Rank these players offensively (peak): Magic, Jordan, LeBron, Curry, Jokic

[AEnigma]

It's true Worthy and Scott were hurt in the 91 Finals, and maybe that's all you meant by that(in which case, fine, no argument),

I was not criticising Magic, no, and I think the criticisms of him in this thread are similarly lazy agenda hits dependent on posting tiny isolated samples without any committed point of comparison. The 1991 Lakers, shaky health and all, did better against the 1991 Blazers — that team’s peak — than the 1992 Bulls did the following year against a worse version. But that of course disrupts the narrative. To say nothing of how the 1988 Pistons shut down the previous three offences the played (utterly destroying Bird and Jordan) but then somehow allowed the Lakers to post a +4.6 rOrtg (higher than every Curry Finals without Durant). Same postseason, +8 rOrtg against the #1 defence Jazz — but that does not count because we only care about western conference teams in the finals.

As for 1996, MJ shot unusually poorly for half that series, but I wouldn't imply that the poor shooting means that he wasn't contributing positively to the team offense. He was still Michael Jordan, so they still had to guard him like he was Michael Jordan, which opens up opportunities for his teammates. He had three 5+ assist games that series, including 7 and 8 in two of his three worst shooting performances of the series, and he had 2+ offensive boards in 4 out of 6 games, so even when his shot wasn't falling, he was contributing to the offense in other ways.

I never said he was a non-contributor. My point was that the team’s all-time oRtg was substantially disconnected from how well Jordan himself was playing, despite having such a “defensively slanted” roster. Same story in 1993, where Jordan had one good game and five middling to atrocious games, yet the Bulls posted a +12.7 rOrtg (portending their result the following year). There is no unique resilience at play. The 1990 Bulls had peak Jordan, yet a paltry -3 rOrtg against the Pistons — but that does not count either when Finals myopia lends itself to so many more convenient narratives.

I am not even blaming Jordan for that result against the Pistons, but he had a hell of lot more support than the -2.8 Finals rOrtg 2007 Cavaliers did, if “performance against good teams” is meant to be any sort of principled stance here.

[AEnigma]

I understand the lack of talent in 2007 and major injuries in 2015 but -2.8 and -1.7 are really really bad. That's offensive level clearly below an average team in the league.

This would be cool if you were comparing it to similar circumstances. Like other series in which a star was suffering from a lack of surrounding talent or major injuries, i.e. "LeBron's team put up a -2.8 rORTG with a lack of talent while Steph put up a X rORTG". That's clearly not what you're doing. None of the teams led by Steph that made it to the Finals had similarly lacking talent or debilitating injuries. Like, what do we think is the closest there? 2019 with KD injured? Now go ahead and compare that to the 2007 Cavaliers roster lol

What do we view as a less talented Steph team? Maybe the 2023 Warriors who lost in R2 to the Lakers, posting a -2.3 rORTG? Or their -3.6 rORTG in the series prior? How should such data points be accounted for?

You mention "Lebron's impressive team rORtg numbers in the postseason are inflated by romps against weak opposition", suggesting that a rORTG approach is susceptible to overvaluing "romps against weak opposition". At which point I would point out that the methodology you offer is weighting the 2018 Cavaliers equally as ... well, every other Finals team here. That +12.7 is pulling a lot of weight, and the 2018 Cavaliers were pretty damn mid. Not all Finals teams are created equally!

You also discuss the notion of LeBron's teams "underperforming", implying some pre-defined expectations they fell short of. It's important to be clear on what those expectations are. The 2007 and 2018 Cavaliers entered the Finals with odds of +360 and +688 respectively, corresponding to approximate win probabilities of 20% and 12%. Deciding how much those teams actually underperformed isn't really as simple as just looking at their rORTG.

Hope this shows that this type of analysis is kinda lazy and, to use your words, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The other side supporting Lebron has no problem using the postseason rORtg from specific years for their argument (basically 2012-2017 conveniently excluding 2015) but then I post the Finals numbers in their entirety without cherrypicking then I'm at fault. Obviously there is a lot of context to the data and it can be interpreted in a range of ways and the process of analysis is quite subjective. In the postseason the overall numbers look favorable to Lebron but against the best opposition, his numbers again look the worst. Of course people will come up with different interpretations and explanations for the data. That's why this thread is interesting. The data is not definitive nor did I ever claim it was but it is a piece of evidence.

… But it is not the best opposition. You took six series for Jordan across eight years (most of which would demonstrably not qualify as the best teams he ever played), six series for Curry across eight years where two series with Durant dramatically skew the entire result, and then nine series across twelve years for Magic and ten series across fourteen years for Lebron ignoring multiple elite results against excellent teams outside the Finals. Very even stuff.

The big picture is that Lebron's regular season offenses are the worst among Jordan/Curry/Magic.

Oh, cool, this one. One moment…

his teams just flat out haven't been as good at putting the ball in the basket as the Bulls. It's that simple.

Except they have. The stipulation is just that Lebron needs to be on the court for them to do so.

You can draw whatever conclusion you want from that, or use 5-15 game samples where LeBron's teams played at Jordan levels or whatever. I don't like working with tiny sample sizes, spot minutes, even single seasons get dicey when we have like nearly a decade of dominance from both that can be looked at....

True!

2009: +13 net offensive impact to team, +7.3 on-court offence relative to league
2010: +15.3 net offensive impact to team, +8.2 on-court offence relative to league
2011: +4.6 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league
2012: +12.4 net offensive impact to team, +5.9 on-court offence relative to league
2013: +11.9 net offensive impact to team, +10.7 on-court offence relative to league
2014: +9 net offensive impact to team, +7.1 on-court offence relative to league
2015: +13.6 net offensive impact to team, +9.9 on-court offence relative to league
2016: +12.6 net offensive impact to team, +9 on-court offence relative to league
2017: +14.8 net offensive impact to team, +9.6 on-court offence relative to league
2018: +7.9 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league

Wow, look at that, a decade of offensive dominance in the regular season. I sure am glad I did not pretend that Lebron played every minute and was solely responsible for how his team performed while he was on the bench.

[Heej]

I understand the lack of talent in 2007 and major injuries in 2015 but -2.8 and -1.7 are really really bad. That's offensive level clearly below an average team in the league.

This would be cool if you were comparing it to similar circumstances. Like other series in which a star was suffering from a lack of surrounding talent or major injuries, i.e. "LeBron's team put up a -2.8 rORTG with a lack of talent while Steph put up a X rORTG". That's clearly not what you're doing. None of the teams led by Steph that made it to the Finals had similarly lacking talent or debilitating injuries. Like, what do we think is the closest there? 2019 with KD injured? Now go ahead and compare that to the 2007 Cavaliers roster lol

What do we view as a less talented Steph team? Maybe the 2023 Warriors who lost in R2 to the Lakers, posting a -2.3 rORTG? Or their -3.6 rORTG in the series prior? How should such data points be accounted for?

You mention "Lebron's impressive team rORtg numbers in the postseason are inflated by romps against weak opposition", suggesting that a rORTG approach is susceptible to overvaluing "romps against weak opposition". At which point I would point out that the methodology you offer is weighting the 2018 Cavaliers equally as ... well, every other Finals team here. That +12.7 is pulling a lot of weight, and the 2018 Cavaliers were pretty damn mid. Not all Finals teams are created equally!

You also discuss the notion of LeBron's teams "underperforming", implying some pre-defined expectations they fell short of. It's important to be clear on what those expectations are. The 2007 and 2018 Cavaliers entered the Finals with odds of +360 and +688 respectively, corresponding to approximate win probabilities of 20% and 12%. Deciding how much those teams actually underperformed isn't really as simple as just looking at their rORTG.

Hope this shows that this type of analysis is kinda lazy and, to use your words, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The other side supporting Lebron has no problem using the postseason rORtg from specific years for their argument (basically 2012-2017 conveniently excluding 2015) but then I post the Finals numbers in their entirety without cherrypicking then I'm at fault. Obviously there is a lot of context to the data and it can be interpreted in a range of ways and the process of analysis is quite subjective.

The big picture is that Lebron's regular season offenses are the worst among Jordan/Curry/Magic. In the postseason the overall numbers look favorable to Lebron but against the best opposition, his numbers again look the worst. Of course people will come up with different interpretations and explanations for the data. That's why this thread is interesting. The data is not definitive nor did I ever claim it was but it is a piece of evidence.

Ironic that in this study LeBron literally had the best opposition but you use the blanket term "best opposition" in a reductive manner to imply that their oppositional context ultimately breaks even for all 5 guys. Magic is probably the only one whose faced a comparable distribution of high tier finals opponents.

[falcolombardi]

For how good they were on absolute terms/if the

Lebron> magic/jokic>jordan/curry (both of these gaps are small)

Relative to their eras

Lebron/magic> jordan/curry/jokic

[DraymondGold]

Uh oh, here comes the next toxic lbj thread

It's a hard question, and there's legitimate points in favor of each player. If I had to do tiers (small gaps between), I'd do something like
-Jordan, Curry
-Magic
-LeBron, Jokic

Qualitatively, I tend to agree with a lot of Djoker's comments. Since I see to have slightly different top and bottom choices than some, I'll give a little more detail on my top and bottom:

~For Jordan~:
-Clearly the best playoff scorer; underrated wholistic creation when you consider underrated passing at his peak and how well he uses his GOAT-level scoring gravity
-Great off-ball play (a clear level up from Magic/LeBron); good scalability and versatility next to more defensive oriented casts, and more on-ball perimeter players (better than Magic/LeBron), and 90s bigs.
-one of the most resilient offensive players ever (clearly improves more in the playoffs than Curry/Magic/Jokic... although playoff improvement does depend on where you're starting too)
-great team results, often with more defensively oriented casts

Statistically, clear GOAT Box Score peak
-Best Backpicks BPM in 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year samples in both the Regular Season and the Playoffs (for a box stat that's significantly closer to APM and PIPM than PER or PPG in accuracy of evaluating current season value, and actually outperforms single-season APM and PIPM in predicting future value since 1998)
-Best 3-year postseason Basketball reference BPM and ws/48 for those who care about more basic box stats

Clear GOAT level in box estimates of impact metrics:
-1st all time in 3-year RS + PS PIPM
-2nd all time in 3-year PS PIPM (ahead of everyone else here)
-1st all time in 3-year RS RAPTOR
-1st all time in 3-year PS RAPTOR

Clear GOAT level in available impact metrics
-On pace for 1st All time in available ~3/5 year Regular Season on/off (though higher uncertainty from partial data)
-8th all-time in 3-year Postseason on/off (ahead of Miami LeBron, 2nd Cavs LeBron, Curry)
-2nd all-time in 5-year Postseason on/off (ahead of all LeBron and Curry stints)
-2nd all-time in 3-year Augmented Plus Minus (ahead of all LeBron and Curry stints)
-Tier 1 all-time in multi-year RAPM (it's hard to compare to compare different RAPM samples like Squared2020 vs Engelmann because they scale differently, but from some sort of standard deviation point of view, Jordan's within uncertainty of the top )

Biased sample of games for raw WOWY scores which have been pretty thoroughly shown to be underrating him, but he's within uncertainty range of having GOAT level adjusted WOWY metrics (WOWYR, GPM, and RWOWY have him behind Magic but ahead of LeBron/Curry/available Jokic data)

Now basically all these metrics include defense, and I would put Jordan's defense over Curry/Magic/Jokic. But I'd also put Jordan behind LeBron defensively, and the majority of these metrics put Jordan ahead of LeBron overall, so my naive prediction would be that going to offensive-only stats (which isn't available for many of these) wouldn't help LeBron vs Jordan here.

