Prime LeBron James is the most resilient scorer in NBA History

[tsherkin]

A massive problem with the short-sighted "Modern era is better." argument is that newer players get the nod over Lebron just how he gets the nod over Jordan. Any comparisons apart from era-relative ones are just pointless. If more recent players are automatically better, then why even bother debating anything... The GOAT title is transient, doomed to change hands in a couple of years.

"A couple of years" is probably a little aggressive. It took like a decade and a half before Jordan got there over Kareem in a lot of the more classical arguments, and because Lebron doesn't have the same sort of near-perfect career arc or narrative, there will always be pushback against him vs. Jordan. And right at the moment, there's no one really threatening for the title of GOAT beyond the classical candidates and Lebron. It'll be some time before a new name gains any real traction, I think.

Ok you're right. I should have clarified that I meant GOAT peaks/primes. GOAT careers are a different story because it requires a certain level of consistency and luck to accumulate accolades so there won't be a new GOAT candidate every few years.

Yeah, peak/prime, fair enough. We're watching Jokic and Embiid (when he's healthy, in the RS, anyhow) and perhaps Doncic and what-not right now, maybe the rise of Shai. There's a ton of compelling talent right now to enjoy.

[Heej]

The problem with what you're presenting here is that you seem to imply that it is fair to compare these stats (team and individual) on a 1:1 basis by invoking the holy creed of era-relativity when really it makes more sense to see which person or team was relatively advantaged or disadvantaged according to their era.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

The more realistic approach here is to comprehend that Jordan was playing against caveman defenses in a decidedly non-caveman offense, while LeBron faced modern defenses (multiple elite ones at that) playing in a modern offense. Meaning that Jordan more than LeBron is the one enjoying era-relative advantages here, within the broader context of a metagame relative to that era which also favored offenses!

Meanwhile not only did much of LeBron's prime occur in an era where defenses in general were one step ahead of offenses, he also didn't get to enjoy a era-relative advantage vs his own opponents by playing in an offense that's ahead of its time. Hell, the one time I can remember a LeBron team truly being one generation ahead of their opponent it was during the 2012 Finals when Scott Brooks decided to play Caveman offense with Ibaka-Perkins at the 4-5 while the Heat ran Battier-Bosh.

And what happened that series? The Heat not only beat the odds and won, they dismantled that team in a backdoor sweep, and unlike the Bulls I'm not even sure LeBron's supporting cast was more talented than KDs given the Bosh injury that postseason.

This is the type of era-relative advantage Jordan was able to enjoy for nearly the entirety of his prime (hell, probably the only other other comparable proto-modern schemes of the era were Sloan's flex offense and Adelman's corner offense which have also seen concepts survive to this day like the triangle) and I don't see any of the meaningful separation one would expect from a guy who's ostensibly similarly talented but had more era-relative advantages.

And my argument regarding the middling teams is that the Bulls relative advantages (roster and coaching) given that the Bulls were essentially a proto-modern team (particularly in the 2nd threepeat running 3 ballhandler lineups with Kukoc-Rodman closing at the 4-5) are on par with the relative roster and coaching advantages LeBron had. Because when you're playing in an era with watered down roster talent and coaching acumen, playing in a proto-modern offense alone places you at such an advantage that it makes no sense to handwave away one guys' opponents as middling when the other teams looked just as mid relative to the Bulls' construction in totality.

Okay, so I think this is a rabbit hole, where you’re just wanting to fit a talking point you like to talk about into this discussion. The basic thesis you’re stating here is that Jordan’s numbers should be discounted because you think he had a huge coaching advantage due to the triangle. It’s a topic we’ve discussed in other contexts before, so I won’t bother rehashing. I don’t think your thesis makes a whole lot of sense in this particular topic, since Jordan’s playoff “resilience” in this data set was higher pre-triangle than with the triangle (and that’s true even if we take the second-three-peat years out of the equation for the triangle). More importantly, I don’t think that actually really bears on the question of which teams we would or wouldn’t expect to underperform their regular season numbers in the playoffs. If a team had a “caveman defense” then they had that “caveman defense” in both the regular season and the playoffs, so that doesn’t tell us anything about whether they’re the type of team we’d expect to underperform their RS numbers in the playoffs. Of course, you’d argue that the “caveman defense” makes them easier to score on in general, but that assertion really doesn’t go to the question of whether they’re the type of team for which relying on their RS numbers would typically overstate their playoff quality. In essence, you are taking issue with something I said by raising a completely separate issue.

Except that it's not only coaching advantage but rather that the metagame of basketball itself was tilted to offensive players then (similar to now) while for much of LeBron's prime it was tilted towards defense which informs how much "credit" one gets for being resilient. And the whole pre-triangle vs post-triangle dataset has just as much to do with the fact that Jordan wasn't getting as far in his playoff runs allowing middling teams to make up more of the data.


And it seems you're failing to understand that my contention isn't that whether teams would underperform in the playoffs vs the regular season, but rather that it comes across as completely arbitrary to say "LeBron's opponents would definitely underperform but Jordan's definitely wouldn't" when in reality it makes more sense to assume the Bulls' opponents are the ones who are likely to underperform in a PS matchup with the Bulls given that they are schematically disadvantaged

[lessthanjake]

One thing I find rather curious is the bizarre way that certain people here feel the need to narrow down LeBron’s prime for purely rhetorical purposes.

Certain people indeed:

Just to drill down on this a bit: LeBron’s teams consistently collapsed defensively in the business end of the playoffs from 2009-2014,but those are pretty generally considered the years of LeBron’s defensive peak (it’s his best span from a DPOY voting standpoint, but also just athletically and by consensus in general).

...
In those later years, LeBron’s teams certainly didn't do badly defensively in late playoff series, but it actually wasn’t quite as consistent as it was in LeBron’s defensive peak. So how does that make sense? People want to give the credit for those defensive performances to LeBron. But if LeBron at his defensive peak and with high-ranked defenses consistently resulted in bad late-stage playoff defenses, then why should we assume that LeBron outside of his defensive peak was somehow the reason his teams actually had some good late-stage playoff performances defensively?

LeBron is clearly better in old age than MJ was. The question is how much that matters.

The arguments that it matters a lot would mostly have to center around one of two things: (1) the extra career value added by being better in old-age seasons; or (2) an implication about what it means about how good they were in their primes.

...

