I'll be making one comprehensive post on this. Part A. Will be simply explaining MY criteria of evaluation and who I'm voting for. Part B. will specifically aimed at persuasion/discussion. As seeing as this vote is coming down to lebron vs jordan(i'm somewhat dissapointed given how it took a tiebreaker to knock kareem from #1 last time), I will be making a case by
a wide set of criterion. The gist is this: Lebron has a compelling or overwhelming case over MJ in just about everything one may weigh. Peak, Leadership, Resume, Off-Court impact(on winning not society), Raw era-less comparison, Clutch, Winning. Part C will be a graunlar comparison of lebron and mj at their peaks that really only exists to support that the holistic evidence that strongly favors lebron is plausible.
Part D. Will be a small section on some "bad" arguments I see in general for goat candidates(ex. using a career average for a player who plays a shorter period of time is just stupid, kareem being the goat is not revisoinist history ect, ect.)
PART AAlright so for voting here is
my criteria along with my votes.
The most important thing is accumulative value RELATIVE TO ERA. Please note, that longetivy based era adjustments are already taken into account which corp which I'll be using as a baseline. Note, my career rankings do not align 1:1 with Ben's, because
A. I am a big believer in descriptive analysis over predictive analysis when assessing the past(so 69 russell for example will be rated higher based on playodds)
B. I take into account off court effect on winning which leadership is a part of. This raises russell(as you will see soon), lowers jordan, lowers shaq, and (thanks largely to the ad trade), raises lebron. I'll be using this as a tiebreaker where its close in terms of career value.
C. I put a lot more weight into the playoffs
D. I do not care about "fluky" induvidual performace
E. I weigh portability less
F. I, like e-ball before me, put a lot more weight into performances vs good opposition/defense/offense depending on what the player in question makes bank on.(This is why I'm considering taking Durant later than harden)
G. Pre Nba play will be weighed ACCORDING to how good they may have been in the nba at the time. Jordan gets nothing for playing worse than rookie lebron in what amounted to a seasons worth of college games. Kareem and Russell on the other hand do get signifcant boosts or being superstar level players before they entered the nba.
Here are other tiebreakers. Not tiebreakers are only used when its already a dead heat:
-> Era strength, this is simply based on talent pool size and in-era things like --expansion---. Given that the talent pool in 2003 was twice as big as the talent pool in 1990, i see no reason to treat the gap between the 90's and the 70's or the 60's as bigger than the gap between the 90's and the 2000's/10's. Era must be applied consistently. Also specific positional strength can be considered(so in a big dominated leagues, a high scoring guard is less impressive if they're getting lots of value from scoring or defending other guards) This all amounts to a drop in the bucket.
-> Winning/team successs, this is not just about rings, finals apps, win % all matters. This also amounts to a drop in the bucket.
-> Peak, this is about single season, single game, single series to me, also amounts to a drop to a bucket
-> Prime, three years, 5 years, 8 years, drop in the bucket
-> Resume, I only care about holistic awards, mvp's, fmvp's, all-nba's, all stars. I will be giving out awards to players where it wasnlt available and it was obvious they were worthy(cough russell cough), will also be looking at how many votes are received, mvp voting shares, how close you get to unanimous, drop in the bucket.
-> Port, how well a player scales up, this is the most important tiebreaker, but it only comes into play when value is comparable(kd gets the edge over westbrook peak wise despite having less raw value thanks to port for example)
All these tiebreakers mean **** if the players aren't tied or close to tied in career value. IE: Kobe is a much better winner and has a much better resume than KG. I dont care, KG was vastly more valuable in the regular season, over multiple playoff runs, and has vastly better longetvity, in a extensive variety of settings and an extensive variety of quality in supporting casts. Kobe doesn't touch him and has no buiness being treated like a comparable player. The name of the game is to impact winning over your career and kobe never came close. Similarly bird peaked way higher than kobe, but since bird couldn't stop himself from geting into bar fights, Kobe gets rated higher because Kobe's career value is higher and Bird's longevity is ****.
I giveth to kobe as much as I taketh away. He's top 10 in accumulative value so he gets to be top 10 in my rankings.
Now with that out of the way here's the vote.
1.a/b Lebron/KareemTo the shock of realgm I don't actually have lebron as a clear cut no.1 yet. Why? Check G. Kareem was good enough to be a top player while he was in college in the nba. If ben accounted for this, kareem would be no.1 HOWEVER, I rate lebron's peak much higher than ben's since I use descriptive analysis(ben rates 09 as below goat tier, i have it as the clear cut goat season), so it amounts to it being unclear whose career value is really higher. Kareem's career value is till probably higher, but that's where we get B. Lebron getting his team anthony davis, is a MASSIVE value add that basically no one not named russell has something comparable to. Lebron is basiclaly the only reason ad came and the lakers had the option of getting ad as an fa. Kareem on the other hand nearly cost his team magic johnson and had some serious leadership kurfuffles with nothing like anthony davis to outweigh it. I see it as a tie currently, something that should break next season.
