People who don't have Jordan as GOAT: What metric(s) would make you change your mind?

[Stalwart]

Meh. The problem with the Lebron/Jordan argument is some of media who are Lebron fans totally ignoring LeBron's failures why enhancing Jordan's. That ends up spilling out to fans on the web and on the streets which ends up causing arguments and pretty much disrespecting both players. Then you have some Kobe fans saying "we're here too" very quietly.

Most Kobe fans give Jordan and Lebron their respect they just also give Kobe his. Jordans fans give Kobe and Lebron their respect they just place Jordan as #1. Its the Lebron fanbase that actively tears Jordan or Kobe's legacy in an effort to prop up his.

[penbeast0]

You keep saying that but you offer no evidence; the LeBron fans offer statistical evidence according to you. Where is your evidence for that?

[70sFan]

It's cool to stay away from Jordan vs LeBron debate. We all should have Russell vs Kareem discussion for the GOAT instead

[Bidofo]

Stalwart:

I see this behavior coming from Lebron fans. Jordan fans state their position. Lebron fans are the ones who are obsessed with their heros place in history. They make dishonest arguments and constantly try to rewrite history. They bash other players in an effort to elevate Lebron. The Lebron media has destroyed the reputations of many players in this endless effort to make Lebron GOAT. They have scapegoated every great player Lebron has played with.

So yeah I see this as projection.

Also Stalwart:

And no, bubble titles are not legitimate titles which is why people call it a mickey mouse title and don't take it seriously.

When the Laker's won the bubble title it didn't make me feel like we actually won a championship. It's more of an embarrassment than anything.

I am now no longer a Lakers fan and enjoy watching them crash and burn. There are lot of people like me who feel this way. When you are losing 25yr hardcore Laker fans over your front office moves I think its fair to say it was a mistake to bring Lebron in. His fans don't like or respect the Lakers franchise and history. They've made a mockery of the brand. And no pitiful bubble title no one respects makes any of this worth it.

However, nobody is going to forget that this was a Bubble title. Every Lebron James legacy debate will bring up the fact that his 2020 title was the weakest in sports history if not completely illegitimate. It's never going to stop. You think Jordan fans are going to forget? You think Kobe fans are going to let it go? KD fans? Imagine if Giannis gets up to 4 titles. You don't think his fans are going to bring up Lebron's Bubble title in the GOAT debates?

The Bubble title is extremely fraudulent. How one views the 2020 title is kind of a litmus test for how much of a drone someone is. When someone touts that mickey mouse title as legitimate you know what you're dealing with. Its either a Lebron stan or someone with no critical thinking and no personal standards whatsoever.

[Stalwart]

^^^ Weird. There goes that toxic Lebron fanbase doing investigative work trying to defrnd their idol. They really cannot handle people criticizing him. Most toxic player and fanbase ever.

[prolific passer]

It's cool to stay away from Jordan vs LeBron debate. We all should have Russell vs Kareem discussion for the GOAT instead

Russell would kick his butt. Told him that at an award show along with some other hof centers.

[AEnigma]

^^^ Weird. There goes that toxic Lebron fanbase doing investigative work trying to defrnd their idol. They really cannot handle people criticizing him. Most toxic player and fanbase ever.

“How dare you use my own words against me!”

Predictably, the only person here engaging in “toxic” idolatry is you, which makes cries of “projection” all the more comical.

[Stalwart]

^^^ Weird. There goes that toxic Lebron fanbase doing investigative work trying to defrnd their idol. They really cannot handle people criticizing him. Most toxic player and fanbase ever.

“How dare you use my own words against me!”

Predictably, the only person here engaging in “toxic” idolatry is you, which makes cries of “projection” all the more comical.

How are those being used against me? And i dont think you know what idolatry means lol.

