Prime LeBron James is the most resilient scorer in NBA History

[OhayoKD]

The lesser attempts for Lebron vs. Jordan is easily offset by Lebron taking 5000 more 3 pointers than Jordan in his career. You're getting an extra point for each vs. 2. He made 1700 more. There's really no reason he shouldn't be in the mix on ppg if he's the GOAT scorer. Also to me that is a slight knock on him, why is the "GOAT" scorer not taking more field goal attempts? Wouldn't the team want that?

Because he knows that it's better to pass more often than not. Even Jordan had to learn that lesson. There's a limit to what hyper-volume scoring can accomplish.

But fair enough, resilient, Jordan had Jordan Rules put against him the Pistons were being more physical with him than any team had ever been to any player and they did beat his team two years in a row. He still was good but he had no teammate averaging 15 ppg that season, however he came back and beat them 4-0. That's resilient.

That's irrelevant narrative that escapes the usage of the word "resilient" in this thread... and in playoff matchups with Detroit from 88-90, Jordan averaged 27.4 ppg on 54.9% TS, 29.7 ppg on 56.1% TS and 32.1 ppg on 56.6%.

In those respective regular seasons, he averaged 35.0 ppg on 60.3% TS, 32.5 ppg on 61.4% TS and 33.6 ppg on 60.6% TS.

He was considerably diminished against them. Not the pro-resilience argument you seem to think it is...

Because he was getting beat up and the Pistons admitted it. Lebron never went through ANY sort of thing in his entire career. No one else did. I said the resilient part was coming back in 91 and sweeping them.

Definition of resilient: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Resilient does not mean just playing for longer than everyone and being a good scorer like some of you think. It was a poor use of the word for OP to use it in this thread honestly. Lebron is not the best at recovering from difficult conditions.

I really don't understand what the point of this argument is. Jordan is a far smaller and weaker player than Lebron. Him being vulnerable to getting "beat up" by a much lighter collection of defenders than what we saw Lebron walking through in the 2000's and mid 2010's is not some positive for his comparative reselience. The Pistons would be extremely unsuccessful trying to beat up a guy who is stronger than any of them and can exploit overly aggressive defense much better and faster than Jordan can.

[Lebronnygoat]

Because he knows that it's better to pass more often than not. Even Jordan had to learn that lesson. There's a limit to what hyper-volume scoring can accomplish.



That's irrelevant narrative that escapes the usage of the word "resilient" in this thread... and in playoff matchups with Detroit from 88-90, Jordan averaged 27.4 ppg on 54.9% TS, 29.7 ppg on 56.1% TS and 32.1 ppg on 56.6%.

In those respective regular seasons, he averaged 35.0 ppg on 60.3% TS, 32.5 ppg on 61.4% TS and 33.6 ppg on 60.6% TS.

He was considerably diminished against them. Not the pro-resilience argument you seem to think it is...

Because he was getting beat up and the Pistons admitted it. Lebron never went through ANY sort of thing in his entire career. No one else did. I said the resilient part was coming back in 91 and sweeping them.

Definition of resilient: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Resilient does not mean just playing for longer than everyone and being a good scorer like some of you think. It was a poor use of the word for OP to use it in this thread honestly. Lebron is not the best at recovering from difficult conditions.

I really don't understand what the point of this argument is. Jordan is a far smaller and weaker player than Lebron. Him being vulnerable to getting "beat up" by a much lighter collection of defenders than what we saw Lebron walking through in the 2000's and mid 2010's is not some positive for his comparative reselience. The Pistons would be extremely unsuccessful trying to beat up a guy who is stronger than any of them and can exploit overly aggressive defense much better and faster than Jordan can.

Resilience meant metaphorically, it’s how well they played against better/elite defenses. It was weird when the term was first brought up to me as well. Not as in, who’s in better shape or more tough physically.

[lessthanjake]

Just for reference for everyone, if we look at Jordan’s playoff career and compare to LeBron’s playoff career just limited to the age range of Jordan’s years, and we actually apply the objective 3.0+ rDRTG opponent criteria rather than selectively not applying it to help LeBron (as the OP did), we get Jordan with 32.10 PPG on +4.20 rTS% and LeBron with 28.98 PPG on +4.78 rTS%. I didn’t do the inflation-adjusted or per-75-possession stuff on the points, since it was way quicker not to and I’m not sure it makes much of a difference here—I have no idea which way layering those things on would cut. To me, Jordan’s numbers are better there, since it’s a few more points per game on essentially the same efficiency.

The overall numbers don’t tell the exact story of the data, though. LeBron was really not a “resilient” playoff scorer in his younger years. I’d say it took him until 2012 (age 27) to actually become a resilient playoff scorer (2011 looks reasonably resilient in this data set, but we know what happened in the 2011 Finals—which doesn’t show up here since the Mavs weren’t a 3.0+ rDRTG defense). After that point, LeBron became a resilient playoff scorer. That said, I think the series in this data set in those years fall into one of a few buckets. The first bucket includes a couple series where I think his rTS% was through the roof in significant part simply because the opponent was scoring so much that they didn’t need to play so hard on defense (2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors). The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams), and those sorts of teams are typically worse in the playoffs against decent teams. The third bucket was teams that were good and didn’t just destroy LeBron’s team on the other end of the court, and LeBron did not score efficiently against those teams (2013 Spurs and 2015 Warriors). I do think that the “resilience” in the post-2012 data for LeBron is in significant part due to the composition of those buckets. But, at the same time, I also think he became a more resilient playoff scorer.

