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I've been having a discussion with residents NBA expert MavsDirk about supporting casts. He's arguing that MJ's supporting cast that season is similar to what LeBron was working with from 2006-2009. I simply don't agree. His argument is below.

MavsDirk41 wrote:I think we have been over this before but here we go again: Pippen missed half the season with an injury. Without Pippen the only other Bulls players in double figures besides Jordan was Kukoc (13ppg) and Longley (11ppg). Rodman was outstanding on the boards but gave them no offense. Jordan carried that team in the regular season with Pippen out. In the finals Jordan averaged 34ppg while Pippen avg 16ppg and Kukoc 15ppg. This was Pippens worst regular season and finals with the Bulls imo. In his 4 finals victorys (James that is) name a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen. You also mentioned Longley and Kerr as part of a solid supporting cast. Ok. Are they worse than Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Tristian Thompson, or the Birdman? Im not taking away from what James did in 07 but its been done before by other alltime greats. And yes, consider ive been watching the nba since 87 im pretty sure i watched 90s nba. You get on here and insult people who disagree with your opinion on lebron james. Reality is not everbody views him or his career the same as you.

I personally think MJ had a good supporting cast. Pippen was still effective, despite the injuries. Kukoc was in his prime. Rodman was putting up 15 RPG. Longley, Kerr, Harper are damn good complimentary pieces IMO. The team was a top defensive team that year as well.

A team with 3 other HOF's and the widely considered GOAT as coach? Nah.

It is hard to take anyone seriously when their entire argument is PPG.

Kukoc and Harper ranked 11th and 13th respectively in +/- [Jordan 4th at 598] in the entire NBA in 1998. Pippen, playing only 44 games, ranked 32nd.

In 2007, LeBron ranked 18th in +/- [378] while the next Cavaliers ranked 30th and 31st respectively [Big Z & Varejao].

In Terms of BPM, LeBron was at 8.1 [Jordan at 6.9] while the Cavaliers had 3 players => 0 BPM [Marshall, Big Z and Varejao, all defensive slanted players] while the Bulls had 5 [yes 5] role players => 0 BPM [Pippen, Kukoc, Burrell, Harper and Kerr].

I guess I am confused about this part:

MavsDirk41 wrote:You also mentioned Longley and Kerr as part of a solid supporting cast. Ok. Are they worse than Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Tristian Thompson, or the Birdman? Im not taking away from what James did in 07 but its been done before by other alltime greats.

Which year is MavsDirk41 talking about? Birdman was never on the same team as Tristan Thompson or Mo Williams and none of these players were on the 2007 Cavaliers.

Can you clarify which year you would like to compare here? None of the players you mention above were on the 2007 Cavaliers.

Maybe on offense but they were still a strong defensive team,great in rebounding(offense and defense) and they had still the best coach of all-time in Phil Jackson

Taj FTW wrote:I've been having a discussion with residents NBA expert MavsDirk about supporting casts. He's arguing that MJ's supporting cast that season is similar to what LeBron was working with from 2006-2009. I simply don't agree. His argument is below.

MavsDirk41 wrote:I think we have been over this before but here we go again: Pippen missed half the season with an injury. Without Pippen the only other Bulls players in double figures besides Jordan was Kukoc (13ppg) and Longley (11ppg). Rodman was outstanding on the boards but gave them no offense. Jordan carried that team in the regular season with Pippen out. In the finals Jordan averaged 34ppg while Pippen avg 16ppg and Kukoc 15ppg. This was Pippens worst regular season and finals with the Bulls imo. In his 4 finals victorys (James that is) name a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen. You also mentioned Longley and Kerr as part of a solid supporting cast. Ok. Are they worse than Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Tristian Thompson, or the Birdman? Im not taking away from what James did in 07 but its been done before by other alltime greats. And yes, consider ive been watching the nba since 87 im pretty sure i watched 90s nba. You get on here and insult people who disagree with your opinion on lebron james. Reality is not everbody views him or his career the same as you.

I personally think MJ had a good supporting cast. Pippen was still effective, despite the injuries. Kukoc was in his prime. Rodman was putting up 15 RPG. Longley, Kerr, Harper are damn good complimentary pieces IMO. The team was a top defensive team that year as well.

It will of course depend on the details of what one mean ... is the bar in terms of the thread title versus other title teams, versus the average team etc. Are we discussing their merits in general or as a cast for Jordan ... etc.

