Who is in your GOAT tier?

[70sFan]

Bill Russell really has no argument for the greatest basketball player of all time.

That's your opinion, not a fact.

Does anyone really think he was better at basketball than a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James?

...yes?

I really just cannot take that opinion seriously. I think it has no basis in reality. It’s like someone arguing that Babe Ruth is the best baseball player of all time or Bart Starr is the best quarterback of all time. But, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Feel free not to take my opinion seriously, but consider a minor possibility that you may be missing something here. After all, you keep talking about Jordan as the GOAT candidate, even though he played a longer time ago than the difference between Russell and Jordan. Not to mention that basketball was much more similar in 1969 than in 2022 to the 1990s...

[HeartBreakKid]

Kobe, who is a different person, a much better 3 point shooter than Michael Jordan, succeeded in a different era from the 2010s - therefore, you can just brush that off that weakness for Jordan?

That looks a little lazy bigbird. Maybe you're letting age get to you, but Kobe Bryant played a long time ago already now (big difference between 2009 and 2019) and you can't use Kobe as Jordan's avatar regardless, especially for something that Jordan was statistically inferior to Bryant.

Their percentages were similar, though Kobe had higher volume.
Jordan - 32.7% on 1.7 attempts / 33.2% on 2.5 attempts in the playoffs.
Kobe - 32.9% on 4.1 attempts / 33.1% on 4.0 attempts in the playoffs.

Neither were good 3 point shooters. And Jordan, despite being a worse 3 point shooter, was still the more efficient scorer. 30.1 ppg on 57% TS on his career compared to 25 ppg on 55% TS for Kobe. 33.4 ppg on 57% for MJ in the playoffs. For 4 straight years in the late 80s/early 90s, Jordan averaged over 31 ppg on 60% TS or better. For example, he averaged 35 ppg on 60% TS in 1988, despite being an anemic 13% from 3 (on only 0.6 attempts). In today’s game he’d have the benefit of increased spacing even if he was still a bad 3 point shooter. So, I don’t think his lack of 3pt shooting would be much of a handicap for him compared to the 2010s stars.

Yeah, to be fair Shai Gilgeous Alexander I think is a pretty good comp for what Jordan might be capable of as a shooter in today's era, not even considering the fact that Jordan perhaps having different mechanics if he grows up in today's environment would help tremendously with deeper shots.

This defeats the purpose of the sub-argument though.

[NO-KG-AI]

I think Jordan, Russell, Kareem, and LeBron clearly are for me, and Wilt I could probably be swayed on, but also think he's not quite as bullet proof and has the most warts, despite maybe having the most outlier/dominance as well.

I think Jordan and Russell have both the most dominance and the least amount of let downs or disappointments compared to the peers of their time and such. I wouldn't say they are in a different tier, but they might have some space IMO.

[Bush4Ever]

Interesting question. It would obviously depend on your ranking criteria and what you weigh most, lead with the most in your rankings, etc...

At the present time, I would say:

Jordan (best combination of peak/prime, winning, and individual dominance)
Lebron (probably the most accumulated career value as a function of longevity x baseline performance)
Russell (greatest pure winner in NBA history).

Jordan's argument is pretty straightforward. Lebron and Russell can get in there with rankings that emphasize the value of longevity/accumulation and team success/winning more than most other schemes/rankings.

I love Kareem, but I think Lebron has basically stolen the central pieces of his argument at this point in time. It's hard for me to see a good argument for Kareem that doesn't also include (and then some) Lebron.

Wilt was a statistical monster, but like a lot of people on this board know, the context (era, pace, arguably quality of competition) and semi-lack of connection of individual statistics to impact on winning pretty much removes him from the discussion, but perhaps > 0 percent of the logical/rational basketball world disagrees.

I don't think anyone else has a shot.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Russell was 27-2 for his entire career. Jordan was 29-3 from 1989-98, an equal 27-2 from 1990-98, and only if we laser in on 1991-98 does he top Russell’s average career winning percentage. But of course we can simply drop the first two years of Russell’s career and swing it right back to Russell.

