RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #1 (LeBron James)

[Tim Lehrbach]

Everyone: don't forget about the Spoiler tag when posting nested quotes! Helps immensely with readability.

[Moonbeam]

I'll wait for the updated versions to say too much, and it certainly sounds like it has team-wide applications, but on an individual evaluation level I'm wary of a stat that has such extreme value swings from season to season. EChamp - which I read as expected championships - being approximately 11x higher for '09 LeBron than for '20 LeBron (as an example) is not an evaluation that works with my current understanding of basketball talent/impact distributions and their effects on championship odds.

Fair enough. It is a pretty extreme shift indeed. What I can say is that the championship odds also tie in regular season performance. According to my metrics, LeBron had 20.44 Adjusted Win Shares in 2009, which works out to 0.249 Adjusted Win Shares per Team Game, while in 2020, LeBron had 10.397 Win Shares, which works out to 0.146 Adjusted Win Shares per Team Game. That drastically changes the predicted seed profile of those teams. In the playoffs, LeBron was estimated at 0.330 Adjusted Win Shares per game in 2009, which is incredible. In 2020, he listed his game as well, with 0.200 Adjusted Win Shares per game. The combination of a much stronger regular season in 2009 and an outlier postseason run makes 2009 jump off the charts.

[eminence]

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I'm not certain on 'full-season' ratings (which are largely dependent on how heavily one weights the playoffs). But the RS Cavs never hit a +10 SRS. Top 5 RS ratings with LeBron:

'09 +8.7
'10 +6.2
'16 +5.5
'15 +4.1
'07 +3.3

Miami went:
+6.8
+5.7
+7.0
+4.2

+6.3 in '20 in LA

There are other techniques to evaluate team goodness, especially for when league sizes aren't similar (not an issue here), but most point the same direction. It's perfectly reasonable to state that LeBron has never led a team to the same heights as MJ or some other candidates in this slot.

[ShaqAttac]

Everyone: don't forget about the Spoiler tag when posting nested quotes! Helps immensely with readability.

hmm k

[lessthanjake]

It is unprecedented post-merger but I think we need to be careful about just using raw srs here. While those gaudy win-totals were better than any other dynasty, that is separate from them being more "dominant". It was after all, not the Bulls who won 11 championships in 13 years, and it was also not the Bulls who won 8-straight. As far as championships go, a 50-win team in the 60's or the post-merger 70's is better(or more likely to win), than a 50-win team in the 90's or the 2000's. Ceiling-raising indicates to me you are specifically focused on championships. With that in mind, when we look at standard deviations as opposed to raw-srs totals...

...we see the Celtics were far more dominant than the Bulls. And if that wasn't enough, they were also better playoff risers winning 4 more rings than expected as opposed to the Bulls only winning 3.1 more rings.

Keep in mind, unlike with Lebron, there's really no evidence for Jordan being a comparable or better "floor-raiser". Russell has won with less help than Jordan has ever won with(1969), has won with two completely different cores, and has kept the Celtics at a best in the league-level(peaking from 60-64 as a bigger outlier than any of Jordan's bulls). If you are going to opt for ceiling raising(justified with more impressive team success), isn't Bill a better choice?

I’ve discussed this a fair bit now in the thread about ranking dynasties. Russell’s winning obviously has to weigh very highly. I’ll end up voting for him pretty highly here—with the immense record of winning being the primary reason for it. But I don’t see those Celtics as being more dominant, despite the 11 titles. It’s just a very different context, where you had a much smaller league and typically only had to win two series’ to win a title—the first of which would naturally be against a team that was merely a pretty average team (the semifinals in a league of 8 or 9 teams is not conceptually that different from the round of 16 in a 30-team league). As someone on that ranking-dynasties thread pointed out, the Russell Celtics were 27-2 in playoff series’s, and Jordan’s Bulls from 1990-1998 were also 27-2 in playoffs series’s. And the Bulls did that while losing only a bit more than half as many playoff games in that stretch than the Celtics did, while also winning a higher percent of their regular season games with a higher SRS.

I get your point about high regular season win totals being less common back then. But it doesn’t really move me at all, to be honest. Being more standard deviations above the mean doesn’t make a team better in absolute terms, if the reason they’re more standard deviations above the mean is simply higher parity. To use a stylized example, let’s take an 8-team league where the best team wins 60% of their games, six teams win 50% of their games, and two teams win 45% of their games. The standard deviation there would be just 0.04, meaning that team that won 60% of their games would be about 2.5 standard deviations above the mean. That’d be the standard deviation equivalent of winning 80% of their games (i.e. like a 66 win season) in the NBA this past year. Do we really think those are equivalent? Is it more impressive to win a lower number of games in a league with more parity? I’d definitely say no. Regardless of standard deviations, that team is still less far above their peers. I don’t think standard deviations are a helpful concept here.

Also, to the extent you’re asking why I’m not putting Russell first given my stated reason for putting MJ first, my reasoning that I gave was focused on a comparison with LeBron. That’s why I have him above LeBron. But MJ and LeBron made it into my final two in part due to other factors that Russell doesn’t meet—including individual statistical dominance. In other words, my reasons for having MJ above LeBron are different than why I have him above Russell. MJ has a combination of statistical dominance and ceiling raising that neither LeBron or Russell meet, for different reasons. My discussion focused on the thing LeBron didn’t meet, because my discussion was about Jordan vs. LeBron, not about Jordan vs. Russell.