~For Curry~:
I'm a bit surprised so many have him last. I'm definitely not sure about that. A lot of people point out playoff struggles, but I really don't see much evidence for an overall playoff decline outside of injury. Are people including injury concerns in their evaluation? For peaks, I tend to prefer analyzing a player when healthy, although reasonable people might disagree.

The impact metrics portray him pretty favorably and at least in the same tier vs LeBron and Jokic offensively:
-GOAT level RS On/off: (1) better 1-year RS On/off than both, (2) better 3-year RS On/off than LeBron (only 0.1 behind Jokic with a massively better On rating and thus better ceiling raising / more chance of diminishing returns), (3) better 5 year RS On/off than both

-1st all-time in raw WOWY, over everyone here

-There's some variation RAPM and unfortunately my preferred version of RAPM (Goldstein or Engellmann) isn't available in season-long stints through Jokic's peak, but in "vanilla" RAPM (the Basketball Database), peak Curry clearly has the best Offensive 3-year RAPM (16-18 Curry +5.23 > 09-11 LeBron +4.34 > 16-18 LeBron +4.26 > 22-24 Jokic + 3.65)

-EPM: This is our best available descriptive stat at measuring current value, and 3-year Curry's peak ranks 2nd (08-10 LeBron +9.26 > 15-17 Curry +9.2 > all other samples). All other samples of LeBron and Jokic have them lower in the RS.

Curry definitely has health concerns in the playoff, but e.g. his 5-year Playoff On/off massively outpaces Jokic's:
15-19 PS Curry +12.8 (only looking at games played) > 15-19 Curry +8.3 (all games) > 20-24 Jokic -2.5 (so far; though including 2019 makes it +3.1 and I'd expect it to become positive with more data this season).
For LeBron: 16-21 LeBron +18.2 passes all Curry's samples, but Healthy 15-19 Curry +15.8 is higher than any other LeBron sample.

And likewise for Jordan, I'd expect much more of LeBron's value to be defensive relative to Curry, which means more of Curry's wholistic value here is proportionally coming from offense.

Indeed, for all the people who cite LeBron's postseason team offenses as reason for having him over Curry, when you actually look at the team offenses with just the star players on, Curry's on-court PS Offense > LeBron's on-court PS offense in 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5-year stints (and indeed it looks better than Nash's and Jokic's too).

And for those who bring up the teammates, when we include large enough samples in the RS to isolate on/off regardless of teammates, we find Curry's having this massive lift regardless of whether Draymond or Klay or KD are on the court or not.

In sum:
-[Healthy] Curry's an all-time scorer, significantly better than Magic and Jokic, with arguably the GOAT 1-year RS scoring peak in 2016.
-[Healthy] Curry's a GOAT level wholistic creator, when we consider his all-star passing + GOAT level scoring gravity, floor spacing, off-ball creation, all-time guard screens. Curry created better shots for his teammates and improved his teammates' efficiency more than 2nd Cavs LeBron, Harden, Jokic, Luka, Westbrook, and older Chris Paul, when looking at 1-year through 5 year stints.
-[Healthy] Curry's GOAT level off-ball ability leads to GOAT level ceiling raising, which remains in the playoffs (his on-court offensive rating is better than any modern star in the playoffs). The GOAT level scalability fits perfectly with intelligent teammates, whether they're defensively oriented, or offensive on-ball perimeter players, hybrid players, or bigs.

He's such a unique archetype. He's not tall. He doesn't dunk on people. He doesn't pound the ball long enough to rack up the same assist numbers, and isn't as good of a passer as Magic/Lebron/Jokic per pass anyway. And yet the numbers are in pretty clear consensus that at his peak (at least when he's healthy), he belongs in this tier, and not at the bottom of it, including in the playoffs. I think we have to ask ourselves whether having an outlier play style might cause us to underrate all the stuff he does.

~For Jokic~:
The main thing is playoff sample size. I have him at the bottom, because when players are mid peak and have only had a single long playoff run mid-peak, I'd prefer to be a bit conservative before anointing them above the true all-time Mount Rushmores of a certain area (e.g. offense, like here). Although it's pretty obvious he's on pace to belong in this conversation.

The RS impact metrics are very strong (although below Curry e.g., and others). But the playoff plus minus data seems a bit disappointing 2020-2022, and even a bit in 2023. How much of this is noise (e.g. 2 of those runs are too short to trust) vs genuine improvement since 2021 vs a lack of playoff resilience? If there's a lack of playoff resilience, how much is it just from the defensive vulnerability? The 2023 playoff run was long, but it was also against pretty disappointing opponents... better than something like SRS would predict, worse than the tougher opponents these other stars have faced.

Note that I say this as a big Jokic fan -- I'm probably rooting for him this postseason, and I was someone who thought he was in contention for being the best in the NBA back in the 2022 regular season including having him overtaking Giannis (when most others were saying it was a forgone conclusion Giannis was the best in the league and would be for the upcoming seasons)

To me, that's why this current postseason run is so interesting. How do the Nuggets perform with a 2nd larger-sample run, against different defenses? How does Jokic's offense look versus some actual great defenses (e.g. Minnesota or Celtics)? A really strong performance in these circumstances would go a long way to clarify those questions about the earlier playoff struggles individually/statistically.

Film-wise / qualitatively, each of these players have an ability to break the game. Magic has his GOAT passing and transition play, Jordan has his GOAT scoring; LeBron has his GOAT drive and kick game; Curry has his GOAT shooting. Jokic looks like he's in contention for having GOAT level passing, clearly a level of passing above Jordan/Curry. Skill-wise, he checks a lot of the boxes to be the offensive GOAT -- e.g. he seems to have stronger scoring than Magic, his floor spacing as a big adds a ton of off-ball value in addition to his better screening and rebounding and lower possession timer than e.g. Lebron.

So why might he not be better than them all? I think it can be hard to qualitatively capture the exact value of a game-breaking skill (at least without a massive volume of detailed film study that many here don't have the time to do). And furthermore, it can be even harder to qualitatively capture the chemistry between different skillsets. It's possible that some of the other players' game breaking skills could be more game breaking than Jokic's, or that the chemistry of their skillset could enable higher offensive impact, despite Jokic checking so many boxes. Or maybe Jokic really does check all the boxes, and his passing really is that game breaking. Worst case, it's no shame to be 5th among the offensive players in this tier. Best case, we're about to watch a really crazy postseason run

[Djoker]

This would be cool if you were comparing it to similar circumstances. Like other series in which a star was suffering from a lack of surrounding talent or major injuries, i.e. "LeBron's team put up a -2.8 rORTG with a lack of talent while Steph put up a X rORTG". That's clearly not what you're doing. None of the teams led by Steph that made it to the Finals had similarly lacking talent or debilitating injuries. Like, what do we think is the closest there? 2019 with KD injured? Now go ahead and compare that to the 2007 Cavaliers roster lol

What do we view as a less talented Steph team? Maybe the 2023 Warriors who lost in R2 to the Lakers, posting a -2.3 rORTG? Or their -3.6 rORTG in the series prior? How should such data points be accounted for?

You mention "Lebron's impressive team rORtg numbers in the postseason are inflated by romps against weak opposition", suggesting that a rORTG approach is susceptible to overvaluing "romps against weak opposition". At which point I would point out that the methodology you offer is weighting the 2018 Cavaliers equally as ... well, every other Finals team here. That +12.7 is pulling a lot of weight, and the 2018 Cavaliers were pretty damn mid. Not all Finals teams are created equally!

You also discuss the notion of LeBron's teams "underperforming", implying some pre-defined expectations they fell short of. It's important to be clear on what those expectations are. The 2007 and 2018 Cavaliers entered the Finals with odds of +360 and +688 respectively, corresponding to approximate win probabilities of 20% and 12%. Deciding how much those teams actually underperformed isn't really as simple as just looking at their rORTG.

Hope this shows that this type of analysis is kinda lazy and, to use your words, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The other side supporting Lebron has no problem using the postseason rORtg from specific years for their argument (basically 2012-2017 conveniently excluding 2015) but then I post the Finals numbers in their entirety without cherrypicking then I'm at fault. Obviously there is a lot of context to the data and it can be interpreted in a range of ways and the process of analysis is quite subjective. In the postseason the overall numbers look favorable to Lebron but against the best opposition, his numbers again look the worst. Of course people will come up with different interpretations and explanations for the data. That's why this thread is interesting. The data is not definitive nor did I ever claim it was but it is a piece of evidence.

… But it is not the best opposition. You took six series for Jordan across eight years (most of which would demonstrably not qualify as the best teams he ever played), six series for Curry across eight years where two series with Durant dramatically skew the entire result, and then nine series across twelve years for Magic and ten series across fourteen years for Lebron ignoring multiple elite results against excellent teams outside the Finals. Very even stuff.

The big picture is that Lebron's regular season offenses are the worst among Jordan/Curry/Magic.

Oh, cool, this one. One moment…

his teams just flat out haven't been as good at putting the ball in the basket as the Bulls. It's that simple.