[Homer38]

Stalwart:

I see this behavior coming from Lebron fans. Jordan fans state their position. Lebron fans are the ones who are obsessed with their heros place in history. They make dishonest arguments and constantly try to rewrite history. They bash other players in an effort to elevate Lebron. The Lebron media has destroyed the reputations of many players in this endless effort to make Lebron GOAT. They have scapegoated every great player Lebron has played with.

So yeah I see this as projection.

Also Stalwart:

And no, bubble titles are not legitimate titles which is why people call it a mickey mouse title and don't take it seriously.

When the Laker's won the bubble title it didn't make me feel like we actually won a championship. It's more of an embarrassment than anything.

I am now no longer a Lakers fan and enjoy watching them crash and burn. There are lot of people like me who feel this way. When you are losing 25yr hardcore Laker fans over your front office moves I think its fair to say it was a mistake to bring Lebron in. His fans don't like or respect the Lakers franchise and history. They've made a mockery of the brand. And no pitiful bubble title no one respects makes any of this worth it.

However, nobody is going to forget that this was a Bubble title. Every Lebron James legacy debate will bring up the fact that his 2020 title was the weakest in sports history if not completely illegitimate. It's never going to stop. You think Jordan fans are going to forget? You think Kobe fans are going to let it go? KD fans? Imagine if Giannis gets up to 4 titles. You don't think his fans are going to bring up Lebron's Bubble title in the GOAT debates?

The Bubble title is extremely fraudulent. How one views the 2020 title is kind of a litmus test for how much of a drone someone is. When someone touts that mickey mouse title as legitimate you know what you're dealing with. Its either a Lebron stan or someone with no critical thinking and no personal standards whatsoever.

Classic double standard for Stalwart!

[AEnigma]

^^^ Weird. There goes that toxic Lebron fanbase doing investigative work trying to defrnd their idol. They really cannot handle people criticizing him. Most toxic player and fanbase ever.

“How dare you use my own words against me!”

Predictably, the only person here engaging in “toxic” idolatry is you, which makes cries of “projection” all the more comical.

How are those being used against me? And i dont think you know what idolatry means lol.

If you did not think they were being used against you, why were you lamenting how they were brought up.

Admittedly I may be a bit unclear on the term because my dictionary was bought used in Chicago and the prior owner just glued a picture of Jordan over the definition. Seemed applicable all the same, though.

[penbeast0]

^^^ Weird. There goes that toxic Lebron fanbase doing investigative work trying to defrnd their idol. They really cannot handle people criticizing him. Most toxic player and fanbase ever.

WARNING: CRITICIZING POSTERS OR FAN BASES WITHOUT ADDING ANY SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT.

[penbeast0]

Classic double standard for Stalwart!

WARNING: ATTACKING A POSTER RATHER THAN DEALING WITH CONTENT. If you don't like his posting, use the ignore button.

[Stalwart]

If you did not think they were being used against you, why were you lamenting how they were brought up.

Because Lebron fans are dishonestly pretending that they are. You see Homer accusing me of having a double standard when there are none.

[AEnigma]

If you did not think they were being used against you, why were you lamenting how they were brought up.

Because Lebron fans are dishonestly pretending that they are. You see Homer accusing me of having a double standard when there are none.

To have a double standard you need to have a coherent standard to start. Bidofo was calling you out for, what was your description, ah, yes, making dishonest arguments, constantly trying to rewrite history, and bashing other players, all in the service of your obsession with your hero’s place in history.

You see measured analysis of how championship level play does not beget a championship by itself, and in response you scream about evil “data” being used to ignore winning, but when people flip that back around on you with Russell, suddenly everything needs to be put in its proper context. It is transparently blind hero worship of the exact type you falsely accuse everyone else of committing. “Jordan was the best at everything, that is just reality, how dare you try to conduct any analysis that does not start with that premise, you toxic Lebron stan.”

[OhayoKD]

Youre trying to have it both ways. Lebron's team perform at historically high levels with his teammates all being properly utilized. But he also needs more help. You got to pick one and stick to it.

No, the argument is he needs a weaker opponent.

