Who is in your GOAT tier?

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Who has an argument for the GOAT?

1-KAJ
85
21%
2-MJ
96
24%
3-LBJ
89
22%
4-Russell
57
14%
5-Wilt
33
8%
6-Duncan
13
3%
7-Shaq
4
1%
8-Magic
9
2%
9-Bird
8
2%
10-other
5
1%
 
Total votes: 399

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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#341 » by Homer38 » Wed Dec 7, 2022 12:00 am

Djoker wrote:
falcolombardi wrote:
Djoker wrote:Ok since you guys are still disputing literal facts I'm just going to post the numbers. Let's just compare their championship seasons in regular season minutes played.

2012 Lebron - 2326 mins
2013 Lebron - 2877 mins
2016 Lebron - 2709 mins
2020 Lebron - 2316 mins

Lebron Average: 2557 mins

1991 Jordan - 3034 mins
1992 Jordan - 3102 mins
1993 Jordan - 3067 mins
1996 Jordan - 3090 mins
1997 Jordan - 3106 mins
1998 Jordan - 3181 mins

Jordan Average: 3097 mins (21% more)

That's a significantly higher load for Jordan in their best seasons.

Overall Lebron has eight 3000+ minute seasons, with six of eight in his first six years from 2004-2009. The others are 2011 and 2018. Jordan has twelve 3000+ minute seasons including 1985, ten straight from 1987-1998 and then one more in 2003.

Lebron from 2012-2022 which is 11 straight seasons averaged 2453 minutes per season. He played an average of 67 games at 36.5 mpg during that span. No one is criticizing Lebron's early career but as the years went on, his loads in the regular season were very small historically compared to his predecessors. That cannot be disputed. Not all of it was load management. Some was legit injuries, some lockouts, some Covid-shortened seasons... Still a reduced load at the end of the day!


If you are gonna go by total minutes per year you should include 94 and 95 in the equation then or 86 for that matter

It makes no sense to mention 2012-2020 total minutes which were affected by injuries and shortened seasons, but not include 94 and 95 in jordan minutes played across the 91-98 stretch


Other than 2009 and 2018, Lebron has no other prime season above 3000 minutes played. Jordan's has 10 consecutive prime seasons from 1987-1998 above 3000 minutes. Or 10 out of 11 seasons if you insist on including 1995.

And in some of Lebron's title seasons in particular like 2012 and 2020 his minute totals are laughable.


No one play 3000 minutes in a season in the current NBA,so this is not like LBJ had played much less minutes that the others star players in the NBA....And I don't think Jordan was playing much more minutes that the others star player of the other team so it was for the most part always similar,so I am not sure what is your point since at one point LBJ had 8 finals in a row,and his minutes was crazy at this time compared to the other stars in this league...He had always a very short offseason
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#342 » by Djoker » Wed Dec 7, 2022 3:45 am

Homer38 wrote:
Djoker wrote:
falcolombardi wrote:
If you are gonna go by total minutes per year you should include 94 and 95 in the equation then or 86 for that matter

It makes no sense to mention 2012-2020 total minutes which were affected by injuries and shortened seasons, but not include 94 and 95 in jordan minutes played across the 91-98 stretch


Other than 2009 and 2018, Lebron has no other prime season above 3000 minutes played. Jordan's has 10 consecutive prime seasons from 1987-1998 above 3000 minutes. Or 10 out of 11 seasons if you insist on including 1995.

And in some of Lebron's title seasons in particular like 2012 and 2020 his minute totals are laughable.


No one play 3000 minutes in a season in the current NBA,so this is not like LBJ had played much less minutes that the others star players in the NBA....And I don't think Jordan was playing much more minutes that the others star player of the other team so it was for the most part always similar,so I am not sure what is your point since at one point LBJ had 8 finals in a row,and his minutes was crazy at this time compared to the other stars in this league...He had always a very short offseason


I'm not comparing relative to league but to other GOAT candidates from other eras. I thought that was clear.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#343 » by AEnigma » Wed Dec 7, 2022 4:01 am

Djoker wrote:
Homer38 wrote:
Djoker wrote:
Other than 2009 and 2018, Lebron has no other prime season above 3000 minutes played. Jordan's has 10 consecutive prime seasons from 1987-1998 above 3000 minutes. Or 10 out of 11 seasons if you insist on including 1995.

And in some of Lebron's title seasons in particular like 2012 and 2020 his minute totals are laughable.


No one play 3000 minutes in a season in the current NBA,so this is not like LBJ had played much less minutes that the others star players in the NBA....And I don't think Jordan was playing much more minutes that the others star player of the other team so it was for the most part always similar,so I am not sure what is your point since at one point LBJ had 8 finals in a row,and his minutes was crazy at this time compared to the other stars in this league...He had always a very short offseason

I'm not comparing relative to league but to other GOAT candidates from other eras. I thought that was clear.

It is clear that your only intent is inventing a frame that makes Jordan look good. Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Hakeem, Duncan, and Lebron all played more in the first fourteen years of their NBA careers than Jordan did. But you want to pretend seasons where he put no mileage on his body do not exist while railing on Lebron for having the gall to play in lockout seasons. It is deeply unserious but entirely typical of the usual Jordan stan approach to anything that threatens their sense of his divinity.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#344 » by Djoker » Wed Dec 7, 2022 4:58 am

AEnigma wrote:
Djoker wrote:
Homer38 wrote:
No one play 3000 minutes in a season in the current NBA,so this is not like LBJ had played much less minutes that the others star players in the NBA....And I don't think Jordan was playing much more minutes that the others star player of the other team so it was for the most part always similar,so I am not sure what is your point since at one point LBJ had 8 finals in a row,and his minutes was crazy at this time compared to the other stars in this league...He had always a very short offseason

I'm not comparing relative to league but to other GOAT candidates from other eras. I thought that was clear.

It is clear that your only intent is inventing a frame that makes Jordan look good. Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Hakeem, Duncan, and Lebron all played more in the first fourteen years of their NBA careers than Jordan did. But you want to pretend seasons where he put no mileage on his body do not exist while railing on Lebron for having the gall to play in lockout seasons. It is deeply unserious but entirely typical of the usual Jordan stan approach to anything that threatens their sense of his divinity.


Except I'm not a Jordan stan or even close. I actually became famous on NBA forums a decade ago for propagating Kareem's case for GOAT. And I've actually supported Lebron until the media machine started overrating him in my eyes, probably circa 2016 when he suddenly went from Lebron v. Bird debates to suddenly a GOAT candidate with only 3 rings. The RealGM Peaks project had Lebron's peak 10th in 2012 after he won his first title. In the latest edition he's 2nd with significant support for 1st. That jump in the evaluation of his peak makes no sense. Anyways... I've actually lost interest in debating this. People can support Lebron for GOAT. For me he will always be below Jordan/Kareem/Russell in whatever order you put them in.

Over time though, I admit I have become biased in a sense that I find the modern NBA lacking a soul. There is something about relaxing defensive rules, increasing pace, reducing minutes, load management, so many shortened seasons... they all destroy the destroy the game of basketball as I know it because I was old enough to watch before it degraded into THIS. There is something wrong about fans coming to watch games to see the biggest stars and then they are rested for phantom injuries. Or someone playing 35 mpg for 60 games then dominating in the playoffs... is it fair to say that's the same thing as someone who plays 38 mpg for 80 games then dominating in the playoffs? I don't even know how to put Lebron's performances in the second half of his career or the entire careers of Durant, Curry, Giannis etc. into their proper context. On one hand a guy like Curry is amazing maybe the greatest offensive wizard ever but on the other hand I can see myself putting him out of the top 20. He is currently 174th in career minutes played at 34 years of age. Would Curry even still be in the league if he had to play 80 games at 38 mpg against hand-checking for the last 10 seasons? That's a question that pops up in the my mind sometimes. Or just how deadly would Jordan be if defenders couldn't breathe on him and he played 60 games every regular season to rest for the playoffs? Would he average 38 ppg instead of 33 ppg in the postseason? It's as difficult to compare the modern NBA to the 90's for instance as it is to compare the 90's to the 60's. Just a totally different game and so many factors that are impossible to account for.

And stylistically, shooting so many threes has made the game more of a shooting contest than tactics and exploiting matchups. What used to be bad offense is now good offense. Sure... analytically yes. A 3pt shot is worth more than a 2pt one so with reasonably good shooting hoisting them up is good offense but boy is it god awful to watch.

The game has also gotten incredibly stat-oriented. So many times you're watching guys putting up huge box score numbers with very little impact. And with the media's obsession about stats, this is likely to get worse. In recent years, players like Harden, Giannis, Jokic and Luka have obliterated a lot of statistical records. But it feels empty in a way. Is a 25/5/5 season as valuable now as it was twenty years ago when you have other stars putting up 36/6/8, 34/9/9, 28/12/7, 30/13/6 and so on...
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#345 » by AEnigma » Wed Dec 7, 2022 5:05 am

^ The problem with miring oneself blindly into nostalgia rather than any real interest in the sport.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#346 » by Doctor MJ » Wed Dec 7, 2022 5:06 am

falcolombardi wrote:Mmm, i have to disagree with some of these points

think the 2015 finals are the case in point here because it most definitely wasn't the case that he was using less energy on offense than normal.


2015 was a down year with back issues for lebron, that he got them as far as he did with two max contract players missing and a hurt back is impressive already.


I don't see how your response disagrees with my statement.

falcolombardi wrote:
LeBron primary paint protector... I don't want to nitpick here, because LeBron certainly deserves major defensive props for what he did, but in the finals in 2012 LeBron blocked 2 shots and in 2015 he blocked 3. In 2012 both Bosh & Wade blocked 6, and in 2015 Mozgov & TT blocked at least 6.


Primary paint protector =/= most blocks imo, just like the player doing more to defend the paint in the 2008 celtics was not perkins (highest blocks) but garnett.

5's are in better position to block shots than roamer 4's without necesarrily affecting the opposite offense more


I think you're baking too much into the term "paint protector".
I mean, what you say is "better position" is roughly synonymous with "the paint" in this context, and thus "roamer" means "doesn't just stay in the paint".

Garnett & LeBron were more valuable defenders than their teammates, in part because they did more than just paint-protect.

falcolombardi wrote: corroborated by +/- data, 2nd best defensive on/off in the whole league with no other cavalier coming close

Jordan seemed to force an intensity with his teammates that LeBron often did not


Why credit jordan for his teammates intensity? Why not the coach or the actual players?


I never said it was either/or.

I will say though: To me looking to understand context-specific effects like this is critical in basically all settings where hierarchies emerge, not the least of which are my own work environments. I find it to be a very helpful skillset to develop.

falcolombardi wrote:
I remember watching LeBron in his early prime,


Lebron early prime started at a age when jordan eas still playing in north carolina, that alone is part of it.