On the question about what it implies about how good they were in their primes (i.e. “Old LeBron is better than old Michael, so prime LeBron must’ve been better than prime Michael”), I don’t really think that there’s any valid point because the context is so different.

And of course, in the same comment I'm replying too...

when I pointed out lots of data showing Steph outdoing LeBron in impact numbers from 2013-2014 onwards

There’s literally nothing in what you quoted that involves me artificially narrowing down LeBron’s prime for rhetorical purposes. Talking about the years of someone’s “defensive peak” is completely different than talking about someone’s general prime as a player, since peak is not prime and defense is quite far from the entire game. I feel like that should be obvious. Meanwhile, I have no idea what you are even trying to point to in the quote where I’m talking about how good these guys were when old. I was referring to how a comparison of Wizards Jordan to LeBron at those same ages goes in LeBron’s favor but that that doesn’t tell us much of anything about how good they were in their primes. That point presupposes that neither player was in their prime in the years I was talking about, but I don’t think anyone would say Wizards Jordan or 2023 & 2024 LeBron were in their primes (and, indeed, I excluded a 2023 data point for LeBron in my analysis, for this exact reason). And I can’t even begin to theorize what you’re trying to say by quoting what I just said in this thread. So, overall, your response here is just a mess, to be honest.

TLDR: Era-strength matters alot for Mikan and then drops in importance incrementally as the league progresses...and then becomes virtually irrelevant in regard to the player you grew up with 30 years ago when, by your own admission, the league was much worse.

And you think your age bolsters your credibility?

I think it is quite reasonable to see a vast difference between the state of the NBA in Mikan’s era and Jordan’s era and therefore to take a very different approach to players in those eras. Indeed, I think that’s by far the most common position people have on this. And it’s a complete misrepresentation to suggest that I simply care about era until the point where Jordan came into the league and then stop caring about it. Era quality becomes pretty unimportant to me well before Jordan came into the league. There’s always a small finger on the scale for me (yes, even when comparing the 1990s to today), hence why I’ve made posts mentioning that Curry playing in the modern era is a factor in his favor. But it’s a very small factor, and my general guidelines about when it is a big or small factor really have nothing to do with the timeline of Jordan’s career. It seems like you may not be able to comprehend that other people might actually have an approach to basketball analysis that is not designed simply to optimally maximize their case for players they like.

Injuries, performance in surrounding years, roster construction, post season performance, surrounding post season performance, championship proximity?.. No. If it's not inflated regular season SRS(and yes, that holds even with an era-relative approach), your analysis of these teams is pretty much boils down to vibes. No literally, championship offs, a measure of how people feel took precedent over how close teams got to winning championships, what they did before and after, the health of their players, and what they did in the playoffs.

This is largely off topic, but I will note that the unrelated discussion you’re referring back to was actually one in which I set down multiple criteria for what factors suggest a team was really good, and that criteria included several of the factors you mention at the end of this. You’re just strawmanning about an essentially unrelated topic.

[PistolPeteJR]

I think both LeBron and Jordan were magnificent.

I'm really hoping Wemby ends up being the guy to blow both of them out of the water so we can be done with this never-ending debate that, for the most part, sees a ton of critical thinking that is executed super poorly.

[lessthanjake]

The problem with what you're presenting here is that you seem to imply that it is fair to compare these stats (team and individual) on a 1:1 basis by invoking the holy creed of era-relativity when really it makes more sense to see which person or team was relatively advantaged or disadvantaged according to their era.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

The more realistic approach here is to comprehend that Jordan was playing against caveman defenses in a decidedly non-caveman offense, while LeBron faced modern defenses (multiple elite ones at that) playing in a modern offense. Meaning that Jordan more than LeBron is the one enjoying era-relative advantages here, within the broader context of a metagame relative to that era which also favored offenses!

Meanwhile not only did much of LeBron's prime occur in an era where defenses in general were one step ahead of offenses, he also didn't get to enjoy a era-relative advantage vs his own opponents by playing in an offense that's ahead of its time. Hell, the one time I can remember a LeBron team truly being one generation ahead of their opponent it was during the 2012 Finals when Scott Brooks decided to play Caveman offense with Ibaka-Perkins at the 4-5 while the Heat ran Battier-Bosh.

And what happened that series? The Heat not only beat the odds and won, they dismantled that team in a backdoor sweep, and unlike the Bulls I'm not even sure LeBron's supporting cast was more talented than KDs given the Bosh injury that postseason.

This is the type of era-relative advantage Jordan was able to enjoy for nearly the entirety of his prime (hell, probably the only other other comparable proto-modern schemes of the era were Sloan's flex offense and Adelman's corner offense which have also seen concepts survive to this day like the triangle) and I don't see any of the meaningful separation one would expect from a guy who's ostensibly similarly talented but had more era-relative advantages.

And my argument regarding the middling teams is that the Bulls relative advantages (roster and coaching) given that the Bulls were essentially a proto-modern team (particularly in the 2nd threepeat running 3 ballhandler lineups with Kukoc-Rodman closing at the 4-5) are on par with the relative roster and coaching advantages LeBron had. Because when you're playing in an era with watered down roster talent and coaching acumen, playing in a proto-modern offense alone places you at such an advantage that it makes no sense to handwave away one guys' opponents as middling when the other teams looked just as mid relative to the Bulls' construction in totality.

Okay, so I think this is a rabbit hole, where you’re just wanting to fit a talking point you like to talk about into this discussion. The basic thesis you’re stating here is that Jordan’s numbers should be discounted because you think he had a huge coaching advantage due to the triangle. It’s a topic we’ve discussed in other contexts before, so I won’t bother rehashing. I don’t think your thesis makes a whole lot of sense in this particular topic, since Jordan’s playoff “resilience” in this data set was higher pre-triangle than with the triangle (and that’s true even if we take the second-three-peat years out of the equation for the triangle). More importantly, I don’t think that actually really bears on the question of which teams we would or wouldn’t expect to underperform their regular season numbers in the playoffs. If a team had a “caveman defense” then they had that “caveman defense” in both the regular season and the playoffs, so that doesn’t tell us anything about whether they’re the type of team we’d expect to underperform their RS numbers in the playoffs. Of course, you’d argue that the “caveman defense” makes them easier to score on in general, but that assertion really doesn’t go to the question of whether they’re the type of team for which relying on their RS numbers would typically overstate their playoff quality. In essence, you are taking issue with something I said by raising a completely separate issue.