In contrast, for Jordan, he was a resilient playoff scorer immediately upon joining the league. Before his first retirement, he was putting up 33.3 PPG on +5.8 rTS% against the teams in this data set, and never had a negative rTS% series in those series. And these weren’t series against mediocre teams with good RS rDRTG—rather they were against amongst the era’s actual best teams. I suppose one could make a similar point about the 1986 Celtics series as about the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors series, though obviously Jordan’s best game of the series was quite close. Overall, I think this time period is pretty unimpeachable in its resilience, with the minor caveat that Jordan was relatively inefficient against the best versions of those Knicks teams (still 30+ points on reasonably positive rTS%, but definitely his lowest rTS% of the era). Overall, I’m more convinced by Jordan’s resilience in this time period than LeBron’s post-2012, for reasons alluded to above. After he came back from his first retirement, Jordan’s playoff scoring resilience was not as good as before. He still scored a lot and he did have a couple high-efficiency series against really good defensive teams in those years, but it was more common for the efficiency to be mediocre (and it was actually bad efficiency against the 1997 Heat). I do think part of this was that the Bulls clamped some of these teams down so hard defensively that Jordan didn’t need to do as much offensively (or perhaps in a similar vein may have been focusing energies defensively and had that affect him offensively at the relatively late age he was in this era, I don’t know). But I think a lot of it was simply that Jordan was less explosive at that point in his career and the game was very slow at the time, so if you were a great defense, you could potentially limit him to taking a ton of highly contested jump shots (i.e. think of his post fadeaway), and he wasn’t always able to efficiently do that. Again, you still got lots of points from him in that era, but I do think it was easier to slow him down.

The ebbs and flows in their “resilience” can probably be largely explained by weaknesses in their game (in early years, LeBron’s weak shooting was exploitable by great defenses, while Jordan’s lack of explosiveness in his later years could leave him not being very efficient against great defenses). However, one other contributing factor here, I think, is the pace of the eras. Both of these guys were less “resilient” during the time period of their career where the league had slowed down a lot. When you have a slow era and are facing great defenses, the playoffs end up being a grind with a lot of glacial half-court offense, and that often means the team’s best player has to take a lot of bad shots at the end of the shot clock, and of course that’s never going to lead to a high rTS%. I do think that sort of thing probably contributed to Jordan’s lowered “resilience” near the end of his career and LeBron’s lowered “resilience” near the start of his career. I may be wrong about that though, as I’ve not really delved into anything to try to validate it, and I don’t think it fully explains things.

[Lebronnygoat]

Just for reference for everyone, if we look at Jordan’s playoff career and compare to LeBron’s playoff career just limited to the age range of Jordan’s years, and we actually apply the objective 3.0+ rDRTG opponent criteria rather than selectively not applying it to help LeBron (as the OP did), we get Jordan with 32.10 PPG on +4.20 rTS% and LeBron with 28.98 PPG on +4.78 rTS%. I didn’t do the inflation-adjusted or per-75-possession stuff on the points, since it was way quicker not to and I’m not sure it makes much of a difference here—I have no idea which way layering those things on would cut. To me, Jordan’s numbers are better there, since it’s a few more points per game on essentially the same efficiency.

The overall numbers don’t tell the exact story of the data, though. LeBron was really not a “resilient” playoff scorer in his younger years. I’d say it took him until 2012 (age 27) to actually become a resilient playoff scorer (2011 looks reasonably resilient in this data set, but we know what happened in the 2011 Finals—which doesn’t show up here since the Mavs weren’t a 3.0+ rDRTG defense). After that point, LeBron became a resilient playoff scorer. That said, I think the series in this data set in those years fall into one of a few buckets. The first bucket includes a couple series where I think his rTS% was through the roof in significant part simply because the opponent was scoring so much that they didn’t need to play so hard on defense (2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors). The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams), and those sorts of teams are typically worse in the playoffs against decent teams. The third bucket was teams that were good and didn’t just destroy LeBron’s team on the other end of the court, and LeBron did not score efficiently against those teams (2013 Spurs and 2015 Warriors). I do think that the “resilience” in the post-2012 data for LeBron is in significant part due to the composition of those buckets. But, at the same time, I also think he became a more resilient playoff scorer.

In contrast, for Jordan, he was a resilient playoff scorer immediately upon joining the league. Before his first retirement, he was putting up 33.3 PPG on +5.8 rTS% against the teams in this data set, and never had a negative rTS% series in those series. And these weren’t series against mediocre teams with good RS rDRTG—rather they were against amongst the era’s actual best teams. I suppose one could make a similar point about the 1986 Celtics series as about the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors series, though obviously Jordan’s best game of the series was quite close. Overall, I think this time period is pretty unimpeachable in its resilience, with the minor caveat that Jordan was relatively inefficient against the best versions of those Knicks teams (still 30+ points on reasonably positive rTS%, but definitely his lowest rTS% of the era). After he came back from his first retirement, Jordan’s playoff scoring resilience was not as good as before. He still scored a lot and he did have a couple high-efficiency series against really good defensive teams in those years, but it was more common for the efficiency to be mediocre (and it was actually bad efficiency against the 1997 Heat). I do think part of this was that the Bulls clamped some of these teams down so hard defensively that Jordan didn’t need to do as much offensively (or perhaps in a similar vein may have been focusing energies defensively and had that affect him offensively at the relatively late age he was in this era, I don’t know). But I think a lot of it was simply that Jordan was less explosive at that point in his career and the game was very slow at the time, so if you were a great defense, you could potentially limit him to taking a ton of highly contested jump shots (i.e. think of his post fadeaway), and he wasn’t always able to efficiently do that. Again, you still got lots of points from him in that era, but I do think it was easier to slow him down.

The ebbs and flows in their “resilience” can probably be largely explained by weaknesses in their game (in early years, LeBron’s weak shooting was exploitable by great defenses, while Jordan’s lack of explosiveness in his later years could leave him not being very efficient against great defenses). However, one other contributing factor here, I think, is the pace of the eras. Both of these guys were less “resilient” during the time period of their career where the league had slowed down a lot. When you have a slow era and are facing great defenses, the playoffs end up being a grind with a lot of glacial half-court offense, and that often means the team’s best player has to take a lot of bad shots at the end of the shot clock, and of course that’s never going to lead to a high rTS%. I do think that sort of thing probably contributed to Jordan’s lowered “resilience” near the end of his career and LeBron’s lowered “resilience” near the start of his career. I may be wrong about that though, as I’ve not really delved into anything to try to validate it.

