Explain this remark by Iavaroni.

[Craig McDermott]

"LeBron is fantastic," Memphis coach Marc Iavaroni said. "I think he's got more passing ability than Magic [Johnson] because he can put it on a dime and with zip. It's a function of his ability to score. He allows people to get free. He's 6-foot-9, and he can see."

he did have a GREAT game though 51(18-28), 9asst, 8rb, 3stls

Do you think he really believes this or is he fellating Bron in the hopes that he passes more next time they play the Grizzlies?

[Blazing_royale]

Iavaroni is obviously suckin Lebron's 5 inch Dank

[noxe]

Iavaroni didn't see the news about Cavs extending Mike Brown's contract

[JellosJigglin]

Dude just forgot to take his medication.

[Craig McDermott]

This is the kind of on the dime w/ zip pass that Magic couldn't make. Note: Iavaroni was sitting on Utah's bench in this clip.

http://files.filefront.com/magic2mpg/;9448692;/fileinfo.html

[celticfan42487]

Well Magic Johnson was pretty much Lebron beign played at the PG spot.

I never considered him a PG, just like I don't consider Lebron one. There a goat guard.

I think I said this on the what postion is the harderst to win a champioship with and I said PG by far and everyone was like zoinks zee magic though!

[L&H_05]

(*The music is awful*)

The one in the playoffs against the Wizards at the 1:52 mark is my absolute favorite from LBJ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfW1669YixI

I don't think LBJ is a better passer than Magic... But, I do believe he's one of the most talented passers in the league...

[LiquidFire]

(*The music is awful*)

The one in the playoffs against the Wizards at the 1:52 mark is my absolute favorite from LBJ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfW1669YixI

I don't think LBJ is a better passer than Magic... But, I do believe he's one of the most talented passers in the league...

Did that go threw his shoulder? lol that was crazy.

also 2:52 is sick also

[The Letter J]

(*The music is awful*)

The one in the playoffs against the Wizards at the 1:52 mark is my absolute favorite from LBJ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfW1669YixI

That is one of the nastiest passes I've seen. Slow motion makes it look even crazier.

[tsherkin]

Yeah, Iavaroni is an idiot for making that comment.

The major differences between Magic and Lebron include about 20 extra pounds of muscle over Magic's prime weight of 230, and a great deal of extra leaping ability and speed.

Magic was a better passer and even if you choose to debate that, which is certainly something one might be inclined to do if one has seen some of the dirty passes Lebron has thrown, you still can't possibly agree that there are passes out there that Lebron can throw that Magic couldn't... Magic made passes like the one in that clip vs. Utah pretty much every half.

[Balls]

The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.

[D.Brasco]

Yeah, Iavaroni is an idiot for making that comment.

The major differences between Magic and Lebron include about 20 extra pounds of muscle over Magic's prime weight of 230, and a great deal of extra leaping ability and speed.

Magic was a better passer and even if you choose to debate that, which is certainly something one might be inclined to do if one has seen some of the dirty passes Lebron has thrown, you still can't possibly agree that there are passes out there that Lebron can throw that Magic couldn't... Magic made passes like the one in that clip vs. Utah pretty much every half.

Im wondering if someone can maybe make an analyses of the different ways lebron and magic playmake. I know magic did most of his passing out of the fast breaks as for lebron could you say he's more of a post-up passer ala bird?

[Craig McDermott]

-= original quote snipped =-

Im wondering if someone can maybe make an analyses of the different ways lebron and magic playmake. I know magic did most of his passing out of the fast breaks as for lebron could you say he's more of a post-up passer ala bird?

The difference is simply that Magic was a more skillful passer than anyone but Maravich, who was a gym fiend. That includes Stockton, who meat and potatoes. The volume of fantastic passes he converted in ONE game and the fact that Earvin ran the team puts Bron out of his league. Bron is a mimicker in my eyes. He makes one or two slick passes in a game, Magic did it nearly all game long.

Magic was above any of his contemporaries save for Bird in terms of correcting a broken play with a instant recognition of the next open man. Example, he sets a guy up, the ball goes loose and if Magic gets it back, boom, into the next guy's hands. Magic was the best I've ever seen at improvising on breaks when someone snuck up on him for a steal (think the behind-the-back pass to Scott vs Phx that is on all of his highlight reels). Magic's head was so into a game that he would direct his players on a nightly basis where to position themselves on the opening tap. At times, a teammate would zone out and not recognize that he had a good look or a mismatch and Magic would yell "shoot it" at them. Bron is not closer to Bird than Magic. Magic and Bird were one and the same.

I guarantee you if Magic was playing today, he'd be winning annual MVPs. This would be his league. The recency effect has made his career a little more hazy w/ each passing year.