Whilst it is visibly weaker (particularly at the top end) than the preceding teams with Pippen hurt and missing time, Rodman diminished, Kukoc shooting worse than the prior years it seems nevertheless to be a solid one.
On the data side the team doesn't go to hell with Jordan on the bench despite the aforementioned top-end dropoff (though it arguably does in the playoffs, in a smaller sample).
In terms of production the top 10-11 (by minutes) are probably all at least competent. Caffey is limited (not a passer) and Brown weak on production but he was a defensive specialist. Buechler is weak in terms of on off, but that years RAPM suggests he was above average suggesting perhaps that the poor on-off may have come from playing in scrub units. Reputationally he had the attributes and numerically the skills you want from that spot player role (defense, hustle, competitive, accepts minutes will fluctuate, defends multiple positions, makes shots, plays within the system, doesn't take much off the table). There's also continuity there in terms of roster and coaching.

I don't know the context of your discussion ... there's an aggregation of Cavs 1, Heat and Cavs 2 casts ... In terms of their comment regarding "a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen" - and teams go much further than 2 players so this is only a small part of the picture - if the focus is on the years of "finals victorys" and thus playoffs I'd rather have '98 playoff Pippen than '13 playoff Wade especially in the roles they played next to a high primacy wing scorer (Wade's box and impact indicators seem at first glance not insiginifcantly worse and he's a worse defender. I'd consider Irving, despite the excellent playoff production because he was always a poor defender and (perhaps because of this) his impact has tended to lag behind his production. Like Pippen he's at circa 1650 minutes for the regular season. To reiterate though there's far more to the overall question than the "second star".

Decent on offense, top tier on defense. I think the value of Rodman's offensive rebounding and decent passing (not just outlet passes but also hitting cutters and stuff) is being overlooked when people say he has no offense, even if his shooting and FT% is a problem.

The role players were solid.

They had ok depth in a good system for its time. I think this is pretty common knowledge.

Owly wrote:

Taj FTW wrote:I've been having a discussion with residents NBA expert MavsDirk about supporting casts. He's arguing that MJ's supporting cast that season is similar to what LeBron was working with from 2006-2009. I simply don't agree. His argument is below.

MavsDirk41 wrote:I think we have been over this before but here we go again: Pippen missed half the season with an injury. Without Pippen the only other Bulls players in double figures besides Jordan was Kukoc (13ppg) and Longley (11ppg). Rodman was outstanding on the boards but gave them no offense. Jordan carried that team in the regular season with Pippen out. In the finals Jordan averaged 34ppg while Pippen avg 16ppg and Kukoc 15ppg. This was Pippens worst regular season and finals with the Bulls imo. In his 4 finals victorys (James that is) name a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen. You also mentioned Longley and Kerr as part of a solid supporting cast. Ok. Are they worse than Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Tristian Thompson, or the Birdman? Im not taking away from what James did in 07 but its been done before by other alltime greats. And yes, consider ive been watching the nba since 87 im pretty sure i watched 90s nba. You get on here and insult people who disagree with your opinion on lebron james. Reality is not everbody views him or his career the same as you.

I personally think MJ had a good supporting cast. Pippen was still effective, despite the injuries. Kukoc was in his prime. Rodman was putting up 15 RPG. Longley, Kerr, Harper are damn good complimentary pieces IMO. The team was a top defensive team that year as well.

It will of course depend on the details of what one mean ... is the bar in terms of the thread title versus other title teams, versus the average team etc. Are we discussing their merits in general or as a cast for Jordan ... etc.

Whilst it is visibly weaker (particularly at the top end) than the preceding teams with Pippen hurt and missing time, Rodman diminished, Kukoc shooting worse than the prior years it seems nevertheless to be a solid one.
On the data side the team doesn't go to hell with Jordan on the bench despite the aforementioned top-end dropoff (though it arguably does in the playoffs, in a smaller sample).
In terms of production the top 10-11 (by minutes) are probably all at least competent. Caffey is limited (not a passer) and Brown weak on production but he was a defensive specialist. Buechler is weak in terms of on off, but that years RAPM suggests he was above average suggesting perhaps that the poor on-off may have come from playing in scrub units. Reputationally he had the attributes and numerically the skills you want from that spot player role (defense, hustle, competitive, accepts minutes will fluctuate, defends multiple positions, makes shots, plays within the system, doesn't take much off the table). There's also continuity there in terms of roster and coaching.