Except that it's not only coaching advantage but rather that the metagame of basketball itself was tilted to offensive players then (similar to now) while for much of LeBron's prime it was tilted towards defense which informs how much "credit" one gets for being resilient.

How does the “metagame of basketball” being “tilted to offensive players” matter here when we are specifically measuring rTS%?

And the whole pre-triangle vs post-triangle dataset has just as much to do with the fact that Jordan wasn't getting as far in his playoff runs allowing middling teams to make up more of the data.

That’s really not true at all. Half the pre-triangle teams Jordan played that are in this data set won the title that year in dominant fashion. Jordan had a higher rTS% against those teams than he did with the triangle (and again, that is true even if we took out the second-three-peat triangle years). There’s really just not a correlation at all in this data between Jordan’s “resilience” and having the triangle. If anything, it’s the opposite.

And it seems you're failing to understand that my contention isn't that whether teams would underperform in the playoffs vs the regular season, but rather that it comes across as completely arbitrary to say "LeBron's opponents would definitely underperform but Jordan's definitely wouldn't" when in reality it makes more sense to assume the Bulls' opponents are the ones who are likely to underperform in a PS matchup with the Bulls given that they are schematically disadvantaged

You’re welcome to disagree with my point. It’s ultimately an inherently subjective/speculative assertion. I have a solid amount of confidence in it because I really do think that there are pretty clear archetypes of teams that do worse in the playoffs than in the regular season, I don’t think they’re all that difficult to identify, and I’ve been identifying them to myself for decades. But you’re welcome to disagree with my assessment on this (after all, I’m making an assertion that’s ultimately not actually provable) and to think that teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks weren’t teams we’d expect would underperform in the playoffs or that you just systematically think that everyone in Jordan’s era would be expected to underperform against the Bulls (based on a rationale that, as already explained, does not even apply to Jordan’s best time period in this data).

[Heej]

There’s always a small finger on the scale for me (yes, even when comparing the 1990s to today), hence why I’ve made posts mentioning that Curry playing in the modern era is a factor in his favor. But it’s a very small factor, and my general guidelines about when it is a big or small factor really have nothing to do with the timeline of Jordan’s career.

It seems to me that your guidelines about when it is a big or small factor have more to do with the context of Jordan's career rather than the timeline

[lessthanjake]

I think both LeBron and Jordan were magnificent.

I'm really hoping Wemby ends up being the guy to blow both of them out of the water so we can be done with this never-ending debate that, for the most part, sees a ton of critical thinking that is executed super poorly.

I think he’s got a decent shot at it, because he seems like the type of player that can have the type of outsized defensive impact that historically great defensive big men often do. That’s a huge leg up, because there’s a pretty big gap in defensive impact between those guys and everyone else. The trouble is that we’ve not seen anyone really combine that kind of defensive impact with genuinely elite offensive impact (though maybe peak Kareem did? Hard to know). If Wemby actually has elite offensive impact, then it’s very easy to imagine him blowing everyone else out of the water. I’m a little skeptical about that, though, and suspect his offensive ceiling may be similar (at least in era-relative terms) to what Duncan’s was. But we’ll see. Even him being an era-relative Duncan overall would probably be enough to be the best ever in non-era-relative terms, but obviously he’d need to be something more than that to become the definitive answer to a question that is mostly discussed in era-relative terms.

[lessthanjake]

There’s always a small finger on the scale for me (yes, even when comparing the 1990s to today), hence why I’ve made posts mentioning that Curry playing in the modern era is a factor in his favor. But it’s a very small factor, and my general guidelines about when it is a big or small factor really have nothing to do with the timeline of Jordan’s career.

It seems to me that your guidelines about when it is a big or small factor have more to do with the context of Jordan's career rather than the timeline

I don’t understand how you could take that conclusion from a post in which I was explicitly explaining that that’s not at all the case (nor, by the way, would such an assertion be consistent with how I voted in the Top 100 project where, for instance, I was pushing Moses Malone well before anyone else).

[Heej]

Okay, so I think this is a rabbit hole, where you’re just wanting to fit a talking point you like to talk about into this discussion. The basic thesis you’re stating here is that Jordan’s numbers should be discounted because you think he had a huge coaching advantage due to the triangle. It’s a topic we’ve discussed in other contexts before, so I won’t bother rehashing. I don’t think your thesis makes a whole lot of sense in this particular topic, since Jordan’s playoff “resilience” in this data set was higher pre-triangle than with the triangle (and that’s true even if we take the second-three-peat years out of the equation for the triangle). More importantly, I don’t think that actually really bears on the question of which teams we would or wouldn’t expect to underperform their regular season numbers in the playoffs. If a team had a “caveman defense” then they had that “caveman defense” in both the regular season and the playoffs, so that doesn’t tell us anything about whether they’re the type of team we’d expect to underperform their RS numbers in the playoffs. Of course, you’d argue that the “caveman defense” makes them easier to score on in general, but that assertion really doesn’t go to the question of whether they’re the type of team for which relying on their RS numbers would typically overstate their playoff quality. In essence, you are taking issue with something I said by raising a completely separate issue.

Except that it's not only coaching advantage but rather that the metagame of basketball itself was tilted to offensive players then (similar to now) while for much of LeBron's prime it was tilted towards defense which informs how much "credit" one gets for being resilient.

How does the “metagame of basketball” being “tilted to offensive players” matter here when we are specifically measuring rTS%?

And the whole pre-triangle vs post-triangle dataset has just as much to do with the fact that Jordan wasn't getting as far in his playoff runs allowing middling teams to make up more of the data.

That’s really not true at all. Half the pre-triangle teams Jordan played that are in this data set won the title that year in dominant fashion. Jordan had a higher rTS% against those teams than he did with the triangle (and again, that is true even if we took out the second-three-peat triangle years). There’s really just not a correlation at all in this data between Jordan’s “resilience” and having the triangle. If anything, it’s the opposite.

And it seems you're failing to understand that my contention isn't that whether teams would underperform in the playoffs vs the regular season, but rather that it comes across as completely arbitrary to say "LeBron's opponents would definitely underperform but Jordan's definitely wouldn't" when in reality it makes more sense to assume the Bulls' opponents are the ones who are likely to underperform in a PS matchup with the Bulls given that they are schematically disadvantaged

You’re welcome to disagree with my point. It’s ultimately an inherently subjective/speculative assertion. I have a solid amount of confidence in it because I really do think that there are pretty clear archetypes of teams that do worse in the playoffs than in the regular season, I don’t think they’re all that difficult to identify, and I’ve been identifying them to myself for decades. But you’re welcome to disagree with my assessment on this (after all, I’m making an assertion that’s ultimately not actually provable) and to think that teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks weren’t teams we’d expect would underperform in the playoffs or that you just systematically think that everyone in Jordan’s era would be expected to underperform against the Bulls (based on a rationale that, as already explained, does not even apply to Jordan’s best time period in this data).