But hey, small league somehow might make winning series against the other best teams easier, right? So how about we just lower the standards for Jordan. Does that help?

Russell had the #1 SRS team the first ten years of his career, then he was second out of ten (lost in the semifinals), third out of twelve (but won the title anyway), then second out of fourteen (and again won the title). By record, he was #1 the first nine years of his career, then second (won road title), second (lost), third (won road title), and joint fifth (won three road series for the title — only ever done by Hakeem, who had to win four for the title in 1995).

So what would be an equivalent for Jordan, hmmm… Okay, how many years did Jordan make the conference finals? Eight? Darn, still quite a bit shy of Russell’s eleven titles. How many years did Jordan have a top four SRS team? Six? Oof, quite a bit shy of Russell’s ten at the top of his small league. Top four record? Still only six compared to Russell’s nine at the top of his small league. And does Jordan at least get to claim a road advantage? Nope. Russell won a larger percentage of his series on the road, won more titles involving a road series, won more road series en route to a title (despite the lessened total number of series in a postseason), and won more road series consecutively.

Russell was the better winner, with a team that was more reliant on him than the Bulls were on Jordan. You want to assess basketball in other ways, fine, but the “winning” argument is not much of a case for Jordan.


Sick tautology.


How are we defining better?

Straight up I think he was a smarter basketball player than Jordan and somewhat less confidently I believe he impacted the game (as in, the actual game being playing on the court between two teams) more, so we can start there. Is that “better”?

When he’s saying better the way I’m viewing it is not thinking about it in era and thinking about it in an absolute sense, like comparing jerry west vs Kawhi or something like that, since I think that’d make more sense

It’s inherently unfair towards older players but I don’t think that makes in an inherently wrong way to compare guys since everyone has their own criteria

Of course I think we all have different opinions on how guys back then would fair today

Yeah that’s exactly how I view it. I wouldn’t say it’s unfair to older generations because it’s the natural progression of sports. The level of play improves over time. Basketball fans are the only fans I’ve seen reject this argument. NFL fans don’t dispute that todays players are better than players from the 1960s. They’re bigger, faster, stronger. Yet a contingent of NBA fans think basketball has declined. I don’t like thinking about it by era because the eras were so different. Dudes in the 50s and 60s had offseason jobs and smoked cigs at halftime. Dudes today spend millions on their bodies and face competition from every crevice of the earth.

If Bill Russell was born in 2001 and had all the modern advantages would he dominate today’s NBA? Sure, maybe. But that bill Russell doesn’t exist, and I wholeheartedly believe the one who did has zero argument for being better at playing the game of basketball than LeBron, Jordan, etc. I hate guys like Curry and KD, but put them in a game in 1957 and those dudes would think they’re aliens.

So I don’t disagree with anything here specifically, but one thing I’d say is that You could probably argue guard play has progressed much more than bigs have. I feel when watching older games that pops out a lot more, altho rules limited them too ofc, I get what you’re saying tho

The basketball declined argument from a large group of fans is mostly old heads who hate jumpshooters and like the midrange or stuff like that I think.

It’s a mix for me, I do like evaluating guys in an absolute sense more than most, at the same time though, babe Ruth is considered the GOAT by some people too right? Even if he isn’t technically better than like, shohei or something like that.

[70sFan]

I love Kareem, but I think Lebron has basically stolen the central pieces of his argument at this point in time. It's hard for me to see a good argument for Kareem that doesn't also include (and then some) Lebron.

Well, if you think that Kareem is better than LeBron, then his argument is pretty straightforward.

[Dutchball97]

I love Kareem, but I think Lebron has basically stolen the central pieces of his argument at this point in time. It's hard for me to see a good argument for Kareem that doesn't also include (and then some) Lebron.

Well, if you think that Kareem is better than LeBron, then his argument is pretty straightforward.