And while his scoring repertoire took time to become resilient, so did jordan ability to create others take some time to come along

Lebron prime alone starting with 2009 is also longer than jordam whole bulls career so evenif we threw away pre 2009 lebron, his prime still stacks up well to jordan


Okay.

ftr, I was thinking of 2011 when I wrote that.

falcolombardi wrote:
I would point out that from '87-88 to '90-91, the defensive improvement of the team was negligible


They were mediocre defensively every year of 87-90 except for 88 where they were good but not great.

The defensive improvement which by all measures have to have come more from pippen and grant leaps were fairly important parts of the bulls rise starting the second half of the 90 season

Let me put this in perspective, the bulls went from a +0.9 defense in 1990 to a -2.7 defense in 91, a 3.6 points leap in defense alone is quite significant. One that was probably not caused by jordan improvements from 90 to 91


Dude, you need to get some perspective, they were the #3 DRtg in the league in '87-88. You need to stop running off with these relative ratings without variance in mind.

On your second statement, I feel like there's an implication that something below league average is the equivalent of "achieving nothing", and thus that the new additions are everything. I'm not saying you think this to be literally the case, but be careful, there's a fallacy you may be getting sucked into.

falcolombardi wrote:
Jordan proved he was capable of leading an elite defense before Phil or Pippen got there,


The bulls were consistently good (but not great) in offense and mediocre in defense pre phil jackson amd pippen leap, and after their single good year (88) they went back to average in defense after losing oakley. If anythingh it was the opposite

And i still wouldnt call a -2.5 defense elite. If leading elite defense is a criteria here, the 2009 -5.5 cavs are a better example


Yeah again, it's a problem when you try to apply a monolithic good-back scale to something like team defensive quality without a thought to the parity in the league. It's reasonable to expect that the greatest outliers in history ought to achieve great linear separation from their contemporaries, but you're trying to use it to say that Jordan leading the 3rd best defense in the league isn't very impressive as a way to say that Jordan being on later elite defenses isn't that impressive.

falcolombardi wrote:
But the looming spectre even then was what the Bubble meant with all that shooting. I absolutely hate when people try to act as if the Bubble championship doesn't count - it absolutely does


Except that lakers were still bad at 3 point shooting in the bubble while seemingly all the other teams shooters got hot

Also is not even just 2020, 2012 was another ring won with below average 3 point shooting

For all the talk of lebron needing shooters, he has the only two rings with below average 3 point shooting (volume AND efficiency) since 2011,

If anythingh he is the only one "proven" to not need the same shooting to win


I'm so confused by what you're choosing to quote from me when you respond as you do. If you want me to respond here, go back, find the part of my post(s) where I'm talking about the change in the Lakers' 3-point shooting, and respond to that specifics-to-specifics.

One thing I can say up front though: You don't seem to be acknowledging at all the effects of absolute improvement to 3-point shooting on spacing-based value, and how that varies by team context, and if you can't, we might as well agree to disagree.

falcolombardi wrote:
This isn't to say Jordan was too wise to do such a thing, only that the effect of what LeBron did is qualitatively different than the effect of Jordan, and while it's up to each of us to decide what that means, the dichotomy is a real thing.


Lebron mistake with westbrook happened at his 37 years old season, two years older than jordan last bulls year. Had he retired after 35 like jordan did he wouldnt have made the mistake. Even if lebron career ended after 2020 he would have a sizable prime longevity lead on jordan

For comparision jordan choice to retire,while understandable, cost the bulls two title runs in the middle of his prime


Your words imply that once longevity reaches beyond a certain point in a comparison, nothing the player does afterward can be used to lessen how impressive that player's achievement is. If this is your perspective, you're far from alone, but suffice to say, it's not mine.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#347 » by Doctor MJ » Wed Dec 7, 2022 5:15 am

AEnigma wrote:But it is a team accomplishment that people are trying to impute primarily onto Jordan and his assumed ability to motivate everyone to go hard (I guess that failed with Pippen in 1998, right).


You too?

What is it with multiple people assuming that I'm making an either/or statement where either Jordan gets all the credit or none of it?

It's not just that you shouldn't assume this about anyone. It's that you know who I am and you know that I'm far from a simplistic thinker. If y'all are strawman-ing me this badly, then I'd worry you're also strawman-ing people all over the place like this as a matter of course - to the point where you don't even realize you're doing it.

I think we all need to start off more often by asking, "What's the most reasonable perspective the person who wrote this could have?" We'd get a lot further in our discussions.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#348 » by NO-KG-AI » Wed Dec 7, 2022 5:50 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
AEnigma wrote:But it is a team accomplishment that people are trying to impute primarily onto Jordan and his assumed ability to motivate everyone to go hard (I guess that failed with Pippen in 1998, right).


You too?

What is it with multiple people assuming that I'm making an either/or statement where either Jordan gets all the credit or none of it?

It's not just that you shouldn't assume this about anyone. It's that you know who I am and you know that I'm far from a simplistic thinker. If y'all are strawman-ing me this badly, then I'd worry you're also strawman-ing people all over the place like this as a matter of course - to the point where you don't even realize you're doing it.

I think we all need to start off more often by asking, "What's the most reasonable perspective the person who wrote this could have?" We'd get a lot further in our discussions.


This, all of this. I can't even respond in these threads because I get caught trying to explain myself against a point I'm not even arguing.

I think LeBron is like the last bastion of guys that actually want to play all season long and not load manage, despite his age and mileage. I've always appreciated that. You could always buy tickets and basically be sure you were gonna see LeBron perform, and see it for 36+ minutes.
Doctor MJ wrote:I don't understand why people jump in a thread and say basically, "This thing you're all talking about. I'm too ignorant to know anything about it. Lollerskates!"
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#349 » by OhayoKD » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:04 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
AEnigma wrote:But it is a team accomplishment that people are trying to impute primarily onto Jordan and his assumed ability to motivate everyone to go hard (I guess that failed with Pippen in 1998, right).


You too?

What is it with multiple people assuming that I'm making an either/or statement where either Jordan gets all the credit or none of it?

It's not just that you shouldn't assume this about anyone. It's that you know who I am and you know that I'm far from a simplistic thinker. If y'all are strawman-ing me this badly, then I'd worry you're also strawman-ing people all over the place like this as a matter of course - to the point where you don't even realize you're doing it.

I think we all need to start off more often by asking, "What's the most reasonable perspective the person who wrote this could have?" We'd get a lot further in our discussions.

Will just point out that comment might not specifically be referencing yours as it quotes someone else and there were various posts about that subject from different posters after your own post which mentioned it as a bit of an afterthought
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#350 » by OhayoKD » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:18 am

NO-KG-AI wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
AEnigma wrote:But it is a team accomplishment that people are trying to impute primarily onto Jordan and his assumed ability to motivate everyone to go hard (I guess that failed with Pippen in 1998, right).


You too?

What is it with multiple people assuming that I'm making an either/or statement where either Jordan gets all the credit or none of it?

It's not just that you shouldn't assume this about anyone. It's that you know who I am and you know that I'm far from a simplistic thinker. If y'all are strawman-ing me this badly, then I'd worry you're also strawman-ing people all over the place like this as a matter of course - to the point where you don't even realize you're doing it.

I think we all need to start off more often by asking, "What's the most reasonable perspective the person who wrote this could have?" We'd get a lot further in our discussions.


This, all of this. I can't even respond in these threads because I get caught trying to explain myself against a point I'm not even arguing.

I think LeBron is like the last bastion of guys that actually want to play all season long and not load manage, despite his age and mileage. I've always appreciated that. You could always buy tickets and basically be sure you were gonna see LeBron perform, and see it for 36+ minutes.

???

Jordan’s minutes per game ranks by season: 4th, injured, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 4th, 26th (the season everyone picks as his peak…), 6th, 6th, retired, partially retired, 19th, 28th, 17th, retired again. To his credit, in total minutes played, he was top three in his first five full seasons (three years leading the league), and top twenty for the six championships years — but in those championship years, he never finished higher than ninth.

Lebron, on the other hand? In minutes per game, he finished: 10th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 13th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 8th, 6th, 5th, 12th, 1st, 1st, injured (was roughly 7th across 55 games), 17th, injured (but would not have made top 30), 20th. In total minutes played it does fall somewhat, but he still has three years leading the league in minutes played (same as Jordan), another second place finish (same as Jordan), six top ten finishes (to Jordan’s three), and five more top twenty finishes (to Jordan’s four).

The idea that Jordan was playing more relative to his league environment is just a flat out incorrect one


But not Lebron. Lebron’s career averages are right there with Jordan’s despite playing for a longer period of time and without ever missing entire seasons, in a more schematically developed and higher talent league where it is more normalised for stars to scale their minutes back.


AEnigma wrote:Per usual, when your sole end goal is deification of Jordan, anything goes.

Lebron 2003-18: 44,000 regular season minutes

Jordan 1984-2003: 41,000 regular season minutes


The idea that Lebron "took it easier" is what's being challenged here, not whether it was acceptable. I'm not sure what your second paragraph is supposed to be responding to
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#351 » by 70sFan » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:21 am

OhayoKD wrote:
NO-KG-AI wrote:
Doctor MJ wrote:
You too?

What is it with multiple people assuming that I'm making an either/or statement where either Jordan gets all the credit or none of it?

It's not just that you shouldn't assume this about anyone. It's that you know who I am and you know that I'm far from a simplistic thinker. If y'all are strawman-ing me this badly, then I'd worry you're also strawman-ing people all over the place like this as a matter of course - to the point where you don't even realize you're doing it.

I think we all need to start off more often by asking, "What's the most reasonable perspective the person who wrote this could have?" We'd get a lot further in our discussions.


This, all of this. I can't even respond in these threads because I get caught trying to explain myself against a point I'm not even arguing.

I think LeBron is like the last bastion of guys that actually want to play all season long and not load manage, despite his age and mileage. I've always appreciated that. You could always buy tickets and basically be sure you were gonna see LeBron perform, and see it for 36+ minutes.

???

Jordan’s minutes per game ranks by season: 4th, injured, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 4th, 26th (the season everyone picks as his peak…), 6th, 6th, retired, partially retired, 19th, 28th, 17th, retired again. To his credit, in total minutes played, he was top three in his first five full seasons (three years leading the league), and top twenty for the six championships years — but in those championship years, he never finished higher than ninth.