Except they have. The stipulation is just that Lebron needs to be on the court for them to do so.

You can draw whatever conclusion you want from that, or use 5-15 game samples where LeBron's teams played at Jordan levels or whatever. I don't like working with tiny sample sizes, spot minutes, even single seasons get dicey when we have like nearly a decade of dominance from both that can be looked at....

True!

2009: +13 net offensive impact to team, +7.3 on-court offence relative to league
2010: +15.3 net offensive impact to team, +8.2 on-court offence relative to league
2011: +4.6 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league
2012: +12.4 net offensive impact to team, +5.9 on-court offence relative to league
2013: +11.9 net offensive impact to team, +10.7 on-court offence relative to league
2014: +9 net offensive impact to team, +7.1 on-court offence relative to league
2015: +13.6 net offensive impact to team, +9.9 on-court offence relative to league
2016: +12.6 net offensive impact to team, +9 on-court offence relative to league
2017: +14.8 net offensive impact to team, +9.6 on-court offence relative to league
2018: +7.9 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league

Wow, look at that, a decade of offensive dominance in the regular season. I sure am glad I did not pretend that Lebron played every minute and was solely responsible for how his team performed while he was on the bench.

Regarding the regular season...

Roster construction and how a team does overall, not just when a player is on the floor, is important. Using on court results also conveniently bypasses comparisons to both Jordan and Magic since we don't have their on data for the regular season.

All I know is the 90's Bulls' four best offenses of +6.7 (1991), +7.2 (1992), +7.6 (1996) and +7.7 (1997) are better than any Lebron team ever had. And the 80's Lakers six best offenses of +5.8 (1983), +6.2 (1985), +6.1 (1986), +7.3 (1987), +6.0 (1989), +5.9 (1990) would make the top 7 for Lebron sandwiching +6.5 (2013). And Curry's +8.1 (2016), +6.8 (2017) and +6.0 (2015) would make the top 4 for Lebron again sandwiching +6.5 (2013).

Which elite teams outside of the FInals? Lebron really faced so few especially in his prime years and if I missed one you really think highly of, you can add it. But from what I see, it doesn't add much to your argument.

2006 Pistons: -3.1 rORtg
2008 Celtics: +3.4 rORtg
2009 Magic: +8.7 rORtg
2010 Celtics: -0.8 rORtg
2021 Suns: -6.7 rORtg
2023 Nuggets: +3.7 rORtg

[AEnigma]

+10.7 against the #1 defence 2012 Celtics while missing Bosh for five and a half games. +7.1 against the 2020 Nuggets. Meanwhile, we cut out peak Jordan’s -3 against the 1990 Pistons. And near peak Jordan’s -1.6 against the 1989 Pistons. And regular season peak Jordan’s -9.5 against the 1988 Pistons.

Then Jordan’s support system improves and suddenly he starts posting elite relative ratings even as his own individual production declines, at which point we are right back to the classic Jordan stance of only caring about what players do when they win — except a separate poster is also extolling the quality of Jordan’s pre-1992 postseason on/off, so I guess you guys really have figured out how to have the best of both worlds.

In 1998, Jordan regular season rOrtg was (approximately) +2 with a +10 net, because Pippen’s absence left the team thinner than it had been in nearly a decade. But in 1997, a “year better than any of Lebron’s,” the bench offence played a league average level — meaning Jordan’s on-court was worse than five of Lebron’s. You are correct that we do not have other years of Jordan’s career, but that just means you should not just be blindly assuming that all team results are equally attributed to Jordan as they are to Lebron or Magic, and especially not when all common means of assessment we have among the three of them suggest Jordan’s presence was the least transformational to his team game to game.

As for Curry, while I have become accustomed to a high level of delusiveness in discussions about his “prime” — incidentally, love how we are supposed to believe 2015-19 Curry was somehow nine points per 100 more valuable than 2021-23 Curry — I confess I did not anticipate a non-fan telling me that a player whose five year postseason prime numbers jump ten points next to Durant is actually a pinnacle of resilience. I do not know why I expected better, but I did.

[Djoker]

+10.7 against the #1 defence 2012 Celtics while missing Bosh for five and a half games. +7.1 against the 2020 Nuggets. Meanwhile, we cut out peak Jordan’s -3 against the 1990 Pistons. And near peak Jordan’s -1.6 against the 1989 Pistons. And regular season peak Jordan’s -9.5 against the 1988 Pistons.

Then Jordan’s support system improves and suddenly he starts posting elite relative ratings even as his own individual production declines, at which point we are right back to the classic Jordan stance of only caring about what players do when they win — except a separate poster is also extolling the quality of Jordan’s pre-1992 postseason on/off, so I guess you guys really have figured out how to have the best of both worlds.

In 1998, Jordan regular season rOrtg was (approximately) +2 with a +10 net, because Pippen’s absence left the team thinner than it had been in nearly a decade. But in 1997, a “year better than any of Lebron’s,” the bench offence played a league average level — meaning Jordan’s on-court was worse than five of Lebron’s. You are correct that we do not have other years of Jordan’s career, but that just means you should not just be blindly assuming that all team results are equally attributed to Jordan as they are to Lebron or Magic, and especially not when all common means of assessment we have among the three of them suggest Jordan’s presence was the least transformational to his team game to game.

As for Curry, while I have become accustomed to a high level of delusiveness in discussions about his “prime” — incidentally, love how we are supposed to believe 2015-19 Curry was somehow nine points per 100 more valuable than 2021-23 Curry — I confess I did not anticipate a non-fan telling me that a player whose five year postseason prime numbers jump ten points next to Durant is actually a pinnacle of resilience. I do not know why I expected better, but I did.

The 2012 Celtics +2.26 SRS and 2020 Nuggets +2.35 SRS are elite teams? Your definition of elite teams is a hell of a lot broader than mine.

Those Pistons are the only teams Jordan's offenses struggled against but we know a) his supporting cast was trash b) the Pistons played vastly better defense in the playoffs. Their regular season rDRtg underrates them. 1988 Pistons were -2.8 RS --8.7 PS, 1989 Pistons were -3.1 RS -6.2 PS, and 1990 Pistons were -4.6 RS -8.8 PS.

Either way, Chicago was -2.1 rORtg against the 1990 Pistons, not -3. In Game 7 in 1990, the Pippen migraine game, the Bulls were -14 rORtg. Outside of Jordan who had 31/8/9 points on 53.1 %TS, all of his teammates collectively had 43 points on 31.5 %TS in that game. Jordan scored or assisted 50/58 points that the Bulls scored off of field goals in that game. And he directly scored 5 free throws and threw a bunch more passes that led to the other 11 Bulls free throws. Maybe there's never been a game where one player did so much offensively. In 1989, the Bulls were -1.6 against the Pistons but -4.6 in the last game that Pippen left after 1 minute of play. Thus in both the 1989 and 1990 series, a healthy Bulls team was around zero rORtg. They were horrible in 1988. I'll concede that one.

Later on when he won titles, if Jordan's teams are consistently better offensively with him OFF than Lebron's teams, then there may be something to the way those teams are structured especially if his supporting casts don't look stronger. Maybe Lebron's teams are built in a way that they are dependent on Lebron more, for example a group of shooters that need a star playmaker to draw the defense and get them open shots. Without him on the court, they struggle to generate offense. In Miami, when Lebron had a secondary playmaker in Wade, his impact numbers looked subdued but I for one am not convinced he was a worse player in 2012 or 2013 than he was in either Cleveland stint. When Jordan was off the floor, Pippen was usually on and ran the offense competently so the Bulls in their title years were rarely terrible without him. But that may be in a way credit to Jordan that his skillset allows for more flexible team construction.

Besides Jordan's ON ratings were spectacular based on the data we do have. +16.7 ON in 1996 regular season followed by +14.3 ON in the 1996 playoffs. +15.9 ON in the 1991 playoffs. Lebron never matched any of those marks.

[AEnigma]

+10.7 against the #1 defence 2012 Celtics while missing Bosh for five and a half games. +7.1 against the 2020 Nuggets. Meanwhile, we cut out peak Jordan’s -3 against the 1990 Pistons. And near peak Jordan’s -1.6 against the 1989 Pistons. And regular season peak Jordan’s -9.5 against the 1988 Pistons.

Then Jordan’s support system improves and suddenly he starts posting elite relative ratings even as his own individual production declines, at which point we are right back to the classic Jordan stance of only caring about what players do when they win — except a separate poster is also extolling the quality of Jordan’s pre-1992 postseason on/off, so I guess you guys really have figured out how to have the best of both worlds.

In 1998, Jordan regular season rOrtg was (approximately) +2 with a +10 net, because Pippen’s absence left the team thinner than it had been in nearly a decade. But in 1997, a “year better than any of Lebron’s,” the bench offence played a league average level — meaning Jordan’s on-court was worse than five of Lebron’s. You are correct that we do not have other years of Jordan’s career, but that just means you should not just be blindly assuming that all team results are equally attributed to Jordan as they are to Lebron or Magic, and especially not when all common means of assessment we have among the three of them suggest Jordan’s presence was the least transformational to his team game to game.

As for Curry, while I have become accustomed to a high level of delusiveness in discussions about his “prime” — incidentally, love how we are supposed to believe 2015-19 Curry was somehow nine points per 100 more valuable than 2021-23 Curry — I confess I did not anticipate a non-fan telling me that a player whose five year postseason prime numbers jump ten points next to Durant is actually a pinnacle of resilience. I do not know why I expected better, but I did.

The 2012 Celtics +2.26 SRS and 2020 Nuggets +2.35 SRS are elite teams? Your definition of elite teams is a hell of a lot broader than mine.

Oh sorry I guess the 2023 Nuggets probably do not count either because they were only 3 SRS.

Always such honest arguments from you guys.

Those Pistons are the only teams Jordan's offenses struggled against but we know a) his supporting cast was trash b) the Pistons played vastly better defense in the playoffs. Their regular season rDRtg underrates them. 1988 Pistons were -2.8 RS --8.7 PS, 1989 Pistons were -3.1 RS -6.2 PS, and 1990 Pistons were -4.6 RS -8.8 PS.