What basis is there for Kareem to be better than LeBron though? Not saying it's necessarily not true but LeBron is catching up in longevity and will likely surpass Kareem on that front, while there really doesn't seem to be too big of a difference between their peak or primes. Era strength also favors LeBron for example.

[Jaivl]

Interesting question. It would obviously depend on your ranking criteria and what you weigh most, lead with the most in your rankings, etc...

At the present time, I would say:

Jordan (best combination of peak/prime, winning, and individual dominance)
Lebron (probably the most accumulated career value as a function of longevity x baseline performance)
Russell (greatest pure winner in NBA history).

Jordan's argument is pretty straightforward. Lebron and Russell can get in there with rankings that emphasize the value of longevity/accumulation and team success/winning more than most other schemes/rankings.

Aren't LeBron's and Russell's arguments the straight-forward ones, Jordan getting there with rankings that emphasize XYZ over ABC?

[Dutchball97]

Interesting question. It would obviously depend on your ranking criteria and what you weigh most, lead with the most in your rankings, etc...

At the present time, I would say:

Jordan (best combination of peak/prime, winning, and individual dominance)
Lebron (probably the most accumulated career value as a function of longevity x baseline performance)
Russell (greatest pure winner in NBA history).

Jordan's argument is pretty straightforward. Lebron and Russell can get in there with rankings that emphasize the value of longevity/accumulation and team success/winning more than most other schemes/rankings.

Aren't LeBron's and Russell's arguments the straight-forward ones, Jordan getting there with rankings that emphasize XYZ over ABC?

Describing Jordan's combination of individual dominance and team success as having to emphasize complicated criteria honestly sounds a bit agenda-driven. I'll assume it's because you're replying to someone who also is making a clearly agenda-driven statement?

To a lot of people Jordan has the highest peak and the Bulls dominance is something Kareem and LeBron didn't come close to at their respective peaks despite changing teams to try and search out better situations. In the end every argument is going to be somewhat subjective and not straight-forward though. For me Jordan was the best individual player in both the regular season and play-offs for all his championships but I know that for someone like 70sFan who rates 93 Hakeem higher (iirc) an argument like that isn't going to hold up.

[70sFan]

I love Kareem, but I think Lebron has basically stolen the central pieces of his argument at this point in time. It's hard for me to see a good argument for Kareem that doesn't also include (and then some) Lebron.

Well, if you think that Kareem is better than LeBron, then his argument is pretty straightforward.

What basis is there for Kareem to be better than LeBron though? Not saying it's necessarily not true but LeBron is catching up in longevity and will likely surpass Kareem on that front, while there really doesn't seem to be too big of a difference between their peak or primes. Era strength also favors LeBron for example.

These two are the GOAT candidates, so I don't want to imply that the gap between Kareem and LeBron is gigantic or anything. With that being said, if you believe that Kareem has a better prime and peak (which is arguable, but defensivble), then why would you pick LeBron over him? For one-two more prime seasons?

People always think that Kareem's case is strictly attached to longevity, but that's not true - Kareem would have been the GOAT candidate even had he finished his career in 1983 or 1984.

[Dutchball97]

Well, if you think that Kareem is better than LeBron, then his argument is pretty straightforward.

What basis is there for Kareem to be better than LeBron though? Not saying it's necessarily not true but LeBron is catching up in longevity and will likely surpass Kareem on that front, while there really doesn't seem to be too big of a difference between their peak or primes. Era strength also favors LeBron for example.

These two are the GOAT candidates, so I don't want to imply that the gap between Kareem and LeBron is gigantic or anything. With that being said, if you believe that Kareem has a better prime and peak (which is arguable, but defensivble), then why would you pick LeBron over him? For one-two more prime seasons?

People always think that Kareem's case is strictly attached to longevity, but that's not true - Kareem would have been the GOAT candidate even had he finished his career in 1983 or 1984.