Tiebreakers are 3-2 lebron
Lebron gets era
Kareem gets winning
Lebron gets resume
Kareem gets port
Lebron gets peak
That allows lebron to be 1a. But he'll need another season to be solidly ahead.
3.
RUSSELLRussell is actually a little bit below MJ in corp so why is he ahead here?
1. Gap is small
2. Ben's predictive analysis **** on russell's 68 and 69 postseason runs
3. Russell was clearly good enough to have superstar impact pre-nba
4. Russell is THE UNDISPUTED GOAT in off court impact, essentially predicting analytics, winning b2b as a player coach, scheming wilt out of the game..
5. Jordan's clearly a negative off the court, alienating his gm during his first years, trading toxicity with EVERYONE for motivating SOME role players getting motivated isn't a great tradeoff. He's very much kyrie-esque as a leader in a vacuum and the vastly more important part of leadership, facilitating chemistry, was left to pippen.
HONORABLE MENTION
JORDAN
same tier as russell, tied for third most valuable carer on the court
DUNCAN
Same tier as Russell and Mj, but a bit lower
AUPM gives him a better postseason peak than shaq for one year, actually has THE BEST postseason peak for three years post 2000 per AUPM, descriptive equity analysis would obviously rank him higher. He's only here because playoff impact metrics are murky, and his regular seasons didn't really hold up, but I'm considering moving duncan into the top 4 anyway. If you rate his playoff peak as close to mj/shaq as i do, his longetivty honestly gives him more career value. Maybe i'll change my mind and put him no.4 or no.3
70's fan rejoice.
SHAQ, only really mentioning him because I think he has a case for goat peak simply on the basis of his ability to put entire defenses in foul trouble day in and day out potentially has a significant impact which would not be recognized and would sometimes work against what impact metrics say about him. Given that he's pretty close to mj leavel in the playoffs going off said metrics, thats potentially enough to bridge the gap which really only leaves the outlier of 40 win bron. Obviouslytt with descriptive analysis 40 win bron is the best peak, but if you subscribe to "played better but worse player" than shaq should be right up with mj for goat peak consideration.
Hakeem and Shaq get crushed here for longetivty and KG gets crushed because he went from GOAT level in the regular season to merely "top 5-10" level impact in the playoffs. That combined with his longetivty comfortably places him ahead of the wilt/bird/kobe tier, but it does make me sad. Also his peak longetivty sucks compared to lebron lol
Magic, peak is top 5 level, but longevity a bitch.
Kobe, Wilt, Bird?
Lol. No.
PART B: Lebron's well rounded superiority to micheal jordanLets start with the elephant in the room. Peak. This is really Jordan's ONLY case for #1 since russell exists, but frankly its a weak one. I will grant you if you set the timr frame just right, say three consecutive years, jordan wins out on this, but it really does require extensive cherrypicking.
The spirit of "peak" is better at their best, and well, frankly, I think aside from being a much better floor raiser, its also perfectly arguably lebron is a better cieling raiser.
THe thing which people really don't seem to get about cieling raising is that it is 90%% FLOOR RAISING. Portability is simply a matter of not losing as much value on better teams, but with a big enough gap in raw value, it really doesn't matter.
And this is where lebron comes in. From 08-10(with 08 easily being the cavs best supporting cast) the lebron-less cavs played 20 win basketball. In minuites without lebron, they played 20 win basketball. When lebron lest, before the cavs blew everything up they played at a 20 win pace. The cavs having the league's third best spacing certainly helped, but that's hardly enough to explain the riduclousness of a player being worth 40 wins in b2b2 seasons on a 60+ win contender. Curry managed similar effiency of impact in 15-16 but his volume doesn't matchup and he dipped hard in the playoffs. KG managed similar volume and effiency, but he tanked in the playoffs. Lebron? Lebron
Got better in 09, much better experiencing massive jumps in his scoring volume, effiency, opposing matchup fg effiency, ect and his backpicks bpm skyrocketed. The cavs lost to a red hot 59 win team becuase they went cold against a bad matchup, but against lebron, all of the heat's players had their effiency tank from their normal rs selves. Dwight howard himself was 3-4 points less effecient when facing lebron in the rim. Even if you take lebron's numbers and effiency agaisnt the magic, a team with a higher srs and defenisve rating, and who beat a better team in the second round and lost to a better lakers team in the final than the 1988 bad boy pistons who made jordan shoot league average, they are much better than lebron's rs numbers. For comparison, mj's weakest cast played 27 win basketball without him and he never elevated those teams to 50+ wins or even contention(something lebron managed in 06, 08, 09 and 10) until the addition of pippen, rodman, and phil jackson.