Either way, Chicago was -2.1 rORtg against the 1990 Pistons, not -3. In Game 7 in 1990, the Pippen migraine game, the Bulls were -14 rORtg. Outside of Jordan who had 31/8/9 points on 53.1 %TS, all of his teammates collectively had 43 points on 31.5 %TS in that game. Jordan scored or assisted 50/58 points that the Bulls scored off of field goals in that game. And he directly scored 5 free throws and threw a bunch more passes that led to the other 11 Bulls free throws. Maybe there's never been a game where one player did so much offensively. In 1989, the Bulls were -1.6 against the Pistons but -4.6 in the last game that Pippen left after 1 minute of play. Thus in both the 1989 and 1990 series, a healthy Bulls team was around zero rORtg.

Lol, thank you for perfectly illustrating how context only matters to you with Jordan.

Later on when he won titles, if Jordan's teams are consistently better offensively with him OFF than Lebron's teams, then there may be something to the way those teams are structured especially if his supporting casts don't look stronger. Maybe Lebron's teams are built in a way that they are dependent on Lebron more, for example a group of shooters that need a star playmaker to draw the defense and get them open shots. Without him on the court, they struggle to generate offense. In Miami, when Lebron had a secondary playmaker in Wade, his impact numbers looked subdued but I for one am not convinced he was a worse player in 2012 or 2013 than he was in either Cleveland stint. When Jordan was off the floor, Pippen was usually on and ran the offense competently so the Bulls in their title years were rarely terrible without him. But that may be in a way credit to Jordan that his skillset allows for more flexible team construction.

Okay, and now you are back to the script.

Spoiler:

The Cavs with Kyrie were the worst with James off court and it was due to defense, not because the offense fell apart. Look at the 2020 Lakers—they didn’t fall apart with James off court because these players would up defending better than anyone thought they would.

Bron+ others created high ceiling pairings but the teammates let him down. When teammates made some open shots and played some defense like in 2020, Lakers steamrolled. And LeBron controlled the ball as much as he ever did in Los Angeles.

Jordan +Pippen, 1997: +11.5 in 656 minutes (BKREF numbers for before 2008j
Jordan + Pippen, 1998: +8.1 in 724 minutes
Shaq + Kobe, 2000: +4.1 in 794 minutes
Shaq + Kobe, 2001: +14.9 in 620 minutes
Shaq + Kobe, 2002: +8.1 in 697 minutes
Shaq + Kobe, 2003: +3.1 in 449 minutes
Kobe + Odom, 2009: +16.1 in 598 minutes
Kobe + Gasol, 2009: +10.2 in 831 minutes
LBJ + Wade, 2012: +13.5 in 799 minutes
LBJ + Wade, 2013: +.5 in 678 minutes
LBJ + Allen, 2013: +11.5 in 455 minutes
KD + Westbrook, 2014: +2.9 in 696 minutes
LBJ + Love, 2015: +15.9 in 99 minutes
LBJ + Tristan T., 2016: +16.9 in 547 minutes
LBJ + Love, 2016: +14.9 in 548 minutes
LBJ + Kyrie, 2016: +12.5 in 672 minutes
KD+ Westbrook, 2016: +10.1 in 592 minutes
LBJ + Kyrie, 2017: +12.7 in 593 minutes
LBJ + Love, 2017: +14.3 in 541 minutes (+22.3 before the finals)

The whole ridiculous “bRoN bALL” argument is only applied to him.

% Possessions in ISO

2021 Clippers, 14.7%
2018 Cavs, 13.7%
2017 Cavs, 15.6%
2016 Cavs, 13.8%

Strange this entire “LeBron’s teams struggle without him because he controls everything” only applies to him. Bulls offense went in the toilet in the playoffs without Jordan but that’s ignored.

When his teammates play well and make shots, the argument goes away. One of the biggest reasons the Lakers were so dominant in the playoffs in 2020 was because they played well with LeBron off court in non-garbage time minutes and LeBron in 2020 controlled the ball more than in any other season. Why did they do well? Because they made shots, especially AD being fed by Rondo. The offense was really good without LeBron on court in a season in which LeBron controlled the ball as much as ever.

2020 playoffs, Lebron off, AD ON
ORTG 118.5
DRTG 113.0
+5.5

With other minutes, mostly garbage time minutes, the Lakers were a negative with LeBron off, but the argument that the team struggles “because he controls everything” is not factually supported.

Bulls without Jordan in 1997 playoffs:
ORTG with Jordan, 108.3
ORTG without Jordan, 96.6
Overall without Jordan, -14.8

Bulls without Jordan in 1998 playoffs:

ORTG with Jordan, 110.2
ORTG without Jordan, 95.7
Overall without Jordan, -13.1

Bulls offense was falling apart without Jordan. Was that because “Jordan controlled everything”? There are multiple other examples too numerous to write down all here but it’s only James who somehow gets blamed for this. Is Shaq ball dominant who controls everything? Why wasn’t Kobe scoring when Shaq was off court? Was it because “Shaq controlled everything”?

Lakers’ playoffs ORTG without Shaq
1997, -11.9
1998, -9.8
1999, -6.9
2000, -13.9
2001, +5.3
2002, -22.1
2003, -16.0
2004, -22.8

Wade, Kyrie, Love, and his other supposed “super teammates” didn’t do much of anything with him off court even though they were running their own sets they were used to all season long, many of them ISO in which they’re good scorers but failed in the playoffs in limited possessions.

Respective Playoff ORTGs without James or Jordan or Shaq [using BKREF numbers for all for sake of ease]

BTW, Cavs had the drop off because the Cavs offenses had such high ceilings WITH LeBron and were better on offense than the Bulls were with Jordan even relative to league averages during the playoffs. If I broke it down by individual defenses faced, took out the Cavs/Heat/Lakers offenses from the league averages, it’s even more skewed in favor of James for the available data.

1997 Bulls offense with Jordan: 108.3 [+.9 rORtg]
1998 Bulls: 110.2 [+4.6 rORtg]
2006 Cavs: 104.0 [-4.2 rORtg]
2007 Cavs: 103.5 [-1.4 rORtg]
2008 Cavs: 106.6 [-.8 rORtg]
2009 Cavs: 115.1 [+7.4 rORtg]
2010 Cavs: 110.1 [+1.5 rORtg]
2011 Heat: 107.5 [+1.5 rORtg]
2012 Heat: 111.9 [+8.3 rORtg]
2013 Heat: 111.9 [+7.1 rORtg]
2014 Heat: 112.7 [+4.0 rORtg]
2015 Cavs: 107.3 [+2.0 rORtg]
2016 Cavs: 118.2 [+11.5 rORtg]
2017 Cavs: 124.0 [+12.7 rORtg]
2018 Cavs: 111.9 [+3.0 rORtg ]
2020 Lakers: 118.3 [+7.0 rORtg]

Now look at some of these offenses without James, Shaq, and Jordan.

2021 Lakers, -30.5 without James
2004, Lakers -22.8 without Shaq
2008 Cavs, -22.2 without James [limited off court minutes since James basically played entire games]
2002 Lakers, -22.1 without Shaq
2017 Cavs, -19.9 without James
2003 Lakers, -16.0 without Shaq
2012 Heat, -15.0 without James
1998 Bulls, -14.5 without Jordan
2010 Cavs, -14.1 without James [limited off court minutes]
2018 Cavs, -14.1 without James
2000 Lakers, -13.9 without Shaq
2016 Cavs, -12.6 without James
1997 Lakers, -11.9 without Shaq
1997 Bulls, -11.7 without Jordan
2007 Cavs, -10.3 without James [limited off court minutes]
1998 Lakers, -9.8 without Shaq
2013 Heat, -8.7 without James
2009 Cavs, -7.8 without James
1999 Lakers, -6.9 without Shaq
2011 Heat, -5.2 without James
2020 Lakers, -4.6 without James
2015 Cavs, -2.5 without James
2014 Heat, +2.0 without James [collapsed defensively]
2001 Lakers, +5.3 without Shaq [Kobe played great and role players made shots]

Hmm…looks like Jordan’s Bulls’ offense fell off of a cliff without him. Is that because Jordan controlled everything? And what about Shaq – how come we never hear about the Lakers offenses falling apart without him? Is he controlling everything, too?

People have stated that the problem with “LeBron ball” is that teams fall apart with him off court and I’ve shown you a) a team that didn’t even though he controlled the ball as much as in any season, i.e., 2020 and other LeBron seasons in which the offense didn’t fall apart but that James just created a high all time ceiling, and b) other ATG players’ offenses collapsing without them, e.g., Jordan’s and Shaq’s (I didn’t even get into Curry and Dirk and others), but this argument is never used against them. Additionally, LeBron offenses are some of the greatest ever created (see lost above) and there’s greater room to “fall”; in this case, LeBron is being punished for BEING a ceiling raiser since others cannot replicate what he did on court.

was messing around with WOWY combinations of LeBron teams on pbpstats and the more I look into it the less the "LeBron isn't portable" argument checks out. I know this topic has been beaten into the ground over and over already but it just annoys me to no end. It's such pseudo-intellectual, surface level analysis that has actually gained traction in intellectual spaces. Mostly because people will take anything they can get as a means to knock him down a peg. This one is especially convenient as it takes a bit of effort to debunk.

2013 with LeBron + Wade on and Bosh off the Heat had a +16.5 net rating. I used Curry and KD as barometers for comparison since they're apparently the gold standards for portability and ceiling raising, and they were "only" +14.3 with Draymond and Klay off the court. So the two least portable players in the top 40 playing overlapping roles performed better as a duo than the acclaimed two most portable offensive superstars ever. LeBron's numbers with Bosh were similarly great too. It was only when the big 3 were on the floor together and Miami was playing 3 slashers at the same time (idiotic regardless of who your stars are) that they disappointed relative to their talent level. But that isn't a knock on any single individual player or player archetype, that's just poor floor balancing.

I feel like there's this perception among basketball fans that this is an issue that you only run into with interior scorers, so slashers and post bigs often get a bad rap. But the same is true of shooters. Just as you don't want to play 4 guys who make a living at the rim, you also don't want to stack a bunch of shooters together with 0 interior presence. It doesn't matter who they are.

Let's take the Warriors again as an example. From 2015 to 2019 with Durant/Draymond/Iguodala off the court (so that means no rim gravity or short roll) the two man combo of Steph + Klay had a net rating of just +2.09. You'd expect better of the supposed greatest offensive player ever/best shooter ever next to another all-nba player/second best shooter ever, wouldn't you? For comparison, in 2013 LeBron + Wade without Miller/Allen/Battier (so the Heat's 3 best shooters) had a net rating of +5.2.