The full argument, as opposed to the wierd strawman that dozens of pages worth of posts have been pushing against can be summarized by these points
-> Lebron has achieved better or comparable team results with as much or less help(multiple times across multiple contexts)
-> Various players people would dare not compare to jordan arguably had better or comparable team results with as much or less help
-> Lebron has managed to achieve comaprable results with peak jordan on teams without spacing(which theoreitcally is a situation jordan should be more valuable in according to cieling raising theory) with less help including a season which was supposed to be one of his weaker years(2015) due to a broken shot
-> Lebron's best scoring years look better in almost all impact data besides box-score aggregates where they generally split(jordan rs, lebron playoffs)
-> Jordan consistently looks worse relative to paint-protectors/two-way bigs the less the box-score plays a factor in metrics
-> Consistentlylooks worse relative to paint-protectors/two way bigs if you go by real-data as opposed to artifically capped apm stuff
-> Lebron's teammates weren't able to do **** in games he wasn't even playing in(so much for "they were minimized")
-> Lebron and two players he supposedly shouldn't fit with produced jordan bullsy results without spacing when they played games together in 2012 despite **** relative to era spacing(also did worse in games where lebron was completely absent than the jordan-bulls)

Taking this away from lebron vs jordan and making it relevant to jordan's goat case in general, the other argument which no one has really bothered dealing with is russells' which is...

-> he won way more
-> he won way more in less time
-> he won at least once with less help than jordan has ever had for a playoff series win in the season he retired

For some reason, instead of addressing these arguments(supported with a variety of evidence), we're making random unsupported claims like "jordan had no weaknesses" or "jordan never stat-padded"

I have a guess what the reason is, but some things are better implied

[Djoker]

I'm a career value guy. And a longevity guy. But I know its not as simple as you are making it sound. I don't just go well this guy played 20 years and this other guy 14 so I'm going with him. It's got a lot more nuance than you are trying to make it sound.

For instance I tend to still be higher on Bird than most and he doesn't have anything special in terms of longevity, but I am so high on him as a player, that he ranks above a guy like Dirk who crushes him on longevity.

For me what bothers me is those who champion a specific player with less than ideal longevity(say Mike to stay on topic) who then want to dismiss that Kareem or Duncan or Lebron were having massively impactful seasons for their teams outside of the fairly arbitrarily defined primes. Like best or 2nd best players on champions kind of impact. I just can't throw that away and say we should only judge X best seasons because this other player for whatever reason didn't. That's not punishing Mike(or Bird or whomever) btw. But it is recognizing the very real value those players were still providing their teams.

Now I'm not telling you or anyone else what to value or how much weight to assign to longevity. But please don't imply its that simplistic. Even those of us who value longevity are capable of nuanced analysis, just as I assume those who don't value it as much are. I mean Lebron James is a great example of a player one simply can't dismiss the longevity. This isn't Duncan who took a backseat offensively later in his career so the PPG guys can dismiss him. Or Kareem, whose defense was no longer elite. Or Mailman who was always a great player, but basically never the best player in the world. Lebron has all the peak and the insane longevity.

I'm not at all insinuating that people using career value aren't capable of nuanced analysis. I don't think the tone of my post was judgmental. I was just pointing out some inconsistencies that I've noticed. Not a big deal.

My point isn't that longevity should be thrown out but I think sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle how much of longevity is just based on factors that have nothing to do with the player's durability. I can see penalizing someone like Bird for lack of longevity because his body gave out but MJ who had one freak injury in his 2nd season and then basically never got injured again. Missed like a combined 7 regular season games for like 10 straight seasons from 1987-1998. Seems wrong to dock a guy like that for longevity, At least IMO...

At the end of the day all else being equal a player who plays 10 great seasons will have provided more "value" than a player of exactly the same value who played 8. Even if the reasons for it are not the latter fault

We can debate the reasons and talk about how unfair it is that magic career was cut short by the HIV panic or how unlucky it is that bird struggle with injuries

but, at the end of the day magic prime ended in 1991 not 1995 or whenever he was gonna drop off if not for the infection.