How does it matter? Maybe because in a playoff series where teams drill down to specific principles and coverages, having a metagame more conducive to offensive basketball means in a playoff series you will have comparatively more quality flaws to exploit in a defense vs a defensively tilted meta. And as such comparing RS to PS numbers is flawed because you can expect PS numbers to be more buoyed because to use stock terms, the overall trend is up for offense.

The fact that half the teams Jordan faced in his short playoff runs are the ones that won the chip just means the skew was closer to half middling teams and half quality teams. In later years he simply had more quality teams on his docket which presented more opportunities to nuke his rTS% numbers in any given matchup. Once again, the quality of Jordan's early prime resilience numbers have more to do with the dataset than any qualitative difference between Doug Collins' yolo offense and Phil's triangle. But surely you knew that already. I hope.

Your criteria of underperformance in the playoffs seems arbitrary to be honest even though it seems reliable in your eyes, especially because for the context of this discussion you'd have to explain why those teams underperformed specifically on defense and allowed LeBron a higher rTS% than we was due rather than the more realistic assumption that any perceived playoff drop-off has just as much to do with offense. Again just seems ad-hoc to say "oh yeah these guys Jordan specifically faced fit the bill for playoff risers but Lebron's comp looks like fallers" especially when you can't even demonstrate whether this perceived fall-off stemmed from offensive or defensive deficiencies.

[Heej]

There’s always a small finger on the scale for me (yes, even when comparing the 1990s to today), hence why I’ve made posts mentioning that Curry playing in the modern era is a factor in his favor. But it’s a very small factor, and my general guidelines about when it is a big or small factor really have nothing to do with the timeline of Jordan’s career.

It seems to me that your guidelines about when it is a big or small factor have more to do with the context of Jordan's career rather than the timeline

I don’t understand how you could take that conclusion from a post in which I was explicitly explaining that that’s not at all the case.

"LeBron's comp looks like playoff fallers to me, but not Jordan's" absolutely smacks of your arbitrary guidelines for adjustment factors having mostly to do with the context of Jordan's career and not specifically the timeline (as you've stated)

[OldSchoolNoBull]

The problem with what you're presenting here is that you seem to imply that it is fair to compare these stats (team and individual) on a 1:1 basis by invoking the holy creed of era-relativity when really it makes more sense to see which person or team was relatively advantaged or disadvantaged according to their era.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

The more realistic approach here is to comprehend that Jordan was playing against caveman defenses in a decidedly non-caveman offense, while LeBron faced modern defenses (multiple elite ones at that) playing in a modern offense. Meaning that Jordan more than LeBron is the one enjoying era-relative advantages here, within the broader context of a metagame relative to that era which also favored offenses!

Meanwhile not only did much of LeBron's prime occur in an era where defenses in general were one step ahead of offenses, he also didn't get to enjoy a era-relative advantage vs his own opponents by playing in an offense that's ahead of its time. Hell, the one time I can remember a LeBron team truly being one generation ahead of their opponent it was during the 2012 Finals when Scott Brooks decided to play Caveman offense with Ibaka-Perkins at the 4-5 while the Heat ran Battier-Bosh.

And what happened that series? The Heat not only beat the odds and won, they dismantled that team in a backdoor sweep, and unlike the Bulls I'm not even sure LeBron's supporting cast was more talented than KDs given the Bosh injury that postseason.

This is the type of era-relative advantage Jordan was able to enjoy for nearly the entirety of his prime (hell, probably the only other other comparable proto-modern schemes of the era were Sloan's flex offense and Adelman's corner offense which have also seen concepts survive to this day like the triangle) and I don't see any of the meaningful separation one would expect from a guy who's ostensibly similarly talented but had more era-relative advantages.

And my argument regarding the middling teams is that the Bulls relative advantages (roster and coaching) given that the Bulls were essentially a proto-modern team (particularly in the 2nd threepeat running 3 ballhandler lineups with Kukoc-Rodman closing at the 4-5) are on par with the relative roster and coaching advantages LeBron had. Because when you're playing in an era with watered down roster talent and coaching acumen, playing in a proto-modern offense alone places you at such an advantage that it makes no sense to handwave away one guys' opponents as middling when the other teams looked just as mid relative to the Bulls' construction in totality.

The thing is, even if what you say is accurate, you are still comparing one era to another here. That is not era-relativity. In order to know the things you're talking about - what schemes were more modern vs what weren't, etc - you'd have to know what happened in the league after player x(in this case Jordan) played.

In era-relativity, you are comparing the player only to the league he played in. That's it. I know people have strong feelings for and against that, but for those of us that support such a worldview, there are important reasons for it that go far beyond the scope of a Jordan/LeBron debate. If you don't ascribe to era-relativity, then eventually, whether it's in 20 or 50 years, there will come a time when people make Top 100 lists that don't have a single pre-merger player on them. Even now, there are plenty of people that don't think Russell belongs in the Top 10, and flat out role their eyes at 50s players like Mikan/Cousy/Schayes/Arizin/Sharman making a Top 100.

Now, having said all that, there is truth in the point that Ohayo makes, that if you're evaluating based on era-relative dominance, then Russell is #1. I can live with that.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

Just to zoom into this passage - the triangle obviously was very important, and you can see that reflected in the team offenses skyrocketing once Phil took over and implemented it, but its success is not independent of Jordan. I would point out that Jordan was producing elite scoring numbers before playing in the triangle, and that that same triangle produced worse offenses in 94 and 95 when he wasn't playing. Here are the rORtgs:

85: +0.8
86: +1.4
87: +0.3
88: +1.0
89: +1.3
90: +4.2
91: +6.7
92: +7.3
93: +4.9
94: -0.2
95: +1.2
96: +7.6
97: +7.6
98: +2.7

I would argue that the triangle did more to improve the offensive performance of his teammates than it did him. He would've been an all-world offensive player anywhere.