“The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams”

Yea, I think this conversation is over. We also don’t understand what prime means. Straight silly.

[NbaAllDay]

Just for reference for everyone, if we look at Jordan’s playoff career and compare to LeBron’s playoff career just limited to the age range of Jordan’s years, and we actually apply the objective 3.0+ rDRTG opponent criteria rather than selectively not applying it to help LeBron (as the OP did), we get Jordan with 32.10 PPG on +4.20 rTS% and LeBron with 28.98 PPG on +4.78 rTS%. I didn’t do the inflation-adjusted or per-75-possession stuff on the points, since it was way quicker not to and I’m not sure it makes much of a difference here—I have no idea which way layering those things on would cut. To me, Jordan’s numbers are better there, since it’s a few more points per game on essentially the same efficiency.

The overall numbers don’t tell the exact story of the data, though. LeBron was really not a “resilient” playoff scorer in his younger years. I’d say it took him until 2012 (age 27) to actually become a resilient playoff scorer (2011 looks reasonably resilient in this data set, but we know what happened in the 2011 Finals—which doesn’t show up here since the Mavs weren’t a 3.0+ rDRTG defense). After that point, LeBron became a resilient playoff scorer. That said, I think the series in this data set in those years fall into one of a few buckets. The first bucket includes a couple series where I think his rTS% was through the roof in significant part simply because the opponent was scoring so much that they didn’t need to play so hard on defense (2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors). The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams), and those sorts of teams are typically worse in the playoffs against decent teams. The third bucket was teams that were good and didn’t just destroy LeBron’s team on the other end of the court, and LeBron did not score efficiently against those teams (2013 Spurs and 2015 Warriors). I do think that the “resilience” in the post-2012 data for LeBron is in significant part due to the composition of those buckets. But, at the same time, I also think he became a more resilient playoff scorer.

In contrast, for Jordan, he was a resilient playoff scorer immediately upon joining the league. Before his first retirement, he was putting up 33.3 PPG on +5.8 rTS% against the teams in this data set, and never had a negative rTS% series in those series. And these weren’t series against mediocre teams with good RS rDRTG—rather they were against amongst the era’s actual best teams. I suppose one could make a similar point about the 1986 Celtics series as about the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors series, though obviously Jordan’s best game of the series was quite close. Overall, I think this time period is pretty unimpeachable in its resilience, with the minor caveat that Jordan was relatively inefficient against the best versions of those Knicks teams (still 30+ points on reasonably positive rTS%, but definitely his lowest rTS% of the era). Overall, I’m more convinced by Jordan’s resilience in this time period than LeBron’s post-2012, for reasons alluded to above. After he came back from his first retirement, Jordan’s playoff scoring resilience was not as good as before. He still scored a lot and he did have a couple high-efficiency series against really good defensive teams in those years, but it was more common for the efficiency to be mediocre (and it was actually bad efficiency against the 1997 Heat). I do think part of this was that the Bulls clamped some of these teams down so hard defensively that Jordan didn’t need to do as much offensively (or perhaps in a similar vein may have been focusing energies defensively and had that affect him offensively at the relatively late age he was in this era, I don’t know). But I think a lot of it was simply that Jordan was less explosive at that point in his career and the game was very slow at the time, so if you were a great defense, you could potentially limit him to taking a ton of highly contested jump shots (i.e. think of his post fadeaway), and he wasn’t always able to efficiently do that. Again, you still got lots of points from him in that era, but I do think it was easier to slow him down.

The ebbs and flows in their “resilience” can probably be largely explained by weaknesses in their game (in early years, LeBron’s weak shooting was exploitable by great defenses, while Jordan’s lack of explosiveness in his later years could leave him not being very efficient against great defenses). However, one other contributing factor here, I think, is the pace of the eras. Both of these guys were less “resilient” during the time period of their career where the league had slowed down a lot. When you have a slow era and are facing great defenses, the playoffs end up being a grind with a lot of glacial half-court offense, and that often means the team’s best player has to take a lot of bad shots at the end of the shot clock, and of course that’s never going to lead to a high rTS%. I do think that sort of thing probably contributed to Jordan’s lowered “resilience” near the end of his career and LeBron’s lowered “resilience” near the start of his career. I may be wrong about that though, as I’ve not really delved into anything to try to validate it, and I don’t think it fully explains things.

You have articulated this in a way that makes it look like you are balancing the equation of the original OP, but you are actually throwing in minimalist context to Lebron and handwaving some specifics for Jordan.

Work is keeping me from going into more depth but saying things like "the opponents were scoring so much they didn't need to play on defense" (Very easy to dismiss Lebrons resilience when you pretend the other team doesn't play defense, fancy that)
or
"they just wern't very good" (In what regard? Good on O, good on D? Did Lebron not have strong defense match ups?)
Did Jordan have harder defense match ups? Was every team he played 'good', did he not have much easier match ups at times?

You very casually mentioned a few instances but move into attempted contextualization for Jordans benefit.

I am fine with you thinking he is more resilient but this doesn't really give me the vibe that you are doing it as honestly as you pretend.

[lessthanjake]

Just for reference for everyone, if we look at Jordan’s playoff career and compare to LeBron’s playoff career just limited to the age range of Jordan’s years, and we actually apply the objective 3.0+ rDRTG opponent criteria rather than selectively not applying it to help LeBron (as the OP did), we get Jordan with 32.10 PPG on +4.20 rTS% and LeBron with 28.98 PPG on +4.78 rTS%. I didn’t do the inflation-adjusted or per-75-possession stuff on the points, since it was way quicker not to and I’m not sure it makes much of a difference here—I have no idea which way layering those things on would cut. To me, Jordan’s numbers are better there, since it’s a few more points per game on essentially the same efficiency.