I'm coming to find that literally every single time a LeBron team has "disappointed" relative to talent it had everything to do with floor balancing, which was completely avoidable if not for stupid coaching/roster building decisions. Either that or playing too many undersized bigs. Otherwise LeBron lineups almost always far, far exceed expectations.

It's actually so easy to build around LeBron. I don't know how every team he's been with has **** it up. The basic formula is floor spacers + rim protection + LeBron = +20ish net ratings, a lock for 60+ wins, and a shot at the title. You don't need a generational defender who can (sometimes) stretch the floor and is also probably the best ever passer at his position, or a volume 3 point shooting all-defense rim protecting 7 footer to achieve all-time results.

In 2020 and 2021 with LeBron + AD + wing adjacent players on the court the Lakers had a net rating of +22. That's virtually identical to 2017-2019 Golden State's net rating of +22.7 with Steph/Durant/Klay/Draymond. That's insane. Coached optimally I think the 2020 Lakers could've been that level of team but they had an anchor in the form of a coach who refused to adjust and had a fetish for double bigs and Rondo. Only after the micro Rockets forced Vogel to abandon his 2003 nba playbook was their true ceiling unveiled. People were begging him to start Caruso over McGee all year and in the last game of the finals he finally does it and the Lakers went up 30 before halftime.

The Cavs also got it right the 2nd half of 2015 after they made the trades for JR/Shumpert/Mozgov and transformed into like a +11-12 SRS team for the remainder of the season. The combo of LeBron + Mozgov had a net rating of +16.5 in the regular season. And that's with a pretty significantly diminished version of LeBron.

After Mozgov died in 2016 they never made an effort to replace him (outside of Bogut's brief stint when he literally f*cking disintegrated after 2 minutes) and just rolled with 6'8 Thompson and Channing Frye as their rim protectors. Their offense continued to be all-time great but their defense tanked and was increasingly reliant on LeBron. When he was playing the best defense of his career in the 2016 postseason they got away with it but anything less than that and they were one of the worst defensive teams in the league. Still a great team but they should've been even better. LeBron paired next to some sort of backline rim protection has resulted in top 5ish defenses every year of his prime. It's not even like he needs outlier level talent to achieve results that rival the best teams of all time. Or his own version of Draymond/Lopez. The 09 and 10 Cavs had a few shooters and a few bigs who could protect the rim and were winning 66 games without a second star.

Earlier I talked about how fitting with Pippen is nothing like fitting with Wade. Jordan made an adjustment (or more accurately was advised to make an adjustment by Phil Jackson) to give Pippen more ballhandling primacy, and that is used as de facto proof of his offensive (reminder that defence scales too…) scalability next to players like Wade. … But Jordan’s dominant skill is not ballhandling, it is scoring. And he cared about that skill a lot.

Basically I was planning to ask Michael, who had won his third scoring title in a row the previous season, to reduce the number of shots he took so that other members of the team could get more involved in the offense. I knew this would be a challenge for him: Michael was only the second player to win both a scoring title and the league MVP award in the same year, the first being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971.
I told [Michael] that I was planning to implement the triangle and, as a result, he probably wouldn’t be able to win another scoring title. “You’ve got to share the spotlight with your teammates,” I said, “because if you don’t, they won’t grow.”
"Okay, I guess I could average thirty-two points,” he said. “That’s eight points a quarter. Nobody else is going to do that.”
“Well, when you put it that way, maybe you can win the title,” I said. “But how about scoring a few more of those points at the end of the game?”
Looking back, Michael says that he liked this approach because it “allowed me to be the person I needed to be.” Sometimes I would tell him that he needed to be aggressive and set the tone for the team. Other times I’d say, “Why don’t you try to get Scottie going so that the defenders will go after him and then you can attack?”
In general, I tried to give Michael room to figure out how to integrate his personal ambitions with those of the team. “Phil knew that winning the scoring title was important to me,” Michael says now, “but I wanted to do it in a way that didn’t take away from what the team was doing.”

Does that sound like a guy who is legitimately worried about not deferring enough? No. Now, as I said, Wade was not Pippen. I do not think Jordan would have taken the same approach with Wade, although obviously we have no real way of knowing. But I do think Jordan was dramatically less likely to be worried about not stepping on the toes of this other elite scorer. Jordan supporters might chalk that up to superior mentality; “Jordan knew he was the best scorer and would rightly force Wade to adjust at the outset!” Whatever. But that is not really a point for his “scalability”.

So then we look at what is being sacrificed, and here we have a nice little sample of what Pippen looks like with no Jordan eating up the entire scoring load. And… he takes like one or two extra shots a game. Pippen was not really being asked to sacrifice anything by playing with Jordan — not in the way someone like Wade, who on his own was taking just as many shots as Jordan (albeit much less effectively). And for all those comments from Phil, what did Jordan sacrifice from 1988? Again, like a shot or two a game. The mentality may have changed as advised, but the total scoring load? Pretty much the same. As mentioned, he also sacrificed some general control of the offence to Pippen, and that was very successful, because Pippen was (or at least developed into) a better passer than Jordan, and passing was his best offensive skill. Contrast this with Wade, who is a worse scorer than both Jordan and Lebron, is a worse playmaker than Lebron, and has explicitly talked about not wanting to act as the point guard on offence… but who is an elite player because on any other team he would be one of the best scorers and playmakers in the game. Suddenly that question of who sacrifices what and how much becomes a lot murkier.

It is not original to say that in many ways Lebron is like taking Pippen and giving him some of Jordan’s scoring acumen. Lebron does not really care much about scoring titles (despite how many of his detractors refuse to admit that). He is an all-time scorer regardless, so it makes sense for him to score a lot, and he does have some ego about scoring (in before the “ten points in every game!” streak gets brought up), but that is not his primary game, and even though he has basically always been the best scorer on his teams, he is perfectly happy to share the scoring load, whether it be with Wade, Kyrie, or Davis.

Lebron likes playmaking in general. This is more traditionally his best skill… but there too he is not exactly unwilling to share — with Wade, with Kyrie, or with Westbrook. Westbrook, in sort of a similar situation as Pippen, really only has abstract value now as a passer, although without his scoring threat, and without any spacing ability, it is not exactly a high value offering. But to accommodate that, what does Lebron do? He tries to pull a Jordan. He relinquishes ballhandling, focuses more on scoring, for the first time in over a decade legitimately pushes for a scoring title… but the team’s defence is bad with Davis “suffering from hurt”, the roster overall is a mess, and a diminished Westbrook is still a pretty active negative who cannot be any actual analogue for even a younger Scottie Pippen. But is any of that a real consequence of some fundamental inability of Lebron to score next to a lead ballhandler?

Kyrie and Wade like ballhandling too. Neither have anything on Lebron’s playmaking or passing ability, and to some extent they both probably know that (questionable with Kyrie lol), but Lebron is happy enough to share. With Kyrie, this works well because Kyrie is an elite spacer. With Wade, this does not work as well, because Wade is a relatively poor spacer. But then we consider Jordan and Pippen again. Is Pippen a good spacer? Not really, and not to an extent I would put him beyond Wade. Well, alright, then is Jordan a better spacer and more capable of working past the spacing limitations of players like Wade and Westbrook and Pippen? There I would say the answer is maybe, and the reason why it is maybe is why era differences are important to this question (as has been discussed).

Jordan was a pretty strong spacer in his era. 3s were not a focus and illegal defence rules limited the extent to which an individual top scorer could be hounded compared to what happened once those rules were dropped… but nevertheless, he is one of the best ever midrange scorers, and he has a degree of raw scoring gravity that really only Curry has competed with as a perimetre player. Lebron, on the other hand, has no leniency from illegal defence. Lebron takes threes, and is enough of a threat to make them that he does draw attention out there, while always having a pretty strong degree of raw scoring gravity of his own. In Jordan’s era, I definitely give the advantage as a spacer to Jordan. In a more modern era? Well, obviously some fans like to argue Jordan would become a strong three-point shooter, but if we take his skills at face value, and his own commentary about feeling that reliance on threes is bad for his own mentality, it seems a lot more debatable whether at that point he actually fits all that much better as a spacer with Pippen or Westbrook or Wade.

So we know Lebron is willing to relinquish ballhandling, as Jordan did. We know he is willing to relinquish scoring primacy, as Jordan did not do and expressly did not want to do but hypothetically could have done if given the opportunity. We know era disparities penalise spacing in different ways, to an extent that it is not clear whether in Lebron’s era Jordan would fare better playing with non-spacing (/non-defending) teammates than Lebron did. We know that Pippen did not particularly eat into Jordan’s scoring and that Jordan’s presence barely affected Pippen’s scoring load. What exactly does all that tell us about how much better Jordan fits with random teammates than Lebron does?

I would say exceedingly little. What I am comfortable saying is that Jordan fits better on offence in his own era with non-spacers than Lebron would — and in that sense, relative to their own respective eras too. I am comfortable saying Jordan fits better with non-scoring ballhandlers than Lebron would, pretty much regardless of era, in the specific sense that Lebron loses more of his innate value from that situation than Jordan does. But on the other side, I think Lebron fits better with spacers and/or off-ball players than Jordan does, by virtue of being better able to take advantage of their skillsets with his passing. I think Lebron fits better with poor defenders than Jordan does. I think Lebron also fits better with Kyrie-type playmakers than Jordan does — scorers who space and like to have some offensive control but are overtaxed as a team’s first choice to perform either skill. And I think it is unclear which of the two fits better on offence in the modern era with that particular breed of player who does not space well yet is best maximised as an on-ball scorer… such as Dwyane Wade.

Mind you, this analysis has been mostly about duos. Think back to that comment about wanting to win the scoring titles. Is that easier with Horace Grant and/or Dennis Rodman, or with Chris Bosh and/or Kevin Love? We talk all about how these third stars oh so tragically were placed into a box next to Lebron. Okay, what does Chris Bosh look like next to Wade and Jordan? Is he suddenly freed up? Is a higher volume scorer asking Bosh to score more too? Is a weaker defender letting Bosh lower his defensive load? Does the team no longer want him to space the floor? Kevin Love has more of a passing game, so he is more interesting (not that either Blatt or Lue seemed to figure out how to make that work well even with Kyrie), but there too it is hard to say his scoring volume would increase next to Jordan or that he would struggle less on defence or that his spacing would be less important.

