MJ VS LEBRON VS WHOEVER THREAD

[Kamby93]

lebron has been the best player in the finals 7 times now, jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams. lebron may also end up with 40k/10k/10k which is insane. lebron is the clear-cut goat and it's not even close.

You can’t be the Goat and lose most of your finals, especially when you chickened out on your team to go play with your friends.

Jordon would NEVER, I mean NEVER go play with other players on another team.

Lebron can be 2nd and remove Kareem but he cemented his legacy

A lot more goes into winning the championship than who’s the better player. Your team gotta hit shots, your opponent gotta miss shots etc too many variables. It’s lazy to JUST look at rings without context

[Gooner]

also if we add higschool and college, bill russell was ALWAYS winning..

Dude literally won the olympics by a record margin, won b2b with a school that had never even made the ncaa, and topped it off by taking an average offense to the greatest dynasty ever.


All while fighting racism and breaking barriers for people of color everywhere. Jordan got shoe deals tho.

He got shoe deals not just for himself, but for guys like LeBron aswell. LeBron is riding on MJ's coattails when it comes to marketing.

[freethedevil]

lebron has been the best player in the finals 7 times now, jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams. lebron may also end up with 40k/10k/10k which is insane. lebron is the clear-cut goat and it's not even close.

You can’t be the Goat and lose most of your finals, especially when you chickened out on your team to go play with your friends.

Jordon would NEVER, I mean NEVER go play with other players on another team.

You're right, he'd just reitre having achieved half of what past greats achieved before.

Lebron chased something, Jordan lacked even the conviction to try.

[Kamby93]

jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams.

That's straight up not true. In 91 and 98 the Lakers and Jazz were the favorites to win it all. In 93 it was a toss up at with a lot of people thinking the Suns were the better team over the back-to-back champs.

If I recall correctly weren’t the lakers on the back 9 and injured ? Also ‘98 how old were Stockton and Malone ? 50??

[marcush]

Surprisingly, basketball didn't begin in the 90's. This feels relevant, considering that outside of his team's achievements, he's just Lebron without the sustained excellence.

Duncan and Kobe have 5. You can slot them in above Lebron also.

[freethedevil]

also if we add higschool and college, bill russell was ALWAYS winning..

Dude literally won the olympics by a record margin, won b2b with a school that had never even made the ncaa, and topped it off by taking an average offense to the greatest dynasty ever.


All while fighting racism and breaking barriers for people of color everywhere. Jordan got shoe deals tho.

He got shoe deals not just for himself, but for guys like LeBron aswell. LeBron is riding on MJ's coattails when it comes to marketing.

And jordan is running on mikan's coattails for superstardom. Everyone rides coattails. The difference is Lebron kept riding, Jordan just quit.

[Kamby93]

I dn't have time ATM to look up each player's playoff history, but let's say each player gets:

1 point for first round playoff exit
2 points for second round playoff exit
3 points for Confernce Finals loss
4 points for Finals loss
5 points for Finals win

Who wins on points?

Why would you give any points for a first round playoff exit. You should subtract points for that.

Zero points for not making the playoffs. Getting a team there and/or a winning record should count for something. Otherwise, you're saying the 82 games of the regular season means squat.

This is the problem today everyone is obsessed and only cares for “rings” without context. And then we complain about regular season ratings..if we don’t care why should the players. IMO it’s harder and more impressive gettin up for 82 games

[marcush]

lebron has been the best player in the finals 7 times now, jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams. lebron may also end up with 40k/10k/10k which is insane. lebron is the clear-cut goat and it's not even close.

You can’t be the Goat and lose most of your finals, especially when you chickened out on your team to go play with your friends.

Jordon would NEVER, I mean NEVER go play with other players on another team.

You're right, he'd just reitre having achieved half of what past greats achieved before.

Lebron chased something, Jordan lacked even the conviction to try.

Lebron gets the effort award. MJ gets the rings.

[Kamby93]

LeBron is great. No question about it, but if we are going to play this game then let’s stop talking about how he dragged a team that didn’t deserve it to the NBA finals. He played in the Eastern conference during it’s weakest era. Later on he benefited by joining forces with his two biggest conference rivals and benefited from an elite Bulls team being destroyed by Rose’s injury.

Also what blatant disrespect to Magic Johnson/Worthy, Drexler/Porter, Barkley/KJ, Kemp/Payton, and Malone/Stockton. None of those teams were as good as the Warriors but Jordan bulldozed through hall of famers to get his rings.

What competition did Jordan have when he started winning the east ? Knicks ? Reggie Miller and the pacers ? .. the NBA talent was more diluted back then with expansion teams coming in making every team worse tbh

[Fencer reregistered]

Russell is my #1 in the GOAT rankings, for a variety of reasons. The big one that's perhaps least discussed is how radically he changed the game. Leaving your feet to defend was thought of as wrong, and he defied conventional wisdom (including his own coach).

I'm also impressed that he was such a strong activist for civil rights while also almost completely shrugging off the racism when it was time to be a basketball teammate. Few other guys came close to that to my knowledge. Russell's teammates found him somewhat hard to deal with given all his anger -- but not so hard that it was a detriment to depending on him and winning with him.

