Larry Bird vs Lebron James - Greatest SF of all Time

[Grandpa Waiters]

Yeah, Bird only had to compete against second rate SFs like Dr.J, Wilkins, King, English, Worthy & Gervin in an era where everyone played man to man.

ROTFL. Bird couldn't play today? Watch some tape of a late 80's or early '90's Bird (who was past his peak) but still scoring buckets on Scottie Pippen, who's arguably the GOAT perimeter defender ever. Whenever people dump on Bird I wonder if there's a hint of racism involved. Whenever posters claim that certain players from the '80's couldn't hack it today they never mention black players, just players like Bird, McHale, Kiki Vandeweghe etc. Let's face it, if Steve Nash played in the '80's posters would be claiming he'd get murdered today. Racism.

A little too far, no?

Why not just ask him to further expound on his point. Larry is a top 10 player....the comment was more around position not that he couldn't play altogether.

I don't think so. I think it's obviously implied. Bird went up against all world athletes and defenders like Bobby Jones, Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins, Michael Cooper, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen etc. Why would anyone doubt his ability to play today? Racism and stereotyping mostly.

[MacGill]

ROTFL. Bird couldn't play today? Watch some tape of a late 80's or early '90's Bird (who was past his peak) but still scoring buckets on Scottie Pippen, who's arguably the GOAT perimeter defender ever. Whenever people dump on Bird I wonder if there's a hint of racism involved. Whenever posters claim that certain players from the '80's couldn't hack it today they never mention black players, just players like Bird, McHale, Kiki Vandeweghe etc. Let's face it, if Steve Nash played in the '80's posters would be claiming he'd get murdered today. Racism.

A little too far, no?

Why not just ask him to further expound on his point. Larry is a top 10 player....the comment was more around position not that he couldn't play altogether.

I don't think so. I think it's obviously implied. Bird went up against all world athletes and defenders like Bobby Jones, Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins, Michael Cooper, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen etc. Why would anyone doubt his ability to play today? Racism and stereotyping mostly.

And Bird is unanimously ranked well ahead of those guys, so is that racism as well?

Dude, that's a pretty big accusation you're making here. Based on just notes from an internet forum. Just seems like a copout response to me. Anyway man, I'll make no further comment on the issue.

[prs]

I think Bird is a better player and I'd pick him for my team.

Career wise though they are close now and Lebron will probably pass him with longevity.

Lebrons defense is still being highly overrated though....

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

It is utterl pointless to compare them based on the year of their career. Bird had more help as a rookie than Lebron ever did in Cleveland, so team success isn't a meaningul point of conversation.

Too, Lebron was 19 and 20 in his first two years, without any college at all. Bird was 23 and had three years of college ball. There's a mix of physical, mental and skill maturation to consider beyond the radical differences in roster support.

I agree that it is unfair to expect players coming out of high school to be at the same level of career development as older players with 4 years of college experience.

How many years of college experience equals a year of NBA experience? I think 1 +1/2 tears of pro ball is = equal to 4 years of college as far as experience. There would be a bigger psychological problem for a player who turns pro before they have the skills to play pro ball.

What are 4 years of human maturity worth? Kids have more passion. Adults have more self control. 18 year olds are children that can function as adults. 22 year olds are more adult but are still immature compared to 30 year olds. For socially well adjusted people I don't think the emotional maturity that comes with ageing is as relevant to basketball performance as the basketball maturity that comes with playing in the NBA playoffs is.

Bodies get stronger between ages 18 and the late 20s but. The slowing that we are all aware of in 30 year olds probably starts less notably in the early 20s. The increase in the feel for basketball that happens to young NBA players makes it hard to notice their slowing during their early to mid 20s because their increase in moving in the right ways more than offsets any loss of raw quickness until their late 20s or first bad injuries.