[INKtastic]

It's kind of hard to compare the two as passers when they played in different eras, at different paces, and with different quality of players to pass to. Also when the comparison is a hall of fame career vs an in progress career

For instance, in 84, magic had these starters to pass to

Kareem, who shot .578 that year
Wilks - .514
Worthy - .556
McGee - .594

That's 2 of the 50 best players of the NBA's first 50 years, and hall of famer Bob McAdoo came off the bench. The 08 cavs have these guys

Z - .465
Gooden - .437
Pavlovic - .340
Hughes - .333

[5DOM]

It's kind of hard to compare the two as passers when they played in different eras, at different paces, and with different quality of players to pass to. Also when the comparison is a hall of fame career vs an in progress career

For instance, in 84, magic had these starters to pass to

Kareem, who shot .578 that year
Wilks - .514
Worthy - .556
McGee - .594

That's 2 of the 50 best players of the NBA's first 50 years, and hall of famer Bob McAdoo came off the bench. The 08 cavs have these guys

Z - .465
Gooden - .437
Pavlovic - .340
Hughes - .333

maybe its magic's passes that helped them to shoot well

[tsherkin]

-= original quote snipped =-



Im wondering if someone can maybe make an analyses of the different ways lebron and magic playmake. I know magic did most of his passing out of the fast breaks as for lebron could you say he's more of a post-up passer ala bird?

That's not actually true in the strictest sense of the word. Magic did a LOT of passing from the top of the circle on the halfcourt, posting and re-posting with Kareem and Worthy, he worked the post-up game (usually on the left block) and passed from there... He passed from everywhere.

Lebron is a fine passer but Magic was pretty well the best passer ever.. I mean, you can argue that Pete Maravich was more technically skilled at delivering the pass and that would be fine, but pretty much no one in league history was able to do what Magic did on a nightly basis.

As for lj4mvp's comments, let's consider the 95-96 season...

Magic tossed down 14.6 ppg, 5.7 rpg and 6.9 apg in 29.9 mpg. That'd be a top-3 season for Lebron (who's never played less than 39.5 mpg and has never played less than 40 mpg in a season in which he averaged 7+ apg) and it was actually Magic's worst season as a passer.

And he was playing for the 95-96 Lakers... and he was 36, fat and out of shape and dealing with HIV and hadn't played really since the 90-91 season (except at the '92 All-Star game and the Olympics that year and I believe he also played in Europe briefly).

You're talking Cedric Ceballos, Elden Campbell, Nick Van Exel, Vlade Divac, Eddie Jones, Anthony Peeler, Sedale Threatt... He had a couple of decent-to-very-good three point shooters and his bigs were OK but that was not a team that was much better than what Lebron has in terms of finishers.

Magic was able to effectively prove that he was not a product of his teammates. And really, if you consider the heavy decline of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the end of Magic's career, it becomes even clearer. By '87, he wasn't even scoring 18 ppg (though Byron Scott had stepped up, sort of your high-energy and commonly replaceable small off-guard with a shot). Kareem didn't even manage 15 ppg in '88, though Byron Scott lead the team in scoring.

Kareem was barely a double-digit scorer in '89 (10.1 ppg), so Magic was relying on Worthy, his own scoring and Byron Scott. Kareem retired after that year, leaving Magic with Worthy and Scott as his major finishers. A solid pair, to be sure, but nothing so special as to be out of the ordinary.

And while it's also true that he was injured, Worthy was never the same after Magic retired, his FG% bottoming out. It dropped by 4.5% that first year, then stayed at 44.7% for another year, then pitted out at 40.6% in his last year.

Magic got everyone such easy buckets because he was a threat to pass as soon as his team got him the ball (and he often did this himself because he was a good rebounder and was reasonably decent at playing the passing lanes to ignite the break. He was also a guy who threw a lot of accurate LONG passes, something that's a bit of a lost art today. And he was also a threat for an alley-oop as soon as he hit the halfcourt line, which made him that much more dangerous when he had athletes on the floor.

And again, he was able to function effectively on the ball with greater frequency than Lebron. Lebron seems better-off as a dynamic playmaking scorer rather than a point guard type, while the reverse was true of Magic, who only ever scored out of necessity when Kareem started to decline.

[INKtastic]

YOu do realize, don't you, that even those declining numbers from the all time great's that Magic had to play with are still far better than what LeBron has to work with, right?

Z averages 13.2 ppg
Hughes shoots .333 and averages 9.4

replace that pair with Kareem and Worthy and don't you think LeBron would get more assists? How hard it it, really, to assist the sky hook? Just look at what LeBron did when he played with some real talent on Team USA - playing beside 3 of the top 5 PGs in the league, LeBron led the team in assists.

I'm not saying that LeBron is a better passer than Magic, I'm saying it's hard to even compare them given the vast difference in the quality of who they have to pass to.