Lebron, on the other hand? In minutes per game, he finished: 10th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 13th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 8th, 6th, 5th, 12th, 1st, 1st, injured (was roughly 7th across 55 games), 17th, injured (but would not have made top 30), 20th. In total minutes played it does fall somewhat, but he still has three years leading the league in minutes played (same as Jordan), another second place finish (same as Jordan), six top ten finishes (to Jordan’s three), and five more top twenty finishes (to Jordan’s four).

The idea that Jordan was playing more relative to his league environment is just a flat out incorrect one


AEnigma wrote:Per usual, when your sole end goal is deification of Jordan, anything goes.

Lebron 2003-18: 44,000 regular season minutes

Jordan 1984-2003: 41,000 regular season minutes


The idea that Lebron "took it easier" is what's being challenged here, not whether it was acceptable. I'm not sure what your second paragraph is supposed to be responding to

He just said that LeBron didn't take it easy.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#352 » by OhayoKD » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:23 am

70sFan wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
NO-KG-AI wrote:
This, all of this. I can't even respond in these threads because I get caught trying to explain myself against a point I'm not even arguing.

I think LeBron is like the last bastion of guys that actually want to play all season long and not load manage, despite his age and mileage. I've always appreciated that. You could always buy tickets and basically be sure you were gonna see LeBron perform, and see it for 36+ minutes.

???

Jordan’s minutes per game ranks by season: 4th, injured, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 4th, 26th (the season everyone picks as his peak…), 6th, 6th, retired, partially retired, 19th, 28th, 17th, retired again. To his credit, in total minutes played, he was top three in his first five full seasons (three years leading the league), and top twenty for the six championships years — but in those championship years, he never finished higher than ninth.

Lebron, on the other hand? In minutes per game, he finished: 10th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 13th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 8th, 6th, 5th, 12th, 1st, 1st, injured (was roughly 7th across 55 games), 17th, injured (but would not have made top 30), 20th. In total minutes played it does fall somewhat, but he still has three years leading the league in minutes played (same as Jordan), another second place finish (same as Jordan), six top ten finishes (to Jordan’s three), and five more top twenty finishes (to Jordan’s four).

The idea that Jordan was playing more relative to his league environment is just a flat out incorrect one


AEnigma wrote:Per usual, when your sole end goal is deification of Jordan, anything goes.

Lebron 2003-18: 44,000 regular season minutes

Jordan 1984-2003: 41,000 regular season minutes


The idea that Lebron "took it easier" is what's being challenged here, not whether it was acceptable. I'm not sure what your second paragraph is supposed to be responding to

He just said that LeBron didn't take it easy.

Ah. My bad. very stupid of me
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#353 » by 70sFan » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:30 am

Djoker wrote:Ok since you guys are still disputing literal facts I'm just going to post the numbers. Let's just compare their championship seasons in regular season minutes played.

2012 Lebron - 2326 mins
2013 Lebron - 2877 mins
2016 Lebron - 2709 mins
2020 Lebron - 2316 mins

Lebron Average: 2557 mins

1991 Jordan - 3034 mins
1992 Jordan - 3102 mins
1993 Jordan - 3067 mins
1996 Jordan - 3090 mins
1997 Jordan - 3106 mins
1998 Jordan - 3181 mins

Jordan Average: 3097 mins (21% more)

That's a significantly higher load for Jordan in their best seasons.

Overall Lebron has eight 3000+ minute seasons, with six of eight in his first six years from 2004-2009. The others are 2011 and 2018. Jordan has twelve 3000+ minute seasons including 1985, ten straight from 1987-1998 and then one more in 2003.

Lebron from 2012-2022 which is 11 straight seasons averaged 2453 minutes per season. He played an average of 67 games at 36.5 mpg during that span. No one is criticizing Lebron's early career but as the years went on, his loads in the regular season were very small historically compared to his predecessors. That cannot be disputed. Not all of it was load management. Some was legit injuries, some lockouts, some Covid-shortened seasons... Still a reduced load at the end of the day!

We can go a bit further and calculate average minutes played per year throughout their primes:

1985-98 Jordan: 35887 minutes in 13 seasons - 2760 minutes per season

2004-18 James: 44298 minutes in 15 seasons - 2953 minutes per season

I really don't understand why you use seasons like 2012 to prove your take, while you completely ignore 1986 or 1995.

About 2012-22 only - I think we should realize that James was in his 9th season in 2012. That's the equivalent of 1993 Jordan. You should compare 2012-22 James to 1993-03 Jordan, not to young Jordan. In this case, James played significantly more minutes per year than Jordan, because Jordan only played 7 seasons in this span. How can you talk about load management, when Jordan literally took two long breaks from basketball?
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#354 » by Doctor MJ » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:40 am

OhayoKD wrote:So, first I'd push back a bit on relying heavily on blocks per game as a measure of paint protection. One can collect blocks without necessarily being the primary paint deterrent. I think this concept is explained well here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nbadiscussion/comments/ktyynk/oc_the_secular_lebron_james_the_case_for_the_king/


So first, the YouTube links are problematic for me so I wasn't able to watch what he was talking about.

I do understand the point about the difference between a typical Jordan-block compared to an interior deterrent though, and would agree that the larger LeBron is more of an interior guy.

However, it's strange to me to use that as a focal point as if in these circumstances LeBron is playing with Jordan-block-type guys while he takes on a more interior role. That's true of Wade to be sure, but not most of the guys.

I also think we just need to really talk through what's meant by "paint protection". Here are some of the options based on what I've seen so far:

1) Basketball goalie

2) The ability to dominate the painted area on defense against opposing men.

3) The ability to deter attacks in/to the paint by those with the ball when you are in the paint.

4) Anti-Gravity - a tendency for all opposing players to avoid the territory around you.

5) The regressive impact your presence on the court has on scoring in the paint.

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of you and others on this, but would really emphasize that "paint protection" is a metaphor, and you can't just co-opt the meaning of a metaphor and expect to have productive communication. I'm inclined to say the use of a new and/or non-metaphorical term would be a good thing here.

OhayoKD wrote:I'll push more strongly on the idea that Lebron being an anchor wasn't clear-cut here. These defenses generally collapsed without him(moreso in the second cleveland stint), dropped as his own indvidual influence faded, and regularized data like drapm, dpipm, ect, ect has him leading the team across the board for the rs and the playoffs. This is true whether you go with his first mvp years, the heatles, or the second cavs stint.

Even if you doubt the extent of his paint protection, he also usually offers signifcant value as the primary defensive quarterback/play-caller, and, in his best years at least, can do a job vs bigger and smaller players, notably having a big role in limiting steph curry in 2015 and 2016, and derrick rose in 2011. Returning to paint protection, even in 2020, with Davis as the undisputed best defender, Lebron was tasked with most of the paint protection for 2 of the lakers 4 series with AD shutting down key perimiter matchups with minimal help.

I don't think Lebron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals to what he was exerting in his heatle years, and I think that at least partially informed the approach of slowing the game to a grinding halt.


"anchor" is another metaphor, which originally meant something more like "last line of defense" but you're interpreting it as "most valuable defender", and that emerging semantic drift is causing more confusion here.

Re: "I don't think LeBron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals". I mean, he went for 35/13/8 in those finals with everyone commenting how much energy he was exerting. You want to say he had even more energy when he was younger? Cool, but from a perspective of whether he was "compensating" by lowering offensive energy in those finals, this fact is as moot as the theory is counter to what people who were watching perceived.

OhayoKD wrote:
Regarding "out-valuing" Jordan, I'm cautious there. Jordan's teams had more dominant top-end seasons than LeBron's teams did, and while I'm all for looking at supporting cast, there is also the matter that Jordan seemed to force an intensity with his teammates that LeBron often did not. It was utterly insane watching the '95-96 Bulls at the time, and I feel like as we look back in history we have this tendency to feel like it was inevitable based on the talent on the roster when it really wasn't.

That's plausible, though I'd ask how much credit we think MJ deserves for the off-court side of this as the Bulls seemed to be able to mantain this drive in 1994 in Jordan's absence coming off a three-peat.


Hmm, 2 things:

1) What exactly are you perceiving as "drive" in '93-94? Are you simply inferring drive because the team has a good W-L record?

2) Do you think they still had drive in '94-95? If not, why not? If so, then why did '95-96 seem like such a shocking shift?


OhayoKD wrote:

My point was really that he maintained jordan+ impact signals on teams of various quality(floor vs cieling) with various teammates. But if you aren't talking era-relative adaptability, I don't have a strong enough opinion to contest it. I will, however, offer a caution: for modern era translation, box-production going up does not mean a player has become more valuable. Scoring 30 ppg where the field is scoring 20 pgg isn't necessarily worse than scoring 40 ppg in a where the field scores 30 ppg. Crude example but it should illustrate the point. If you are going to argue Jordan gets better thanks to spacing, it can't just be a matter of numbers. You need to argue that he will be better relative to his peers in 2022 than 1991. According to ben, jordan was a limited pure passer even relative to kobe(found half as many good passes per 100 iirc), so i'm not sure having him helio vs more sophisticated and talented defenses produces better results(as far as winning goes).

"he translates well" needs a little more support than "ah, spacing -> numbers go brr"


Can you elaborate on what you're seeing from Kareem in terms of "impact signals"?

It's those samples I mentioned in the last post, with the 71/72 bucks being peers for the peak bulls(era-relative anyway) and holding up well(63 win pace) when oscar was out of the lineup(cieling raising), you have him winning 56 on a 27 win team(identical record to the bulls pre-mj) as a rookie and then going from 3-14 to a 48(srs) or 45 win pace(record) in 75 with his second and third best players plummeting in production(floor-raising). The weakest sample >10 game sample iirc comes with the 75 and 78 lakers(from ben's peak video on the cap) with a 32 win team lifted to a 52 win team. Compared to the progression of the bulls where you have a 27 win team reach 48-50 wins(sub 50 srs), a schematic jump, and then another massive jump in 1991(the blip is oakley's depature in 89 which conincdes with a defensive collapse), I get the impression Kareem hit goat-level(71/72) team results with less help, contention(40-63), with less help, and everything below with less help. Additinonally he's able to replicate this with his the nature of his supporting cast being significantly shook-up(post-75). It also doesn't hurt that Kareem is considered one of the best players in the world before he enters the nba and is flirting with perfection(team-wise) in college and highschool. I don't know we have anything else really(well, besidesincomplete box-aggregates from the era), but in lieu of a compelling counter-case, i think its probable Kareem has a relative to era impact advantage, even if we theorize that he doesn't translate across eras as well.[/quote]

Okay, but do remember that there's that soft middle to Kareem's career where the Lakers were going nowhere, and know that at least with Ben's prime WOWYR metric Kareem doesn't look as good as Jordan. Now, much as I respect Ben, I wouldn't treat a number like this as a definitive answer, however I'd be real careful about running with an in-head-WOWY if it tells you something counter to what the data has told him.