[Heej]

The problem with what you're presenting here is that you seem to imply that it is fair to compare these stats (team and individual) on a 1:1 basis by invoking the holy creed of era-relativity when really it makes more sense to see which person or team was relatively advantaged or disadvantaged according to their era.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

The more realistic approach here is to comprehend that Jordan was playing against caveman defenses in a decidedly non-caveman offense, while LeBron faced modern defenses (multiple elite ones at that) playing in a modern offense. Meaning that Jordan more than LeBron is the one enjoying era-relative advantages here, within the broader context of a metagame relative to that era which also favored offenses!

Meanwhile not only did much of LeBron's prime occur in an era where defenses in general were one step ahead of offenses, he also didn't get to enjoy a era-relative advantage vs his own opponents by playing in an offense that's ahead of its time. Hell, the one time I can remember a LeBron team truly being one generation ahead of their opponent it was during the 2012 Finals when Scott Brooks decided to play Caveman offense with Ibaka-Perkins at the 4-5 while the Heat ran Battier-Bosh.

And what happened that series? The Heat not only beat the odds and won, they dismantled that team in a backdoor sweep, and unlike the Bulls I'm not even sure LeBron's supporting cast was more talented than KDs given the Bosh injury that postseason.

This is the type of era-relative advantage Jordan was able to enjoy for nearly the entirety of his prime (hell, probably the only other other comparable proto-modern schemes of the era were Sloan's flex offense and Adelman's corner offense which have also seen concepts survive to this day like the triangle) and I don't see any of the meaningful separation one would expect from a guy who's ostensibly similarly talented but had more era-relative advantages.

And my argument regarding the middling teams is that the Bulls relative advantages (roster and coaching) given that the Bulls were essentially a proto-modern team (particularly in the 2nd threepeat running 3 ballhandler lineups with Kukoc-Rodman closing at the 4-5) are on par with the relative roster and coaching advantages LeBron had. Because when you're playing in an era with watered down roster talent and coaching acumen, playing in a proto-modern offense alone places you at such an advantage that it makes no sense to handwave away one guys' opponents as middling when the other teams looked just as mid relative to the Bulls' construction in totality.

The thing is, even if what you say is accurate, you are still comparing one era to another here. That is not era-relativity. In order to know the things you're talking about - what schemes were more modern vs what weren't, etc - you'd have to know what happened in the league after player x(in this case Jordan) played.

In era-relativity, you are comparing the player only to the league he played in. That's it. I know people have strong feelings for and against that, but for those of us that support such a worldview, there are important reasons for it that go far beyond the scope of a Jordan/LeBron debate. If you don't ascribe to era-relativity, then eventually, whether it's in 20 or 50 years, there will come a time when people make Top 100 lists that don't have a single pre-merger player on them. Even now, there are plenty of people that don't think Russell belongs in the Top 10, and flat out role their eyes at 50s players like Mikan/Cousy/Schayes/Arizin/Sharman making a Top 100.

Now, having said all that, there is truth in the point that Ohayo makes, that if you're evaluating based on era-relative dominance, then Russell is #1. I can live with that.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

Just to zoom into this passage - the triangle obviously was very important, and you can see that reflected in the team offenses skyrocketing once Phil took over and implemented it, but its success is not independent of Jordan. I would point out that Jordan was producing elite scoring numbers before playing in the triangle, and that that same triangle produced worse offenses in 94 and 95 when he wasn't playing. Here are the rORtgs:

85: +0.8
86: +1.4
87: +0.3
88: +1.0
89: +1.3
90: +4.2
91: +6.7
92: +7.3
93: +4.9
94: -0.2
95: +1.2
96: +7.6
97: +7.6
98: +2.7

I would argue that the triangle did more to improve the offensive performance of his teammates than it did him. He would've been an all-world offensive player anywhere.

I'm telling you that looking at the specific coaching and roster advantages Jordan had relative to his opponents and comparing that to what LeBron had is the actual way to do era-relativity correctly. Because basketball has been iterated on and more "solved" to an extent now so we can look back and using modern knowledge identif which teams were structurally advantaged or disadvantaged

In regards to the triangle improving his teammates more than him, sure you can say that if you only reduce basketball to isolated matchups (the common fallacy for 95% of basketball fans I find nowadays) and not on the reflexive feedback loops inherent to the nature of the game itself.

And I'm not sure it didn't help Jordan seeing as how it helped reduce his turnovers via simplifying reads and keeping defenses more honest while also allowing him more catch and shoot created jumpers that preserved his body for deeper runs and extended series'. Also his TS% in the playoffs during his first stint was slightly better overall than pre.

I agree Jordan would've been a world-class player no matter where he went but the biggest difference between pre-triangle and 2nd threepeat is that Jordan attacked the rim less and got less free throws which is just as easily attributed to age and wear and tear. Also it would be unfair for me not to point out that the late 90s was when the league first started oscillating back towards a defensive tilt given how pace went down specifically after 94.

[PistolPeteJR]

I think both LeBron and Jordan were magnificent.

I'm really hoping Wemby ends up being the guy to blow both of them out of the water so we can be done with this never-ending debate that, for the most part, sees a ton of critical thinking that is executed super poorly.

I think he’s got a decent shot at it, because he seems like the type of player that can have the type of outsized defensive impact that historically great defensive big men often do. That’s a huge leg up, because there’s a pretty big gap in defensive impact between those guys and everyone else. The trouble is that we’ve not seen anyone really combine that kind of defensive impact with genuinely elite offensive impact (though maybe peak Kareem did? Hard to know). If Wemby actually has elite offensive impact, then it’s very easy to imagine him blowing everyone else out of the water. I’m a little skeptical about that, though, and suspect his offensive ceiling may be similar (at least in era-relative terms) to what Duncan’s was. But we’ll see. Even him being an era-relative Duncan overall would probably be enough to be the best ever in non-era-relative terms, but obviously he’d need to be something more than that to become the definitive answer to a question that is mostly discussed in era-relative terms.

If he produces Duncan-level defense for a sizable period of time while being more polished offensively, he's easily top-3 all-time then. From there it's about the specifics to see whether he's clearly the GOAT or not.

[Heej]

I think both LeBron and Jordan were magnificent.

I'm really hoping Wemby ends up being the guy to blow both of them out of the water so we can be done with this never-ending debate that, for the most part, sees a ton of critical thinking that is executed super poorly.