I don't know that Lebron's weight training has helped him. Carrying around those heavy muscles has definitely slowed Lebron down some but he has continued to increase his skills so is still getting better. Lebron gets some benefit out of his power muscles but his game is still based more on quickness than power so I think Lebron might be even better if he was not carry so much upper body muscle.

It is utterl pointless to compare them based on the year of their career. Bird had more help as a rookie than Lebron ever did in Cleveland, so team success isn't a meaningul point of conversation.

Here I quibble over the details. Just talking about Bird's rookie year prior to the arrival of Parish and McHale, Birds team was not was not all that talented. The Celtics won 29 games the year before Bird arrived and won 61 games in Bird's rookie year. What changed?

Cowens was continuing to decline even if his defensive effort got better. This Cowens was not a starting quality Center. Age and injuries had taken their toll. I loved Cedric Maxwell. Maxwell was the best Celtic Prior to Bird's arrival. But Maxwell and Bird ( and really Cowens as well) were all power forwards. Luckily Maxwell learned how to defend small forwards because Bird lacked the speed to defend small forwards.

Cedric Maxwell was underrated but Maxwell better than the best player that Lebron played with in Cleveland?

Nate Archibald healed somewhat from his injuries during the off season prior to Bird's arrival. Nate was not the super Nate Archibald of the mid 1970s but old Nate got good enough to be an above average starting point guard.

The got a new coach Bill Fitch. The team played much harder than they had the previous year. If Bird helped get the team to play hard then give Bird credit for that.

There was more player continuity. The Celtics had gone through a phase of extreme changes in player personal. Other than Bird and Henderson the rest of the players had played at least 30 games together the previous year.

Chris Ford, ML Carr and Rick Robey played between 20 and 30 minutes a game. They played reasonably well but these are not players that were better than Lebron's teamates.

Gerald Henderson and Jeff Judkins played 10 to 15 minutes a game. Henderson was a raw rookie out of the CBA who would a few years later become a quality player. Judkins helped the Celtics but he was not talented enough to be remembered by anyone but Celtic fans. Was a 2nd round draft pick the year before Bird arrived. Judkins got his chance because he would hustle on the otherwise demoralized pre Bird Celtics. Judkins. Judkins was only in the league 3 more years never played much because he was not very good.

Eric Fernstien and 33 year old Don Chaney playing his last year were not really factors.

It may not be true that "Bird had more help as a rookie than Lebron ever did in Cleveland"

[bledredwine]

Peak bird is certainly the better offensive player, but Lebron makes this a close call just because he's a great defensive presence. But playoffs are how I judge a player and Bird would be the better scorer, rebounder, and playmaker. And people always mention less-skilled players when discussing intangibles, but IMO Bird is One of the best examples of that weve seen. His impact on the game was tremendous. I'd take Bird.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

To the thread: Bird was a power forward. I don't care if the Celtics public relations or whoever in 1979 decided to call Bird a small forward. Bird was a power forward. Replace Cedric Maxwell on the Celtics with Magic Johnson and nobody would ever call Bird a small forward.

Yes McHale and Maxwell were also power forwards and they were low post scorers but they had to defend the small forwards while Bird defended the power forwards. ML Carr also defended the small forwards.

Bird had the foot speed and strength and size of a power forward. Bird also was a great low post scorer. Playing with Maxwell, McHale and Parish made Bird play farther away from the basket than he would have on a team that was not already loaded with quality low post scorers. Bird probably would have had a higher FG percentage on a team with Chris Mullin and Dirk Nowitzki instead of Maxwell and McHale because then Bird would be the low post scorer.

If we don't call Dirk Nowitzki a shooting guard because he is such a good shooter then why do we call Bird a small forward just because he could shoot, pass and be creative?

[tsherkin]

Here I quibble over the details. Just talking about Bird's rookie year prior to the arrival of Parish and McHale, Birds team was not was not all that talented. The Celtics won 29 games the year before Bird arrived and won 61 games in Bird's rookie year. What changed?

