70sFan wrote:I agree with Odinn, we shouldn't give the first place to James just because of his name. Sure, he had outstanding postseason run but was it better than 2000 Shaq or 1977 Kareem? I don't think so. Was it better than 1987 Magic? It's arguable at very least.
Meanwhile, his RS is clearly the worst among them.
Yet if you changed Jerry West's name to Michael Jordan and everything was the exact same, there is no way Jordan would place #5 on most people's ballots. You don't think most people here, even those placing West are not having a "name bias" with the type of skill set and stats he has? You don't think Shaq gets any preemptive bias from already having a reputation as the goat peak guy? There are tons of reputation bias in these threads much worse than placing Lebron James above Magic Johnson.
Yes, Lebron had a worse RS than them. RS doesn't matter that much in his era, nor does it matter much to some voters including myself. RS dominance has huge diminishing returns.
If you're asking if Lebron James in the post season is arguably better than O'Neal or Magic - then yes, it arguably is. If it's better by just 1% then that's enough for me to vote for him over them, it's not like James is a scrub in the RS. Furthermore, Lebron didn't need to even do more in the post season for his team to win.
It's not name value, it's common sense to a degree. Lebron James is not really worse than he was in Cleveland, not by a large amount. He went from the best player in the world in 2018 to just...the best player in the world in 2020, he did not fall off much if at all.
I mean the argument against Magic is the same it has always been. Lebron might be a worse offensive player, he probably is, but he is a much better defender. You can say Magic was "decent", decent is still a long way from Lebron James. If Lebron needs to have higher boxscore stats to (try to) win a series, then obviously he would do that.
I do not measure players during the RS by who has the best boxscore stats, it's always by who I think is the best. And even during the RS I still not low on Lebron, and thought he was almost certainly better than Giannis.
I think the idea that I am using bias' is hilarious. Like almost all of my votes look incredibly ugly because I am trying my best to go with who I think is actually the best. When I was first writing my posts I had a full paragraph with Shaq at #1 - I then did this thing called thinking it over. Not to say that if you do not have Shaq at #1 or above James you did not think about it, but this idea that I have a recency bias because I have Lebron James over is almost ironic. I have Bill Russell over Lebron James on my goat list for God sakes.