I mean if you believe Kareem has a better peak/prime than LeBron (like you said, difficult to argue but not impossible) then of course a tiny longevity advantage for LeBron isn't going to change anything. It's more that in most cases people aren't going to differentiatie that much between their peak/prime and in the case that they do are likelier to prefer LeBron so when LeBron surpasses Kareem's longevity, it'll get even harder to argue Kareem ahead of LeBron (again not impossible, but the "easy" narrative of having the best longevity kind of goes away for him).

In the case that Kareem retired in 83 or 84 I'd still have him in my GOAT tier and at worst he'd drop to 4th below Russell on my list but without his insane longevity I'd have trouble making a strong #1 case for him, which he does have at the moment.

[70sFan]

What basis is there for Kareem to be better than LeBron though? Not saying it's necessarily not true but LeBron is catching up in longevity and will likely surpass Kareem on that front, while there really doesn't seem to be too big of a difference between their peak or primes. Era strength also favors LeBron for example.

These two are the GOAT candidates, so I don't want to imply that the gap between Kareem and LeBron is gigantic or anything. With that being said, if you believe that Kareem has a better prime and peak (which is arguable, but defensivble), then why would you pick LeBron over him? For one-two more prime seasons?

People always think that Kareem's case is strictly attached to longevity, but that's not true - Kareem would have been the GOAT candidate even had he finished his career in 1983 or 1984.

I mean if you believe Kareem has a better peak/prime than LeBron (like you said, difficult to argue but not impossible) then of course a tiny longevity advantage for LeBron isn't going to change anything. It's more that in most cases people aren't going to differentiatie that much between their peak/prime and in the case that they do are likelier to prefer LeBron so when LeBron surpasses Kareem's longevity, it'll get even harder to argue Kareem ahead of LeBron (again not impossible, but the "easy" narrative of having the best longevity kind of goes away for him).

In the case that Kareem retired in 83 or 84 I'd still have him in my GOAT tier and at worst he'd drop to 4th below Russell on my list but without his insane longevity I'd have trouble making a strong #1 case for him, which he does have at the moment.

Again, this is all about how you view Kareem's prime. I didn't say it's difficult to argue, but more than it's open to discussion. To me, I probably prefer Kareem's 1970-81 years over James 2009-20, although I understand that I am in the minority.

I think James will surpass Kareem this season on my list, assuming he wil start to play relevant basketball this year (it's still early), but not because of better prime or peak.

[Bush4Ever]

I see Kareem and Lebron being essentially the same in the "best half" of their careers, but Lebron being straightforwardly better in the "worst half", and also having more credits to his name as a leading player in terms of team success (NBA obviously).

The few times I've disagreed with Kareem fans about value, it seems to be oriented more towards how you consider the 1980s, not the 1970s (in my experience).

To me, it's significantly easier to argue Lebron > Kareem over the worst half than Kareem > Lebron over the best half.

Edit: I read an article once on sprinters (100/200/400 types), and one of the takeaways is that many times in sprints, winning is more correlated to withstanding deceleration from top speed than what exactly your top speed is. I kind of see Lebron vs. Kareem in that light...similar top speeds, but Lebron decelerating noticeably more slowly.

[Dutchball97]

These two are the GOAT candidates, so I don't want to imply that the gap between Kareem and LeBron is gigantic or anything. With that being said, if you believe that Kareem has a better prime and peak (which is arguable, but defensivble), then why would you pick LeBron over him? For one-two more prime seasons?

People always think that Kareem's case is strictly attached to longevity, but that's not true - Kareem would have been the GOAT candidate even had he finished his career in 1983 or 1984.

I mean if you believe Kareem has a better peak/prime than LeBron (like you said, difficult to argue but not impossible) then of course a tiny longevity advantage for LeBron isn't going to change anything. It's more that in most cases people aren't going to differentiatie that much between their peak/prime and in the case that they do are likelier to prefer LeBron so when LeBron surpasses Kareem's longevity, it'll get even harder to argue Kareem ahead of LeBron (again not impossible, but the "easy" narrative of having the best longevity kind of goes away for him).