Tiny Archibald playing 11 more games and 10 more minutes per game didn't hurt. Bird's presence was obviously huge, of course. But yes, Maxwell was easily better than anyone with whom Lebron played in Cleveland.

1980 Nate was a 14/8, 115 ORTG player and was at least as good as Mo Williams ever was.

It may not be true that "Bird had more help as a rookie than Lebron ever did in Cleveland"

I think it's pretty clear that it is. Lebron never had a second option as strong as Maxwell at any point in his Cleveland career, let alone a 2-3 punch to his #1 like Nate the Skate and Maxwell together.

Then in 81, his second season, they won three rounds to win the NBA title. By that point, they'd added the ~ 19/10 Parish and rookie McHale, at which point it would be entirely false to claim that any Cleveland team with Lebron ever fielded that much talent, since Maxwell and Nate were still there. It only improved from there for Bird as they eventually acquired Ainge and DJ. He played with WAY more talent than Lebron's Cavs days, so it's hardly a surprise that there is a radical difference in team success.

Again though, even as a rookie, Bird had more to work with than even 09 and 10 Lebron, and the depth on offense makes that pretty clear. In Lebron's best years in Cleveland, he was working with Mo Williams, Big Z (65 games) and Delonte West (64 G). That doesn't at all compare. Anderson Varejao was useful as well, but more on D than on O. The year after, they added injured Shaq and waste-of-skin Jamison, as well as Anthony Parker. The team was riddled with injuries and Antawn Jamison crapped himself from 3 all year long, but especially in the playoffs. Shaq wasn't able to find any serious traction in the league post-Phoenix and while the Cavs were titans in the EC regular season, they ran into Boston and everything fell apart. Williams was weak sauce, Shaq couldn't play more than 25 minutes or so, Parker wasn't a legit second option (and by that point was fairly old), etc, etc.

Boston was definitely much more balanced. You can draw at least some sort of argument that, when healthy, the 2010 Cavs squad compared to the 1980 Boston team in terms of theoretical depth, but in practice, the results were very different... especially taking a more polished player in 23 year-old Bird versus 19 year-old Lebron and seeing who had greater impact.

The point I was making, though, is that using team success doesn't make sense. It is blindingly apparent after their rookie years, of course, irrefutably the case that Bird had more to work with, but even in that rookie season (and factoring out the age difference), it really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare team success directly during those stretches.

Say what you will ultimately about who ranks higher or is better, etc, etc, but team success is intimately related to roster and Lebron's Cavs rosters were strong defensively and mostly unimpressive offensively and in terms of actual talent.

Mo Williams was a one-time All-Star who made it in as an injury replacement. Big Z was a two-time All-Star... 2003 and 2005. By those later years, he was a low-minutes guy who couldn't be a big-time impact player. Shaq was a year away from retirement. Jamison had fallen completely apart. Parker had played a full career in Europe, then three years with Toronto before hitting Cleveland at 34 and overlapping with Lebron for a year (just like Shaq and Jamison... the latter of whom played 25 RS games and then the playoffs, and sucked).

And Mike Brown wasn't really a stellar offensive coach, though he worked the defensive system well enough.

Cleveland management didn't do a particularly good job, while Boston was able to exploit Nate's return to health and the quality of Cedric Maxwell right away. Would I say rookie Bird was better than rookie Lebron?

For sure, though given the nearly half-decade difference in age and the college difference, I can't say that is terribly surprising or meaningful.

This is the stuff I'm talking about, a direct comparison in terms of team success really falls apart along several seams.

[Gideon]

Bird and LeBron are both "combo forwards" who can play either 3 or 4 (and have played both positions at times throughout their careers). IMO they're also the two best forwards to ever play basketball by a pretty wide margin. I can dig arguments for either player, and I think they're both top-6 all-timers. I picked Bird in the poll, but I think it's damn close... really into that "blur zone" where we're talking subjective preferences and intuition more than any sort of clear difference in quality of play/impact.

