Where would 1998 Jordan rank today?

[Matt15]

Where would 1998 Jordan rank in todays league?

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[HomoSapien]

In the regular season, he'd probably be somewhere in the top 5. I have him above Durrant, Steph, LeBron but in 98 I don't think there was anyone playing at Jokic, Embiid, or Luka's level. Shai and Giannis are also having incredible seasons.

In the playoffs though, I think he's the most dangerous player that has ever existed.

[jdzimme3]

In the regular season, he'd probably be somewhere in the top 5. I have him above Durrant, Steph, LeBron but in 98 I don't think there was anyone playing at Jokic, Embiid, or Luka's level. Shai and Giannis are also having incredible seasons.

In the playoffs though, I think he's the most dangerous player that has ever existed.

This

[SportsGuru08]

In the regular season, he'd probably be somewhere in the top 5. I have him above Durrant, Steph, LeBron but in 98 I don't think there was anyone playing at Jokic, Embiid, or Luka's level. Shai and Giannis are also having incredible seasons.

In the playoffs though, I think he's the most dangerous player that has ever existed.

Good take. Regular season is tough to say where he'd rank, but in the playoffs I'd trust him a great deal more than any of today's stars.

[One_and_Done]

I voted top 3, but my gut was telling me that's too high. Kind of regretting it tbh.

[Heej]

Top 10. 98 was kind of a drop off for Jordan all around. His burst was zapped with him relying on midranges a lot more (while shooting well on them) and his dunks were essentially rim grazers. 98 MJ is a tier 2 or 3 athlete in the league right now and probably wouldn't be the best pure athlete on most teams rn

[OhayoKD]

In the regular season, he'd probably be somewhere in the top 5. I have him above Durrant, Steph, LeBron but in 98 I don't think there was anyone playing at Jokic, Embiid, or Luka's level. Shai and Giannis are also having incredible seasons.

In the playoffs though, I think he's the most dangerous player that has ever existed.

Interesting claim given that Jordan rises less in the postseason than a fair few players, most notably Lebron and Hakeem

[lessthanjake]

He’d be top 3-5 IMO. By 1998, I don’t think he could be the best today, since we have Jokic, who I think is currently up there with anyone’s peak ever (including Jordan’s) and Jordan was not at his peak in 1998. Beyond Jokic, I think there’s no one that is very clearly above 1998 Jordan. But there’s enough guys that I think *could* be better that I would guess top 3-5 rather than saying #2. One thing I’ll note is that there’s players in the league now that are perhaps playing better than 1998 Jordan generally did, but who I’m not sure I’d put over 1998 Jordan because of questions about holding up in the playoffs (Embiid, for instance). In general, my inclination is that 1998 Jordan would be at about the level of Luka. Not that they’d be the same player, of course, but that’s the general level I see him at that year (though I think I’m not as high on Luka as some others are, so keep that in mind).

[Dutchball97]

I'd take him 5th in the regular season behind Embiid, SGA, Jokic and Giannis. Luka is arguable but his inability to produce a +- impact you expect from a star (and see with the other guys I mentioned) is becoming a persistent enough issue I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt over Jordan, who had at least a weak MVP level season himself.

In the post-season SGA and Embiid haven't proven themselves enough to justify over even an older and not quite at his best Jordan imo. GIannis and Jokic have but those two and 98 Jordan would be an interesting discussion so I'm going top 3 for now.

[tsherkin]

Hmm.

Old Bull Jordan, less burst than he had even in 96.

He wouldn't play 38.8 mpg today, though. Chicago was slow af (89.0 pace in 98), so he might enjoy a little boost with the extra transition offense from a league that's like 10 full possessions per game faster than that on average. Especially with reduced minutes to help manage his stamina. Trash year for him in terms of scoring efficiency, he was a 102 TS+ guy on 53.3% TS (+0.9% rTS). About a third of his FGAs were long 2s (32.8%) at 46.2% FG. Excellent shooting, but a horrible strategy in today's game.

That puts him about 4.7% below league average efficiency today. Even with a boost from transition (and thus more high-percentage looks at the rim), it's hard to envision that particular version of Jordan thriving as a high-volume scorer in this environment. Still, on a team with spacing, helping him get a few more drives to the rack per game, you can imagine him as a guy in that +2% rTS range, and he was exceptional at protecting the ball, so his overall utility on offense would be interesting. 1997 was his last really great year. 98 was not a banner year for him, though in his defense, he turned it up in the playoffs. Less so with efficiency (he was at similar efficiency from January forward in the RS), but he also had only 45 turnovers in that entire playoff run (again), which is wild . 6.7% TOV. Just parse that for a second. Yeah, most of his possessions ended with a middie, but even still, it's wild.

He'd be up there. Top 10 in the RS, maybe? Hard to do the theoretical translation into today's game and get a strong picture of exactly how he'd look, but he wasn't staggering the league even in his own day, and without a 3 or elite FT shooting (that was also the worst FT-shooting season of his entire career), there's something of a cap on how efficient he could be.

