Chocolate City Jordanaire wrote:Lalouie wrote:Chocolate City Jordanaire wrote:I am 61. If a certain legendary player from the University of Maryland were still alive he would turn 59 this year. Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley recently celebrated 59 three days apart. I knew Leonard bias and if you check with Albert King and Bernard King they may remember me. (Short guy. Wedding)
What the hell am I doing on real GM?
Lol
In my opinion if Michael Jordan were along today and in this soft NBA would he be the same?
One thing is for sure and that is LeBron would not have gotten away with much of his stuff in the 80s. Charles Barkley would’ve taken it right to LeBron. Dennis Rodman would have really irked LeBron.
But at the other end of the coin
LeBron would be magic Johnson on steroids if playing in the 80s. For that I believe with Scotty Pippen is now correct about is that LeBron James is the best player even if he does manipulate the media and be a worse at times I can’t even blame him for that.
LeBron James is the man, like the man or not.
actually,,,lebron had every opportunity to be such a player. he had his choice of hi octane players and shooters alike. kyrie, klove, korver, miller, frye, jr, bosh, wade, allen, ad, battier,.
he had in almost all of those 8yrs a team in the top10 in BOTH 3pt% and 2pt%
with all that hand-picked fire power he chose instead to be a 28/8/7.5 player,,,not a 20/11/7.2 player like magic. lebron chose scoring over assisting. for a guy who mouths that passing is everything and those mediots who agree with him, 28ppg is not a pass first player,,,sorry
i will posit that if lebron was more like "magic" he might have had better teams, those miami teams had all the makings - the goat of it's generation, fire power, and great D. but none of those teams are in anybody's "greatest teams" i would surmise. heck, they're not even top3 it it's own decade!
the fascination of lebron is the package not the deeds.
a 6/8 linebacker with pg skills and we may not see that for a long long time. but i think that has clouded people over the hard numbers. because in that club of GOATS,
they only care about the rings. and i would guess they aren't too bowled over by the way lebron chased his rings. 11 teams of his choosing, two really bad teams, a failed year, a ring against a team that was almost as young as the 77 blazers, a lucky ring vengefully reclaimed the very next year by that same spur team against that same heat team 4-1. a covid ring, and a once in a lifetime come from behind ring
for a "goat" who has basically had his way, i'd say lebron's hardware is a bit sheepish and underwhelming
Great post!
Cannot disagree with any of this but I will offer that the Miami talents in S. Beach teams had Bosh and Birdman as the bigs. D Wade at the time was probably most alpha even with Prime Lebron.
The personality of MJ with attack dogs like Pippen, Rodman and the rest of the Bulls...was probably more to do with all time great. The Celtics of the 80s...come on man. Way better bigs and Bird, but the Heat might have taken them. Golden State a few years back vs Miami...
Back to Lebron: He will play where he wants and I think he has earned the right
i find it hard to extrapolate across eras with players, much less teams. with all the cross comparing that goes on in basketball, TEAMS are normally no part of the discussion. case in point - how many goat team discussion are there on realgm compared to goat player discussions. teams are relegated to their eras,,,,probably because basketball is about star players.
so i'm not going to join you in discussing what team can beat what team. it's just not done. teams function as part of their era, rules, system, and zeitgeist. much much less so with players. with players it's always skillset versus skillset or athleticism versus athleticism,,,mano a mano.
suffice it to say, when people talk about great TEAMS, the lebron teams are not part of that discussion. there's any number of 60s celts, maybe the holzman knicks, that awesome '68 philly team, the bird and magic teams, the jordan teams, maybe even a bad boy team though i doubt it. the kobe shaq teams, a few spur teams including the one that trounced miami, and the gsw 73win team and a kd team......there's almost 20 great teams before lebron gets a chance at a whiff of their poo.
back to lebron...he will go where he wants but i think it'll be harder than anyone thinks. it'll be a package deal with bronny and that's a given, straight from the horse's mouth. is any team seriouly willing to do that. lebron at this very moment is causing more trouble for the lakers than any team he's ever been on. what will a team give up for that AND be forced to draft bronny as well.