I don't know the context of your discussion ... there's an aggregation of Cavs 1, Heat and Cavs 2 casts ... In terms of their comment regarding "a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen" - and teams go much further than 2 players so this is only a small part of the picture - if the focus is on the years of "finals victorys" and thus playoffs I'd rather have '98 playoff Pippen than '13 playoff Wade especially in the roles they played next to a high primacy wing scorer (Wade's box and impact indicators seem at first glance not insiginifcantly worse and he's a worse defender. I'd consider Irving, despite the excellent playoff production because he was always a poor defender and (perhaps because of this) his impact has tended to lag behind his production. Like Pippen he's at circa 1650 minutes for the regular season. To reiterate though there's far more to the overall question than the "second star".

The discussion is the Cavs during LeBron's first stint, specifically his last season there (08-09) vs the last Bulls championship team. His argument is all over the place though, because he feels the need to bring up the LeBron Heat for some reason.

There's been stronger title teams but Pippen was still one of the best co-stars in the league and the team overall had good depth in an era where most teams didn't have that.

Agree that it depends which team we're comparing to. I'd say 98 Bulls had a better supporting cast than 06, 07, 08 Cavs but not 09 Cavs. I agree with the sentiment that 98 Bulls supporting cast has become wildly overrated because of the name power. Many of those guys were on their last legs as true impact guys, particularly Rodman and Pippen, and they suffered from the same worn-down malaise that every attempting three-peat team suffers from. The fact they won 62 games and won the title is a testament to Jordan's greatness and refusal to let them not win above anything else.

Colbinii wrote:Kukoc and Harper ranked 11th and 13th respectively in +/- [Jordan 4th at 598] in the entire NBA in 1998. Pippen, playing only 44 games, ranked 32nd.

I find it tough to do this kind of thing with 90s line ups because Kukoc, Harper, and Pippen played almost all of their mins with Jordan. Of course their +/- looked good.

VanWest82 wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Kukoc and Harper ranked 11th and 13th respectively in +/- [Jordan 4th at 598] in the entire NBA in 1998. Pippen, playing only 44 games, ranked 32nd.

I find it tough to do this kind of thing with 90s line ups because Kukoc, Harper, and Pippen played almost all of their mins with Jordan. Of course their +/- looked good.

Don't do that. Collinearity helps all of them. If their stats look good because they played together it's because they were actually good lol. Raw +/- isn't that good anyway, but from what I understand from the real stats focused discussions I've seen on PC Board '98 MJ isn't particularly dominant or legendary as far as the impact stats go so I doubt it's all that fair to imply he was the reason they looked good in raw plus minus.

And as others have pointed out, the difference in coaching support between the 2 is nothing short of astronomical. And as far as Pippen goes. I'd personally take half a season of 98 Pippen over '09 Mo Williams who shrank in the playoffs lol

Heej wrote:

VanWest82 wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Kukoc and Harper ranked 11th and 13th respectively in +/- [Jordan 4th at 598] in the entire NBA in 1998. Pippen, playing only 44 games, ranked 32nd.

I find it tough to do this kind of thing with 90s line ups because Kukoc, Harper, and Pippen played almost all of their mins with Jordan. Of course their +/- looked good.

Don't do that. Collinearity helps all of them. If their stats look good because they played together it's because they were actually good lol. Raw +/- isn't that good anyway, but from what I understand from the real stats focused discussions I've seen on PC Board '98 MJ isn't particularly dominant or legendary as far as the impact stats go so I doubt it's all that fair to imply he was the reason they looked good in raw plus minus.

And as others have pointed out, the difference in coaching support between the 2 is nothing short of astronomical. And as far as Pippen goes. I'd personally take half a season of 98 Pippen over '09 Mo Williams who shrank in the playoffs lol

and I don't think the Bulls front court would make Dwight Howard like prime Shaq by moment!

Heej wrote:

VanWest82 wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Kukoc and Harper ranked 11th and 13th respectively in +/- [Jordan 4th at 598] in the entire NBA in 1998. Pippen, playing only 44 games, ranked 32nd.

I find it tough to do this kind of thing with 90s line ups because Kukoc, Harper, and Pippen played almost all of their mins with Jordan. Of course their +/- looked good.

Don't do that. Collinearity helps all of them. If their stats look good because they played together it's because they were actually good lol. Raw +/- isn't that good anyway, but from what I understand from the real stats focused discussions I've seen on PC Board '98 MJ isn't particularly dominant or legendary as far as the impact stats go so I doubt it's all that fair to imply he was the reason they looked good in raw plus minus.