[tsherkin]

YOu do realize, don't you, that even those declining numbers from the all time great's that Magic had to play with are still far better than what LeBron has to work with, right?

Z averages 13.2 ppg
Hughes shoots .333 and averages 9.4

Hughes is very much inexcusably terrible.

replace that pair with Kareem and Worthy and don't you think LeBron would get more assists? How hard it it, really, to assist the sky hook? Just look at what LeBron did when he played with some real talent on Team USA - playing beside 3 of the top 5 PGs in the league, LeBron led the team in assists.

Uh huh... he leads his team in assists now and is very much a team-oriented player. But Team USA and the Showtime Lakers are considerably different.

I'm not saying that LeBron is a better passer than Magic, I'm saying it's hard to even compare them given the vast difference in the quality of who they have to pass to.

I don't think so, though; post-Kareem, yes, Magic had Worthy but the rest of the guys on the team weren't stunners and Worthy was like Amare or Marion... a very good player who could do a lot on his own and who's FG% was MASSIVELY padded by his PG.

Magic created opportunities on a regular basis that other PGs could not, including Lebron.

Everyone should appreciate what LBJ brings, he and Penny are the closest things to Magic we've seen since his retirement in terms of tall guys with passing ability but neither Penny nor Lebron had the same level of technical proficiency as Magic.

You don't have to be an especially skilled player to score when Magic was on the floor; a LOT of Kareem's points came flat-footed when Magic decided he was going to make a ridiculous pass through like three guys so Kareem could just get an open dunk. Big Z could've hit those shots as well.

Yes, Kareem also had the skyhook but the skyhook was not always an assisted basket... Kareem liked to shimmy and shake and take his time.

In fact, Chick Hearn's famous call pretty much covers that, you know? Magic into Kareem, fakes left, shoots right, skyhook's good! I'm paraphrasing of course but you can find the .wav or MIDI or whatever.

Realistically, it's erroneous to consider that a significant portion of Magic's assists were on skyhooks from Kareem. Most of the assisted baskets Kareem got from Magic were actually dunks. He also threw a lot of early alleys to Worthy, Cooper and Scott and did a lot of damage in transition... but then there were those times when he was posting up and throwing no-lookers over his shoulder to the guy on the opposite block or hitting shooters on the perimeter, or the times he created off the dribble...

Magic was a much more effective post player than Lebron is (at present, and speaking in terms of overall efficacy and not scoring ability) and was almost unequivocally a more technically skilled passer.

I've seen Lebron throw some fine passes... but then I've see Rafael Araujo throw some fine passes, too (not to directly equate the two, of course). My point is that what Lebron does that wows the crowd once or twice a game, Magic was doing that and more any given time he had the ball. Yeah, he made a lot of fundamental passes but he was much more readily capable of tossing that "ZOMG, WTF just happened?!?" pass than Lebron and that's not a reflection on his teammates.

Well, the alley-oops are, that requires a certain level of athleticism and coordination but Hughes can finish alleys and I think that he doesn't see them because Mike Brown is on crack when it comes to offensive sets and for not letting Cleveland increase the pace. Let Z trail all he wants, many teams (including the Showtime Lakers) got by without their big man being able to keep up. Definitely a modern trend I do not understand.

Anyway, no, I passionately disagree that it is impossible to compare the two. I've seen plenty of Lebron and much, much more of Magic and can definitely state that Magic was a better passer.

It's not a crime to be worse than one of the top 5 or 6 guys in NBA history, lbj; Magic was arguably the best passer in the history of the league. The only guys who should even be in the same breath as him are Stockton (for what he was capable of achieving with mostly fundamental passes and with less technical proficiency than Magic), Oscar Robertson and Bird, really.

[Blue_Bomber]

[quote="tsherkin"][/quote]
I agree with where you're coming from, but have you ever seen Larry Hughes try to "finish" anything lately? The guy has no lift, when he does finish, he does it below the rim (usually missing actually)

[Sedale Threatt]

I'm glad you mentioned Bird.

I think he's a much better comparison for LBJ in terms of passing. Whereas Magic's entire game was built around setting up his teammates, Bird and LBJ were/are both exceptional passers whose abilities in that facet take a back seat to their scoring.

I'll leave it to Sherk to expand on the details. But for starters, their averages are virtually identical (6.5 apg for LBJ to 6.3 apg for Bird) and Bird was every bit as slick as LeBron is. But I feared both those guys as scorers/shooters first. Magic, on the other hand, could dominate without scoring a single point.

Different games, different roles.

Although let me echo what Sherk said -- it's no crime that LeBron takes a backseat to guys like Magic and Stockton and Oscar. In fact, it shows you how truly remarkable he is, for all his physical talent and scoring ability, that he can be favorably compared as a passer.

Just goes to show what an amazingly unique player he is.