I think he’s got a decent shot at it, because he seems like the type of player that can have the type of outsized defensive impact that historically great defensive big men often do. That’s a huge leg up, because there’s a pretty big gap in defensive impact between those guys and everyone else. The trouble is that we’ve not seen anyone really combine that kind of defensive impact with genuinely elite offensive impact (though maybe peak Kareem did? Hard to know). If Wemby actually has elite offensive impact, then it’s very easy to imagine him blowing everyone else out of the water. I’m a little skeptical about that, though, and suspect his offensive ceiling may be similar (at least in era-relative terms) to what Duncan’s was. But we’ll see. Even him being an era-relative Duncan overall would probably be enough to be the best ever in non-era-relative terms, but obviously he’d need to be something more than that to become the definitive answer to a question that is mostly discussed in era-relative terms.

Well hey, at least here's something we can agree on. But Wemby archetypally projects to be more of a creator on offense than Duncan was imo. I'd probably skew more towards the era-relative KG route which is absolute GOAT-esque depending on how much you weigh impact metrics vs team results.

If he's putting up KG-esque impact results relative to peers in his era and translating that into playoff success he's gonna have one hell of an argument against LeBron when he hangs it up. I agree the issue will be whether he can translate his offense more in the playoffs than his archetypal counterparts in KG and AD

[lessthanjake]

How does it matter? Maybe because in a playoff series where teams drill down to specific principles and coverages, having a metagame more conducive to offensive basketball means in a playoff series you will have comparatively more quality flaws to exploit in a defense vs a defensively tilted meta. And as such comparing RS to PS numbers is flawed because you can expect PS numbers to be more buoyed because to use stock terms, the overall trend is up for offense.

If that were the case in any way that really matters for these purposes, we’d see TS% in general meaningfully go up in the playoffs in Jordan’s era, and vice versa with LeBron’s era. We don’t actually see that. TS% in the playoffs was very similar to RS TS% in both eras.

The fact that half the teams Jordan faced in his short playoff runs are the ones that won the chip just means the skew was closer to half middling teams and half quality teams. In later years he simply had more quality teams on his docket which presented more opportunities to nuke his rTS% numbers in any given matchup. Once again, the quality of Jordan's early prime resilience numbers have more to do with the dataset than any qualitative difference between Doug Collins' yolo offense and Phil's triangle. But surely you knew that already. I hope.

You’re ignoring the fact that pre-triangle Jordan’s rTS% against those teams that won the title was higher than his rTS% with the triangle (even when we narrow it down to pre-first-retirement triangle years). Nor was Jordan’s rTS% in the other series not against title winners actually way higher (those teams were the 1985 Bucks and 1989 Cavs—which I think were not remotely comparable to the middling teams I referred to with LeBron, but am also not interested in going down a giant rabbit hole with you on that).

The bottom line is that if Jordan’s playoff “resilience” was a product of the triangle, we’d expect his “resilience” to be higher with the triangle than without it. The reality is actually the opposite. You try to explain that away by invoking the “These were middling teams” argument for the pre-triangle years. But even if we only look at when pre-triangle Jordan faced dominant title winners, it’s still the case that Jordan’s pre-triangle playoff “resilience” looks better than it did with the triangle (again, even if we narrow it down to pre-first-retirement triangle years). So the reality is that the data just does not support your thesis. I suppose you can keep thinking it, but I don’t think that an attempted explanation for data that is not at all consistent with the data is very convincing.

Your criteria of underperformance in the playoffs seems arbitrary to be honest even though it seems reliable in your eyes, especially because for the context of this discussion you'd have to explain why those teams underperformed specifically on defense and allowed LeBron a higher rTS% than we was due rather than the more realistic assumption that any perceived playoff drop-off has just as much to do with offense. Again just seems ad-hoc to say "oh yeah these guys Jordan specifically faced fit the bill for playoff risers but Lebron's comp looks like fallers" especially when you can't even demonstrate whether this perceived fall-off stemmed from offensive or defensive deficiencies.

I wouldn’t say my criteria is arbitrary, but it is at least somewhat subjective and squishy. So you don’t have to agree with my conclusions (or even the general theory itself). I think I’m right about this and I suspect what I said would ring true for others as well. But it’s an inherently unprovable concept (just as many of your claims are, by the way). I can just say that I fully expect teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks to underperform against good team in the playoffs, including on defense. I’d expect these sorts of teams to underperform on both sides of the ball. A good bit of this is just for the simple reason that teams like this don’t really get players up in the morning in the regular season, so they’re just generally not consistently getting opposing players’ best effort in the regular season the same way that teams higher up the NBA hierarchy (or at least ones with major superstars) are. So, for these teams, the opponent quality effectively ramps up higher in the playoffs than it does for non-middling teams, making the playoffs a bigger difficulty spike for them. But again, this point is inherently subjective, and you are free to disagree and think that we wouldn’t expect teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks to underperform against good teams in the playoffs. I’m sure some people would agree with you, but I think plenty would agree with me on this. And with an amorphous concept like this, there’s not really much to discuss beyond that.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

There’s always a small finger on the scale for me (yes, even when comparing the 1990s to today), hence why I’ve made posts mentioning that Curry playing in the modern era is a factor in his favor. But it’s a very small factor, and my general guidelines about when it is a big or small factor really have nothing to do with the timeline of Jordan’s career.

It seems to me that your guidelines about when it is a big or small factor have more to do with the context of Jordan's career rather than the timeline

I don’t understand how you could take that conclusion from a post in which I was explicitly explaining that that’s not at all the case (nor, by the way, would such an assertion be consistent with how I voted in the Top 100 project where, for instance, I was pushing Moses Malone well before anyone else).

does you jumping early for someone from MJ's time really show you're not curving things for MJ?

Saying Lebron is better and played in a much better league but MJ is still better while discounting Mikan and Kareem and Russell for playing in a much worse league is kinda telling everyone what's really going on here

[OldSchoolNoBull]

The problem with what you're presenting here is that you seem to imply that it is fair to compare these stats (team and individual) on a 1:1 basis by invoking the holy creed of era-relativity when really it makes more sense to see which person or team was relatively advantaged or disadvantaged according to their era.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

The more realistic approach here is to comprehend that Jordan was playing against caveman defenses in a decidedly non-caveman offense, while LeBron faced modern defenses (multiple elite ones at that) playing in a modern offense. Meaning that Jordan more than LeBron is the one enjoying era-relative advantages here, within the broader context of a metagame relative to that era which also favored offenses!