In the case that Kareem retired in 83 or 84 I'd still have him in my GOAT tier and at worst he'd drop to 4th below Russell on my list but without his insane longevity I'd have trouble making a strong #1 case for him, which he does have at the moment.

Again, this is all about how you view Kareem's prime. I didn't say it's difficult to argue, but more than it's open to discussion. To me, I probably prefer Kareem's 1970-81 years over James 2009-20, although I understand that I am in the minority.

I think James will surpass Kareem this season on my list, assuming he wil start to play relevant basketball this year (it's still early), but not because of better prime or peak.

It's difficult to argue for a significant peak/prime difference either way imo. While I'm not trying to say they're exactly the same, they are by all means close enough in prime quality that an argument centered around LeBron/Kareem having a much better prime than the other is going to be pretty shaky. At this point it's probably mostly a stylistic difference between us that I prefer looking at other differentiating factors when it's very close on a certain aspect like prime, while you do more often take on the task of trying to quanitify the difference in their primes.

[70sFan]

I mean if you believe Kareem has a better peak/prime than LeBron (like you said, difficult to argue but not impossible) then of course a tiny longevity advantage for LeBron isn't going to change anything. It's more that in most cases people aren't going to differentiatie that much between their peak/prime and in the case that they do are likelier to prefer LeBron so when LeBron surpasses Kareem's longevity, it'll get even harder to argue Kareem ahead of LeBron (again not impossible, but the "easy" narrative of having the best longevity kind of goes away for him).

In the case that Kareem retired in 83 or 84 I'd still have him in my GOAT tier and at worst he'd drop to 4th below Russell on my list but without his insane longevity I'd have trouble making a strong #1 case for him, which he does have at the moment.

Again, this is all about how you view Kareem's prime. I didn't say it's difficult to argue, but more than it's open to discussion. To me, I probably prefer Kareem's 1970-81 years over James 2009-20, although I understand that I am in the minority.

I think James will surpass Kareem this season on my list, assuming he wil start to play relevant basketball this year (it's still early), but not because of better prime or peak.

It's difficult to argue for a significant peak/prime difference either way imo. While I'm not trying to say they're exactly the same, they are by all means close enough in prime quality that an argument centered around LeBron/Kareem having a much better prime than the other is going to be pretty shaky. At this point it's probably mostly a stylistic difference between us that I prefer looking at other differentiating factors when it's very close on a certain aspect like prime, while you do more often take on the task of trying to quanitify the difference in their primes.

Isn't that your argument about Jordan being the GOAT though? Why do you think that you can't pick a clearly better player between the two, why you always insist that Jordan was better than them?

To me, all three have very close primes, but it doesn't mean that you can't choose between them.

[Dutchball97]

Again, this is all about how you view Kareem's prime. I didn't say it's difficult to argue, but more than it's open to discussion. To me, I probably prefer Kareem's 1970-81 years over James 2009-20, although I understand that I am in the minority.

I think James will surpass Kareem this season on my list, assuming he wil start to play relevant basketball this year (it's still early), but not because of better prime or peak.

It's difficult to argue for a significant peak/prime difference either way imo. While I'm not trying to say they're exactly the same, they are by all means close enough in prime quality that an argument centered around LeBron/Kareem having a much better prime than the other is going to be pretty shaky. At this point it's probably mostly a stylistic difference between us that I prefer looking at other differentiating factors when it's very close on a certain aspect like prime, while you do more often take on the task of trying to quanitify the difference in their primes.

Isn't that your argument about Jordan being the GOAT though? Why do you think that you can't pick a clearly better player between the two, why you always insist that Jordan was better than them?

To me, all three have very close primes, but it doesn't mean that you can't choose between them.

The main argument for Jordan to me is how consistently he dominated on both an individual and team level during his prime. It's the one area where Kareem and LeBron aren't damn near perfect and to me it weighs more than better longevity. There's legit arguments about team context, Jordan's two mid-career retirements and strength of opposition. We also can't forget about Russell who also had extremely consistent team success, while always being in the mix for best in the league as well but weighing everything together I found MJ having the most convincing GOAT case the last time I compared them in detail (2020 top 100 project). I don't rule out LeBron might still take that top spot the next time around either. I do think Jordan has the best peak but for prime it depends on how many seasons we're talking about.