And of course, if you've done something more quantitative, or you see a specific issue with Kareem's data along these lines, please elaborate.


OhayoKD wrote:I'm definitely focused on LeBron's blips when I talk about Jordan being the more robust playoff performer, but I don't think "immense longevity" really explains it. I remember watching LeBron in his early prime, and I remember the ways he struggled. At the time I was one of the ones trying to calm others down about what it said about limits to LeBron's capacity, and I don't think I've actually changed my stance.

In general, there's a common issue I tend to call the "Fast Eddie" growth curve (after the character in the 1961 move "The Hustler") where a young guy can hit phenomenal highs but is more easily rattled than the old, grizzled vet. Fast Eddie over the course of the movie makes that transition, and I think there are a bunch of actual athletes who show similar tendencies, with LeBron being one of them.

I think it's actually important not to give Jordan too much credit for being "perfect" in avoid chokes, but while LeBron has developed toward being greatly robust with time, it's hard for me to say that that actually allowed him to be more dominant over any run than Jordan was.


So what specifically do you define as a "run" here. I feel pretty comfortable Lebron was more robust in his second cavs stint on the basis of how he was relatively unaffected by opposing defensive quality, how the cavs relative defense was more effective against better offenses than worse offenses(sort of implying they weren't even going at full gear), his production improving over the course of the series as jordan's generally declined, and significantly better looking aupm/pipm single year results(ben presents thar as an average), better three year on/off(2nd behind duncan wierdly enough), and what looks like staggering life if you go with "pure impact". (cavs are a sub 30 in games lebron doesn't play reflecting a collapse on both ends and play like a 65-70 win team in the 16/17 playoffs while playing like the 88-90 bulls in the 15 playoffs when love and kyrie go out).

You might respond to me with "but the regular season"(and jordan's box-stuff looks better), but then I look at the better holistic signals(which account for defense better) for lebron(rapm, non-regularized impact, pipm), and would have to respond "are we sure about that?"[/quote]

I think the 2nd Cavs run is a good place to focus for LeBron having a more bulletproof run than Jordan.

I also think that the focus on the playoffs makes sense...but it's tricky because the East was weak and the Cavs lost to the Warriors every time but one. That one win is beyond huge of course, but beyond that the team's playoff highlights involved teams led by Paul Millsap and DeMar DeRozan.

OhayoKD wrote:I would point out that from '87-88 to '90-91, the defensive improvement of the team was negligible. It was the offense that changed. When you zoom in like you've done I understand why you draw different conclusions, but flat out: Jordan proved he was capable of leading an elite defense before Phil or Pippen got there, it was the offense where he was unproven.

Well to be clear, the "proof" you're referencing is the 1988 regular season. Here are my quibbles:

1. If we zoom out a little more, 1988 is the only season prior to pippen and grant's ascension(and per pipm, on/off/partial rapm, Jordan's own decline in terms of "two-way" impact) where the Bulls managed a good regular season defense. That defense did not hold up in the postseason and it fell back to average in the following regular season. This rise and immediate decline coincided with Oakley's time at the Bulls. Oakley was chicago's premier front-court presence and probably the second best defender on that singular strong regular season defense.
2. 1988 is also an outlier for Jordan in terms of D-PIPM, and via various people's film-tracking, jordan's perimiter and paint activity, foot speed, and defensive error rate all go the wrong direction from that point forward. Even if 1988 MJ could lead a good defense, that doesn't necessarily apply to all versions of MJ.
3. If we compare to this Lebron's own outlier outcome(2009), the defense wasn't nearly as good(-2 vs -5), held up much worse in the playoffs, and experienced a much smaller drop-off(regularized or non-regularized) when the player in question went off the court. Lebron's corresponding 5 year D-RAPM was the 5th best. Lebron's playoff D-RAPM, for his career, is tied with Kawhi(consider how many more games that is maintained over for Lebron) as of 2020.
4. Lebron matches or exceeds jordan's 88 dpipm score at multiple points including 2020. Even in 2021, with Davis an injured shell, the Lakers are the best defense in the league before Lebron gets hurt. Using raw, stuff, I'd also say the 15 cavs and the 16 cavs are better defenses than the 88 bulls when we consider the post-season, and again, the experience a bigger drop-off without Lebron in the rs.
5. To really zoom-in on 2015, the cavaliers aren't initally very good at defense. Lebron rests and rejuvenates and the cavs defense skyrockets when he's back(top 10 post-miami vacation). Again, Lebron seems tied to the defensive success of his teams in a way Jordan doesn't.

I don't know it much matters where you draw the lines here. Unless we think Jordan was anchoring the defense for the Bulls at their peak(and I don't think the timeline of their improvement, film-tracking, or non-decline in 94 support this), Lebron looks more impressive. Maybe Lebron suffers from some sort of defensive port concern, but in lieu of that, Lebron strikes me as more impactful defensively and I'm not sure it's particularly close.[/quote]

1. I think I got into this with falco. I think we should be careful about trying to downplay a player's significance in Achievement X as a means to downplay his significance in Achievement Y. Jordan on his own was not enough to ensure a Top 5 defense, but the same is true for Pippen or Phil Jackson the coach or LeBron.

2. I'd appreciate if you could share where you're getting the data on these metrics.

3. I certainly understand being more impressed with LeBron's D, and as I've noted, my analysis also sides with LeBron.

4. Uh, the Lakers had the best DRtg in the league over the entire year despite playing most their minutes without LeBron. To me the story of the Laker defense that year was about how good the Laker role players had become in Vogel's scheme...which was why it was so heartbreaking the way they then seemed to treat those players as if they were background extras when planning their off-season strategy.

5. You're using LeBron's presence in 2015 show a general trend of defensive WOWY impact while also pointing to 2020, while ignoring the way the defense caved in between those years. Meanwhile, you use the years between 1988 and 1991 to try to talk as if Jordan really didn't have much defensive impact. If feels to me like you're in real danger of falling prey to confirmation bias.

OhayoKD wrote:1. I will say, that when you are discussing a 20 year career, its likely not wise to assume a player's mentality/philosophy has been identical throughout. Perhaps in 2022 Lebron overestimated himself, but in 2016 Lebron demanded the Cavs pay big bucks for a three-and-d. It's also possible the limitations of 2022 Lebron were more limiting than prior versions. In 2021 the Lakers were looking league-best before injury, and still looked like a threat to the suns. You say 2020 is a fluke, but Lebron first pulled the "win with bleh spacing" trick in 2012 and got impressively close in 2015. As falco mentioned, Lebron has the two "worst shooting" titles of the era with Gianni's bucks coming closest. And ultimately, with time, comes volume. We would expect more bad and more good here.
2. The specific thing I think Lebron deserves credit(at least as far as off-court winning goes) is his willingness to actively pursue co-stars. The lakers were not the only option for AD to potentially win, but Lebron was the guy who was socializing with him and unofficially "tampeing" to get him. Old-heads, including Jordan, have looked down on that practice, but Lebron encouraged it, repeatedly exploiting friendships to help his teams get co-stars. Maybe he erred when he went for the shiny thing again with Westbrook, but it was probably necessary for the Lakers to win in 2020.
3. I think with off-court analysis it is important to look at process independent of the tangible results in a specific case. While the Wizards may have been **** with or without Jordan, its not hard to see a variety of situations where contention is at play where MJ's conduct at the Wizards doesn't ruin things. Even at the Bulls, Jordan played a role in the relationship fraying with Krause. He's quoted having made anti-semetic remarks, he punched a teammate, got into beef with various bigs, and had issues with Erving out of spiteful envy.

Especially with your focus being on transporting players to the modern nba, how well do you think Jordan's off-court behavior plays in the age of social media. It's not hard to see this breaking a locker-room:
https://thesportsrush.com/nba-news-michael-jordan-used-flaming-fagot-as-reference-for-kwame-brown-his-whipping-boy-according-to-si-and-washington-post/

While the Bulls were able to survive, does your understanding of how organizations work support the idea that Jordan is a positive leadership influence? Particularly if we're transposing this to 2022, I see loads of potential pitfalls with MJ's off-court antics

We celebrate when machismo and "killer instinct" succeeds, but we tend to sweep aside when it fails


1. As I've said, it's not just 2022, this began in 2018 with his arrival in LA. The Westbrook stuff has only made clear how clear-cut his priorities were.

Re: 2nd stint Cavs. Indeed, after the Heatles, LeBron seemed like he understood what kind of fit he actually needed, which is why it was so maddening to see how he changed with his next team. A couple things though:

a) On those Cavs, he didn't explicitly choose role players over stars. He came to Cleveland because they had Kyrie and could were able to acquire Love. That's what he cared about first and foremost, and so in that sense, I'm not sure if anything actually changed. Just as LeBron pushed the Cavs to get Love to create a 3-star team, he pushed the Lakers to get Westbrook. The difference really is that in the first circumstance the Cavs had a big time prospect to trade, in the second they had to sacrifice the supporting cast. And that - along with the fact that he drastically overrated Westbrook - is why the former wasn't a bad move but the latter was one of the most damaging moves I can ever remember a player twisting his team to make.

b) I do think it likely that LeBron's advanced age in LA led him to believe that he needed someone who could "play LeBron" so that he could rest. I really don't know if there's any evidence that this is why he was obsessed with getting a 3rd star at all cost, but I'm sure it relates to why he ended up zeroing in on the absolute worst fitting teammate he could have ever had in Westbrook.

Re: "You say 2020 is a fluke but he did it before." I think we need to drill down further here than just "They were great at 3's, but they won the title."

I said 2020 was a fluke specifically because the Bubble caused teams to shoot better than they ever did before, and the Lakers improving their spacing capacity was exactly what they needed to shore up their obvious weakness at shooting. We can debate whether that really made the difference for them in the playoffs, but this was absolutely a change precisely in the direction they needed due to reasons that they couldn't have expected to occur.

What about 2012? Let's look at it like this:

In the playoffs, the Heat played 4 teams.
The Heat had a higher 3PAr than 2 of those teams in the RS.
The Heat had a higher 3P% than the other two teams in the RS.
The Heat hit more 3's than their opponents in 3 out of their 4 PS series.
And also had a higher 3P% than 3 out of their 4 PS opponents.

In a nutshell, this absolutely was not a team that was winning despite being outstripped from the arc against the opponents they were playing.

Now, was their stellar defense a part of the reason for this? Sure, but it wouldn't have been enough to make up the difference against the shooters of today's game.

In 2012, the Heat were literally not at a massive spacing disadvantage, and that's how they won.
In 2022, they would get crushed trying to play the same way.