Jordan pretty much always got to play his way. He was never forced into a situation where he seriously had to consider relinquishing his league high scoring load (his principle and most personally valued skill). He was almost never asked to take a role that did not suit him. Because we know that Lebron struggled a little bit in those situations that Jordan never faced, we conclude that Jordan is an easier fit with more players? Nonsense. This guy is not Steph — not as a spacer (obviously), nor as someone who seems at all willing to sacrifice scoring volume. And he is also not Kobe or Iverson or Carmelo, in the sense that it almost always should be best practice for him to be that primary scorer… but then it similarly has almost always been best practice for Lebron to be both the primary scorer and creator, and despite his clear willingness to compromise on either, that is being held against him, with zero evidence of whether Jordan could maintain his “impact” next to players who would force him to adapt his game or otherwise see their own games disrupted next to him. When Lebron gets strong fit teams that allow him to balance his skills, they are dismissed because he was not as good on bad fitting teams. But when Jordan wins six titles on teams that allow him to maximise his scoring above any other responsibilities? Well, that is just a good example of how scalable he is!

I have said it before, but we are essentially rewarding Jordan for having a less dynamic skillset: “well, both of them probably see diminishing returns as scorers next to other high volume scorers by virtue of both being some of the highest volume scorers ever, but Lebron’s superior passing sees more diminishing returns next to high volume creators, so that means Jordan fits better with more players!” Like, fine, for those of you who want to give Jordan an easy 38% three-point shot on good volume, this is not going to matter for you as much. Just like there are those of you who will never move past six titles, or how scoring is the number one skill, or what a failure 2011 was, or how Jordan was actually a god-tier defender, or how Lebron is a coward for not sticking with the Cavaliers from the start. But for those of you looking at the type of spacers they actually are and are ostensibly trying to be objective and properly critical of the context in which each played? You should be asking a lot more.

When was James used as a cutter to the degree that could be significant in this discussion? Or lob finisher? Transition is legit point, but the rest don't make any sense. I also like how you bring up Bird's advantaves, but then say "whatever". No, it's not arguable that Bird was better off-ball player in halfcourt. This, along with his post game (which is also an off-ball skill in 90%) is Bird's entire halfocurt offense. He didn't handle the ball, he didn't run P&Rs often and he didn't play iso ball.

Plenty of times, despite playing with mostly overall weak passers in his career and shooting guards masquerading as point guards (Boobie Gibson, Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Kyrie Irving, Avery Bradley/Alex Caruso). LeBron managed to show me enough in those years for to see him as a better cutter than Bird, despite the fact that he might have been used as a cutter three times every game, because he was busy playing on-ball as he was better at it than 99.9% of the league and all his teammates.

I mean, it's not really rocket science here... We're talking about one of the quickest, strongest, most athletic players of all-time with an incredible motor and vert that finishes extremely well under the rim. You think this guy would have had trouble being a high level cutter if he didn't have enough other valuable on-ball skills? If not anything else, he would most certainly be better than Larry Bird in that area.

Lob finisher? Well, if you are willing to go back and tell me how many lobs has Larry Bird finished with a made basket in his career, i promise you i will do the same for LeBron... But i have a sneaky suspicion we would just both end up wasting our time, as LeBron is inconceivably ahead in this regard. And yes, maybe a good portion of his lob finishes come in transition, running the wing (still counts), but he had his fair share of back door cuts that ended up in easy dunks, especially in his younger, more athletic days. 1

Larry was excellent at using screens, setting screens, moving without the ball, exploiting openings in split second and offensive rebounding.

So was LeBron. Just because he less of some of those things or did them differently (due to being arguably the best on-ball player in the league), doesn't mean he was worse in those areas. And again, it depends on what you are looking for. Who was better using screens by leveraging their shooting ability? Definitely Bird. Who was better at using screens to drive to the basket? Definitely LeBron. So now what?

His whole offense was built around off-ball action, this is something James never tried to emulate.

And for good reason. Lebron was able to dominate and have a bigger impact on the game by having the ball in his hands, like most of the best offensive players of all-time. But anything that has to do with him running, grabbing the ball and trying to finish, or using the threat of his inside scoring, he will have a huge advantage. And at his peak, he was also a solid catch and shooter, but the Heat weren't really building the offense around that, because that would be stupid.

Jordan isn’t a better off ball player than lebron lol that’s a dumb take

The idea of Jordan being better off ball comes from not u understanding of how basketball scheme works and relying too much on the roles guys actually played rather than what they could, there’s a ridiculous amount you can do with a guy like lebron off ball, with Jordan if it comes down to he can curl off screens for midrange jumpers that really isn’t bunch value in today’s game

It essentially comes from people hugely overstating the value of stampede cuts and occupying help, in itself that’s not an overrated thing but the rarity and difficulty of it is hugely overstated and we’ve seen lebron do that more now but the difference is the gap he needs to score is easier and often the right play is him getting it anyways

I understand why people would think Jordan is better off ball but the reality is if they both were average on ball players, you would certainly have much more to work with offensively if you take some iterations as an off ball offensive force where he quite literally checks EVERY BOX as a off ball big for example, over a guy like Jordan who really isn’t helping much. He played in a more reactionary offense where he did cut in and occupy the D with off ball movement more, and you can certainly argue he did more off ball than many of lebrons seasons given the roles they played and the offenses they played in, but that’s not the same as being a better off ball player.

Like conceptually speaking if you take like Miami or some years of cleveland lebron for example he checks a ridiculous amount of boxes as an off ball 4

As an off ball big what you’d want generally use

Being a lob threat (vs aggressive screen coverages)
- he’s 6ft9 250 with a 45 inch vertical
Spacing the floor for catch and shoot three point jumpers (popping)
- outside of 2016 he was around 38-42% on catch and shoot threes
Short roll passing
- he’s lebron
Beating switches (yes)
- yes

When you actually try to see how many people can do all 4 it’s not a long list at all, versions of bron being incredibly elite at all 4 along with being a GOAT level finisher getting the ball if he’s early on the move makes him an insane off ball player if a team was designed to go around that more, and we’ve seen him start doing more cuts and movement off ball to occupy help when it’s his job to do so

Jordan in time coming off curls for midrange jumpers was important and it is a genuinely important skill for a team to have to have guys that can shoot off the move, but it’s the type where it’s a unique one to find and if you’re doing it off midrange shots and not three point shots now it’s just not that valuable since catch and shoot midrange shots are being somewhat phased out

What makes Lebron better off ball is you can conceptually do a lot more with him if you lean into that, Jordan did end up doing more off ball throughout their careers in the roles and offenses they played in, but that’s not the same thing as who was better off ball.

First of all, generally speaking the type of empty side clear out cuts (I forgot the name ngl) to create get overhyped as some sort of massive brained play, as well as cuts to draw help defenders, alot of those are built in or dependent on how a team functions. We saw in 2021 and 2022 the Lakers were stupid stagnant in their post offense, in terms of cutting off of both stunts and baseline hep, whereas in 2023 and 2024 they’ve id when to cut and when to flash or set pin in flares (digging vs baseline help) and you see the post data for AD suddenly looks alot better. Of those guys brons certainly the best cutter off of stunts to the point they can’t really do it off of him or they have to stunt and rotate high and give up the cut to someone else instead

And 45 stampede cut + lift people overhype the crap out of thinking it’s the pinnacle of bball intelligence lol, it’s really just how the offense decides to align for those opportunities and we’ve seen it with brin

There REALLY isn’t a comparison in terms of what they could do though

First of all, lebron is a better shooter off ball, because he can shoot the three. Yes, era matters there and it’s unfair to Jordan but in an absolute sense yeah this isn’t a close comparison, brons abour a 37-42% three point shooter throughout 2010-2023, he takes a lot of pullup jumpers in pick and roll and hits them at a respectable rate (relative to average players) that brings down his averages (35% off the dribble would be about 40% off the shoot probably)

Lebrons catch and shoot three point data per Synergy:

2010: 34.7%
2011: 39.3%
2012 34.7%
2013 42.1%
2014 42.5%
2015: 42%
2016 36.0%
2017 40%
2018 41.4%
2019 35.0%
2020 40.6%
2021 37.6%
2022 37.1%
2023 31.8%
2024 45.9%

In any case spot up shooting is much more not being bad than being an outlier unless ur a crazy outlier which neither of them are, I agree it’s unfair to say jordan didn’t shoot well from three therefore he’s worse because of era but arguing the other way around because bron doesn’t shoot catch and shoot midrange jump shots off of screens which has been largely phased out is equally unfair and it’s also a less valuable skill period if ur talking about midrange shots

As for being a lob threat:

Jordan was around 6ft4-6ft5 barefoot and his vertical from what I recall was measured at 45 inches in some UNC paper off an unlimited run ip and 41 inches with the ball. If you’ve ever played basketball you know that it’s not 1 to 1 with vertical and height, ur never gonna see a guard be a roll man lob threat consistently

That’s not a lob threat in a way that functionally matters at all in the context I was describing, which was as a roller. Lebron barely qualifies being 6ft8.5 barefoot with a 40+ inch vert as well, and I’m taking about pre Lakers for sure (maybe even only up to Miami but not sure)

It’s mitigated a tad by the fact that lebron on the move with the ball is basically unstoppable, but that doesn’t mitigate it all that much in the context of why you want a lob threat in pick and roll vs aggressive coverages

There’s a much stronger argument that neither of them are in that context than Jordan being one as well. Jordan isn’t tall enough to be one, bron probably barely meets the mark but I get the argument he doesn’t in the context of what I said

The entirety of how he improved in 2023 outside of Lebron getting to be more physical rather than quick was them starting to get him the ball on the move more, in the playoffs he couldn’t do anything on ball at all

Offensive rebounding:

I mean neither are threats in the way that someone should consider an off ball player, (using raw rebounding % makes no sense when that number has changed lol). But regardless of a 0-1% change either way, lebron technically is a bigger threat just based on size since off ball offensive rebounding is probably more about in mismatch situations on certain switches (beyond that, offensive rebounding is just… offensive rebounding lol)