To jordan's credit, he is mort portable. His ability to create via off-ball gravity outclasses lebron meaning he loses less value on better teams. But the simple fact of the matter is Lebron james at his apex was a far more valauble player. For jordan to be a comparable cieling raiser, the cavs getting 5 wins better would have to come at the cost of lebron getting 10-15 wins worse. Maybe that's not impossible, but it is quite the hell of an assumption to make. At the very least, lebron has a very good argument for being history's best cieling raiser, simply as a byproduct of being, by far history's best floor raiser. The combination of the two give lebron, during his first stint in the cavs, the clear cut best case for goat peak. Lebron at his best is the best player in history. His lowers may be lower than jordan's, but that's really just longetivty. Either you value sustained execellence or you dont, either way, lebron is more valuable to winning, and hence better.
Finally, people have engaed in revisionist history claiming everyone who saw jordan saw lebron's peak as clearly worse. Howevee this is simply nonsense. Barkley who ranked lebron 8th all time in 2019, called lebron "the greatest player he had ever seen" in 2009 before lebron had won a title and did it again in 2012 when lebron only had one. At the time when lebron was peaking, people clearly saw lebron as a rival or potentially better for peak jordan. That he is somehow clearly worse is entirely a baseless revisionist narrative that came after different versions of lebron lost in the finals. Unless you think magic+shaq hybrid 09 lebron is the same player as the glorified karl malone we saw in 2011, this should have no bearing on how you view his peak.
Next, resume.
First prime resume:
Lebron 4 mvp's, 2 fmvp's, 1 vote away from a uninamous
Jordan, 3 mvp's, 3 fmvp's, 3 votes away from a uanimous
I see a slight edge for lebron here
Career resume:
Jordan +1 mvp, +2 fmvp, +2 rings
Lebron: more mvp votes, +6 all nba +4 all stars, +4 finals
I'd pick lebron here, but really any good faith analysis would at least concede this is close. The gap here is at least far smaller than it would be betwen MJ and Russell:
-5 rings
-6 finals
-2-4 fmvp's
+2 all stars
Really the only rebuttal I've seen to this is era based so lets apply this conssitently.
If one is to dimiss such a collosal gap on the 60's weakness an era, one must examine how the 90's compare to the 2000's/2010's
1. As Trex has shown, the talent pool of basketball players in the world AS OF 2003 was TWICE as big as the nba's talent pool in 1991. The league is simply far more talented now.
2. The 95 mvp race is a massive anomoly in that it is completely dominated by players 32 years old or older. Expansion very clearly weakened a league that was already lacking in talent compared to 2003. If one wishes to dimiss russell's career resume, they must at the very least be willing to dismiss naything jordan did after 1995.
That leaves jordan with
3 MVP
3 FMVP
Jordan's resume goes from arguably second to fringe to not even top 10. We can chop off half of Lebron's career to get something comparable or better.
Jordan's goathood is very much not arguable via resume and those who dismiss russell's resume as a product of era are going to need very narrow reasoning to somehow conclude jordan's resume is also not far inferioir to lebron's with whatver silly era-adjustment they're making.
Winning:
Jordan, +2 rings
Lebron, +4 finals, Higher Regular season win %, higher playoff win %, more series won, more conference final apps, more regular season and post season wins, note that everything i listed would apply even if you ajdusted for the 5-7 game series adjustment.
Given Lebron is the more effecient and prolific winner in an absolute sense, jordan's rings advantage are likely just a byproduct of matchup.
Clutch:
TEAM LEVEL ANALYSIS:
This is the top 3 teams in 4th quarter net rating since 2000 when this was tracked:
1. 2020 thunder
2. 2009 Cavs
3. 2010 Cavs
Yes, those aforementioned 20 win teams were goat level clutch. I wonder why.
The 18 cavs were 50-1 when leading after the 4th quarter. The 2020 lakers were 57-0. Lebron has led the two goat level closers in his career
We dont have extensive data for jordan's teams, but off a limited sample, their 4th quarter rating was the same as their rating for the first three quraters. By comparison, ball dominant playmakers like magic, lebron, nash, generally lead teams who get better in the 4th quarter.
Lebron is easily the best elimiantion game player in history save for russell.