And as others have pointed out, the difference in coaching support between the 2 is nothing short of astronomical. And as far as Pippen goes. I'd personally take half a season of 98 Pippen over '09 Mo Williams who shrank in the playoffs lol

I'm not suggesting those guys sucked or that Jordan was carrying them - see my other post itt - just that comparing teammate +/- from late 90s Bulls to late 00s Cavs doesn't make much sense given the way the league had started to figure out staggering line ups.

If you want to talk about shrinking in the playoffs, go look at the shooting %s for Scottie, Harper, Rodman in 98 playoffs. They were all worse than Mo Williams. 09 Cavs won 66 games. That was a real supporting cast. Bulls overcame Rodman being washed and Scottie getting hurt. Cavs couldn't overcome Ben Wallace getting hurt and Mo Williams not stepping up.

Edit: I'd also suggest that doing teammate BPM for MJ vs. Lebron's teams and equating that to teammate quality is super flawed given one guy had the ball in hands most of the time and the other guy played off ball a good portion of the time. Teammate box score is going to look different.

VanWest82 wrote:

Heej wrote:

VanWest82 wrote:I find it tough to do this kind of thing with 90s line ups because Kukoc, Harper, and Pippen played almost all of their mins with Jordan. Of course their +/- looked good.

Don't do that. Collinearity helps all of them. If their stats look good because they played together it's because they were actually good lol. Raw +/- isn't that good anyway, but from what I understand from the real stats focused discussions I've seen on PC Board '98 MJ isn't particularly dominant or legendary as far as the impact stats go so I doubt it's all that fair to imply he was the reason they looked good in raw plus minus.

And as others have pointed out, the difference in coaching support between the 2 is nothing short of astronomical. And as far as Pippen goes. I'd personally take half a season of 98 Pippen over '09 Mo Williams who shrank in the playoffs lol

I'm not suggesting those guys sucked or that Jordan was carrying them - see my other post itt - just that comparing teammate +/- from late 90s Bulls to late 00s Cavs doesn't make much sense given the way the league had started to figure out staggering line ups.

Can you provide examples of how line-ups were more staggered in the late 2000s compared to 1997 or 1998?

Wouldn't these +/- numbers also inflate Jordan if the line-ups weren't staggered, since he would be playing with the best 4 players on the Bulls for a majority of his minutes?

Edit: I'd also suggest that doing teammate BPM for MJ vs. Lebron's teams and equating that to teammate quality is super flawed given one guy had the ball in hands most of the time and the other guy played off ball a good portion of the time. Teammate box score is going to look different.

This isn't remotely true.

Taj FTW wrote:I've been having a discussion with residents NBA expert MavsDirk about supporting casts. He's arguing that MJ's supporting cast that season is similar to what LeBron was working with from 2006-2009. I simply don't agree. His argument is below.

MavsDirk41 wrote:I think we have been over this before but here we go again: Pippen missed half the season with an injury. Without Pippen the only other Bulls players in double figures besides Jordan was Kukoc (13ppg) and Longley (11ppg). Rodman was outstanding on the boards but gave them no offense. Jordan carried that team in the regular season with Pippen out. In the finals Jordan averaged 34ppg while Pippen avg 16ppg and Kukoc 15ppg. This was Pippens worst regular season and finals with the Bulls imo. In his 4 finals victorys (James that is) name a second fiddle that James had who was worse than 98 Pippen. You also mentioned Longley and Kerr as part of a solid supporting cast. Ok. Are they worse than Mo Williams, Mario Chalmers, Tristian Thompson, or the Birdman? Im not taking away from what James did in 07 but its been done before by other alltime greats. And yes, consider ive been watching the nba since 87 im pretty sure i watched 90s nba. You get on here and insult people who disagree with your opinion on lebron james. Reality is not everbody views him or his career the same as you.

I personally think MJ had a good supporting cast. Pippen was still effective, despite the injuries. Kukoc was in his prime. Rodman was putting up 15 RPG. Longley, Kerr, Harper are damn good complimentary pieces IMO. The team was a top defensive team that year as well.

First and foremost, you need to disregard pretty much every single thing MavsDirk says regarding LeBron. It's become abundantly clear that he has an agenda and if there's one thing I've learned about the anti-LeBron folk, they're just as bad as the bronsexuals. With that in mind, I don't even know why you bothered making this thread. I don't think any objective person would ever say LeBron's 09 cast was better than Jordan's 98 cast.