Quicker decision maker on the catch:
Being a quick decision maker off the catch isn’t equivalent to possessions resetting when they pass it out at times but this really isn’t comparable to the other advantages lol

Anyways, a 38 year old lebron currently averaging less touches a game than Brandon Ingram with less time of possession than Austin reaves, he’s averaging 26-8-7 on 67%TS and noticeably taking it easy till the fourth, and is a +17.4 on offense which ranks poorly overall because they can’t function without him (which is a bit from bad luck to be clear)

A 37 year old bron in the 18 game stretch where AD was hurt and we desperately were clinging to the playoffs, with no spacing, averages 80.6 touches a game (14th) , an average time of possession of 6.3 minutes (15th) , an average time of 4.66 seconds per touch (52nd). Those numbers aren’t quite as low as they were in Miami (2014 only) where people say off ball bron was somewhat of a thing but they’re close ish, especially considering who the team had around them and the raw volume of their offensice production. If I recall lebron was like a +17-18 on offense and we were top 5 in the games he played on that end

Wouldn’t call it off ball at first, the caveat is he was averaging 33.5/8/8 on great effeciency (62.5TS), so those rankings are insane considering the production

So what we have here is a VASTLY declined Lebron put his foot on the gas for 20 games and pretty consistently was a top 3 offensive player in a league with Jokic, Luka, Curry, in that stretch before injuries got him, and currently brons averaging a career high percentage inside the arc and his average career numbers despite sleepwalking untill the fourth quarter because he definately wants that clutch player of the year award unless 500k is on the line or it’s a marquee/revenge game matchup (anyone that doubts this has not seen the Lakers, lebron is currently leading the league in ppg in the fourth other than tyus Jones whose played 1 fourth quarter, averaging 32-8-8 per 36 on 70.8TS)

Now shooting off of screens is genuinely important, but not as much from the midrange nowadays

Jordan is good in the context of an elite normal player off ball whereas Lebron has much more unique value off ball which is the main thing here

Jordan doesnt open things up schematically for you to be more creative and diverse with what you can do for your offense or to make your actions more effective, he is an incredibly smart and skilled player off ball

Lebron, especially the younger versions of him that would be a lob threat that still shoot well off the catch, if you play into that absolutely does those things.

As cutters their values aren’t even remotely close, an issue with synergy tracking is some post ups are considered cuts and stampede cuts aren’t classified as cuts iirc, but not only is bron historically effecient off cuts for awhile now, but it’s one of those things where it’s a unique value vs other guys. With most players off cuts it’s cuz they’re so fast and smart with it but if you can wall up it’s fine, with bron it’s because he’s fast and huge so if you wall up he’ll go overpower you and he knows how to not foul in those situations, hes unstoppable on the move and it shows in those situations. This should be a non starter, lebrons shooting 80-90% on cuts throughout his career, his cutting has unique value because of the combination of size, finishing, speed, and playmaking. An argument for Jordan here is as much of a non starter as saying he’s better in transition

The synergy stat sheet that’s someone made for Jordan awhile back is a bit broke because turnovers weren’t accounted for, but iirc over 142 games jordan was at 68% inside the arc on cuts with a little more than one a game

That is both impressive and lower than any season bron has had since and including 2010, especially in recent years where brons relied on it and focused on it more he’s at hovering at around 80%, on a bit more volume as well per game (My mistake, one year they had a similar percentage where bron was at 67%, but bron had more volume)

As an off rolling big, its REALLY hard to name a guy that has basically all the skills you need vs every coverage, spot up shooting, short roll passing, punishing mismatches, lob threat. Throw in offensive rebounding there too but that’s not usually one I think of to beat coverages as much as a bonus but its valid. There are ways to mitigate lacking in some of those skills but that gets tied into the ball handler and coaching.

Lebron checks at least 3/4 boxes super comfortably, and as a lob threat he’s 6ft8.5 barefoot with a 40-45 inch vert, At least when he was younger, he’s a tad short for that but he’s an inch or two shorter than AD and dwight so he could still be one.

Jordan does not qualify as a lob threat in that situation and it doesn’t even make sense to care about him in that situation

A lot of Arguments for Jordan on here in the context of their off ball ability are focused on what occurred situationally in the situations they were in ans the systems they played in (which is valid), but the arguments that hes actually better just always end up being super vague and not actual descriptive which just sounds like waffling things out of thin air lol, throwing out super vague descriptions of what happens on the court m to make a point is barely step better than throwing out a narrative out there imo. In a concrete sense lebrons just so more of a potent tool off ball you can do more things with, feel that’s a given if you have schematic knowledge of the freedom a guy like bron gives you over a guy like Jordan

By the way, in 1997, Jordan played ~82% of his minutes with Pippen, and neither my memory nor my general understanding of Phil Jackson feel there was much difference in the prior years.

Curry’s numbers with Draymond are similar… and then in the postseason, they leap up to 86%. Five-year postseason prime we are talking 91% with at least one of Durant or Draymond. That is not “flexibility”.

Besides Jordan's ON ratings were spectacular based on the data we do have. +16.7 ON in 1996 regular season followed by +14.3 ON in the 1996 playoffs. +15.9 ON in the 1991 playoffs. Lebron never matched any of those marks.

I agree Lebron never had a team with as much of an advantage over the field as the 1991/96 Bulls. That has never mattered much to me when assessing the quality of the players themselves, but I do prefer when you guys are honest about blindly chasing MOV.

[lessthanjake]

I think there’s a pretty obvious and crucial difference between a series where a player’s team did badly offensively and the player himself did not do well individually and a series where a player’s team did badly offensively but the player himself did pretty well individually. Seems pretty obvious that the former has more culpability than the latter.

Just to take some notable examples being discussed here:

In the 2007 Finals, the Cavs had a -2.7 rORTG and LeBron scored 22 PPG on -8.3 rTS%. In the 2015 Finals, the Cavs had a -1.8 rORTG and LeBron had 36 PPG on -3.7 rTS%.

In 1988 against the Pistons, the Bulls had a -9.5 rORTG but Jordan scored 27 PPG on +2.5 rTS%. In 1989 against the Pistons, the Bulls had a -1.6 rORTG but Jordan scored 30 PPG on +4.7 rTS%. In 1990 against the Pistons, the Bulls had a -2.1 rORTG but Jordan scored 32 PPG on +5.2 rTS%.

Granted, scoring isn’t everything, but just as we don’t really have to act like the 2017 Warriors had a remotely comparable supporting cast to a team like the 2007 Cavs, we also don’t have to act like these two guys had the same level of culpability for their teams’ offensive woes in those series. LeBron’s inefficiency (caused in large part by his mediocre shooting ability) was a huge driver of his team’s inefficient offense in those series, while the same is just not true of Jordan against the Pistons.

[AEnigma]

Yep, I will boldly agree with Jordan being a better scorer than 22-year-old Lebron and Lebron working through a season-long back injury. Good job.

[MacGill]

Imagine when, and hoping, Jokic gets 'more help' as I am sure other teams will be looking to further man-up on his sole superstar roster.

1) MJ
2) Jokic
3) Magic
4) LBJ
5) Curry

[Djoker]

...

2023 Nuggets are different because they ended up winning a championship and had a dominant playoffs. That excuses their mediocre regular season. They were 4th in title odds with +1000 entering the playoffs and by the conference finals had jumped up to 2nd with +260.

The 2020 Nuggets were not taken seriously as a contender and were 9th in title odds +3000 going into the playoffs and still a distant 4th with +1025 before the conference finals. 2012 Celtics were likewise not considered a threat being 6th in title odds +2000 going into the playoffs and a distant 4th with +1400 before the conference finals. I don't think there is any rationale to group these two teams as great opposition.

As for Jordan and Pippen playing together, I've mostly tracked playoff games and Jordan was rarely off the court without Pippen being on. In the regular season that could be different but I doubt it. They generally staggered in a similar way that Lebron/Wade did on the Heat.

The Bulls had a huge advantage over the field? That's a convenient rhetoric. Problem is when people look at those Bulls, they don't see a stacked offensive team. When they look at many Lebron's teams, they do. There's a great deal of cognitive dissonance trying to push this line of thinking when it's plainly obvious that Jordan's best teams had weaker supporting casts on offense than Lebron's best teams. Curry also falls in this category. Outside of the Durant years, Curry's supporting casts on offense were weaker than Lebron's.

[AEnigma]

Respect the full shift back to vibes-based analysis.

Lebron’s teams had scorers and bad defenders (i.e. offensive players), therefore they must have been a better offensive roster.

Yet somehow, the 1998 Bulls offence tanked without Pippen. Somehow, the 1994 Bulls had a relative offensive rating with Pippen right on par with every Jordan Bulls team pre-1990, and somehow, they were then able to post a +8 rOrtg against a historic defence in the postseason.

To whatever extent we want to say Lebron’s teams had better offensive support in the 2010s, it never manifested. Lebron missed 18 games from 2011-14, and the Heat were bad offensively. Filtering for games where Wade played (down to 9), and they were still bad. Granted, Wade was only a superstar through 2011, but it is not like he was running good offences in 2009/10. Same story with the 27 games Lebron missed in his second Cavaliers stint. Okay, Kyrie only played 18 of those games, and they were better when he did… as a +1.5 offence (and of course the defence fell apart without Lebron acting as one of the team’s two or three best defenders).

Which leaves the question, what could be this mysterious 11-ring winning variable producing unexpectedly strong offensive results with ostensibly less “talented” offensive teams.

[IlikeSHAIguys]

...

2023 Nuggets are different because they ended up winning a championship and had a dominant playoffs. That excuses their mediocre regular season. They were 4th in title odds with +1000 entering the playoffs and by the conference finals had jumped up to 2nd with +260.

The 2020 Nuggets were not taken seriously as a contender and were 9th in title odds +3000 going into the playoffs and still a distant 4th with +1025 before the conference finals. 2012 Celtics were likewise not considered a threat being 6th in title odds +2000 going into the playoffs and a distant 4th with +1400 before the conference finals. I don't think there is any rationale to group these two teams as great opposition.

As for Jordan and Pippen playing together, I've mostly tracked playoff games and Jordan was rarely off the court without Pippen being on. In the regular season that could be different but I doubt it. They generally staggered in a similar way that Lebron/Wade did on the Heat.