The overall numbers don’t tell the exact story of the data, though. LeBron was really not a “resilient” playoff scorer in his younger years. I’d say it took him until 2012 (age 27) to actually become a resilient playoff scorer (2011 looks reasonably resilient in this data set, but we know what happened in the 2011 Finals—which doesn’t show up here since the Mavs weren’t a 3.0+ rDRTG defense). After that point, LeBron became a resilient playoff scorer. That said, I think the series in this data set in those years fall into one of a few buckets. The first bucket includes a couple series where I think his rTS% was through the roof in significant part simply because the opponent was scoring so much that they didn’t need to play so hard on defense (2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors). The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams), and those sorts of teams are typically worse in the playoffs against decent teams. The third bucket was teams that were good and didn’t just destroy LeBron’s team on the other end of the court, and LeBron did not score efficiently against those teams (2013 Spurs and 2015 Warriors). I do think that the “resilience” in the post-2012 data for LeBron is in significant part due to the composition of those buckets. But, at the same time, I also think he became a more resilient playoff scorer.

In contrast, for Jordan, he was a resilient playoff scorer immediately upon joining the league. Before his first retirement, he was putting up 33.3 PPG on +5.8 rTS% against the teams in this data set, and never had a negative rTS% series in those series. And these weren’t series against mediocre teams with good RS rDRTG—rather they were against amongst the era’s actual best teams. I suppose one could make a similar point about the 1986 Celtics series as about the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors series, though obviously Jordan’s best game of the series was quite close. Overall, I think this time period is pretty unimpeachable in its resilience, with the minor caveat that Jordan was relatively inefficient against the best versions of those Knicks teams (still 30+ points on reasonably positive rTS%, but definitely his lowest rTS% of the era). After he came back from his first retirement, Jordan’s playoff scoring resilience was not as good as before. He still scored a lot and he did have a couple high-efficiency series against really good defensive teams in those years, but it was more common for the efficiency to be mediocre (and it was actually bad efficiency against the 1997 Heat). I do think part of this was that the Bulls clamped some of these teams down so hard defensively that Jordan didn’t need to do as much offensively (or perhaps in a similar vein may have been focusing energies defensively and had that affect him offensively at the relatively late age he was in this era, I don’t know). But I think a lot of it was simply that Jordan was less explosive at that point in his career and the game was very slow at the time, so if you were a great defense, you could potentially limit him to taking a ton of highly contested jump shots (i.e. think of his post fadeaway), and he wasn’t always able to efficiently do that. Again, you still got lots of points from him in that era, but I do think it was easier to slow him down.

The ebbs and flows in their “resilience” can probably be largely explained by weaknesses in their game (in early years, LeBron’s weak shooting was exploitable by great defenses, while Jordan’s lack of explosiveness in his later years could leave him not being very efficient against great defenses). However, one other contributing factor here, I think, is the pace of the eras. Both of these guys were less “resilient” during the time period of their career where the league had slowed down a lot. When you have a slow era and are facing great defenses, the playoffs end up being a grind with a lot of glacial half-court offense, and that often means the team’s best player has to take a lot of bad shots at the end of the shot clock, and of course that’s never going to lead to a high rTS%. I do think that sort of thing probably contributed to Jordan’s lowered “resilience” near the end of his career and LeBron’s lowered “resilience” near the start of his career. I may be wrong about that though, as I’ve not really delved into anything to try to validate it.

“The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams”

Yea, I think this conversation is over. We also don’t understand what prime means. Straight silly.

You think those teams were very good? They had SRS of 2.39, 3.34, 3.63, 3.49, and 3.23. None of them had great SRS in surrounding years. And not a single one of them had the type of major superstar that is so important to playoff success. These are exactly the types of teams that a very rarely good in the playoffs, and typically fold against good teams. The reality is the East was weak in that era and had some playoff paper tigers that had good regular season rDRTG’s.

As for the “prime” part, the data I provided started and ended for LeBron in years where he finished 2nd in the NBA in MVP voting. You can define his “prime” more narrowly if you want, but it’s a reasonable formulation of it. And, in any event, I didn’t specifically say the numbers were “prime” numbers. Instead, I described exactly what I was providing, with no subjective statement about what it represents. Again, if you want to define “prime” for purposes of this thread more narrowly than the data I provided, you can feel free to do so. I think doing that misses crucial aspects of the story here. But, if you want to do so, it might behoove you to actually provide data that doesn’t blatantly cherry-pick data points in and out for subjective reasons (and in violation of your stated objective criteria) in order to massage the numbers.

[AEnigma]

Love how the response to massaging numbers was to just do it in a different direction and add obviously worse years to your less favoured player… so that the two end up looking basically even but for Jordan’s characteristic extra shot volume. Utterly masterful, could not have scripted it better.

[lessthanjake]

You have articulated this in a way that makes it look like you are balancing the equation of the original OP, but you are actually throwing in minimalist context to Lebron and handwaving some specifics for Jordan.

Work is keeping me from going into more depth but saying things like "the opponents were scoring so much they didn't need to play on defense" (Very easy to dismiss Lebrons resilience when you pretend the other team doesn't play defense, fancy that)
or
"they just wern't very good" (In what regard? Good on O, good on D? Did Lebron not have strong defense match ups?)
Did Jordan have harder defense match ups? Was every team he played 'good', did he not have much easier match ups at times?

You very casually mentioned a few instances but move into attempted contextualization for Jordans benefit.

I am fine with you thinking he is more resilient but this doesn't really give me the vibe that you are doing it as honestly as you pretend.