There are younger, more athletic guys who are better scorers and playmakers in the league right now than Old MJ with a busted finger on his last ride with the red and black. That shouldn't be that surprising. It's hard to imagine him being better than Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Shai, Hali. He's in there somewhere maybe with Steph, KD, Trae and Lebron. Jordan has this titanic narrative weight to him, but his RS performance wasn't that hot. He'd need to have an epic postseason to really turn that around. He certainly had a great one in 98 in flashes, but like, 98 was a brutally-repressed offensive environment, so mediocre volume scoring with decent playmaking and very strong ball protection was a viable approach. It isn't right now.

Younger MJ, different story, but Jordan wasn't that stunning in 98. Winning glosses over a lot. I can see where a lot of pro-MJ arguments come from, of course. And certainly tracing back to the 98 postseason, you see some flashes. But it's quite a bit more difficult to survive your star going 11/28, 9/22 and 9/25 as he did in the Pacers series, that last being in game 7... and he was 3/12 in the 2nd half. And then yeah, 51.6% TS (1.3% BELOW playoff league average) in the Finals? That's the guy we're talking about here. We remember the game-winner over Russell, and the steal before it and such. But we tend to forget how mundane and mortal he looked in that series overall. Chicago had him lofting over 27 FGA/g and it was brutal; they're lucky Utah folded like a cheap suit on O in that series. Well, lucky and very good on D, but still.

Food for thought.

[magicman1978]

Top 10. 97 was the last year he could have been top 5. The finger issue tsherkin mentioned is a key reason why. It caused him to struggle with his outside shot and definitely would have meant he'd struggle with shooting 3s. He was no longer athletic enough to make up for it.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Hmm.

Old Bull Jordan, less burst than he had even in 96.

He wouldn't play 38.8 mpg today, though. Chicago was slow af (89.0 pace in 98), so he might enjoy a little boost with the extra transition offense from a league that's like 10 full possessions per game faster than that on average. Especially with reduced minutes to help manage his stamina. Trash year for him in terms of scoring efficiency, he was a 102 TS+ guy on 53.3% TS (+0.9% rTS). About a third of his FGAs were long 2s (32.8%) at 46.2% FG. Excellent shooting, but a horrible strategy in today's game.

That puts him about 4.7% below league average efficiency today. Even with a boost from transition (and thus more high-percentage looks at the rim), it's hard to envision that particular version of Jordan thriving as a high-volume scorer in this environment. Still, on a team with spacing, helping him get a few more drives to the rack per game, you can imagine him as a guy in that +2% rTS range, and he was exceptional at protecting the ball, so his overall utility on offense would be interesting. 1997 was his last really great year. 98 was not a banner year for him, though in his defense, he turned it up in the playoffs. Less so with efficiency (he was at similar efficiency from January forward in the RS), but he also had only 45 turnovers in that entire playoff run (again), which is wild . 6.7% TOV. Just parse that for a second. Yeah, most of his possessions ended with a middie, but even still, it's wild.

He'd be up there. Top 10 in the RS, maybe? Hard to do the theoretical translation into today's game and get a strong picture of exactly how he'd look, but he wasn't staggering the league even in his own day, and without a 3 or elite FT shooting (that was also the worst FT-shooting season of his entire career), there's something of a cap on how efficient he could be.

There are younger, more athletic guys who are better scorers and playmakers in the league right now than Old MJ with a busted finger on his last ride with the red and black. That shouldn't be that surprising. It's hard to imagine him being better than Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Shai, Hali. He's in there somewhere maybe with Steph, KD, Trae and Lebron. Jordan has this titanic narrative weight to him, but his RS performance wasn't that hot. He'd need to have an epic postseason to really turn that around. He certainly had a great one in 98 in flashes, but like, 98 was a brutally-repressed offensive environment, so mediocre volume scoring with decent playmaking and very strong ball protection was a viable approach. It isn't right now.

Younger MJ, different story, but Jordan wasn't that stunning in 98. Winning glosses over a lot. I can see where a lot of pro-MJ arguments come from, of course. And certainly tracing back to the 98 postseason, you see some flashes. But it's quite a bit more difficult to survive your star going 11/28, 9/22 and 9/25 as he did in the Pacers series, that last being in game 7... and he was 3/12 in the 2nd half. And then yeah, 51.6% TS (1.3% BELOW playoff league average) in the Finals? That's the guy we're talking about here. We remember the game-winner over Russell, and the steal before it and such. But we tend to forget how mundane and mortal he looked in that series overall. Chicago had him lofting over 27 FGA/g and it was brutal; they're lucky Utah folded like a cheap suit on O in that series. Well, lucky and very good on D, but still.

Food for thought.

I hear what you're saying, but I would caution against minimizing 98 Jordan's impact too much. You've focused on his efficiency which, while still above league average(barely), was certainly below previous years. But these are some of his other numbers for 97-98:

Regular Season: .238 WS/48, 6.9 BPM, +6.7 on/off
Playoffs: .265 WS/48(next highest Bull in playoffs was Kukoc at .182), 9.0 BPM(next highest Bull in playoffs was Scottie at 5.6), +13.1 on/off(next highest Bull in playoffs was Rodman at +5.5)
6.15 RS+PO RAPM(via JE), 4.43 O-RAPM, 1.72 D-RAPM(next highest RAPM on the team was Kukoc at 4.99)

This illustrates, imo, elite impact despite the drop in efficiency, especially in the playoffs.