The Bulls had a huge advantage over the field? That's a convenient rhetoric. Problem is when people look at those Bulls, they don't see a stacked offensive team. When they look at many Lebron's teams, they do. There's a great deal of cognitive dissonance trying to push this line of thinking when it's plainly obvious that Jordan's best teams had weaker supporting casts on offense than Lebron's best teams. Curry also falls in this category. Outside of the Durant years, Curry's supporting casts on offense were weaker than Lebron's.

Is it really important how people looked at the Bulls?

[Djoker]

Respect the full shift back to vibes-based analysis.

Lebron’s teams had scorers and bad defenders (i.e. offensive players), therefore they must have been a better offensive roster.

Yet somehow, the 1998 Bulls offence tanked without Pippen. Somehow, the 1994 Bulls had a relative offensive rating with Pippen right on par with every Jordan Bulls team pre-1990, and somehow, they were then able to post a +8 rOrtg against a historic defence in the postseason.

To whatever extent we want to say Lebron’s teams had better offensive support in the 2010s, it never manifested. Lebron missed 18 games from 2011-14, and the Heat were bad offensively. Filtering for games where Wade played (down to 9), and they were still bad. Granted, Wade was only a superstar through 2011, but it is not like he was running good offences in 2009/10. Same story with the 27 games Lebron missed in his second Cavaliers stint. Okay, Kyrie only played 18 of those games, and they were better when he did… as a +1.5 offence (and of course the defence fell apart without Lebron acting as one of the team’s two or three best defenders).

Which leaves the question, what could be this mysterious 11-ring winning variable producing unexpectedly strong offensive results with ostensibly less “talented” offensive teams.

You accused me of using SRS (which I admittedly did use simplistically on its own) to prove my point so I gave you betting odds showing that the 2012 Celtics and 2020 Nuggets were not considered to be great teams.

Using tiny WOWY samples without Lebron to make your point doesn't really work well especially when a large chunk of these games were late season games with seeding wrapped up. In other words, these were largely meaningless contests. Wade was still All-NBA caliber in 2012 and all-star caliber in 2013 and 2014. And don't forget Bosh who was also an all-star caliber player in Bron's Miami stint. Kyrie was also All-NBA caliber with Love all-star caliber from 2015-2017 and 2015-2018, respectively. Look up top player lists from those years and see where those players were ranked at the end of the day if you don't believe me.

[eminence]

Jokic isn't quite in this tier for me yet. He's great, clear MVP level, might be top 10 offensive guy ever, but he's unproven for a top 5 type guy. No RS team result to really hang his hat on (this is their best result and they're a 57 win, #5 offense, #4 SRS squad, great, but not historically great). He has one great playoff run, but it's 1 run and the competition was underwhelming. His impact stats are great, top of the league level, but don't seem to be at the level of outlier that Nash/LeBron/Steph all reached. If he was lacking in either main area I might brush it aside (team success and individual stats), cause damn he's fun to watch, but he's lacking in both (relative to this hyper elite competition).

Other 4+Nash would be my top 5 (sorry Oscar, the era wasn't kind to offensive stars like later eras have been, I do think he had the talent).

[Peregrine01]

Jokic isn't quite in this tier for me yet. He's great, clear MVP level, might be top 10 offensive guy ever, but he's unproven for a top 5 type guy. No RS team result to really hang his hat on (this is their best result and they're a 57 win, #5 offense, #4 SRS squad, great, but not historically great). He has one great playoff run, but it's 1 run and the competition was underwhelming. His impact stats are great, top of the league level, but don't seem to be at the level of outlier that Nash/LeBron/Steph all reached. If he was lacking in either main area I might brush it aside (team success and individual stats), cause damn he's fun to watch, but he's lacking in both (relative to this hyper elite competition).

Other 4+Nash would be my top 5 (sorry Oscar, the era wasn't kind to offensive stars like later eras have been, I do think he had the talent).

I don't care much for rankings but I will say this: if you absolutely need a bucket, I find it hard to go with anyone other than Jokic. The Nuggets during the regular season have not been outlier-ish as an offense but in part that's by design. Jokic is not even going 10% against the bottom half of the league. But when he has to turn it on, I've seen no other player that can create a good look on call like he does.

[AEnigma]

Respect the full shift back to vibes-based analysis.

Lebron’s teams had scorers and bad defenders (i.e. offensive players), therefore they must have been a better offensive roster.

Yet somehow, the 1998 Bulls offence tanked without Pippen. Somehow, the 1994 Bulls had a relative offensive rating with Pippen right on par with every Jordan Bulls team pre-1990, and somehow, they were then able to post a +8 rOrtg against a historic defence in the postseason.

To whatever extent we want to say Lebron’s teams had better offensive support in the 2010s, it never manifested. Lebron missed 18 games from 2011-14, and the Heat were bad offensively. Filtering for games where Wade played (down to 9), and they were still bad. Granted, Wade was only a superstar through 2011, but it is not like he was running good offences in 2009/10. Same story with the 27 games Lebron missed in his second Cavaliers stint. Okay, Kyrie only played 18 of those games, and they were better when he did… as a +1.5 offence (and of course the defence fell apart without Lebron acting as one of the team’s two or three best defenders).

Which leaves the question, what could be this mysterious 11-ring winning variable producing unexpectedly strong offensive results with ostensibly less “talented” offensive teams.

You accused me of using SRS (which I admittedly did use simplistically on its own) to prove my point so I gave you betting odds showing that the 2012 Celtics and 2020 Nuggets were not considered to be great teams.

Personally I care more about what teams do than about what people think they will do eight months earlier, and you already threw out SRS by making it abstractly about “great teams” rather than about any tangible cutoff markers. Is the move now going to be who performed best against which teams had the best preseason odds? Cannot wait.

Using tiny WOWY samples without Lebron to make your point doesn't really work well especially when a large chunk of these games were late season games with seeding wrapped up. In other words, these were largely meaningless contests. Wade was still All-NBA caliber in 2012 and all-star caliber in 2013 and 2014. And don't forget Bosh who was also an all-star caliber player in Bron's Miami stint. Kyrie was also All-NBA caliber with Love all-star caliber from 2015-2017 and 2015-2018, respectively. Look up top player lists from those years and see where those players were ranked at the end of the day if you don't believe me.

To echo my last point, I also care more about what players do than about how they are perceived. Shawn Marion never made all-defence, but Kobe made it 12 times. Duncan and Pippen do not have a DPoY but Marcus Camby, Metta Artest, Marcus Smart, Gary Payton, Alvin Robertson, Michael Jordan, and Michael Cooper all do, and Kawhi, Rodman, and Moncrief have two. Rasheed Wallace never made all-NBA (or all-defence for that matter), but Julius Randle has done so twice. And Jamal Murray is not an all-star and may never be one, but I dare you to try to meaningfully distinguish his playoff production from Kyrie’s. This is not a real argument for anything.

[lessthanjake]

Jokic isn't quite in this tier for me yet. He's great, clear MVP level, might be top 10 offensive guy ever, but he's unproven for a top 5 type guy. No RS team result to really hang his hat on (this is their best result and they're a 57 win, #5 offense, #4 SRS squad, great, but not historically great).

I actually think there’s a pretty major RS team result offensively that people don’t realize: No star player has ever had their team score as many points per 100 possessions with them on the floor as the Nuggets scored with Jokic on the floor in the 2022-2023 season (and no one is even all that close). The Nuggets were only 5th in offensive rating overall, but that’s just because they were an awful offense with Jokic off the floor. No offense in NBA history has scored as efficiently with their star on the floor as the Nuggets did last season with Jokic on the floor. Of course, the league-wide explosion in offense is a huge factor here and it’d be perfectly reasonable to look at league-relative terms and say that something like the 2005 Suns with Nash on the floor was actually the best. But I do think that the fact that no player has ever ran an offense more efficiently than Jokic did last season qualifies as a “RS team result to really hang his hat on” offensively.

He has one great playoff run, but it's 1 run and the competition was underwhelming. His impact stats are great, top of the league level, but don't seem to be at the level of outlier that Nash/LeBron/Steph all reached.

He’s been dominant in impact metrics in general. Since his true prime began, he’s usually led the league in measures like EPM, RAPTOR, LEBRON, etc. And, of course, offense is the main thing driving those numbers. I think when people label players outliers, they forget that these stats are noisy enough that no one is truly dominating them constantly—even the past players they’re saying were outliers. LeBron did not have a 5-year span where he led the league in NBAShotCharts RAPM (though that started in 2011, so it’s quite possible he would’ve led in an earlier 5-year span if they had it). LeBron only led the league in EPM three times (2006, 2010, and 2013), and two of them were by a pretty small margin. He led the league in LEBRON four times (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2016), and all but one of them was by a small margin. LeBron never led the league in RAPTOR (though, of course, the stat only started in 2013-2014). On a year-by-year basis, we have not actually seen anyone that just dominates every year across all measures. There’s too much variance for that to happen. The best players lead the league several times in a given measure, occasionally lead in some measures by a ton in a given season, and are almost always at least near the top of virtually every measure. Over larger sample sizes of seasons, that consistency makes them look incredible, but if you look holistically they’re not typically year-to-year outliers overall. Jokic is very consistent with that IMO. And, unsurprisingly, larger sample sizes of seasons make him look incredible too—with Jokic having the highest RAPM in Engelmann’s 1997-2024 RS+Playoffs RAPM, including having the highest ORAPM (ahead of Steph, who has the 2nd highest ORAPM). Of course, impact data is not definitive at all. There’s lots of additional nuance, as well as potential methodological flaws and biases, statistical noise, etc. But I don’t see impact data as a thing that can be used against Jokic in any meaningful way, if we actually take a holistic look at the data (rather than cherry-picking out the best and worst measures for given players—not saying you’ve done that, of course).

That said, I definitely agree on the Nash shout, and I do actually lean towards Nash being the better offensive player than Jokic, at least in era-relative terms. Some of Nash’s greatness at the time was being significantly ahead of the curve in terms of general basketball strategy, so I’m not *sure* he’d be nearly as good in era-relative terms now (where he wouldn’t have that advantage), but at the time he was just outrageously effective.

EDIT: Also, as I said in my first post on this thread, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to keep Jokic at or near the bottom of this list, just on the basis of him being much less far into his career, and therefore inherently less proven in this regard. For me, I’ve seen enough to rank Jokic based on how I see him, but I think taking a different position on that (as you have here) is totally valid.