I could go into more detail, but it was already an exceedingly long post! And please note that I’m not completely discounting things based on some of the stuff I mentioned. Like I don’t just discount LeBron’s scoring efficiency against the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors. Nor do I do that with regards to the teams I labeled as not being very good (to answer your question, I really mean in all regards. I see those teams as the quintessential teams that are weak/underperform in general in the playoffs when faced with good teams—they’re teams that don’t have a major superstar, didn’t have a high SRS, and didn’t do great in surrounding seasons, and I have zero confidence in teams like that in the playoffs and fully expect them to do worse than their RS baseline when facing a good team). All I said is that I think that these sorts of things are a factor in his 2012-onwards resilience, but at the same time I do think he became a resilient playoff scorer. That context doesn’t eliminate the baseline fact that LeBron was a resilient playoff scorer in that timeframe. As for Jordan, feel free to add context you think is appropriate there too. I mentioned that the 2014 Spurs/2017 Warriors point could perhaps be deployed with regards to the 1986 Celtics series. Meanwhile, I don’t see almost any of Jordan’s relevant playoff opponents as being the type of weak team I was referring to. The 1997 Hawks arguably were, but that series was actually one of Jordan’s least efficient series anyways. I’m sure if someone dug in, they could come up with some unrelated reason to downplay Jordan’s resilience (or excuse LeBron’s early lack of resilience), but I don’t think I’m really missing things on the actual issues I was going through.

[OhayoKD]

Love how the response to massaging numbers was to just do it in a different direction and add obviously worse years to your less favoured player… so that the two end up looking basically even but for Jordan’s characteristic extra shot volume. Utterly masterful, could not have scripted it better.

“Yeah Lebron’s scoring looks better than Jordan’s in his prime but if you add his pre-prime scoring then they look pretty even. Therefore Jordan is better.”

[lessthanjake]

Love how the response to massaging numbers was to just do it in a different direction and add obviously worse years to your less favoured player… so that the two end up looking basically even but for Jordan’s characteristic extra shot volume. Utterly masterful, could not have scripted it better.

How did I massage numbers? Unlike the OP, I was very clear about what I counted and didn’t count, and did not set forth an objective criteria that I then didn’t evenly apply. I provided a clearly-stated criteria for what I was doing and stuck to that completely. That’s not “massaging numbers.” And when you say I “add[ed] obviously worse years to your less favored player,” you’re ignoring the fact that the baseline analysis that I was adding years onto was done by someone who in the first instance was very blatantly tailoring the data specifically to get to his preferred result. Adding “worse years” for LeBron against a baseline of clearly-massaged data isn’t the intrinsically bad thing you are suggesting. Again, you can disagree with the timeframe I used, and you’re free to run the data in your preferred timeframe and report the results. Personally, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about “prime” LeBron as spanning a timeframe that starts and ends with years where he finished #2 in MVP voting (and starts and ends with years where he scored 30+ PPG in the playoffs). And I also think that looking at it more narrowly would ignore a huge part of the stories of these players’ careers. Again, you can prefer a different timeframe. I think you’d want to do that to allow you to ignore stuff you don’t like, but you’d say you want to ignore it because it isn’t adequately representative of “prime” LeBron. To each their own. At the very least, unlike OP, the analysis I provided actually is what I said it is, so you can look at it and get accurate information, even if you disagree with the parameters that that accurate information uses.

[lessthanjake]

Love how the response to massaging numbers was to just do it in a different direction and add obviously worse years to your less favoured player… so that the two end up looking basically even but for Jordan’s characteristic extra shot volume. Utterly masterful, could not have scripted it better.

“Yeah Lebron’s scoring looks better than Jordan’s in his prime but if you add his pre-prime scoring then they look pretty even. Therefore Jordan is better.”

Huh? I looked at their scoring in the exact same age timeframe for both of them! It literally even includes Jordan’s rookie year while the first and last year for LeBron were years he was #2 in MVP voting (and had 30+ PPG in the playoffs). So there’s a better argument that I included non-prime Jordan than that I included non-prime LeBron IMO (though obviously Jordan was great already as a rookie). Obviously it’s not your preferred timeframe, because it includes an era that hurts LeBron’s numbers here. But it includes numbers for Jordan at those same ages!

I also think it’s worth noting that the primary reason you might consider 2006-2008 to not be prime LeBron is precisely because he was not a resilient playoff performer. He was statistically right there with other prime years and was absolutely considered amongst the very top players in the league (and arguably the top). The knock on those years is that he just didn’t do well against good defenses in the playoffs in those years. So I think this sentiment that these years shouldn’t be counted is mostly tautological when we think about it. It’s basically “These years shouldn’t be counted in an analysis of playoff resilience, because LeBron wasn’t in his prime, and we know LeBron wasn’t in his prime because he wasn’t resilient in the playoffs.”

Another tell regarding this idea that LeBron’s “prime” only started in 2009 is that you (and many others) also think 2009 was his peak year. How many players have their peak as the first year of their prime? It’s quite uncommon, for obvious reasons. If we’re defining someone’s prime to start at their peak, that seems like it’s probably a good tell that we’re just trying to avoid considering something from the years before that.

[Heej]

"Our rules are designed to allow players to penetrate for higher percentages shots. This has allowed for more high quality perimeter shots as well, because of how much easier it is to penetrate today." - Stu Jackson

Jordan's era was tougher to score no advanced stats will change that, and he STILL beat Lebron in ppg with taking 5000 less 3 pointers. If there was a basketball definition of resilient scorer it would have a picture of Michael Jordan, NOT Lebron James.

Yea except players are being funnelled into pre-flooded zone defenses now. Backline rotations matter a lot more vs elite scorers than the person in front of them. This is basic hoops IQ

[Heej]

Eh I don't buy the "they didn't try as hard on defense" or "they didn't try hard on offense" arguments. This is about playoff series' where you're dialed into specific schemes vs specific opponents. Offense and defense are reflexive feedback loops where doing well on a possession on one end increases EV on the other end for various reasons.