Lebron has the most buzzer beaters in the playoffs
Lebron has scored the most baskets in the clutch
PLease note these all exclusively measure scoring, plays like lebron finding george hill for free throws with a fantastic pass after drawing iggy durant and dray onto him are incredibly clutch but aren't covered in this analysis.
Post heat and pre heat lebron both have strong cases for the second most clutch player ever after russell. If jordan had sustained his execellence, maybe knocking the heatles less goaty clutchness would be valid, but lets be real, i could take out the heat and i'd still have a larger body of clutch work than mj. Jordan doesn't get credit for playing less.
LEADERSHIP/OFF COURT VALUE
Lebron has successfully built chemistry on the lakers, the cavs before ad after joining the heat. Jordan was consistently a net negative on chemistry and his motivation had mixed results working with some role players, but being ineffectual with his bigs.
What really makes this a landslide in lebron's favor is leGM getting the lakers AD. Goes withotu saying lebron was much better with his gm.
All in all, Lebron has a case against jordan in just about everything, and his goat argument holds up much better under a wide array of scrutiny. Oh and his career is way more valuable as far as winning is concerned. Jordan really shouldn't be included on the same tier as russell, lebron, and kareem, as any case that can be made for him against one, is blown to pieces when compared to another. If you go by culturual impact, jordan has a nice case, otherwise, he just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
PART C: Granular comparisonLebron vs Jordan
Lebron is a better rim protector, defensive playcaller, rebounder, interior scorer, and passer. He's also a better three point shooter but that's not really that meaningful for a relative to era context.
Jordan is a better shooter, cutter, and man defender.
Man defense is not as valauble as playcalling or rim protection which is why lebron, even at 31 on the cavs played more impactful defense against the warriors, than jordan has at any point in his career. For people unironically using jordan's dpoy in 1988 really need to account for why the bulls defensive rating completely tanked once they traded their primary rim prtotector in oakley while lebron has anchored elite playoff defenses at 30+ alongside known defenisve stalwarts tristan thompson and kevin love.
Offensively jordan's off ball game usually gives him a scoring edge, but we've seen lebron at his best use his superioir speed and strength to score with similat effectiveness for postseason long stretches While maintaing his massive passing advantge. Jordan usually turns the ball over less, but lebron has managed similar low turnover rates for postseason long stretches. Lebron at his best can offer more value offenisvely and defensively, hence the signifcant gap in peak value.
PART D: Misc. Rebuttals1. Kareem was never considered the goat until recently.
He was literally voted the goat over wilt, russell, erving and oscar robertson
.
2. Wilt was widely considered better than russell at the time
Then why the hell was russell nigh unanimously voted over wilt for goat? Could it be that just about no one disputed russell was better after he beat wilt's superteam with a weak cast on his last legs as a player/coach.
3. JORDAN'S CAREER (insert per, ws/48 ect) MEANS HE PEAKED HIGHEST
No. career average is simply average level of play over a length of time and it will obviously be higher if you play less. Jordan entered the league at 22. Before that with the extensive workload of a seasons worth of college games, he was playing worse, relative to his college peers, than rookie lebron. if jordan who couldn't even play like rookie lebron in college level comp goes against nba level comp, what exactly do you think's happening to that 13 season per which is already barely ahead of lebron's 17 season rate?
Jordan was on average a significantly worse basketball player than lebron wire to wire. Only ages jordan has any real argument over lebron are 25-29. Well I guess if you completely ignore results or value to wnning you could argue age 24, but thats about it.
4. KAREEM ONLY HAS 2 FMVPS
okay, but the third fmvp he lost to magic is literally just a techincality. He was voted for a third fmvp, they gave it to magic because of a broadcasting change and the invonvenience of kareem not being present.
He has 3 fmvps' unless you're arguing in horribly bad faith.
5. SCORING TITLES DPOY GO BRRR
This is a discussion of greatest overall player. Partial credit has no relevance here, lmao.
6. WILT SCORED 50 PPG
which adjusts with pace to 28 ppg on average effiency. Peak wilt scored 23 ppg on good effiency when his offenses were good. Totally top 5 all time scoring material
7. OBPM RATES KOBE OVER(insert two way big)
why in the world would you only use obpm you doofus.
8. PER IS OKAY, ALLL STATS ARENT GOOD OR BAD
Per sucks at predicting winning and is literally just calucualted based of randomly assigned weights. It's less effective than a bunch of **** that does the exact same **** it does. Stop using per, plz
9. IMPACT IS HYPOTHETICAL
No it isn't. That's not what hypothetical means, ffs.
That's it for now. Feel free to rebut, agree, make fun of, or question. I spent way too much time on this and have a soundtrack to make. Bye.
Edit: before I go bye
Doctor MJ wrote:..
Penny for your thoughts.
OKay bye.