Meanwhile not only did much of LeBron's prime occur in an era where defenses in general were one step ahead of offenses, he also didn't get to enjoy a era-relative advantage vs his own opponents by playing in an offense that's ahead of its time. Hell, the one time I can remember a LeBron team truly being one generation ahead of their opponent it was during the 2012 Finals when Scott Brooks decided to play Caveman offense with Ibaka-Perkins at the 4-5 while the Heat ran Battier-Bosh.

And what happened that series? The Heat not only beat the odds and won, they dismantled that team in a backdoor sweep, and unlike the Bulls I'm not even sure LeBron's supporting cast was more talented than KDs given the Bosh injury that postseason.

This is the type of era-relative advantage Jordan was able to enjoy for nearly the entirety of his prime (hell, probably the only other other comparable proto-modern schemes of the era were Sloan's flex offense and Adelman's corner offense which have also seen concepts survive to this day like the triangle) and I don't see any of the meaningful separation one would expect from a guy who's ostensibly similarly talented but had more era-relative advantages.

And my argument regarding the middling teams is that the Bulls relative advantages (roster and coaching) given that the Bulls were essentially a proto-modern team (particularly in the 2nd threepeat running 3 ballhandler lineups with Kukoc-Rodman closing at the 4-5) are on par with the relative roster and coaching advantages LeBron had. Because when you're playing in an era with watered down roster talent and coaching acumen, playing in a proto-modern offense alone places you at such an advantage that it makes no sense to handwave away one guys' opponents as middling when the other teams looked just as mid relative to the Bulls' construction in totality.

The thing is, even if what you say is accurate, you are still comparing one era to another here. That is not era-relativity. In order to know the things you're talking about - what schemes were more modern vs what weren't, etc - you'd have to know what happened in the league after player x(in this case Jordan) played.

In era-relativity, you are comparing the player only to the league he played in. That's it. I know people have strong feelings for and against that, but for those of us that support such a worldview, there are important reasons for it that go far beyond the scope of a Jordan/LeBron debate. If you don't ascribe to era-relativity, then eventually, whether it's in 20 or 50 years, there will come a time when people make Top 100 lists that don't have a single pre-merger player on them. Even now, there are plenty of people that don't think Russell belongs in the Top 10, and flat out role their eyes at 50s players like Mikan/Cousy/Schayes/Arizin/Sharman making a Top 100.

Now, having said all that, there is truth in the point that Ohayo makes, that if you're evaluating based on era-relative dominance, then Russell is #1. I can live with that.

The relative advantage Jordan enjoyed in the Triangle (which I had to painstakingly explain to you in other threads was more akin to a proto-modern offense due to PJ sprinkling in plenty of high PnR and mid-post iso actions off base triangle sets) along with the roster strength skews a lot more favorably towards him than the advantage LeBron was able to enjoy in regards to coaching and roster.

Just to zoom into this passage - the triangle obviously was very important, and you can see that reflected in the team offenses skyrocketing once Phil took over and implemented it, but its success is not independent of Jordan. I would point out that Jordan was producing elite scoring numbers before playing in the triangle, and that that same triangle produced worse offenses in 94 and 95 when he wasn't playing. Here are the rORtgs:

85: +0.8
86: +1.4
87: +0.3
88: +1.0
89: +1.3
90: +4.2
91: +6.7
92: +7.3
93: +4.9
94: -0.2
95: +1.2
96: +7.6
97: +7.6
98: +2.7

I would argue that the triangle did more to improve the offensive performance of his teammates than it did him. He would've been an all-world offensive player anywhere.

I'm telling you that looking at the specific coaching and roster advantages Jordan had relative to his opponents and comparing that to what LeBron had is the actual way to do era-relativity correctly. Because basketball has been iterated on and more "solved" to an extent now so we can look back and using modern knowledge identif which teams were structurally advantaged or disadvantaged

But can you see that in that approach, you're still comparing one era to another? That's not era-relativity, not in the way I see most people approach it.

The very idea that basketball has been "solved" inherently sympathizes with more recent players and teams. It celebrates the game of the last of 15-20 years and compares everything else, mostly unfavorably, to it.

In regards to the triangle improving his teammates more than him, sure you can say that if you only reduce basketball to isolated matchups (the common fallacy for 95% of basketball fans I find nowadays) and not on the reflexive feedback loops inherent to the nature of the game itself.

And I'm not sure it didn't help Jordan seeing as how it helped reduce his turnovers via simplifying reads and keeping defenses more honest while also allowing him more catch and shoot created jumpers that preserved his body for deeper runs and extended series'. Also his TS% in the playoffs during his first stint was slightly better overall than pre.

I'm not just looking at isolated matchups, I'm looking at several of his key teammates' scoring efficiency before and after triangle and I see, maybe not huge, but noticeable upticks. With MJ, two of his four highest RS rTSs(including #1) came pre-triangle, in 88 and 89. And contrary to what you said, his playoff TS peaked in 88 and 89 at 59.8 and 60.2%. It was very marginally lower in 90 and 91 and then fell more as the years went on.

I'm just saying, based on rel ORtg, the Bulls with the triangle and no MJ(94 and 95) look about on par with the Bulls with MJ and no triangle(84-89). Both were needed to get to the next level. I don't for a minute deny the triangle's importance in the Bulls' success, I'm just saying don't give it outsized importance relative to MJ being MJ.

[lessthanjake]

It seems to me that your guidelines about when it is a big or small factor have more to do with the context of Jordan's career rather than the timeline

I don’t understand how you could take that conclusion from a post in which I was explicitly explaining that that’s not at all the case (nor, by the way, would such an assertion be consistent with how I voted in the Top 100 project where, for instance, I was pushing Moses Malone well before anyone else).

does you jumping early for someone from MJ's time really show you're not curving things for MJ?

Saying Lebron is better and played in a much better league but MJ is still better while discounting Mikan and Kareem and Russell for playing in a much worse league is kinda telling everyone what's really going on here

Moses Malone was not really from MJ’s time—at least his best years definitely weren’t (and the vast majority of my discussion pushing him related to those 1978-1983 years). And by the way, to take another example, I also pushed for Rick Barry way before anyone else. The assertion here is just wrong. I’m telling you it’s wrong, and since it’s about something that inherently is within my knowledge specifically (since it is about my own approach), others should simply accept when I say it’s wrong. The fact that I demonstrably favored lots of players from the 1970s more than anyone else did is just icing on the cake here.