And if you're saying the middling teams LeBron beat in the Eastern Conference doesn't matter then the same can be said for middling teams Jordan beat in the East.

I'm not a fan of cherry picking data but it seems like if you just applied a basic filter of 'not having 2 of the opponent's best players be injured' to justify handwaving away series' for both players then it affects Jordan more since he had better injury luck in regards to teammates and opponents during his prime than LeBron did

[AEnigma]

Saying Lebron was a worse postseason scorer in 2006-08 is not tautological, it is how improvement works. Which everyone here understands, including those pretending otherwise.

The fact pre-prime (or call it the early parts of a twenty-year prime if you want) Lebron can finish second in MVP voting at the same age Jordan was getting outperformed by Sam Perkins in an elimination game (great math by the way) should be a testament to his overall quality as a player from the start, but instead it gets weaponised — as if anyone were sincerely questioning whether 2006-08 Lebron was anywhere near his later postseason resilience.

And yeah, there is nothing inherently wrong with including 2006-08 — I think those Pistons series and Celtics series are all immensely impressive without anyone close to Orlando Woolridge relieving scoring pressure — but the comedy here is entering a thread covering Lebron’s consensus ten-year prime and comparing it to Jordan’s ten-year prime (with a 1986 bonus for fun), and then feeling the need to run alternate extended numbers because of the suggestion that people might not know young Jordan was a more effective era-relative scorer than young Lebron was. The proverbial cherry is that for all that hand-wringing over whether it is fair to only look at Lebron’s ten-year prime, and how, oh, we simply must highlight how young Lebron was a less reliable scorer… the ultimate result is a sample where Jordan’s career scoring numbers look like Lebron’s plus an extra two shots a game. Again: inspired work.

[Heej]

It is not tautological, it is how improvement works. Which everyone here understands, including you.

The fact pre-prime (or call it the early parts of a twenty-year prime if you want) Lebron can finish second in MVP voting at the same age Jordan was getting outperformed by Sam Perkins in an elimination game (great math by the way) should be a testament to his overall quality as a player from the start, but instead you want to weaponise it as if anyone is sincerely questioning whether 2006-08 Lebron was anywhere near his typical postseason resilience.

And yeah, there is nothing inherently wrong with it — I think those Pistons series and Celtics series are all immensely impressive without anyone close to Orlando Woolridge relieving scoring pressure — but the comedy here is you entering a thread covering Lebron’s consensus ten-year prime and comparing it to Jordan’s ten-year prime (with a 1986 bonus for fun), and then feeling the need to run alternate extended numbers because of the suggestion that people might not know young Jordan was a more effective era-relative scorer than young Lebron was. The proverbial cherry is that for all that hand-wringing over whether it is fair to only look at Lebron’s ten-year prime, and how, oh, we simply must highlight how young Lebron was a less reliable scorer… you ultimately create a sample where Jordan’s career scoring numbers look like Lebron’s plus an extra two shots a game. Inspirational.

Weird how cherry picking claims were met with "the cherries I picked are a lot more ripe"

Also it's somewhat salient to point out that pre-prime LeBron occurred during a transitionary period for the defensive metagame as teams pushed the limits every season on how far players can sink in the paint using zone rules (until Thibs let the cat out of the bag and straight up sent guys all the way across to the strong side in advance which never happened en masse league-wide until around 08), while no such stylistic change was occurring during the 80s

Once teams adjusted to what was obviously a huge step forward in defensive schemes LeBron was magically more resilient. Funny how that works

[lessthanjake]

And if you're saying the middling teams LeBron beat in the Eastern Conference doesn't matter then the same can be said for middling teams Jordan beat in the East.

First of all, I didn’t say that what happened against those teams “doesn’t matter.” I included all of those series in the data I provided. I simply noted that I think those teams not being very good is part of the context of that data, but that regardless of that context LeBron did become a resilient playoff scorer.

Second of all, for purposes of this thread we are specifically talking about what happened against teams with a -3.0 or better rDRTG. For LeBron, that actually includes a handful of middling teams. For Jordan, it doesn’t. The only middling team that Jordan played that gets included for purposes of this data is the 1997 Hawks, but that was one of Jordan’s most inefficient and lowest-scoring series against the teams being considered here anyways, so it is in no way driving the data for Jordan.

[homecourtloss]

Just for reference for everyone, if we look at Jordan’s playoff career and compare to LeBron’s playoff career just limited to the age range of Jordan’s years, and we actually apply the objective 3.0+ rDRTG opponent criteria rather than selectively not applying it to help LeBron (as the OP did), we get Jordan with 32.10 PPG on +4.20 rTS% and LeBron with 28.98 PPG on +4.78 rTS%. I didn’t do the inflation-adjusted or per-75-possession stuff on the points, since it was way quicker not to and I’m not sure it makes much of a difference here—I have no idea which way layering those things on would cut. To me, Jordan’s numbers are better there, since it’s a few more points per game on essentially the same efficiency.

The overall numbers don’t tell the exact story of the data, though. LeBron was really not a “resilient” playoff scorer in his younger years. I’d say it took him until 2012 (age 27) to actually become a resilient playoff scorer (2011 looks reasonably resilient in this data set, but we know what happened in the 2011 Finals—which doesn’t show up here since the Mavs weren’t a 3.0+ rDRTG defense). After that point, LeBron became a resilient playoff scorer. That said, I think the series in this data set in those years fall into one of a few buckets. The first bucket includes a couple series where I think his rTS% was through the roof in significant part simply because the opponent was scoring so much that they didn’t need to play so hard on defense (2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors). The second bucket were teams that honestly just weren’t very good (2012 Knicks, 2013 & 2014 Pacers, 2016 Hawks, and 2018 Celtics were not very good teams), and those sorts of teams are typically worse in the playoffs against decent teams. The third bucket was teams that were good and didn’t just destroy LeBron’s team on the other end of the court, and LeBron did not score efficiently against those teams (2013 Spurs and 2015 Warriors). I do think that the “resilience” in the post-2012 data for LeBron is in significant part due to the composition of those buckets. But, at the same time, I also think he became a more resilient playoff scorer.