In the end it comes down to my earlier point of these takes all being subjective. We can't really rule out anyone from the GOAT discussion since if somebody wanted to argue Tom Sanders is the real GOAT, who are we to say there is no case. What I'm trying to say is personal GOAT lists are about your own criteria but when participating in a broader GOAT discussion with others there is usually some convincing required and for arguments sake if LeBron ends up with noticeably better longevity than Kareem, it could be a hard sell to some people that Kareem should be ahead anyway due to a superior prime.

[70sFan]

It's difficult to argue for a significant peak/prime difference either way imo. While I'm not trying to say they're exactly the same, they are by all means close enough in prime quality that an argument centered around LeBron/Kareem having a much better prime than the other is going to be pretty shaky. At this point it's probably mostly a stylistic difference between us that I prefer looking at other differentiating factors when it's very close on a certain aspect like prime, while you do more often take on the task of trying to quanitify the difference in their primes.

Isn't that your argument about Jordan being the GOAT though? Why do you think that you can't pick a clearly better player between the two, why you always insist that Jordan was better than them?

To me, all three have very close primes, but it doesn't mean that you can't choose between them.

The main argument for Jordan to me is how consistently he dominated on both an individual and team level during his prime. It's the one area where Kareem and LeBron aren't damn near perfect and to me it weighs more than better longevity. There's legit arguments about team context, Jordan's two mid-career retirements and strength of opposition. We also can't forget about Russell who also had extremely consistent team success, while always being in the mix for best in the league as well but weighing everything together I found MJ having the most convincing GOAT case the last time I compared them in detail (2020 top 100 project). I don't rule out LeBron might still take that top spot the next time around either. I do think Jordan has the best peak but for prime it depends on how many seasons we're talking about.

In the end it comes down to my earlier point of these takes all being subjective. We can't really rule out anyone from the GOAT discussion since if somebody wanted to argue Tom Sanders is the real GOAT, who are we to say there is no case. What I'm trying to say is personal GOAT lists are about your own criteria but when participating in a broader GOAT discussion with others there is usually some convincing required and for arguments sake if LeBron ends up with noticeably better longevity than Kareem, it could be a hard sell to some people that Kareem should be ahead anyway due to a superior prime.

Just like you may prefer Jordan's combination of team and individual success, you can also prefer Kareem's two-way impact and consistent RS dominance throughout his prime over LeBron. I really fail to see why you think you can prefer Jordan because of "dominance", but you can't prefer Kareem over LeBron in any other way than longevity aspect. I know that you didn't say that, but it looks that way.

You think that Jordan has clearly better peak than James, some may think the same about Kareem over James. I fail to understand why people always have to link Kareem with longevity argument, Kareem doesn't need that at all...

[Dutchball97]

Isn't that your argument about Jordan being the GOAT though? Why do you think that you can't pick a clearly better player between the two, why you always insist that Jordan was better than them?

To me, all three have very close primes, but it doesn't mean that you can't choose between them.

The main argument for Jordan to me is how consistently he dominated on both an individual and team level during his prime. It's the one area where Kareem and LeBron aren't damn near perfect and to me it weighs more than better longevity. There's legit arguments about team context, Jordan's two mid-career retirements and strength of opposition. We also can't forget about Russell who also had extremely consistent team success, while always being in the mix for best in the league as well but weighing everything together I found MJ having the most convincing GOAT case the last time I compared them in detail (2020 top 100 project). I don't rule out LeBron might still take that top spot the next time around either. I do think Jordan has the best peak but for prime it depends on how many seasons we're talking about.