Hence, trying to take 2012 & 2020 together and say "LeBron is the exception to the rule!" is looking for a simpler, and yet more mysterious, rule than what actually happened. In the first run, it wasn't really an exception to the rule. In the second, there was something really anomalous happening.

Re: 2015 "impressively close". Certainly impressive and close, but I do think it's important to remember that once the Warriors adapted, it really wasn't all that close. In that series, the Cavs had no ability to run an effective offense, and were getting by on the Warriors being unsure how to attack a Cavs team that looked very different from the one the Cavs had intended to put out there. It was no given even that the Warriors would figure it out in time, but figure it out they did, and in the end, it's those last 3 games in the series that foretell what we'd have expected to happen if the two teams kept playing each other indefinitely.

2. Pursuing co-stars. In general I'm not looking to judge this as if it's a bad thing, and I'll also say it's not a new thing. From the Laker perspective, LeBron, AD & Westbrook are just 3 more established stars the team was able to acquire as part of a long line of similar players going back to Wilt.

This incidentally means that while I'm very critical of LeBron, I'm certainly not letting Laker management off the hook for the Westbrook situation. The reality is that this was a very Laker mistake to make.

3. I'm quite critical of Jordan's bullying tendencies and push back at any idea that he represents an ideal leader. I agree with you that behaving like this in eras closer to the present would not go well, and can certainly see arguments for why LeBron would be the better player to draft in today's league.

At the same time, I think Jordan's all-encompassing approach probably helped the team with the 3-peats and was likely essential to their 72-10 year.

Leadership impact is a slippery, slippery thing.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#355 » by NO-KG-AI » Wed Dec 7, 2022 7:51 am

My whole post that started this mess was to point out there has always been a pattern on LeBron teams that his teammates let off the gas pedal when he is around comparitively, and that I’ve always said that’s a knock on them and not LeBron, and was mroe opening up the discussion of whether or not LeBron should have held them more accountable for it instead of just shouldering the load and letting them coast below their capabilities.

That said, everyone responds differently ans maybe those guys would have cracked and played even worse if they were handled like the guys on Jordan’s Bulls teams, but it is interesting as a kind of recurring theme over the years.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#356 » by 70sFan » Wed Dec 7, 2022 10:18 am

Doctor MJ wrote:Okay, but do remember that there's that soft middle to Kareem's career where the Lakers were going nowhere, and know that at least with Ben's prime WOWYR metric Kareem doesn't look as good as Jordan. Now, much as I respect Ben, I wouldn't treat a number like this as a definitive answer, however I'd be real careful about running with an in-head-WOWY if it tells you something counter to what the data has told him.

And of course, if you've done something more quantitative, or you see a specific issue with Kareem's data along these lines, please elaborate.

I am not interested in another MJ vs LBJ discussion, but I will bite here.

I think it's very important to be careful to call anything "going nowhere":

1. Lakers finished with the best RS record in 1977, Jordan neve did that before 1991.

2. Lakers finished with +2.95 SRS in 1979, which is better than Bulls in any year in 1987-90 period outside of 1988. It happened in the smaller, more balanced league as well.

3. Lakers lost to two future champions in the playoffs during 1977-79 period. The other time, they lost to future finalists in a 3 games series. That's the same level of playoff success as 1987-89 Bulls.

If you want to say that they did nothing during that period, then I'm afraid you should say the same for Jordan's whole career before 1990.

About WOWY - Jordan's biggest samples don't show him as the better one than Kareem (from Ben's database):

1986 Jordan: +2.0 SRS change, 1.2 WOWY score
1995 Jordan +2.7 SRS change, 1.9 WOWY score

1975 Kareem: +7.1 SRS change, +3.6 WOWY score

I'm afraid Ben's database has an error with 1978 sample, as it shows as clear negative for Kareem, despite all the calculations I made and his own words in Kareem profile:

At the beginning of the ’78 season, Kareem cold-cocked Bucks center Kent Benson and missed substantial time with another broken hand. However, it’s hard to infer much from the injury since LA fired off two trades around that period.10 With Jabbar — and ignoring all the other lineup activity — the Lakers played like a 53-win team (4.1 SRS) in ’78. With a similar roster in ’79 (minus Charlie Scott), LA ticked along at a 50-win clip when healthy (3.1 SRS). Below, I’ve plotted the ’78 team’s performance in 21 games without Kareem, in which the Lakers played at a 36-win pace (-1.7 SRS) after a major offensive drop-off.


Which shows a +5.8 SRS change again. The biggest samples we have show Kareem having a clear advantage. We can also look at the more nuanced samples, when a player even joins or leaves his team:

1984 Bulls without MJ: -4.7 SRS, 27 wins
1985 Bulls with MJ: -0.5 SRS, 38 wins
Change: +4.2 SRS and +11 wins

1993 Bulls with MJ: +6.2 SRS, 57 wins
1994 Bulls without MJ: +2.9 SRS, 55 wins
Change: +3.3 SRS, +2 wins

1995 Bulls without MJ: +3.8 SRS, 52 wins pace
1996 Bulls with MJ: +11.8 SRS, 72 wins
Change: +8 SRS, 20 wins

I wouldn't include 1998-1999, because the whole team changed, including a coach.

1969 Bucks without Kareem: -5.1 SRS, 27 wins
1970 Bucks with Kareem: +4.3 SRS, 56 wins
Change: +9.4 SRS, 29 wins

1975 Bucks with Kareem: +2.6 SRS, 49 wins pace
1976 Bucks without Kareem: -1.6 SRS, 38 wins
Change: +4.2 SRS, 11 wins

1975 Lakers without Kareem: -3.9 SRS, 30 wins
1976 Lakers with Kareem: +0.2 SRS, 40 wins
Change: +4.1 SRS, 10 wins

The difference is that Kareem left Bucks in a trade, which means that Lakers gave a lot of value to Bucks. Jordan samples are clean, as Jordan didn't go to the Bulls in exchange.

I don't know, I don't see the case for MJ > Kareem in terms of WOWY.
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#357 » by OhayoKD » Wed Dec 7, 2022 11:52 am

Doctor MJ wrote:
OhayoKD wrote:
So, first I'd push back a bit on relying heavily on blocks per game as a measure of paint protection. One can collect blocks without necessarily being the primary paint deterrent. I think this concept is explained well here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nbadiscussion/comments/ktyynk/oc_the_secular_lebron_james_the_case_for_the_king/


So first, the YouTube links are problematic for me so I wasn't able to watch what he was talking about.

I do understand the point about the difference between a typical Jordan-block compared to an interior deterrent though, and would agree that the larger LeBron is more of an interior guy.

However, it's strange to me to use that as a focal point as if in these circumstances LeBron is playing with Jordan-block-type guys while he takes on a more interior role. That's true of Wade to be sure, but not most of the guys.

I also think we just need to really talk through what's meant by "paint protection". Here are some of the options based on what I've seen so far:

1) Basketball goalie

2) The ability to dominate the painted area on defense against opposing men.

3) The ability to deter attacks in/to the paint by those with the ball when you are in the paint.

4) Anti-Gravity - a tendency for all opposing players to avoid the territory around you.

5) The regressive impact your presence on the court has on scoring in the paint.

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of you and others on this, but would really emphasize that "paint protection" is a metaphor, and you can't just co-opt the meaning of a metaphor and expect to have productive communication. I'm inclined to say the use of a new and/or non-metaphorical term would be a good thing here.

Okay so I'll link you some of the post's examples directly:
https://youtu.be/T-c1NradPN4?t=147
https://youtu.be/T-c1NradPN4?t=175
(lebron)
https://youtu.be/T-c1NradPN4?t=17
(draymond)

the original videos for the other links seem to have been taken down :(

I use "paint protection" as a catch-all term for defensive activity, in the paint, that helps prevent the other team from scoring. I guess you could call it paint-defense to make it clearer. I'm not clever enough to come up with a metaphor, but i invite the many smarter people here to try :)

My general impression was that Lebron resembled a traditional big-man more on d in 2015 and was doing more in the paint than he was with the heatles(i think this is partially due to a lack of agility/quickness), but I don't have data on me to confirm that theory.
OhayoKD wrote:
I'll push more strongly on the idea that Lebron being an anchor wasn't clear-cut here. These defenses generally collapsed without him(moreso in the second cleveland stint), dropped as his own indvidual influence faded, and regularized data like drapm, dpipm, ect, ect has him leading the team across the board for the rs and the playoffs. This is true whether you go with his first mvp years, the heatles, or the second cavs stint.

Even if you doubt the extent of his paint protection, he also usually offers signifcant value as the primary defensive quarterback/play-caller, and, in his best years at least, can do a job vs bigger and smaller players, notably having a big role in limiting steph curry in 2015 and 2016, and derrick rose in 2011. Returning to paint protection, even in 2020, with Davis as the undisputed best defender, Lebron was tasked with most of the paint protection for 2 of the lakers 4 series with AD shutting down key perimiter matchups with minimal help.

I don't think Lebron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals to what he was exerting in his heatle years, and I think that at least partially informed the approach of slowing the game to a grinding halt.


"anchor" is another metaphor, which originally meant something more like "last line of defense" but you're interpreting it as "most valuable defender", and that emerging semantic drift is causing more confusion here.

Re: "I don't think LeBron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals". I mean, he went for 35/13/8 in those finals with everyone commenting how much energy he was exerting. You want to say he had even more energy when he was younger? Cool, but from a perspective of whether he was "compensating" by lowering offensive energy in those finals, this fact is as moot as the theory is counter to what people who were watching perceived.

Well first, the vast majority of Lebron's rebounds were on the defensive side so I wouldn't point that specifically as an indication of offensive effort. While the points total is the same we should probably look at how those shots came about. A bigger portion of his shot attempts are threes while significantly less, (0.07%) of his shots are at the rim. So, for one, Lebron drove signiicantly less in the 2015 playoffs. Lebron does indeed put up what is, even on his standards, an outlier degree of playmaking, but on-ball helio playmaking on a slow offense takes less energy than moving around off-the-ball on a fast one(lebron is moving off-ball less and is taking less catch-and-shoots even as his 3pa goes up). I'd go so far as to say, that slowing the game down and monopolizing the ball gave Lebron some time to recuperate. On the other hand, Lebron's block% goes significantly up and he's spending more time in the paint. This coincides with better looking individual defensive impact than any of his miami years, and the best playoff defense he's ever anchored.

Taking a broader view, In 2015, Lebron is coming off his first major injury and has traded mobility for bulk. We would expect a defense to offense trade-off there and the team-data and individual data suggests there is.

All in all I'm pretty confident in 2015 as an example of Lebron's defense going up and his offense going down because I think the granular stuff supports the holistic stuff here.