It may be unlucky that bird got hurt in 89 but we cannot pretend bird played that year and contributed to celtics. Prime 89' bird just didnt happen

Injuries are different. Durability is an asset to an athlete and players whose career got derailed by injuries (Bird being a prime example on top 10 lists) are fairly penalized.

My point is about how we treat longevity factors that have nothing do with durability. For instance Jordan's and Magic's situations...

[Colbinii]

I'm not at all insinuating that people using career value aren't capable of nuanced analysis. I don't think the tone of my post was judgmental. I was just pointing out some inconsistencies that I've noticed. Not a big deal.

My point isn't that longevity should be thrown out but I think sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle how much of longevity is just based on factors that have nothing to do with the player's durability. I can see penalizing someone like Bird for lack of longevity because his body gave out but MJ who had one freak injury in his 2nd season and then basically never got injured again. Missed like a combined 7 regular season games for like 10 straight seasons from 1987-1998. Seems wrong to dock a guy like that for longevity, At least IMO...

At the end of the day all else being equal a player who plays 10 great seasons will have provided more "value" than a player of exactly the same value who played 8. Even if the reasons for it are not the latter fault

We can debate the reasons and talk about how unfair it is that magic career was cut short by the HIV panic or how unlucky it is that bird struggle with injuries

but, at the end of the day magic prime ended in 1991 not 1995 or whenever he was gonna drop off if not for the infection.

It may be unlucky that bird got hurt in 89 but we cannot pretend bird played that year and contributed to celtics. Prime 89' bird just didnt happen

Injuries are different. Durability is an asset to an athlete and players whose career got derailed by injuries (Bird being a prime example on top 10 lists) are fairly penalized.

My point is about how we treat longevity factors that have nothing do with durability. For instance Jordan's and Magic's situations...

Jordan willingly left the sport.
Magic left because of decisions he made outside of basketball.

Would you view LeBron the same if he left for the 2014 and 2015 seasons and did something else in his life?

At the end of the day LeBron didn't have sex with thousands of women and didn't lose interest in basketball.

[Djoker]

It's good to see someone, who is very high on Jordan, having Russell as the GOAT candidate

I think the problem isn't with Russell's individual dominance, but people's flawed way to define it. Russell didn't score a lot of points, so people don't view him as a dominant player. It's just that simple, even though he dominated his era more than Jordan did.

About all-nba selections - yeah, Russell had to fight with Wilt for one spot in the team, while Jordan had no counterpartner at guard position when Magic retired and he had 2 spots in the first team. That's just a very flawed argument.


None of these apply to Kareem though.


That's a good point and I think longevity is something we should adjust for eras.


I don't think anyone who values longevity has Malone outside of top 20, or even top 15.

As I reply to your post I'm addressing a lot of falcolombardi's points too regarding Russell.

Just to be clear the arguments against Russell I posted there are not my arguments. It's just that it is a general consensus that Russell wasn't the clear-cut best player in the league the way Kareem. Jordan and Lebron were. There is a plurality of people that will take Wilt as the flat-out better basketball player than Russell. The problem isn't that Russell was 2nd team to Wilt. The problem was that in the 10 seasons they were in the league together, Wilt was 1st Team All-NBA 8 times and Russell 2 times. And Russell was MVP 5 times (once before WIlt came into the NBA) and Wilt was MVP 4 times.

And yes all those longevity factors I mentioned actually go in Kareem's favor. I personally consider Kareem's longevity to be much more impressive than Lebron's even though in the absolute sense Lebron is already matching if not surpassing Kareem. Kareem joined the NBA 4 years older, played in a much more physical NBA, no load management, no modern benefits and still played like a beast that long. Even the off court issues that he faced including racism was far beyond the adversity that modern athletes face.