In contrast, for Jordan, he was a resilient playoff scorer immediately upon joining the league. Before his first retirement, he was putting up 33.3 PPG on +5.8 rTS% against the teams in this data set, and never had a negative rTS% series in those series. And these weren’t series against mediocre teams with good RS rDRTG—rather they were against amongst the era’s actual best teams. I suppose one could make a similar point about the 1986 Celtics series as about the 2014 Spurs and 2017 Warriors series, though obviously Jordan’s best game of the series was quite close. Overall, I think this time period is pretty unimpeachable in its resilience, with the minor caveat that Jordan was relatively inefficient against the best versions of those Knicks teams (still 30+ points on reasonably positive rTS%, but definitely his lowest rTS% of the era). Overall, I’m more convinced by Jordan’s resilience in this time period than LeBron’s post-2012, for reasons alluded to above. After he came back from his first retirement, Jordan’s playoff scoring resilience was not as good as before. He still scored a lot and he did have a couple high-efficiency series against really good defensive teams in those years, but it was more common for the efficiency to be mediocre (and it was actually bad efficiency against the 1997 Heat). I do think part of this was that the Bulls clamped some of these teams down so hard defensively that Jordan didn’t need to do as much offensively (or perhaps in a similar vein may have been focusing energies defensively and had that affect him offensively at the relatively late age he was in this era, I don’t know). But I think a lot of it was simply that Jordan was less explosive at that point in his career and the game was very slow at the time, so if you were a great defense, you could potentially limit him to taking a ton of highly contested jump shots (i.e. think of his post fadeaway), and he wasn’t always able to efficiently do that. Again, you still got lots of points from him in that era, but I do think it was easier to slow him down.

The ebbs and flows in their “resilience” can probably be largely explained by weaknesses in their game (in early years, LeBron’s weak shooting was exploitable by great defenses, while Jordan’s lack of explosiveness in his later years could leave him not being very efficient against great defenses). However, one other contributing factor here, I think, is the pace of the eras. Both of these guys were less “resilient” during the time period of their career where the league had slowed down a lot. When you have a slow era and are facing great defenses, the playoffs end up being a grind with a lot of glacial half-court offense, and that often means the team’s best player has to take a lot of bad shots at the end of the shot clock, and of course that’s never going to lead to a high rTS%. I do think that sort of thing probably contributed to Jordan’s lowered “resilience” near the end of his career and LeBron’s lowered “resilience” near the start of his career. I may be wrong about that though, as I’ve not really delved into anything to try to validate it, and I don’t think it fully explains things.

You have articulated this in a way that makes it look like you are balancing the equation of the original OP, but you are actually throwing in minimalist context to Lebron and handwaving some specifics for Jordan.

Work is keeping me from going into more depth but saying things like "the opponents were scoring so much they didn't need to play on defense" (Very easy to dismiss Lebrons resilience when you pretend the other team doesn't play defense, fancy that)
or
"they just wern't very good" (In what regard? Good on O, good on D? Did Lebron not have strong defense match ups?)
Did Jordan have harder defense match ups? Was every team he played 'good', did he not have much easier match ups at times?

You very casually mentioned a few instances but move into attempted contextualization for Jordans benefit.

I am fine with you thinking he is more resilient but this doesn't really give me the vibe that you are doing it as honestly as you pretend.

That’s literally his every post regarding James and Jordan.

[homecourtloss]

Love how the response to massaging numbers was to just do it in a different direction and add obviously worse years to your less favoured player… so that the two end up looking basically even but for Jordan’s characteristic extra shot volume. Utterly masterful, could not have scripted it better.

“Yeah Lebron’s scoring looks better than Jordan’s in his prime but if you add his pre-prime scoring then they look pretty even. Therefore Jordan is better.”

[homecourtloss]

If Lebron's the greatest scorer why is he no wear to be found on this list?

I see quite a few faces some more than once, but I do not see Lebron's face.

This isn't salient to the thread subject, really. The discussion is of resilience against escalating defensive quality, and volume alone isn't actually an argument for greatness. Lebron has one season of 23+ FGA/g in his career (23.1).

Jordan has 7, and shot 24+ in 4 different seasons, including 25.7 and 27.8 (the listed year).

Kobe has 3 seasons of 24+ and his 06 season was at 27.2

Gervin had 2 and was at 24.9 in 1980 (25.2 in 1982).

Luka is taking 23.6 FGA/g this year.

That said, Lebron scored 23.76 ppg without FTs in 2006 when he was at his shooting best, and was definitely not as good a jump shooter as any of these guys.

Luka's representation on this list is more about ability than the others, per se, who were more about hyper-volume shooting. Not sure that's the angle you want to take on an attack against Lebron's scoring ability.

The lesser attempts for Lebron vs. Jordan is easily offset by Lebron taking 5000 more 3 pointers than Jordan in his career. You're getting an extra point for each vs. 2. He made 1700 more. There's really no reason he shouldn't be in the mix on ppg if he's the GOAT scorer. Also to me that is a slight knock on him, why is the "GOAT" scorer not taking more field goal attempts? Wouldn't the team want that?

But fair enough, resilient, Jordan had Jordan Rules put against him the Pistons were being more physical with him than any team had ever been to any player and they did beat his team two years in a row. He still was good but he had no teammate averaging 15 ppg that season, however he came back and beat them 4-0. That's resilient.