OhayoKD wrote:
Regarding "out-valuing" Jordan, I'm cautious there. Jordan's teams had more dominant top-end seasons than LeBron's teams did, and while I'm all for looking at supporting cast, there is also the matter that Jordan seemed to force an intensity with his teammates that LeBron often did not. It was utterly insane watching the '95-96 Bulls at the time, and I feel like as we look back in history we have this tendency to feel like it was inevitable based on the talent on the roster when it really wasn't.

That's plausible, though I'd ask how much credit we think MJ deserves for the off-court side of this as the Bulls seemed to be able to mantain this drive in 1994 in Jordan's absence coming off a three-peat.

Hmm, 2 things:

1) What exactly are you perceiving as "drive" in '93-94? Are you simply inferring drive because the team has a good W-L record?

2) Do you think they still had drive in '94-95? If not, why not? If so, then why did '95-96 seem like such a shocking shift?


It's nothing too in-depth but generally, teams find it hard to maintain success, especially in the regular season, after several deep-runs, so hitting 55 wins and then genuinely operating like a contender in the postseason strikes me as a sign of impressive commiment to winning. Admitedly this is a bit of a shot in the dark(maybe they actually weren't going full tilt and they hypothetically would be winning 60 games if they were able to mantain motivation).

94-95 they are still posting a 50 win srs, but you now have 4 deep playoff runs, an additional olympics, and the second best player from the 93-94 team leaving. All in all, keeping a winning record(and this is probably somewhat a product of variance giving the srs) doesn't speak negatively to me about their ability to stay motivated.

It also helps this is a coach who has done the "win repeat championships" thing three times. Not to say Jordan shouldn't be given any credit(notably there was a regular season drop-off with the lakers), but I'm unsure to what degree Jordan's "intangibles" should be credited here. Honestly, maybe, in a strictly off-court sense, it might be presumptive of us to assume Pippen didn't do a large part of that given the Bulls really did go for the four-peat in 94.

OhayoKD wrote:

My point was really that he maintained jordan+ impact signals on teams of various quality(floor vs cieling) with various teammates. But if you aren't talking era-relative adaptability, I don't have a strong enough opinion to contest it. I will, however, offer a caution: for modern era translation, box-production going up does not mean a player has become more valuable. Scoring 30 ppg where the field is scoring 20 pgg isn't necessarily worse than scoring 40 ppg in a where the field scores 30 ppg. Crude example but it should illustrate the point. If you are going to argue Jordan gets better thanks to spacing, it can't just be a matter of numbers. You need to argue that he will be better relative to his peers in 2022 than 1991. According to ben, jordan was a limited pure passer even relative to kobe(found half as many good passes per 100 iirc), so i'm not sure having him helio vs more sophisticated and talented defenses produces better results(as far as winning goes).

"he translates well" needs a little more support than "ah, spacing -> numbers go brr"


Can you elaborate on what you're seeing from Kareem in terms of "impact signals"?

It's those samples I mentioned in the last post, with the 71/72 bucks being peers for the peak bulls(era-relative anyway) and holding up well(63 win pace) when oscar was out of the lineup(cieling raising), you have him winning 56 on a 27 win team(identical record to the bulls pre-mj) as a rookie and then going from 3-14 to a 48(srs) or 45 win pace(record) in 75 with his second and third best players plummeting in production(floor-raising). The weakest sample >10 game sample iirc comes with the 75 and 78 lakers(from ben's peak video on the cap) with a 32 win team lifted to a 52 win team. Compared to the progression of the bulls where you have a 27 win team reach 48-50 wins(sub 50 srs), a schematic jump, and then another massive jump in 1991(the blip is oakley's depature in 89 which conincdes with a defensive collapse), I get the impression Kareem hit goat-level(71/72) team results with less help, contention(40-63), with less help, and everything below with less help. Additinonally he's able to replicate this with his the nature of his supporting cast being significantly shook-up(post-75). It also doesn't hurt that Kareem is considered one of the best players in the world before he enters the nba and is flirting with perfection(team-wise) in college and highschool. I don't know we have anything else really(well, besidesincomplete box-aggregates from the era), but in lieu of a compelling counter-case, i think its probable Kareem has a relative to era impact advantage, even if we theorize that he doesn't translate across eras as well.

Okay, but do remember that there's that soft middle to Kareem's career where the Lakers were going nowhere, and know that at least with Ben's prime WOWYR metric Kareem doesn't look as good as Jordan. Now, much as I respect Ben, I wouldn't treat a number like this as a definitive answer, however I'd be real careful about running with an in-head-WOWY if it tells you something counter to what the data has told him.

And of course, if you've done something more quantitative, or you see a specific issue with Kareem's data along these lines, please elaborate.

Well it's not an in-head-WOWY. It's actually taken directly from Ben in the "impact evaluation" section of his Kareem write-up:
https://thinkingbasketball.net/2018/04/12/backpicks-goat-1-kareem-abdul-jabbar/
70's listed the numbers for 75 in paticular here:
1974/75 Bucks with Kareem: 35-30, 44 wins pace
1974/75 Bucks without Kareem: 3-14, 15 wins pace

You might notice that generally, even though Ben lists the wowyr at the top, his "impact evalution" feature pure WOWY samples more. In his peaks project vids, he lists WOWY stuff from a couple of seasons, not multi-season WOWYR.

As I understand, regularization offers the same issue with wowy as it does with APM(artificial caps) and Kareem's wowy stuff crosses the treshold where value would be mis-attributed(25-30 wins). Perhaps more significantly, on a per-season basis the sample is relative miniscule and is covering a massive period of time(players change). I'll quote myself here if you don't mind:
Over 10 year spans or so, wowy will typically be based on a handful of games per season with players who've probably changed signifcantly during that time span. That's not really all that useful. What you want to do is look for moments where players or teammates miss(or are absent) from an unusally high number of games so you can get the largest samples. A good starting point for this would be the year before a player joins a team or the year after a leaves a team as you get a full season sample of data(70 Celtics, 84 Bulls, 84 Rockets, 69 Bucks, ect.) Then you can track roster changes, and granular stuff to adjust or guesstimate if the team improved got worse, ect. Lookign for concentrated stretches of missed game time, or how teams do when a star's teammates go out also can be useful. Ideally you want as much of this type of data for a player in various contexts and then you can compare players in these various situations directly.

I don't think the wowry averages are all that useful(and i suspect Ben agrees). I'd much rather start with the "raw stuff" and then adjust for context:
-> 69 Bucks are a 27 win team before they draft Kareem, win 56 games with rookie kareem and dandridge
-> 72 Bucks play at a 63 win pace in 18 games robertson misses
-> 75 Bucks go 3-14 in the 17 games Kareem misses, play at a 49 win pace with Kareem despite dandridge and robertson and falling off

I'm not super knowledgeable on the 70's, so I'm happy to learn about specific factors that may warrant consideration, but taking a holistic look, Kareem looks "more valuable" and his pre-nba dominance along with his status as the best player in the league for close to a decade(signified with 6 mvp's and probably should have won more) has me thinking kareem is the more impactdul dude, at least in the regular season. While I'm not extremely confident about it, I haven't seen much to push against that.

If you have specific criticisms/concerns for Kareem, I'm all ears.
OhayoKD wrote:
I'm definitely focused on LeBron's blips when I talk about Jordan being the more robust playoff performer, but I don't think "immense longevity" really explains it. I remember watching LeBron in his early prime, and I remember the ways he struggled. At the time I was one of the ones trying to calm others down about what it said about limits to LeBron's capacity, and I don't think I've actually changed my stance.

In general, there's a common issue I tend to call the "Fast Eddie" growth curve (after the character in the 1961 move "The Hustler") where a young guy can hit phenomenal highs but is more easily rattled than the old, grizzled vet. Fast Eddie over the course of the movie makes that transition, and I think there are a bunch of actual athletes who show similar tendencies, with LeBron being one of them.

I think it's actually important not to give Jordan too much credit for being "perfect" in avoid chokes, but while LeBron has developed toward being greatly robust with time, it's hard for me to say that that actually allowed him to be more dominant over any run than Jordan was.


So what specifically do you define as a "run" here. I feel pretty comfortable Lebron was more robust in his second cavs stint on the basis of how he was relatively unaffected by opposing defensive quality, how the cavs relative defense was more effective against better offenses than worse offenses(sort of implying they weren't even going at full gear), his production improving over the course of the series as jordan's generally declined, and significantly better looking aupm/pipm single year results(ben presents thar as an average), better three year on/off(2nd behind duncan wierdly enough), and what looks like staggering life if you go with "pure impact". (cavs are a sub 30 in games lebron doesn't play reflecting a collapse on both ends and play like a 65-70 win team in the 16/17 playoffs while playing like the 88-90 bulls in the 15 playoffs when love and kyrie go out).

You might respond to me with "but the regular season"(and jordan's box-stuff looks better), but then I look at the better holistic signals(which account for defense better) for lebron(rapm, non-regularized impact, pipm), and would have to respond "are we sure about that?"


I think the 2nd Cavs run is a good place to focus for LeBron having a more bulletproof run than Jordan.

I also think that the focus on the playoffs makes sense...but it's tricky because the East was weak and the Cavs lost to the Warriors every time but one. That one win is beyond huge of course, but beyond that the team's playoff highlights involved teams led by Paul Millsap and DeMar DeRozan.

That's fair, but the Warriors apparent lack of influence on his effiency/volume either as a scorer or a playmaker gives me some confidence. People talk about draymond/iggy/klay, but looney was also an extremely strong defender on a per minuite basis. Even for his career, Lebron's effiency holds up a bit better vs better defenses than Jordan's, and I think from 16-18 he's really a complete package offensively. The defense holding up better against the hawks, raptors and warriors than they did against weak offenses also indicates to me the numbers aren't necessarily representative of what the cavs would be doing if they went at full tilt. I'll also add that in terms of competition, the Cavs opponents in 2016 weren't weaker than the 91 Bulls going by SRS.

Neither the Raptors or the Hawks were that impressive, but sweeping them feels like a legitimate accomplishment, especially in 2015 where neither kyrie or love are playing.



OhayoKD wrote:
I would point out that from '87-88 to '90-91, the defensive improvement of the team was negligible. It was the offense that changed. When you zoom in like you've done I understand why you draw different conclusions, but flat out: Jordan proved he was capable of leading an elite defense before Phil or Pippen got there, it was the offense where he was unproven.

