migya wrote:AEnigma wrote:Dutchball97 wrote:Only being able to include Jordan if you twist your criteria is another one of those overcorrections imo. Jordan's quality of play is still the best ever and if even if you disagree it's at the very least at the same level as LeBron and Kareem and much more consistent on a year to year basis.
On one hand it should be acceptable for someone to not have Jordan as one of their GOAT candidates but it's starting to look like people are suddenly trying to downplay Jordan out of nowhere just because there are still people refusing to consider anyone other than Jordan.
What makes his quality of play “the best ever”. Eye test? Box score aggregates? Scoring myopia? Jaivl separated that from value added, so will leave that aside as best I can, but the only area where I would entertain Jordan as being at the true “GOAT” tier would be volume scoring specific. But he is not at that tier as a playmaker. You have said you are less in on Magic/Nash playmaking than some of us, alright, but for those of us who think that type of playmaking is better correlated with top offensive quality of players, Jordan is not “GOAT” tier there. He is one of the best pure wing defenders, but that feels about as inherently meaningful as saying Tim Duncan was one of the best post-scoring bigs. Marking Lebron as a better evolution is not downplaying anything anymore than it would be to have marked Jordan as a better evolution of Erving or West who preceded him.
You certainly haven't watched much of Jordan, there are plenty of games of him in YouTube. He was a great playmaker and passer but had to score for his teams to win and the did that well.
I have watched plenty. He was a good positional playmaker at volume. That does not mean he was a significant passer, and it certainly does not mean he chose to “sacrifice” his passing to score. He wanted to score, that was his thing, and that was his best trait.
But this is the usual reactionary Jordan response. If I say 1967/68 Wilt was not individually an all-time playmaker and passer
even though he was at or near the top of the league in assists, far fewer people would reflexively try to jump down my throat to “correct” me. Jordan is much more in the vein of Wade or Kobe or Iverson. All good playmakers, but not at a GOAT level, no. And Jordan’s passing, whether you want to attribute it to era primitivism or to a fundamental lack of creative vision (imo a mix of both) was even less high-end.
Recently watched games of early career Jordan and he managed to get the most out of his low talented teams,
38 wins, injury year, 40 wins, 50 wins!, 47 wins. A lot more in line with what you would see from 2001-03 McGrady or 2006/07 Kobe than you would with 2009/10 Lebron or 2003/04 Garnett or 1994-96 Robinson or even 1993/94 Hakeem.
made Corzine and Oakley look like good scorers.
Both of them have all their best scoring years off the Bulls lmao.
His defense was elite but one must know what that looks like, it's not all about stopping penetration with teammates helping on the wing.
Singular elite wing defence is fundamentally not as meaningful as stopping penetration, no. And Jordan was really only at that tier of absolute no question top of the line elite wing defender for one season. Most of the rest, he was at your normal all-defensive guard/wing level, which is nice and gives him an advantage over guys like Magic or Nash but is not doing much on its own by comparison to all-defensive forwards and certainly not compared to all-defensive bigs, even without going a step beyond to those all-time multiple DPoY level defenders.