In the end it comes down to my earlier point of these takes all being subjective. We can't really rule out anyone from the GOAT discussion since if somebody wanted to argue Tom Sanders is the real GOAT, who are we to say there is no case. What I'm trying to say is personal GOAT lists are about your own criteria but when participating in a broader GOAT discussion with others there is usually some convincing required and for arguments sake if LeBron ends up with noticeably better longevity than Kareem, it could be a hard sell to some people that Kareem should be ahead anyway due to a superior prime.

Just like you may prefer Jordan's combination of team and individual success, you can also prefer Kareem's two-way impact and consistent RS dominance throughout his prime over LeBron. I really fail to see why you think you can prefer Jordan because of "dominance", but you can't prefer Kareem over LeBron in any other way than longevity aspect. I know that you didn't say that, but it looks that way.

You think that Jordan has clearly better peak than James, some may think the same about Kareem over James. I fail to understand why people always have to link Kareem with longevity argument, Kareem doesn't need that at all...

Looks like my post didn't convey what I meant well enough. Of course someone can prefer Kareem over James regardless of longevity. To be honest I was mostly just interested in where you see a clear advantage for Kareem over LeBron in terms of prime as I personally see their primes as close to equal.

[AEnigma]

Interesting question. It would obviously depend on your ranking criteria and what you weigh most, lead with the most in your rankings, etc...

At the present time, I would say:

Jordan (best combination of peak/prime, winning, and individual dominance)
Lebron (probably the most accumulated career value as a function of longevity x baseline performance)
Russell (greatest pure winner in NBA history).

Jordan's argument is pretty straightforward. Lebron and Russell can get in there with rankings that emphasize the value of longevity/accumulation and team success/winning more than most other schemes/rankings.

Aren't LeBron's and Russell's arguments the straight-forward ones, Jordan getting there with rankings that emphasize XYZ over ABC?

Describing Jordan's combination of individual dominance and team success as having to emphasize complicated criteria honestly sounds a bit agenda-driven. I'll assume it's because you're replying to someone who also is making a clearly agenda-driven statement?

Look how abstracted that is lol. He does not top Russell in team success, so the measure has to be team success plus “peak/prime individual dominance” — which basically just seems to mean big box score numbers — in some unspecified blend. You can phrase it simply, sure, but it is ultimately going more on expected vibes of what “individual dominance” looks like.

To a lot of people Jordan has the highest peak

Well yeah, he scored a ton, was a good defender for his position, and won; for a lot of people, that is basically where the analysis stops.

Which takes us back to the arbitrary blend. He — without doing any further contextual analysis — won more than everyone but Russell. But we want it to be Jordan, so obviously we need to blend individual dominance relative to their own league, and a lot of people still think Wilt was better than Russell, so it cannot be Russell, so therefore Jordan is the best!

and the Bulls dominance is something Kareem and LeBron didn't come close to at their respective peaks despite changing teams to try and search out better situations.

Because their teams were less healthy, worse without them, and faced tougher opposition.

This is one of the most annoying aspects to this approach. Rookie Kareem sees a 27-win team jump up to a 56-win team. Then they add an old Oscar Robertson and have a 12-SRS team with a 12-2 title run, and the following year they are nearly at the same level despite Oscar missing a quarter of the season. However, in the playoffs they go on the road against another 12-SRS team, and lose three close games, the last of which Oscar could only play part of a quarter, despite outscoring them overall.

At this point, if Kareem experienced a Walton-type breakdown, people taking your approach would probably have his peak even higher! Instead, he made the mistake of continuing on. Nate Thurmond exposes him, retroactively making everyone value his prior two years less. Oscar continues to decline and ultimately retires after a game 7 Finals loss. 1975, the Bucks go 3-14 without Kareem. And so he jumps ship to the Lakers, where he shapes up and improves upon those Milwaukee weaknesses, but still loses against an 8+SRS-when-healthy Blazers team. This is basically an inversed Jordan arc, but we reward Jordan for aging into one of the league’s top coaches and supporting casts, while penalising Kareem and Lebron for either not having those casts or seeing those casts age away.