Well to be clear, the "proof" you're referencing is the 1988 regular season. Here are my quibbles:

1. If we zoom out a little more, 1988 is the only season prior to pippen and grant's ascension(and per pipm, on/off/partial rapm, Jordan's own decline in terms of "two-way" impact) where the Bulls managed a good regular season defense. That defense did not hold up in the postseason and it fell back to average in the following regular season. This rise and immediate decline coincided with Oakley's time at the Bulls. Oakley was chicago's premier front-court presence and probably the second best defender on that singular strong regular season defense.
2. 1988 is also an outlier for Jordan in terms of D-PIPM, and via various people's film-tracking, jordan's perimiter and paint activity, foot speed, and defensive error rate all go the wrong direction from that point forward. Even if 1988 MJ could lead a good defense, that doesn't necessarily apply to all versions of MJ.
3. If we compare to this Lebron's own outlier outcome(2009), the defense wasn't nearly as good(-2 vs -5), held up much worse in the playoffs, and experienced a much smaller drop-off(regularized or non-regularized) when the player in question went off the court. Lebron's corresponding 5 year D-RAPM was the 5th best. Lebron's playoff D-RAPM, for his career, is tied with Kawhi(consider how many more games that is maintained over for Lebron) as of 2020.
4. Lebron matches or exceeds jordan's 88 dpipm score at multiple points including 2020. Even in 2021, with Davis an injured shell, the Lakers are the best defense in the league before Lebron gets hurt. Using raw, stuff, I'd also say the 15 cavs and the 16 cavs are better defenses than the 88 bulls when we consider the post-season, and again, the experience a bigger drop-off without Lebron in the rs.
5. To really zoom-in on 2015, the cavaliers aren't initally very good at defense. Lebron rests and rejuvenates and the cavs defense skyrockets when he's back(top 10 post-miami vacation). Again, Lebron seems tied to the defensive success of his teams in a way Jordan doesn't.

I don't know it much matters where you draw the lines here. Unless we think Jordan was anchoring the defense for the Bulls at their peak(and I don't think the timeline of their improvement, film-tracking, or non-decline in 94 support this), Lebron looks more impressive. Maybe Lebron suffers from some sort of defensive port concern, but in lieu of that, Lebron strikes me as more impactful defensively and I'm not sure it's particularly close.

1. I think I got into this with falco. I think we should be careful about trying to downplay a player's significance in Achievement X as a means to downplay his significance in Achievement Y. Jordan on his own was not enough to ensure a Top 5 defense, but the same is true for Pippen or Phil Jackson the coach or LeBron.

2. I'd appreciate if you could share where you're getting the data on these metrics.

3. I certainly understand being more impressed with LeBron's D, and as I've noted, my analysis also sides with LeBron.

4. Uh, the Lakers had the best DRtg in the league over the entire year despite playing most their minutes without LeBron. To me the story of the Laker defense that year was about how good the Laker role players had become in Vogel's scheme...which was why it was so heartbreaking the way they then seemed to treat those players as if they were background extras when planning their off-season strategy.

5. You're using LeBron's presence in 2015 show a general trend of defensive WOWY impact while also pointing to 2020, while ignoring the way the defense caved in between those years. Meanwhile, you use the years between 1988 and 1991 to try to talk as if Jordan really didn't have much defensive impact. If feels to me like you're in real danger of falling prey to confirmation bias.

1. That's fair. Still. the lack of replication in terms of individual data or team-wide signals, and aforementioned indications of defensive decline, has me see it in the same vein of 2001 Kobe, it's a good year specifically and an accomplishment In of itself, but it shouldn't be assumed to apply to later versions of Jordan. Regardless though, I don't think it does much for MJ in a comparison with Lebron. Lebron has several years that match or outdo it in terms of PIPM(2009, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020), is clearing it in RAPM with post-prime rs samples(2015-20, +2 vs +1.5 for 88), clearing it by a margin with his best scoring stretches(+4.7 drapm between 07-11), and the gap widens if you go by pure wowy analysis. Additionaly Lebron has anchored(with more influence apparently) 2 defenses in 2015 and 2016I'd say were significantly better(much better in the playoffs, a bit off in the regular season, improved vs good offenses) in his 30's, and a much better defense in 09 in what was his own "outlier". I didn't get into the weeds of the surrounding years because you were going off a single season, but that's not because I think Lebron looks worse over larger samples. Lebron's 15 year playoff drapm is on par with the consensus best non-big defender of his era(kawhi) despite lebron's sample covering vastly more minuites(averages dip the longer you play). Even with three defensive down years in 2018, 2019, and 2014, lebron scores at +2 from 14-20 in the regular season. I don't think it's a coincidence that the more a holistic metric accounts for defense, the better Lebron looks.

2. Noted. Maybe I should give 2021 marc gasol more credit then. I was under the impression the defense dropped after lebron's injury, but maybe I'm off.

3. Well, ultimately the goal is to try and isolate the individual defensive value of the player in question, and to that end, I think tracking how well a player's impact, granulars, and level of defensive activity correlates with the the team's defense is worthwhile. I'm noting the years between 88 and 91 because Jordan's own defensive signals decline. Even as his offensive box-stuff improves, his on/off, apm, rate of defensive breakdowns, and volume of defensive activity at the rim and on the perimeter all take a turn for the worse. If the Bulls defense is skyrockets anyway, and then maintains that level with Jordan retiring, it's hard to give too much credit to Jordan defensively outside of 88. I also don't know we should treat the bulls with oakley in 88 as the same as the bulls without oakley in 89. 88 is the outlier here, whether you want to look at what they were before, or after. Oakley might explain why.

When there's a decrease in Lebron's signals, or defensive activity, the team drops accordingly. On top of everything else we have, that suggests that Lebron, at his prime, influences the quality of his team's defenses to a significantly higher degree. Looking at his second cleveland stint, if we go past 2015, the 2016 cavs maintain most of their previous playoff defensive impact despite adding two negatives to the lineup in kyrie and love, in 2017, Lebron is doing less defensively(though he still looks good relative to say mj) and the cavs fall-off to average in the rs(still good in the playoffs), and in 2018 he's truly a non-factor on the defensive end and the cavs are now not a good defense.

When the signals within in a season are supported by what's happening season to season, I trust them more. Consensus reduces uncertainty.
OhayoKD wrote:
1. I will say, that when you are discussing a 20 year career, its likely not wise to assume a player's mentality/philosophy has been identical throughout. Perhaps in 2022 Lebron overestimated himself, but in 2016 Lebron demanded the Cavs pay big bucks for a three-and-d. It's also possible the limitations of 2022 Lebron were more limiting than prior versions. In 2021 the Lakers were looking league-best before injury, and still looked like a threat to the suns. You say 2020 is a fluke, but Lebron first pulled the "win with bleh spacing" trick in 2012 and got impressively close in 2015. As falco mentioned, Lebron has the two "worst shooting" titles of the era with Gianni's bucks coming closest. And ultimately, with time, comes volume. We would expect more bad and more good here.
2. The specific thing I think Lebron deserves credit(at least as far as off-court winning goes) is his willingness to actively pursue co-stars. The lakers were not the only option for AD to potentially win, but Lebron was the guy who was socializing with him and unofficially "tampeing" to get him. Old-heads, including Jordan, have looked down on that practice, but Lebron encouraged it, repeatedly exploiting friendships to help his teams get co-stars. Maybe he erred when he went for the shiny thing again with Westbrook, but it was probably necessary for the Lakers to win in 2020.
3. I think with off-court analysis it is important to look at process independent of the tangible results in a specific case. While the Wizards may have been **** with or without Jordan, its not hard to see a variety of situations where contention is at play where MJ's conduct at the Wizards doesn't ruin things. Even at the Bulls, Jordan played a role in the relationship fraying with Krause. He's quoted having made anti-semetic remarks, he punched a teammate, got into beef with various bigs, and had issues with Erving out of spiteful envy.

Especially with your focus being on transporting players to the modern nba, how well do you think Jordan's off-court behavior plays in the age of social media. It's not hard to see this breaking a locker-room:
https://thesportsrush.com/nba-news-michael-jordan-used-flaming-fagot-as-reference-for-kwame-brown-his-whipping-boy-according-to-si-and-washington-post/

While the Bulls were able to survive, does your understanding of how organizations work support the idea that Jordan is a positive leadership influence? Particularly if we're transposing this to 2022, I see loads of potential pitfalls with MJ's off-court antics

We celebrate when machismo and "killer instinct" succeeds, but we tend to sweep aside when it fails


1. As I've said, it's not just 2022, this began in 2018 with his arrival in LA. The Westbrook stuff has only made clear how clear-cut his priorities were.

Re: 2nd stint Cavs. Indeed, after the Heatles, LeBron seemed like he understood what kind of fit he actually needed, which is why it was so maddening to see how he changed with his next team. A couple things though:

a) On those Cavs, he didn't explicitly choose role players over stars. He came to Cleveland because they had Kyrie and could were able to acquire Love. That's what he cared about first and foremost, and so in that sense, I'm not sure if anything actually changed. Just as LeBron pushed the Cavs to get Love to create a 3-star team, he pushed the Lakers to get Westbrook. The difference really is that in the first circumstance the Cavs had a big time prospect to trade, in the second they had to sacrifice the supporting cast. And that - along with the fact that he drastically overrated Westbrook - is why the former wasn't a bad move but the latter was one of the most damaging moves I can ever remember a player twisting his team to make.

b) I do think it likely that LeBron's advanced age in LA led him to believe that he needed someone who could "play LeBron" so that he could rest. I really don't know if there's any evidence that this is why he was obsessed with getting a 3rd star at all cost, but I'm sure it relates to why he ended up zeroing in on the absolute worst fitting teammate he could have ever had in Westbrook.

Re: "You say 2020 is a fluke but he did it before." I think we need to drill down further here than just "They were great at 3's, but they won the title."

I said 2020 was a fluke specifically because the Bubble caused teams to shoot better than they ever did before, and the Lakers improving their spacing capacity was exactly what they needed to shore up their obvious weakness at shooting. We can debate whether that really made the difference for them in the playoffs, but this was absolutely a change precisely in the direction they needed due to reasons that they couldn't have expected to occur.

What about 2012? Let's look at it like this:

In the playoffs, the Heat played 4 teams.
The Heat had a higher 3PAr than 2 of those teams in the RS.
The Heat had a higher 3P% than the other two teams in the RS.
The Heat hit more 3's than their opponents in 3 out of their 4 PS series.
And also had a higher 3P% than 3 out of their 4 PS opponents.


In a nutshell, this absolutely was not a team that was winning despite being outstripped from the arc against the opponents they were playing.

Now, was their stellar defense a part of the reason for this? Sure, but it wouldn't have been enough to make up the difference against the shooters of today's game.

In 2012, the Heat were literally not at a massive spacing disadvantage, and that's how they won.
In 2022, they would get crushed trying to play the same way.