If there's narrative weight around Jordan for the 98 playoffs, the narrative is that the team was running on fumes: Pippen had missed half the season recovering from foot surgery and by the playoffs was dealing with back problems that turned out to be herniated discs and had wanted out all season; Rodman had begun mentally checking out, having ran away to Vegas for a time during the season; all of the major players on the team were aging; everyone knew Phil was done in Chicago; etc. That playoff run has always been characterized as a big carry job on MJ's part, and the numbers posted above seem to jive with that. That being said, I suppose people have exaggerated this a bit, seeing as Pippen(before the back injury) and Kukoc played well enough.

There's also this fact that I saw in a reddit thread about the 98 playoffs:

"MJ scored 32.4 out of their 92 points per game during their 28 postseason games. That's the highest percentage/share for any individual player of any title team's total offense in league history. Higher than Shaq's 2000, Hakeem's 94+95, and LeBron's 2012."

He was past his prime, but he was still a hugely impactful player imo.

It's hard to say where he'd rank in the current league - too many variables.

[tsherkin]

I hear what you're saying, but I would caution against minimizing 98 Jordan's impact too much. You've focused on his efficiency which, while still above league average(barely), was certainly below previous years. But these are some of his other numbers for 97-98:

Regular Season: .238 WS/48, 6.9 BPM, +6.7 on/off
Playoffs: .265 WS/48(next highest Bull in playoffs was Kukoc at .182), 9.0 BPM(next highest Bull in playoffs was Scottie at 5.6), +13.1 on/off(next highest Bull in playoffs was Rodman at +5.5)
6.15 RS+PO RAPM(via JE), 4.43 O-RAPM, 1.72 D-RAPM(next highest RAPM on the team was Kukoc at 4.99)

This illustrates, imo, elite impact despite the drop in efficiency, especially in the playoffs.

It's worth remembering that the Bulls made their bones on offense that year not with shotmaking, but with ball protection (of which Jordan was a significant part) and offensive rebounding. They were 15th in 2FG% and 23rd in 3P%, and 21st in FT/FGA. Some of that last was due to some crappy FT shooters, of course. There were injuries to consider, and Rodman's lack of scoring ability, etc.

If there's narrative weight around Jordan for the 98 playoffs,

I meant around him in general. People don't like to consider the idea that he might not be the best in the league always, for every season he ever played, in all eras.

He was past his prime, but he was still a hugely impactful player imo.

Oh, they leaned on him really hard. Chicago was designed to let him be the high-volume individual scorer. My point was more that this is not a sensible strategy in today's game, particularly without SIGNIFICANT shift in efficiency.

[HomoSapien]

In the regular season, he'd probably be somewhere in the top 5. I have him above Durrant, Steph, LeBron but in 98 I don't think there was anyone playing at Jokic, Embiid, or Luka's level. Shai and Giannis are also having incredible seasons.

In the playoffs though, I think he's the most dangerous player that has ever existed.

Interesting claim given that Jordan rises less in the postseason than a fair few players, most notably Lebron and Hakeem

Yeah, nope. Not taking that bait.

[AEnigma]

Not really bait, there is nothing that makes Jordan (especially old Jordan) uniquely “dangerous” outside of his sheer shot volume — which in the modern league is no longer the outlier it used to be with more teams than ever trying to funnel shots to their stars.

[DirtyDez]

I’d take 88-92’ MJ over Jokic.

[HeartBreakKid]

jordan past his prime isn't more dangerous than jokic lol. makes no sense, jokic already did what 98 Jordan did last year in terms of leading and scoring (and then some), not to mention one of the goat passers..

[Djoker]

Top 3 in the league with Jokic/Giannis but I wouldn't take anyone over him in the playoffs.

The 1998 NBA had a league average TS% pf 52.4 and a pace of 90.3.
The 2023 NBA had a league average TS% of 58.1 and a pace of 99.1.

1998 Jordan averaged 32.4/5.1/3.5 on 54.5 %TS (+2.1 rTS) with 2.1 turnovers per game in the playoffs. Today with the same rTS the scoring numbers jump up to 35.8 ppg on 60.2 %TS (+2.1 rTS). With the higher pace the other stats including FGA would probably go up too so overall a 36/6/4 average is very probable. And he was still an elite defender for a guard.

[VanWest82]

Shai is a good example of how 98 MJ would look today imo, though I always find these old guy from a previous era in a new era thought experiments really tough. Part of the old guy advantage is you know the league so well.

[Cavsfansince84]

Still top 5ish. It's hard to project him from being in a way slower league, on a team near the bottom pace wise on top of it and getting to play in the triangle on teams that were winning with defense to today. I also think that even though he was still a great playoff performer he was starting to wear down as the playoffs came around in 96-98.