With all of that said, I do think that Jordan's 98 supporting cast is the weakest of his championship teams. I also think that him being able to win the championship that season doesn't get enough credit and tends to be underrated. A reason for this is that it gets mixed in with the 6 Jordan has, and it just gets looked at as a collection of rings, Jordans 6 or his two three peats. This devalues them to an extent, because just like LeBron's 4, each championship has its own unique story. And when you look at said story, it adds more credibility to some (and also devalues some, like his 91 ring).

I just wanted to throw that out there before I state: Jordan's 98 cast still wins pretty easily here.

Colbinii wrote:Can you provide examples of how line-ups were more staggered in the late 2000s compared to 1997?

I watched NBA in the 90s and 00s. Teams started staggering line ups more in the latter half of 00s, especially their stars. I don't know of a site that will do wowy going back to 98, do you? Every one of Bulls 20 most used RS line ups that year had MJ in it according to bbref. (edit: while top 20 most used Bulls line ups had MJ, the 5th, 7th, 13th, 17th, and 19th most used Cavs line ups didn't have Lebron but did have Mo Williams which would suggest more staggering)

Wouldn't these +/- numbers also inflate Jordan if the line-ups weren't staggered, since he would be playing with the best 4 players on the Bulls for a majority of his minutes?

Other way around. Because Jordan played so many more mins than everyone else that year, the main supporting players all benefited from playing with MJ but MJ got stuck having to play a bunch with guys like Randy Brown, Jason Caffey, Bill Wennington, Scott Burrell, Jud Beuchler, Rusty LaRue, etc. Conversely, Lebron's main cohorts played in way more widely used line ups without him.

Edit: I'd also suggest that doing teammate BPM for MJ vs. Lebron's teams and equating that to teammate quality is super flawed given one guy had the ball in hands most of the time and the other guy played off ball a good portion of the time. Teammate box score is going to look different.

This isn't remotely true.

Yes it is. It's not an accident that over and over again Lebron pairs up with high box score teammates who then experience a drop in their box score playing with Lebron. Meanwhile, that 98 Bulls team in particular was a lousy scoring team, but they had a bunch of guys who were underrated passers which is why you see MJ taking so many shots and his teammates racking up more assists than one would expect just looking at the roster. There was better division of responsibilities rather than one guy doing the lion's share of the box-related responsibilities.

It's not weak but appears more so because they played at such a slow pace(89.0)and MJ took up a huge % of the shots. So all the box score stuff for his teammates looks weak compared to a lot of other title teams but if the goal is winning a title they had a solid team and those Bulls teams benches always held their own.

Maybe weak compared to other title winning teams historically but most teams that season were pretty weak historically.

VanWest82 wrote:

Colbinii wrote:Can you provide examples of how line-ups were more staggered in the late 2000s compared to 1997?

I watched NBA in the 90s and 00s. Teams started staggering line ups more in the latter half of 00s, especially their stars. I don't know of a site that will do wowy going back to 98, do you? Every one of Bulls 20 most used RS line ups that year had MJ in it according to bbref. (edit: while top 20 most used Bulls line ups had MJ, the 5th, 7th, 13th, 17th, and 19th most used Cavs line ups didn't have Lebron but did have Mo Williams which would suggest more staggering)

I thought the comparison was 2007 LeBron and 1998 Jordan supporting cast. I don't really care for comparing the supporting casts of 2009 LeBron [as 2009 LeBron was significantly better than 1998 Jordan] to 1998 Jordan.

FWIW, all 20 of the Top Line-ups for the 2007 Cavaliers contained LeBron

Wouldn't these +/- numbers also inflate Jordan if the line-ups weren't staggered, since he would be playing with the best 4 players on the Bulls for a majority of his minutes?

Other way around. Because Jordan played so many more mins than everyone else that year, the main supporting players all benefited from playing with MJ but MJ got stuck having to play a bunch with guys like Randy Brown, Jason Caffey, Bill Wennington, Scott Burrell, Jud Beuchler, Rusty LaRue, etc. Conversely, Lebron's main cohorts played in way more widely used line ups without him.

Same for 2007 LeBron then, yes? Especially guys like Eric Snow and Drew Gooden--who was historically bad without LeBron.

Drew Gooden played 1994 of his 2238 minutes in 2007 with LeBron James. In those 1994 minutes, LeBron + Gooden were +2.0 Points/100. In the 244 minutes without sharing the court with LeBron James, he was -9 Points/100.

It's also impossible to compare the 90's Bulls to the 00's Cavs without taking into account the differences in coaching and systems being used. Coaching is probably the most underrated aspect of everything on this board tbh because we focus so much on players.