1. Fair
2. Fair(in terms of assessing the wisdom of lebron's decision), but as this sort of touches on "absolute translation"(which came up with Falco), I feel i should maybe reiterate what I said before about era-translation:
for modern era translation, box-production going up does not mean a player has become more valuable. Scoring 30 ppg where the field is scoring 20 pgg isn't necessarily worse than scoring 40 ppg in a where the field scores 30 ppg. Crude example but it should illustrate the point. If you are going to argue Jordan gets better thanks to spacing, it can't just be a matter of numbers. You need to argue that he will be better relative to his peers in 2022 than 1991. According to ben, jordan was a limited pure passer even relative to kobe(found half as many good passes per 100 iirc), so i'm not sure having him helio vs more sophisticated and talented defenses produces better results(as far as winning goes).

More spacing does not automatically determine that a player will get more valuable offensively. Jordan's a relatively undersized interior threat and has limitations as a passer. What makes you think he gets more valuable in an era where the field has gotten much better at his unique strengths (shooting/off-ball movement)? Let's assume talent level is equal.


Re: 2015 "impressively close". Certainly impressive and close, but I do think it's important to remember that once the Warriors adapted, it really wasn't all that close. In that series, the Cavs had no ability to run an effective offense, and were getting by on the Warriors being unsure how to attack a Cavs team that looked very different from the one the Cavs had intended to put out there. It was no given even that the Warriors would figure it out in time, but figure it out they did, and in the end, it's those last 3 games in the series that foretell what we'd have expected to happen if the two teams kept playing each other indefinitely.

This is fair, but it also lends itself to a second framing: Lebron was beating with the 67 win Warriors(and competitive in the one loss), and then they got better. I have heard youtubers like dom2k say that the Warriors became their 73 win-selves over the course of the series. Not sure how true that is, but you could argue that the Warriors found a new level. If nothing else, forcing a big tactical switch from Kerr to break the tie is still impressive. Who knows if a doc rivers or a mike budenhoizer would have managed the same.

2. Pursuing co-stars. In general I'm not looking to judge this as if it's a bad thing, and I'll also say it's not a new thing. From the Laker perspective, LeBron, AD & Westbrook are just 3 more established stars the team was able to acquire as part of a long line of similar players going back to Wilt.

This incidentally means that while I'm very critical of LeBron, I'm certainly not letting Laker management off the hook for the Westbrook situation. The reality is that this was a very Laker mistake to make.

I think a player taking an active role in it is unusual and really a byproduct of player empowerment. Lebron also did this with Miami and Bosh. Having a player whose willing to actively recruit talent on your behalf has perks.

3. I'm quite critical of Jordan's bullying tendencies and push back at any idea that he represents an ideal leader. I agree with you that behaving like this in eras closer to the present would not go well, and can certainly see arguments for why LeBron would be the better player to draft in today's league.

At the same time, I think Jordan's all-encompassing approach probably helped the team with the 3-peats and was likely essential to their 72-10 year.

Leadership impact is a slippery, slippery thing.

1. I'll add that I do think, at least during the first cleveland stint, Lebron was a pretty effective leader and he didn't really showcase the drawbacks he would later. I don't know quite how you would weigh "character arcs" over a career, but when we consider leadership/off-court impact predictively, Lebron was able to avoid the negative notes Jordan had at the start with the Bulls despite a fair bit of off-court adversity.

2. Fair. I don't have an issue with that assumption. I suppose you don't see 09 and 10 similarly due to the drop-off without him?
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
Djoker
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#358 » by Djoker » Wed Dec 7, 2022 3:02 pm

70sFan wrote:
Djoker wrote:Ok since you guys are still disputing literal facts I'm just going to post the numbers. Let's just compare their championship seasons in regular season minutes played.

2012 Lebron - 2326 mins
2013 Lebron - 2877 mins
2016 Lebron - 2709 mins
2020 Lebron - 2316 mins

Lebron Average: 2557 mins

1991 Jordan - 3034 mins
1992 Jordan - 3102 mins
1993 Jordan - 3067 mins
1996 Jordan - 3090 mins
1997 Jordan - 3106 mins
1998 Jordan - 3181 mins

Jordan Average: 3097 mins (21% more)

That's a significantly higher load for Jordan in their best seasons.

Overall Lebron has eight 3000+ minute seasons, with six of eight in his first six years from 2004-2009. The others are 2011 and 2018. Jordan has twelve 3000+ minute seasons including 1985, ten straight from 1987-1998 and then one more in 2003.

Lebron from 2012-2022 which is 11 straight seasons averaged 2453 minutes per season. He played an average of 67 games at 36.5 mpg during that span. No one is criticizing Lebron's early career but as the years went on, his loads in the regular season were very small historically compared to his predecessors. That cannot be disputed. Not all of it was load management. Some was legit injuries, some lockouts, some Covid-shortened seasons... Still a reduced load at the end of the day!

We can go a bit further and calculate average minutes played per year throughout their primes:

1985-98 Jordan: 35887 minutes in 13 seasons - 2760 minutes per season

2004-18 James: 44298 minutes in 15 seasons - 2953 minutes per season

I really don't understand why you use seasons like 2012 to prove your take, while you completely ignore 1986 or 1995.

About 2012-22 only - I think we should realize that James was in his 9th season in 2012. That's the equivalent of 1993 Jordan. You should compare 2012-22 James to 1993-03 Jordan, not to young Jordan. In this case, James played significantly more minutes per year than Jordan, because Jordan only played 7 seasons in this span. How can you talk about load management, when Jordan literally took two long breaks from basketball?


Because I'm not trying to compare wear and tear over their careers. Lebron obviously played more full seasons but that's not what this argument was about. There is such a thing as seasonal wear and tear and even monthly and weekly wear and tear. Playing 65 games in a season is much easier than playing 80 games in a season. The latter has a higher probability of fatigue in the playoffs, injuries etc. in the given stretch. That's what I was getting at.
70sFan
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#359 » by 70sFan » Wed Dec 7, 2022 3:16 pm

Djoker wrote:
70sFan wrote:
Djoker wrote:Ok since you guys are still disputing literal facts I'm just going to post the numbers. Let's just compare their championship seasons in regular season minutes played.

2012 Lebron - 2326 mins
2013 Lebron - 2877 mins
2016 Lebron - 2709 mins
2020 Lebron - 2316 mins

Lebron Average: 2557 mins

1991 Jordan - 3034 mins
1992 Jordan - 3102 mins
1993 Jordan - 3067 mins
1996 Jordan - 3090 mins
1997 Jordan - 3106 mins
1998 Jordan - 3181 mins

Jordan Average: 3097 mins (21% more)

That's a significantly higher load for Jordan in their best seasons.

Overall Lebron has eight 3000+ minute seasons, with six of eight in his first six years from 2004-2009. The others are 2011 and 2018. Jordan has twelve 3000+ minute seasons including 1985, ten straight from 1987-1998 and then one more in 2003.

Lebron from 2012-2022 which is 11 straight seasons averaged 2453 minutes per season. He played an average of 67 games at 36.5 mpg during that span. No one is criticizing Lebron's early career but as the years went on, his loads in the regular season were very small historically compared to his predecessors. That cannot be disputed. Not all of it was load management. Some was legit injuries, some lockouts, some Covid-shortened seasons... Still a reduced load at the end of the day!

We can go a bit further and calculate average minutes played per year throughout their primes:

1985-98 Jordan: 35887 minutes in 13 seasons - 2760 minutes per season

2004-18 James: 44298 minutes in 15 seasons - 2953 minutes per season

I really don't understand why you use seasons like 2012 to prove your take, while you completely ignore 1986 or 1995.

About 2012-22 only - I think we should realize that James was in his 9th season in 2012. That's the equivalent of 1993 Jordan. You should compare 2012-22 James to 1993-03 Jordan, not to young Jordan. In this case, James played significantly more minutes per year than Jordan, because Jordan only played 7 seasons in this span. How can you talk about load management, when Jordan literally took two long breaks from basketball?


Because I'm not trying to compare wear and tear over their careers. Lebron obviously played more full seasons but that's not what this argument was about. There is such a thing as seasonal wear and tear and even monthly and weekly wear and tear. Playing 65 games in a season is much easier than playing 80 games in a season. The latter has a higher probability of fatigue in the playoffs, injuries etc. in the given stretch. That's what I was getting at.

But LeBron didn't play 65 games in his prime, outside of one lockout season in 2012. LeBron averaged 76 games per season in 2003-18 period. Jordan averaged 72 games in his Bulls career.

You act like James consistently played less than 70 games and rested for most of his prime in RS. In reality, LeBron had exactly one season when he missed significant number of games in his prime - 2015 when he missed 13 games due to injury. Other than that, he didn't have a single season in his prime when he missed 10 games. The next biggest break he had was in 2017 when he missed 8 games. If you want to tell me that these 8 games is a gigantic advantage for LeBron, then I have to disagree.

You basically argue that Jordan playing 2-4 more games per RS is a huge deal. No, it isn't - playing 79 vs 82 games is no difference for an NBA superstar.
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AEnigma
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Re: Who is in your GOAT tier? 

Post#360 » by AEnigma » Wed Dec 7, 2022 3:20 pm

Djoker wrote:
70sFan wrote:We can go a bit further and calculate average minutes played per year throughout their primes:

1985-98 Jordan: 35887 minutes in 13 seasons - 2760 minutes per season

2004-18 James: 44298 minutes in 15 seasons - 2953 minutes per season

I really don't understand why you use seasons like 2012 to prove your take, while you completely ignore 1986 or 1995.

About 2012-22 only - I think we should realize that James was in his 9th season in 2012. That's the equivalent of 1993 Jordan. You should compare 2012-22 James to 1993-03 Jordan, not to young Jordan. In this case, James played significantly more minutes per year than Jordan, because Jordan only played 7 seasons in this span. How can you talk about load management, when Jordan literally took two long breaks from basketball?

Because I'm not trying to compare wear and tear over their careers.

The only reason you are not is because of how obviously it shows Lebron’s load is tougher.
Like, you want to talk about…
higher probability of fatigue in the playoffs, injuries etc. in the given stretch. That's what I was getting at.

… then yes, career wear is absolutely relevant. Just as it is relevant that Lebron’s league is one that asks more per minute of its stars. Just as it is relevant that in 2012 — a season you are trying to throw away — they had to condense all those games into a speed run.

You have absolutely no data on this. “Oh Jordan playing an extra hundred minutes makes him way more likely to have an injury, even if it comes after entire seasons where he barely played, so that is much more impressive.” Because when the conclusion from the start is that Jordan needs to receive more props, sports reality stops being of any interest.
MyUniBroDavis wrote:Some people are clearly far too overreliant on data without context and look at good all in one or impact numbers and get wowed by that rather than looking at how a roster is actually built around a player

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