Mr Puddles wrote:Floody100 wrote: it’s hard for me to give someone the ‘GOAT’ status when they’ve lost more finals than they’ve won, especially when the guy he’s trying to pass has never lost a final.
It puzzles me how people continue to use the "losing in the finals" argument.
Using that same logic, let's say Jordan had led his team to the finals 4 more times but failed to beat the western conference opponent - would he be considered a worse player now? You'd basically be arguing that if he had lead his team to more wins and greater playoff success, he'd be a worse player.
Why is losing to the finals a blemish on your resume, but not making it to the finals isn't?
There's plenty of reasons to view Jordan as the goat over lebron without discussing the finals.
But strictly talking about the finals, personally it's about performance in the biggest stage more so than win v loss, but wins matter obviously.
I don't hold 18,17,15 against him
14 - not really a big deal, but he shot 57% (which is great) but it just seemed like he cared more about the FG% than being aggressive. Alot of times he scored when the heat were already down a bunch and it was the biggest margin of losses in finals history.
He only took 17 shots a game and lebron is capable of getting a shot off almost anytime he wants. Not his fault they lost, the team was gassed, but I would have liked to see him go down swininging like he did in 2015.
The big two blemishes are 2011 and 07 - I won't go into 2011 it's been done to death but that year the heat should have won, and they would have 3peated which would bring many more people to the view he's the goat.
But 2007 it's not that he lost, but he played horribly and simply wasn't good enough, the games were close all 4 and that's despite the fact he was at like 22ppg on 40% fg irrc. Age experience these aren't good enough excuses for an all time great like lebron.