[Heej]

How does it matter? Maybe because in a playoff series where teams drill down to specific principles and coverages, having a metagame more conducive to offensive basketball means in a playoff series you will have comparatively more quality flaws to exploit in a defense vs a defensively tilted meta. And as such comparing RS to PS numbers is flawed because you can expect PS numbers to be more buoyed because to use stock terms, the overall trend is up for offense.

If that were the case in any way that really matters for these purposes, we’d see TS% in general meaningfully go up in the playoffs in Jordan’s era, and vice versa with LeBron’s era. We don’t actually see that. TS% in the playoffs was very similar to RS TS% in both eras.

The fact that half the teams Jordan faced in his short playoff runs are the ones that won the chip just means the skew was closer to half middling teams and half quality teams. In later years he simply had more quality teams on his docket which presented more opportunities to nuke his rTS% numbers in any given matchup. Once again, the quality of Jordan's early prime resilience numbers have more to do with the dataset than any qualitative difference between Doug Collins' yolo offense and Phil's triangle. But surely you knew that already. I hope.

You’re ignoring the fact that pre-triangle Jordan’s rTS% against those teams that won the title was higher than his rTS% with the triangle (even when we narrow it down to pre-first-retirement triangle years). Nor was Jordan’s rTS% in the other series not against title winners actually way higher (those teams were the 1985 Bucks and 1989 Cavs—which I think were not remotely comparable to the middling teams I referred to with LeBron, but am also not interested in going down a giant rabbit hole on that).

The bottom line is that if Jordan’s playoff “resilience” was a product of the triangle, we’d expect his “resilience” to be higher with the triangle than without it. The reality is actually the opposite. You try to explain that away by invoking the “These were middling teams” argument for the pre-triangle years. But even if we only look at when pre-triangle Jordan faced dominant title winners, it’s still the case that Jordan’s pre-triangle playoff “resilience” looks better than it did with the triangle (again, even if we narrow it down to pre-first-retirement triangle years). So the reality is that the data just does not support your thesis. I suppose you can keep thinking it, but I don’t think that an attempted explanation for data that is not at all consistent with the data is very unconvincing.

Your criteria of underperformance in the playoffs seems arbitrary to be honest even though it seems reliable in your eyes, especially because for the context of this discussion you'd have to explain why those teams underperformed specifically on defense and allowed LeBron a higher rTS% than we was due rather than the more realistic assumption that any perceived playoff drop-off has just as much to do with offense. Again just seems ad-hoc to say "oh yeah these guys Jordan specifically faced fit the bill for playoff risers but Lebron's comp looks like fallers" especially when you can't even demonstrate whether this perceived fall-off stemmed from offensive or defensive deficiencies.

I wouldn’t say my criteria is arbitrary, but it is at least somewhat subjective and squishy. So you don’t have to agree with my conclusions (or even the general theory itself). I think I’m right about this and I suspect what I said would ring true for others as well. But it’s an inherently unprovable concept (just as many of your claims are, by the way). I can just say that I fully expect teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks to underperform against good team in the playoffs, including on defense. I’d expect these sorts of teams to underperform on both sides of the ball. A good bit of this is just for the simple reason that teams like this don’t really get players up in the morning in the regular season, so they’re just generally not consistently getting opposing players’ best effort in the regular season the same way that teams higher up the NBA hierarchy (or at least ones with major superstars) are. So, for these teams, the opponent quality effectively ramps up higher in the playoffs than it does for non-middling teams, making the playoffs a bigger difficulty spike for them. But again, this point is inherently subjective, and you are free to disagree and think that we wouldn’t expect teams like the 2012 Knicks and 2016 Hawks to underperform against good teams in the playoffs. I’m sure some people would agree with you, but I think plenty would agree with me on this. And with an amorphous concept like this, there’s not really much to discuss beyond that.

Comparing league-wide TS% to playoff only TS% seems like an exercise in futility to me considering only the top 16 teams make the playoffs in the first place. Don't see how you can draw many meaningful conclusions from that to a player comparison discussing how individuals held up in the playoffs. A comparison which still appears to favor LeBron Even after all the cherries have been picked.

I'm rather confused at how the triangle wouldn't have helped Jordan when his first stint with the Bulls saw his playoff TS% increase and TOV% decrease in the playoffs relative to his pre-triangle days. Trying to reduce comparisons to Jordan's numbers only to pre-triangle title teams smacks of small sample size theater.

Seems you're basing this mostly on Jordan's comparatively worse stats in his second threepeat to which I'd say surely there's more context to his production there beyond "muh triangle held him back"

And again, my problem isn't with the idea that there are playoff risers and fallers. That is an inherent truth in basketball. My problem is with how ad-hoc your justifications for applying there criteria to one players' opponents over another's seem to be. But hey, at least you've acknowledged how weird all that was.

In regards to your logic one could easily argue that with the teams you listed being primarily veteran teams those same players are often not "getting up" for games either on a night to night basis so the inverse could easily be true where veterans with more rest are able to play harder in the postseason. So I'm not sure what the point of that is, and how that means your era-relative context filters aren't just masked Jordan-relative context filters.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

I don’t understand how you could take that conclusion from a post in which I was explicitly explaining that that’s not at all the case (nor, by the way, would such an assertion be consistent with how I voted in the Top 100 project where, for instance, I was pushing Moses Malone well before anyone else).

does you jumping early for someone from MJ's time really show you're not curving things for MJ?

Saying Lebron is better and played in a much better league but MJ is still better while discounting Mikan and Kareem and Russell for playing in a much worse league is kinda telling everyone what's really going on here

Moses Malone was not really from MJ’s time—at least his best years definitely weren’t (and the vast majority of my discussion pushing him related to those 1978-1983 years). And by the way, to take another example, I also pushed for Rick Barry way before anyone else. The assertion here is just wrong. I’m telling you it’s wrong, and since it’s about something that inherently is within my knowledge specifically (since it is about my own approach), others should simply accept when I say it’s wrong. The fact that I demonstrably favored lots of players from the 1970s more than anyone else did is just icing on the cake here.

I read it as Karl instead of Moses to be honest.

But doing it so how weak a league is matters the least with Jordan even though you also said league got much better from Jordan's time?

I don't wanna play mind reader but it almost seems like you think Lebron is better but you don't wanna say it. Also kinda wierd having all this debate around starting with 2009. Isn't that what people usually say was the start of his prime?