Stalwart wrote:capfan33 wrote:Stalwart wrote:
But don't his teammates praise him? Don't they call him a great teammate and a great leader? Don't they claim he drove them to be the best versions of themselves? And didn't they win...every single year? How is that not being a great leader?
As far as having the worst intangibles in terms of leadership and locker room culture that honor belongs to Lebron.
I don't know if I would go so far as saying Jordan had the worst intagibles of anyone in the top-20, but he's definitely not 1st. Russell, Duncan and Bird are all easy picks above him, and I would hazard that KG, Dirk, West and Magic are all better. Of course, this is pretty subjective which is why I only feel comfortable with the 3 I mentioned for sure above Jordan. Also Lebron's not last lol.
Based on what tho? Style or substance and results? Where are you guys getting this notion that guys like Russell, Bird, and Duncan have more intangibles than Jordan?
This criticism seems completely out of left field and actually baseless. But maybe im missing something?
You can't see the irony in that you could ask yourself that very question?
Your go to argument is that Jordan's teammates said that he was a great teammate. Think about that. The greatest player of all time, who won 6 titles, have teammates that compliment him...that isn't exactly uncommon. You also are the one who made a baseless statement saying James is the worst or something.
We know Jordan's personality, and know many players who have his traits who usually get torn down. Jordan benefits from confirmation bias, obviously. If a player with Jordan's personality traits isn't as good as Jordan and his team doesn't have success, they would be seen as someone with a bad intangibles. Jordan has gambling addictions, jealousy/insecurity issues, violent out lashes, is demeaning, abrasive and easily irritable. He is like that even in the professional world, much less in basketball. You tell me if he wasn't a freak athlete with great basketball skills how good those things would go over?
It's nice to think that his personality trait is that he is just "pissed off at his skill level and therefore just wants to work on his jumper all day" - but he's not a cartoon character he has more than two dimensions.
Go to work and pretend to act like Michael Jordan (the actual Jordan not Space Jam Jordan), how do you think you'd be seen? Even if you were stellar at your job - are you going to say Steve Jobs has great intangibles too?
I mean going off of teammates opinions...how is Jordan even coming ahead still? Bill Russell was his teams coach at one point. He "was" the locker room. Bill Russell played through severe racism and even had some teammates who had traditional racist backgrounds and still put it together. Russell wasn't pampered with big commercials, sneaker lines and millions of dollars - he had to sleep in barns and **** in certain cities simply because he was black.
Russell played a style that no one ever played, was criticized for it, ignored it, and now in 2022 about half of the basketball players in the world now play like Bill Russell.
And lastly, intangibles is generally seen as dominating in ways that doesn't show up in the boxscore. One of the biggest arguments against Russell are his boxscore stats aren't good especially relative to Wilt Chamberlain who is the boxscore king. He ended up becoming a multi time MVP and "won" more than anyone else.
Bill Russell had a few negative traits like he was also irritable but there is nothing to suggest he has the amount of negative traits as Jordan or the severity of it. In addition, Bill Russell has more positive feats than Jordan. The fact that the best thing you could say about Jordan is that Steve Kerr talked him up after punching him in the face for being a crappy and smaller player shows that he lacks
evidence to be in the conversation for best intangibles. If that was the best story you could tell about Bill Russell, he wouldn't be very high up on the intangibles list either.
so you tell me, if you had to pick one, why would Jordan be better than Russell in intangibles? No, you cannot cop out and say "well, they're both good, so its equal" because I totally feel like that is what you're going to do. What is his argument, because you can't say "his teammates said good things about him" as that goes with Bill Russell, and literally every great player including the WORST intangible guy Lebron.
Michael Jordan has/had untreated personality disorders. It's 2022, we know these things exist.