I feel like the question here (which is basically unanswerable, but fun to debate) is not which one of Bird or LeBron is "the greatest small forward ever" but which one is "the greatest forward ever." I have lots of respect for Dr. J, Dirk, and KG, but I still would place Bird and LBJ in their own super-elite category, a notch above even those three, as far as the forward position goes. My "hypothetical all-time greatest team" definitely features Bird and LBJ as the two starting forwards.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Bird was a power forward. But who was a better forward, Bird, Lebron or Duncan? I am calling Duncan a center so forget Duncan.

Bird is the better passer.

The gap between Bird's passing ability and Lebron's passing ability is larger than what shows up in the assist numbers. Lebron has the ball in his hand for a much larger percentage of the game than Bird does. The reason Lebron has the ball in his hands more than Bird does is not because Lebron's teamates were bad ball handlers. The reason Lebron has the ball is because he is the player most likely to do the most good with the ball and you can not force Lebron to give up the ball without doubling him. Bird also was the best player to have the ball in his hands but, you could take away Bird's dribble towards the basket if you defend Bird with a small forward.

On a normal team defending Bird with a small forward would mean that Bird would set up in the low post and exploit that small forward down low. On the Celtics Bird setting up to exploit say Michael Cooper or Paul Pressey under the basket would result in clogging the lane for McHale or Maxwell both of whom were not accustomed to shooting from beyond shortish-midrange. Parish often shot from mid-midrange but he also was better closer to the basket. Bird did take the ball low a lot and it was not so much of a problem because he was such a good interior passer even in a crowd and he had good targets to pass to.

Quick point guards would stop Steve Nash from dribbling towards the basket which was no problem for Nash because if he could not dribble towards the basket he would dribble somewhere else and eventually some opportunity would open up for Nash to exploit. Bird often used the Nash technique to handle not being able to dribble towards the basket when defended by Cooper or Pressey or other quality fast defenders. Lebron does not have the problem that Bird an Nash had. Lebron can beat his defender off the dribble. Lebron does not have to work hard to deal with a player trying to deny his dribble. Defenders generally don't press Lebron as he dribbles because he will blow by them.

I saw the Celtics defend Lebron with Tony Allen and even Rondo to try to contest his dribble and it sort of worked a bit. Lebron can to some degree use the Magic Johnson techniques of extending the dribble away from his body to the side so that much smaller quicker players have to go around his body to try to get to the ball which would then take them away from being between Magic and the basket enabling Magic to bring the ball back to the front (behind the back if necessary) and give him a clear path to the basket. Bird's arms were shorter than Magic's or Lebron's arms are.

It is Lebron's superior speed that makes it make sense for Lebron to have the ball in situations were Bird should not have the ball. Nate Archibald was the only team-mate that either Lebron or Bird had that was so good with the ball that you might actually prefer to have the ball in his hands to run the offense. Nate was only with Bird for a few years. Eric Snow was good but not that good. Snow went straight from being co-point-guard with Iverson to being co-point-guard with Lebron.

Shooting,
Bird is the better Shooter. There were some years when Birds Broken finger or hurting back made Bird not a better shooter.

Creating quality shots for yourself,
Lebron is better and this is the main reason why I lean towards Lebron as being the better player.
Bird has a better bag of tricks to create space for shots. Bird also can play a poor man's Moses Malone bullish low post power game. Bird has better touch on the ball. Bird has a faster release. Bird is a better below the rim circus shot shooter of crazy off balance flips. In Bird's best years Bird was a better long range shooter. ( The few good shooters should have shot more 3s in the 1980s. Coaching mistake in my opinion. )

But all Birds superior skills are negated by his lesser acrobatic athleticism and lesser speed. Lebron's bag of tricks to get quality shots is almost as good as Bird's. You don't add the tricks plus athleticism; you multiply the tricks times athleticism. Lebron is getting better shots and he is hitting them. They both hit difficult shots. Lebron is better at creating space to shoot. Lebron may have to fly through the air to create space but Lebron can fly through the air.