EDIT: I'm not a Jordan guy. Never was until a few years ago when the Lebron hype train became deafening. I quite frankly feel that Lebron is overrated and it's kind of normal because he's the modern GOAT. Most posters on this forum never watched Jordan live let alone Kareem or Russell. Watching historical footage, you still can't feel the emotions of that era. You can't feel the feelings that watching those players made viewers feel back then.

Russel won the mvp in the year of wilt 50 points season, he won most mvps among the two when both primes overlapped, remember wilt won 3 of his mvps against a russel in his 30's (bigger deal back then) who was slowing down. There were a lot of people such as the pkayers who voted for mvp who prefered russel at the time

Media liked to vote for wilt, not necesarrily wrongly, but media can easily be biased towards the monster scoring playet who was the main draw and attractiong of a nascent sport

Is very unfair imo to use media voting against russel when he was competing for -media- votes (in all nba teams) with the guy who was not only top 10 ever himself but who popularity wise may have been bigger than the league at a point. We are deciding who is the better player not who was more popular with the media voters of the time

As for the part about feelings

I mean feelings and vibes are pretty subjective and arbitrary are they not? Not somethingh we can debate on if the goal is to know who was the most impactful or valuable player

It also cuts both ways. If you grew up with basketball of the 80's and 90's is easy to be biased towards players and styles of that era. Same way people like me who have less time watching the nba may be biases towards the moder players and style we grew up watching

Which is precisely why i think we shouldnt use "what we felt" as part of why we rank a player one way or another and try to stick as much to objetive measures of value whenever possible

Yea but feelings are part of it whether we like to admit it or not. We tend to support players that we've watched personally over the years. Better believe that when Lebron retires he will have fewer fans on these forums. That's just life.

For the record I started watching the NBA in 1997. Or at least that's the point from where I actually remember and understand what I saw LOL.

[falcolombardi]

At the end of the day all else being equal a player who plays 10 great seasons will have provided more "value" than a player of exactly the same value who played 8. Even if the reasons for it are not the latter fault

We can debate the reasons and talk about how unfair it is that magic career was cut short by the HIV panic or how unlucky it is that bird struggle with injuries

but, at the end of the day magic prime ended in 1991 not 1995 or whenever he was gonna drop off if not for the infection.

It may be unlucky that bird got hurt in 89 but we cannot pretend bird played that year and contributed to celtics. Prime 89' bird just didnt happen

Injuries are different. Durability is an asset to an athlete and players whose career got derailed by injuries (Bird being a prime example on top 10 lists) are fairly penalized.

My point is about how we treat longevity factors that have nothing do with durability. For instance Jordan's and Magic's situations...

Jordan willingly left the sport.
Magic left because of decisions he made outside of basketball.

Would you view LeBron the same if he left for the 2014 and 2015 seasons and did something else in his life?

At the end of the day LeBron didn't have sex with thousands of women and didn't lose interest in basketball.

Sorry but that criticism doesnt make sense

Magic didnt know that having tons of sex could end up with him getting vih, people at the time were not conscious of the risk of vih (remember, is a infection that takes years to develop, magic likely cont infected in the early 80's when there was not public awareness of it)

[Colbinii]

Injuries are different. Durability is an asset to an athlete and players whose career got derailed by injuries (Bird being a prime example on top 10 lists) are fairly penalized.

My point is about how we treat longevity factors that have nothing do with durability. For instance Jordan's and Magic's situations...

Jordan willingly left the sport.
Magic left because of decisions he made outside of basketball.

Would you view LeBron the same if he left for the 2014 and 2015 seasons and did something else in his life?

At the end of the day LeBron didn't have sex with thousands of women and didn't lose interest in basketball.

Sorry but that criticism doesnt make sense

Magic didnt know that having tons of sex could end up with him getting vih, people at the time were not conscious of the risk of vih (remember, is a infection that takes years to develop, magic likely cont infected in the early 80's when there was not public awareness of it)

That's not the point. He made decisions and thpse decisions ended up ending his playing career.