively high on-off doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Anyways, saying 2018 LeBron > 1989 Jordan because his team beat the 2018 Raptors more easily than Jordan’s Bulls beat the 1989 Cavaliers is absurdly reductionist. There’s so many other variables you’re just handwaving away. For one thing, this tortured analogy can only make any sense if you assume that the teams played equally well outside of these guys. In reality, we know that Jordan had an enormous +24.30 on-off per 48 minutes in the 1989 playoffs. And that was +29.72 in the series against the 1989 Cavs specifically (with a -24.69 net rating per 48 minutes when Jordan was off). The Bulls did awful with Jordan off the court in those playoffs and in that series. Meanwhile, the Cavs outscored the 2018 Raptors in that series with LeBron off the court. Obviously a team is likely to win a series much more easily if the supporting cast holds their own without the star on the court, as opposed to when they collapse. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the 1989 Cavs were very likely the superior team to the 2018 Raptors (better SRS, hugely better title odds in both preseason and before the playoffs, etc.). It’s just a really silly thing to make the crux of an argument.

[Djoker]

Just want to post stats because some people are under the impression that Lebron had a better PS on offense.

PS - Per 75
1989 Jordan: 32.6 pts, 6.5 reb (1.4 o), 7.1 ast, 2.3 stl, 0.8 blk on +6.5 rTS with 3.8 tov
2018 Lebron: 31.9 pts, 8.6 reb (1.4 o), 8.5 ast, 1.3 stl, 1.0 blk on +6.4 rTS with 4.0 tov

It's worth noting that Jordan faced better defenses in the absolute sense (105.0 vs. 106.4 opp DRtg) and played at a slightly lower pace as well (91.1 vs. 91.6).

The Cavs as people said were starting Kevin Love at C and as such were an offensively slanted team whereas the Bulls if anything were defensively slanted. And yet Jordan's Bulls had playoff rORtg of +3.9, +8.3 and -1.6 by series for a playoff average of +2.8 while Lebron's Cavs had playoff rORtg of -2.6, +21.4, +2.5, and +0.9 by series for a playoff average of +3.1. Unless we insist to proportionally value the Cavs' obliteration of Toronto, their playoff offense was quite uninspiring and worse than the Bulls' despite having a lot more offensive talent and largely selling out on defense.

The impact stats also aren't kind to Lebron in this comparison.

PS - Per 48 Min
1989 Jordan: +3.4 ON, -20.9 OFF, +24.3 ON-OFF
2018 Lebron: -1.1 ON, -5.4 OFF, +6.5 ON-OFF

Other metrics that we don't have for Jordan like RAPM, RPM, PIPM, AuPM, and Backpicks BPM also don't look kindly on 2018 Lebron and view it as one of his weaker seasons and postseasons despite the gaudy box score.

All in all, they are close offensively. 2018 Lebron was Jordanesque on offense but the notion that he was better... I don't buy that at all. Not by the box stats (pretty even), not by the carrying job (Lebron actually had a better offensive cast), not by impact stats (Lebron worse across the board) and not by the team offensive results (likely worse team offense while selling out on defense).