Lebron's fg % is a lot higher.
Lebron's fg% benefits from the floor spacing created by playing with multiple 3 point shooters who are encouraged to shoot open 3s.

Ford and Ainge were great 3 point shooters but the coaching mentality at the time over feared the long rebound and under appreciated floor spacing.


Rebounding.
Bird was a great rebounder. Here the gap in Bird's favour is is not as large as it seems. Bird was the power forward on defense so of course he got more defensive rebounds. He was closer to the basket than Lebron who was defending small forwards. At least the defensive rebounding comparison should be adjusted because they played different positions.

How does the quality of rebounding from teammates effect a players rebounding numbers?

Defense
Bird's choices of when and how to gamble when giving help defense was very good. There was nothing wrong with Bird's man to man defense as long as Bird was guarding power forwards.

Lebron is a better defender and can guard multiple positions.

I guess Lebron is the better player. The Magic and Bird teir of players who are not Centers has a third member in Lebron. Lebron is probably the best of the 3.

Jordan is in a class by himself above Lebron, Magic and Bird.

[Patterned919]

Peak bird is certainly the better offensive player, but Lebron makes this a close call just because he's a great defensive presence. But playoffs are how I judge a player and Bird would be the better scorer, rebounder, and playmaker. And people always mention less-skilled players when discussing intangibles, but IMO Bird is One of the best examples of that weve seen. His impact on the game was tremendous. I'd take Bird.

Same, Bird. Bird could get it in any way on offense. Lebron has notoriously struggled in the finals when the lane was taken away from him, costing him and his team rings. We almost had the exact same thing happen just last year.

Bird was also the better rebounder and even passer(in terms of skill) in my opinion. What Lebron does well is "get in where he fits in," the majority of his assists come from a very simple drive and dish game. The majority of his baskets come from drives as well. He recognizes his talent in those areas and pushes his edge.

I think at the end of the day, we can have a more objective look when we are more removed from Lebrons prime and Heats back to back. Bird > Lebron but Bird had a short NBA career and Lebron may be able to surpass him by the end.

[wigglestrue]

Peak bird is certainly the better offensive player, but Lebron makes this a close call just because he's a great defensive presence. But playoffs are how I judge a player and Bird would be the better scorer, rebounder, and playmaker. And people always mention less-skilled players when discussing intangibles, but IMO Bird is One of the best examples of that weve seen. His impact on the game was tremendous. I'd take Bird.

So was Bird, apparently. In a very tangible, visible, quantifiable way.
What's yet to be determined is just how great a defensive presence Bird was.
Was he a Top 50 defender? (Hard to argue now that he wasn't, given what's upthread.)
As high as Top 25? Some tier in between, like Top 35-40?

Perhaps nobody, not even Celtics homers like myself, has ever before bothered to even contemplate whether Bird was a better overall defensive presence than just "very good in only one or two auxiliary ways for a few seasons", perhaps it has never occurred to anyone to figure out if Bird was an all-time great defender? And, most improbably, it seems he was. Go figure. How long before the consensus turns to catch up with this unexpected reality?

p.s. Here's another defensive highlight reel for Bird. Most of the same plays as before, but longer, no music, uneven audio-wise, and for some reason does not feature a few big plays like on Bird's ECF-sealing steal in 1985. Now, tell me his defensive greatness is not visible here. How many other all-time defenders wouldn't be proud of this as a career montage of defensive plays? Not many. Look at who Bird picks, swats, and generally embarrasses. He may not have been assigned superstars all game, but there's apparently no shortage of video of him spectacularly thwarting players like Jordan, Erving, Magic, Hakeem, Wilkins, King, Pippen, Worthy...and on and on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H76dsMqo3s

Wait, wait, there's an even longer montage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpEAZMT5t_U

[wigglestrue]

Bird and LeBron are both "combo forwards" who can play either 3 or 4 (and have played both positions at times throughout their careers). IMO they're also the two best forwards to ever play basketball by a pretty wide margin. I can dig arguments for either player, and I think they're both top-6 all-timers. I picked Bird in the poll, but I think it's damn close... really into that "blur zone" where we're talking subjective preferences and intuition more than any sort of clear difference in quality of play/impact.