[freethedevil]

You can’t be the Goat and lose most of your finals, especially when you chickened out on your team to go play with your friends.

Jordon would NEVER, I mean NEVER go play with other players on another team.

You're right, he'd just reitre having achieved half of what past greats achieved before.

Lebron chased something, Jordan lacked even the conviction to try.

Lebron gets the effort award. MJ gets the rings.

But he didn't?

achieved half of what past greats achieved before.

He fell about 5 short. A for effort though.

[marcush]

Dude literally won the olympics by a record margin, won b2b with a school that had never even made the ncaa, and topped it off by taking an average offense to the greatest dynasty ever.


All while fighting racism and breaking barriers for people of color everywhere. Jordan got shoe deals tho.

He got shoe deals not just for himself, but for guys like LeBron aswell. LeBron is riding on MJ's coattails when it comes to marketing.

And jordan is running on mikan's coattails for superstardom. Everyone rides coattails. The difference is Lebron kept riding, Jordan just quit.

George Mikan?

[freethedevil]

Russell is my #1 in the GOAT rankings, for a variety of reasons. The big one that's perhaps least discussed is how radically he changed the game. Leaving your feet to defend was thought of as wrong, and he defied conventional wisdom (including his own coach).

It's actually laughable how 2000's fans repeat "no one cared about effiency" when Russell clearly did and planned accordingly. When someone from the 50's solves analytics, you only have yourself to blame.

[Kamby93]

Well, Lebron is more penalized for his Finals losses than a player who loses in earlier rounds of the playoffs.

It's all about context. He formed two super teams and he played in a very weak east. Getting to the finals was minimum requirement, but when he faced the team that was of the same caliber as his, he would lose for the most part. It's a major knock on his legacy whether his fans like it or not.

1. We saw the cavs without lebron but with kyrie and love.. didn’t they go something like 3-17 in games lebron didn’t play? And heat superteam was true maybe year 1 then wade was shot. What were his playoffs numbers year 3-4 of that run? Plus he was missing a lot of games in the reg season

[freethedevil]

He got shoe deals not just for himself, but for guys like LeBron aswell. LeBron is riding on MJ's coattails when it comes to marketing.

And jordan is running on mikan's coattails for superstardom. Everyone rides coattails. The difference is Lebron kept riding, Jordan just quit.

George Mikan?

Yes, the man who made superstardom possible. Basketball wasn't always a well-paid profession, you know.

[pontius]

jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams.

That's straight up not true. In 91 and 98 the Lakers and Jazz were the favorites to win it all. In 93 it was a toss up at with a lot of people thinking the Suns were the better team over the back-to-back champs.

If I recall correctly weren’t the lakers on the back 9 and injured ? Also ‘98 how old were Stockton and Malone ? 50??

It don't matter. I'm just mentioning how they were regarded as the favorites going into the finals. For the Lakers an explanation is that at the time Jordan was seen as somebody who's not a winner going against a proven team (similar to LeBron after 2011). For the Jazz in 1998 people thought it was time for the Bulls to lose and the Jazz were really a great team despite the age of their stars (Bulls weren't much younger than them either). For the Jazz there was a Baltimore Sun article from 1998 that was shared here before, that details the betting odds in the Jazz's favor.

[freethedevil]

lebron has been the best player in the finals 7 times now, jordan only made the finals 6 times playing inferior teams. lebron may also end up with 40k/10k/10k which is insane. lebron is the clear-cut goat and it's not even close.

You can’t be the Goat and lose most of your finals, especially when you chickened out on your team to go play with your friends.

Jordon would NEVER, I mean NEVER go play with other players on another team.

Lebron can be 2nd and remove Kareem but he cemented his legacy

Let me get this straight, Lebron can remove kareem, but he can't remove the one who won waaay less than kareem did?

[Fencer reregistered]

also if we add higschool and college, bill russell was ALWAYS winning..

Dude literally won the olympics by a record margin, won b2b with a school that had never even made the ncaa, and topped it off by taking an average offense to the greatest dynasty ever.


All while fighting racism and breaking barriers for people of color everywhere. Jordan got shoe deals tho.

I rate Jordan in the GOAT rankings lower than most people do, given that I have biases for longevity and against the on-court changes Jordan brought to the game.

But I do think that having a black celebrity be as popular as Jordan was a big deal in itself. (Ditto for having a player of any color be popular around the world.)

[freethedevil]

also if we add higschool and college, bill russell was ALWAYS winning..

Dude literally won the olympics by a record margin, won b2b with a school that had never even made the ncaa, and topped it off by taking an average offense to the greatest dynasty ever.


All while fighting racism and breaking barriers for people of color everywhere. Jordan got shoe deals tho.

I rate Jordan in the GOAT rankings lower than most people do, given that I have biases for longevity and against the on-court changes Jordan brought to the game.

But I do think that having a black celebrity be as popular as Jordan was a big deal in itself. (Ditto for having a player of any color be popular around the world.)

This is true. In Jordan's absence, I wonder how long Magic would have kept that torch. Is his comeback from aids viewed simarly as jordan's from baseball?

[Pythagoras]

Outside of perhaps Tom Brady stans, Lebron stans have got be some of the most insecure fans about their boy in American sports.