The lesser attempts for Lebron vs. Jordan is easily offset by Lebron taking 5000 more 3 pointers than Jordan in his career. You're getting an extra point for each vs. 2. He made 1700 more. There's really no reason he shouldn't be in the mix on ppg if he's the GOAT scorer. Also to me that is a slight knock on him, why is the "GOAT" scorer not taking more field goal attempts? Wouldn't the team want that?

Because he knows that it's better to pass more often than not. Even Jordan had to learn that lesson. There's a limit to what hyper-volume scoring can accomplish.

But fair enough, resilient, Jordan had Jordan Rules put against him the Pistons were being more physical with him than any team had ever been to any player and they did beat his team two years in a row. He still was good but he had no teammate averaging 15 ppg that season, however he came back and beat them 4-0. That's resilient.

That's irrelevant narrative that escapes the usage of the word "resilient" in this thread... and in playoff matchups with Detroit from 88-90, Jordan averaged 27.4 ppg on 54.9% TS, 29.7 ppg on 56.1% TS and 32.1 ppg on 56.6%.

In those respective regular seasons, he averaged 35.0 ppg on 60.3% TS, 32.5 ppg on 61.4% TS and 33.6 ppg on 60.6% TS.

He was considerably diminished against them. Not the pro-resilience argument you seem to think it is...

Because he was getting beat up and the Pistons admitted it. Lebron never went through ANY sort of thing in his entire career. No one else did. I said the resilient part was coming back in 91 and sweeping them.

Definition of resilient: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Resilient does not mean just playing for longer than everyone and being a good scorer like some of you think. It was a poor use of the word for OP to use it in this thread honestly. Lebron is not the best at recovering from difficult conditions.

"Our rules are designed to allow players to penetrate for higher percentages shots. This has allowed for more high quality perimeter shots as well, because of how much easier it is to penetrate today." - Stu Jackson

Jordan's era was tougher to score no advanced stats will change that, and he STILL beat Lebron in ppg with taking 5000 less 3 pointers. If there was a basketball definition of resilient scorer it would have a picture of Michael Jordan, NOT Lebron James.

All this from a poster WHO DIDNT KNOW that THE THREE POINT LINE WAS SHORTENED. “Better defenders, Jordan Rules…” It’s always fascinating to see 28-35 year olds who never even watched Jordan have these takes.

Spoiler:

These years there was a shortened three-point line. Take a look what happened the year it went back to normal. It’s amazing that some of the biggest Jordan hagiographers didn’t see him play (30-35 year olds).



Hmm.

That's was for 3 years what I said still stands for his entire career when he shot around 1 per game he had terrible percentages (basically meaning he didn't shoot them at all because of half court heaves) when he shot 3 per game he had good percentages. In 1990 before the shortened 3 point line he shot 37.6 percent on 3 shots per game. (you didn't research this or failed to bring it up because you have an agenda) Every year before that the most he attempted was 1.2 per game that's when his percentages were in the teens and brought down his average for his career. (you also didn't research this or failed to bring it up because you have an agenda) He proved to be a slightly above average 3 point shooter when he attempted them. There's no evidence if he was a high volume 3 point shooter he wouldn't be a good one. Not all time great but good.

Now do Lebron's free throw shooting since you're a fanboy of his and have focused MJ hate. You guys want to focus on MJ's 3 point shooting which you know is something NBA players didn't do in high volume then like they do now (and Jordan was still okay at it) but want to sweep Lebron's free throw shooting under the carpet, when that's important in every era. Maybe if he practiced more at it he'd be better or maybe he just isn't capable of being good at it what do you think?

You either didn’t know at all about the shortened line or now can’t even admit that you passed off data about what happened during these shortened line seasons as if they were normal seasons. Which one?

In any case, Jordan was 581/1778 from three in his career. He was 238/589 from the shortened line. He was 343/1189 from three when the regular line was in play, 28.8%. In 1998, when the line went back to normal, he was 30/126, 23.8%.

You’re injected LeBron into the conversation when the thread of discussion surrounded the following ludicrous statement; I don’t see anything about James’s pathological need to win:

If Russell played today he would be a 45% three point shooter if that's what it took. He was like MJ in having an almost pathological need to win.

To which I replied:

What about Jordan’s pathological need to win in Washington?

The point is that these mythologized takes about a pathological need to win, would do everything to win, wouldn’t let a grandma beat him in checkers, etc., etc., fail to account for something so basic as Jordan seeing his own athleticism declining and becoming a below-average efficiency scorer, and not resorting to the easiest fix to continue to be able to win games and become at least an average efficiency scorer, i.e., become a good three point shooter. He actually became a worse three point shooter. Why would he allow this?

In other threads, people say that Jordan could become a good three point shooter if he wanted to but the three wasn’t emphasized, etc. How does a player with a supposed pathological need to win look around and see others making threes and using it to their advantage, and then not do so himself when he has become a below average efficiency scorer? Why would a pathological need to win killer, etc., not become a good three point shooter so he can still fulfill the pathological need to win?

[Heej]

And if you're saying the middling teams LeBron beat in the Eastern Conference doesn't matter then the same can be said for middling teams Jordan beat in the East.

First of all, I didn’t say that what happened against those teams “doesn’t matter.” I included all of those series in the data I provided. I simply noted that I think those teams not being very good is part of the context of that data, but that regardless of that context LeBron did become a resilient playoff scorer.

Second of all, for purposes of this thread we are specifically talking about what happened against teams with a -3.0 or better rDRTG. For LeBron, that actually includes a handful of middling teams. For Jordan, it doesn’t. The only middling team that Jordan played that gets included for purposes of this data is the 1997 Hawks, but that was one of Jordan’s most inefficient and lowest-scoring series against the teams being considered here anyways, so it is in no way driving the data for Jordan.

Is your reasoning for those not being middling teams primarily hinging on SRS because I don't take that too seriously for expansion-era teams.