I feel like the question here (which is basically unanswerable, but fun to debate) is not which one of Bird or LeBron is "the greatest small forward ever" but which one is "the greatest forward ever." I have lots of respect for Dr. J, Dirk, and KG, but I still would place Bird and LBJ in their own super-elite category, a notch above even those three, as far as the forward position goes. My "hypothetical all-time greatest team" definitely features Bird and LBJ as the two starting forwards.

QFT!

[wigglestrue]

Peak bird is certainly the better offensive player, but Lebron makes this a close call just because he's a great defensive presence. But playoffs are how I judge a player and Bird would be the better scorer, rebounder, and playmaker. And people always mention less-skilled players when discussing intangibles, but IMO Bird is One of the best examples of that weve seen. His impact on the game was tremendous. I'd take Bird.

Same, Bird. Bird could get it in any way on offense. Lebron has notoriously struggled in the finals when the lane was taken away from him, costing him and his team rings. We almost had the exact same thing happen just last year.

Bird was also the better rebounder and even passer(in terms of skill) in my opinion. What Lebron does well is "get in where he fits in," the majority of his assists come from a very simple drive and dish game. The majority of his baskets come from drives as well. He recognizes his talent in those areas and pushes his edge.

I think at the end of the day, we can have a more objective look when we are more removed from Lebrons prime and Heats back to back. Bird > Lebron but Bird had a short NBA career and Lebron may be able to surpass him by the end.

Right. LeBron can fly...except when he can't, when his space is clogged.
Bird's game could always fly, even flat-footed, against any pressure.

[Grandpa Waiters]

A little too far, no?

Why not just ask him to further expound on his point. Larry is a top 10 player....the comment was more around position not that he couldn't play altogether.

I don't think so. I think it's obviously implied. Bird went up against all world athletes and defenders like Bobby Jones, Bernard King, Dominique Wilkins, Michael Cooper, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen etc. Why would anyone doubt his ability to play today? Racism and stereotyping mostly.

And Bird is unanimously ranked well ahead of those guys, so is that racism as well?

Dude, that's a pretty big accusation you're making here. Based on just notes from an internet forum. Just seems like a copout response to me. Anyway man, I'll make no further comment on the issue.

I think most posters rank players relative to the era they played in (ie Bird is a top ten player all time because of how he dominated the '80's) but that doesn't necessarily mean they think he would dominate just the same today.

[wigglestrue]

Wait, wait, there's an even longer montage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpEAZMT5t_U

Nevermind, that's just the same BasketballJones video with a much longer written prologue, many of the exact same points I made in this thread, but not quite as thorough. So, at least one Celtics homer has thought to make this case before, more or less. And I bet it's no coincidence that the dude who made that case is a dude who has spent umpteen hundreds of hours most closely watching Bird play. Guys, ultimately, the instrument that gets us closest to perceiving basketball performance is our eyes, not our calculators. You watch a couple full-court pickup games featuring the same 10 people, and without tallying any stats you will have a good idea of how to hierarchize the players according to on-court value. What is the eyeball but a motion capture technology like the kind the league just installed? Some players have to be seen. Larry Bird has to be seen first, analyzed later, and then seen some more even later because he's just so much goddamned fun to watch play. Now, yes, the eye can lie. Well, it's more like the brain. Our expectations, biases, preconceptions, assumptions, misinformation, etc. I do think that if Larry Bird had been brown and had an afro and beard instead of a pale blonde horse-mane-mulleted honky, that we would actually give him even more credit, feel him to be even more special. I think we are a little bit blind to elements of his greatness because it just seems so implausible for a white dude to be doing, you know...that...or that, lol. I wish we could commission the artist Paul Pfeiffer or some other CGI wizard to somehow manipulate a video so that Bird is replaced by a black player performing the exact same motions.