Instead we need to rigidly adhere to arbitrary narrative standards. The player must win in dominant fashion, without considering competition or health of the team. The player must maintain their scoring, again regardless of their competition or how their own team is performing, or indeed what their league environment even looks like in its ability to hone in on any singular lead scorer. It does not matter that someone like Lebron has a season that would win straight up against any non-1991 Jordan season, or that no one really has an ability to articulate how exactly 1991 Jordan elevated past anything we see from him in any surrounding years. No, all that matters is the narrative. Strong regular season record, 15-2 postseason run, best regular season player, scoring maintained from the regular season, threepeated so it was not a fluke, never looked better in any other season… Framed like that, yeah, it is Jordan, but why are we framing it like that, and how is any of that qualifying as actual analysis of what was happening on the court?

In the end every argument is going to be somewhat subjective and not straight-forward though. For me Jordan was the best individual player in both the regular season and play-offs for all his championships but I know that for someone like 70sFan who rates 93 Hakeem higher (iirc) an argument like that isn't going to hold up.

Even if we take that as a given — strong agree that 1993 Hakeem was better, but whatever — why again does that matter? Oh, Curry was better in the 2016 regular season than Lebron, and Giannis was better in the 2020 regular season. Do you think all of Jordan’s title regular seasons would have topped them either? Okay, maybe Bill Russell was not necessarily the best regular season player every year — although that is even tougher to quantify in that era — but his competition would have been peak Wilt, Oscar, and West, and he still should have more than six titles where he was the best in both anyway.

I do not really mean to gun for you specifically when this is a common view of the sport, but you are the acting representative of that view in this thread, and to me it looks like just a half step off JordansBulls reasoning.

[70sFan]

The main argument for Jordan to me is how consistently he dominated on both an individual and team level during his prime. It's the one area where Kareem and LeBron aren't damn near perfect and to me it weighs more than better longevity. There's legit arguments about team context, Jordan's two mid-career retirements and strength of opposition. We also can't forget about Russell who also had extremely consistent team success, while always being in the mix for best in the league as well but weighing everything together I found MJ having the most convincing GOAT case the last time I compared them in detail (2020 top 100 project). I don't rule out LeBron might still take that top spot the next time around either. I do think Jordan has the best peak but for prime it depends on how many seasons we're talking about.

In the end it comes down to my earlier point of these takes all being subjective. We can't really rule out anyone from the GOAT discussion since if somebody wanted to argue Tom Sanders is the real GOAT, who are we to say there is no case. What I'm trying to say is personal GOAT lists are about your own criteria but when participating in a broader GOAT discussion with others there is usually some convincing required and for arguments sake if LeBron ends up with noticeably better longevity than Kareem, it could be a hard sell to some people that Kareem should be ahead anyway due to a superior prime.

Just like you may prefer Jordan's combination of team and individual success, you can also prefer Kareem's two-way impact and consistent RS dominance throughout his prime over LeBron. I really fail to see why you think you can prefer Jordan because of "dominance", but you can't prefer Kareem over LeBron in any other way than longevity aspect. I know that you didn't say that, but it looks that way.

You think that Jordan has clearly better peak than James, some may think the same about Kareem over James. I fail to understand why people always have to link Kareem with longevity argument, Kareem doesn't need that at all...

Looks like my post didn't convey what I meant well enough. Of course someone can prefer Kareem over James regardless of longevity. To be honest I was mostly just interested in where you see a clear advantage for Kareem over LeBron in terms of prime as I personally see their primes as close to equal.

I'm not saying that Kareem has a clear advantage over James (though I prefer his prime), but I don't see Jordan having any advantage over Kareem or James either. You say that it's about "combination of "team and individual dominance" but I'm not convinced his individual dominance is any better than these two and his team dominance was replicated by Kareem and James - just less often (due to team circumstances, not lack of ability). I mean, did James or Kareem ever played in their primes in a team that would have won 55 games without them? I doubt it to be honest, given how Lakers/Bucks or Cavs/Heat did without them.