[wigglestrue]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX8ipponmSc

Peep that video essay, too. Great stuff!

[bledredwine]

Peak bird is certainly the better offensive player, but Lebron makes this a close call just because he's a great defensive presence. But playoffs are how I judge a player and Bird would be the better scorer, rebounder, and playmaker. And people always mention less-skilled players when discussing intangibles, but IMO Bird is One of the best examples of that weve seen. His impact on the game was tremendous. I'd take Bird.

So was Bird, apparently. In a very tangible, visible, quantifiable way.
What's yet to be determined is just how great a defensive presence Bird was.
Was he a Top 50 defender? (Hard to argue now that he wasn't, given what's upthread.)
As high as Top 25? Some tier in between, like Top 35-40?

Perhaps nobody, not even Celtics homers like myself, has ever before bothered to even contemplate whether Bird was a better overall defensive presence than just "very good in only one or two auxiliary ways for a few seasons", perhaps it has never occurred to anyone to figure out if Bird was an all-time great defender? And, most improbably, it seems he was. Go figure. How long before the consensus turns to catch up with this unexpected reality?

p.s. Here's another defensive highlight reel for Bird. Most of the same plays as before, but longer, no music, uneven audio-wise, and for some reason does not feature a few big plays like on Bird's ECF-sealing steal in 1985. Now, tell me his defensive greatness is not visible here. How many other all-time defenders wouldn't be proud of this as a career montage of defensive plays? Not many. Look at who Bird picks, swats, and generally embarrasses. He may not have been assigned superstars all game, but there's apparently no shortage of video of him spectacularly thwarting players like Jordan, Erving, Magic, Hakeem, Wilkins, King, Pippen, Worthy...and on and on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H76dsMqo3s

Wait, wait, there's an even longer montage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpEAZMT5t_U

I know that Bird is a good defender. I know that a couple of his famous plays were defensive. I've watched him guard MJ and though he still got his, he had to work for his points. But for impact on team defense? That's Lebron without a doubt. And for shutting down opposing players? Bird's no all-timer like Pipp-MJ (though neither is Lebron). But Lebrons D is more important to his team. If you truly believe otherwise, Godspeed. By the way, you may want to consider replying to someone's 2-paragraph opinion with something other than "QFT" if you disagree. Actually, it's hard to take any of the "QFT" posters seriously. It's just abrasive. Thanks for the links, will check them out.

[tsherkin]

By the way, you may want to consider replying to someone's 2-paragraph opinion with something other than "QFT" if you disagree. Actually, it's hard to take any of the "QFT" posters seriously. It's just abrasive. Thanks for the links, will check them out.

QFT is "quoted for truth," it's essentially a +1. Bit of a post-pad, of course, but not actually a negative shot at the quoted material, bled.

[Mr MoJo Risin]

To the thread: Bird was a power forward.

This is an exaggeration like people saying that James Worthy was a power forward. Bird played the majority of his minutes @ SF. He only played PF, when either Chief/Mchale were injured or in foul trouble.

[wigglestrue]

By the way, you may want to consider replying to someone's 2-paragraph opinion with something other than "QFT" if you disagree. Actually, it's hard to take any of the "QFT" posters seriously. It's just abrasive. Thanks for the links, will check them out.

QFT is "quoted for truth," it's essentially a +1. Bit of a post-pad, of course, but not actually a negative shot at the quoted material, bled.

Yep, and I reserve it only for situations where And1 isn't enough, imo.
(I'm about 10 years and 20,000 posts removed from caring aboit post-padding, lol.)