Yeah, uh no. Their SRS was "nor nearly as good" because Pippen and Grant missed games. When both were in the lineup they posted a regular season srs of 4.7, aka, a 55-win pace:

In the playoffs they played like a +8 team, boosting their srs from +4.7 to +5 for the season. Aka, a 58-win pace. Then without Grant(who would see the Magic jump from first-round outs to finalists), the Bulls won at a 52-win pace:

The names might not impress you, but they made a decent offense without Jordan and Grant, and a good one when they were just down Jordan. Pair that with an excellent defense, and you get one of the few teams in nba history that was capable of contending for a championship without their best player. For comparison, let's look at how Cleveland(second stint) and Miami fared without Lebron:

This is all a bit misleading, because injuries exist and players miss games. The average SRS of the league only in games where the team was fully “healthy” is going to be well above 0. So it’d inflate SRS numbers of basically any team to talk about only games where they’re fully healthy. They got that SRS in part because they were playing other teams that *weren’t* fully healthy! I wonder what the Bulls’ “healthy” SRS was in 1995-1996 and 1996-1997, given that Rodman missed like 45 games in those two seasons. That said, I do agree the Bulls were a good team without Jordan—no one would really deny that.

From 12-14 Miami posted a net-rating of -3.5 in games without Lebron(7.5 with). In the title-winning years Miami were a +8.4 team with Lebron and a -2.5 team without. That actually looks like a 30ish win team rather than a 40ish won but presumably missed time and opponent quality shift the lebron-less heat towards neutrality with SRS.

Switching from WOWY, to lineup-ratings, the Heat were +11.04 with Lebron/Wade lineups, +2.7 with with Wade, no Lebron lineups, 10.87 with Lebron/Bosh lineups, -1.19 with Bosh, no Lebron lineups, +10.28 with the big-three, and -4.48 with the big-three minus Lebron. The heat were also +2.77 in lineups with Lebron and without Wade or bosh. Overall, Lebron lineups scored at +9.62 while Lebron-less lineups scored at +0.75

In the title-winning years, the Heat were -3.25 with just Wade and Bosh and +12 with all three, +5.88 with Lebron and no wade or bosh, and +0.48 without any of the big three. Overall, for 12 and 13, Lebron lineups scored at 11.96 while Lebron-less lineups were -0.36.p

The net rating in games without LeBron is essentially completely meaningless regardless of what the number is, because the sample size of games is tiny. For instance, LeBron missed a total of just 18 games with the Heat! And a significant portion of those were just sitting at the end of the season, in games that the team didn’t actually care about. You’re referring to numbers that are wildly affected by things like the Heat losing by 34 in the last game of the 2011-2012 season in a game they did not care about, and by 21 in a game at the end of the 2013-2014 season that they did not care about. It’s just a bad use of statistics.

Even engaging with the substance of this though, I’d refer you to my earlier post above. It’s comparing apples and oranges to talk about what happens in isolated games a star player misses when his team is built around him compared to what happens in a season in the team’s heyday where the team is completely without that star player. The latter is obviously much more conducive to the team having adapted and playing to its full potential. And that’s especially true here, where LeBron’s teams play such a LeBron-centric style that is hard to pivot away from for isolated games. I don’t think there can be any comparison whatsoever between the two scenarios, even if we had an adequate sample size (which we do not).

Yeah, uh, that game 7 in 2012 came after losses where Lebron's co-stars weren't playing. With the big-three starting, Miami posted a MOV of 13.5, going 8-1 despite bosh and wade entering and leaving the lineup and Dwayne literally getting his knees operated in the middle of playoff games. Moreover they crushed an OKC side that, per San's PSRS(which gives 3/4 weight to playoff performance), looks better than any team Jordan has beat at any round of the playoffs. For that matter, all 8 of Lebron's first final opponents from 2011 to 2018 score higher than any team Jordan's Bulls vanquished including 3 teams, he's beaten with significantly worse support such as the 13 Spurs who look as good or better, using psrs or regular season srs, than the 90 Pistons, a team peak Jordan lost to despite having very good help.

That’s a fair point, but it’s not like that team was dominant in the regular season that year. It’s possible they might’ve had a dominant playoff run if Bosh had been healthy, but they didn’t have a dominant regular season, and any assertion that they might’ve had a dominant playoff run if Bosh had been healthy is purely speculative. They sure weren’t dominant the year before in the playoffs when Wade and Bosh were healthy.

As for a method that tells us that the 2012 Thunder were better than any team Jordan ever beat in the playoffs, I don’t know what that measure is, but I can infer from the results you’re saying it spits out (such as the 2012 OKC team being rated super highly) that it puts extremely high value on beating teams in the playoffs that had playoff success in surrounding years. That 2012 OKC team did beat three teams that won the title in nearby years. But it’s hard for the Bulls to beat teams that beat title winners in surrounding years (or for the Bulls to directly beat title winners), when they themselves won virtually every title in surrounding years! Your opponents will always look weaker when you’re doing all the winning! It’s a self-fulfilling argument! And it can essentially be used in any sport ever to suggest that the most dominant teams were in weak eras. I don’t put much credit in that kind of tautological argument, especially when the point I’m making is also true of *regular season* dominance as well, which obviously is unaffected by who one’s specific playoff opponents were.


I’m losing steam here and don’t have the time/willingness at the moment to respond to the rest of this post. May get back to it later, but am not sure. The one thought I’d leave that I think is broadly relevant to a lot of the stuff I didn’t respond to is that I think on-off metrics actually miss something fairly crucial—which is that what happens when you’re on the floor can affect how your teammates play when you’re off the floor. And specifically, if you play with a really ball-dominant guy, you’ve barely got a feel of the ball and don’t feel engaged. It makes guys be less in rhythm offensively and can make them less motivated on defense. It’s a squishy, unmeasurable concept, but you can hear some NBA role players be pretty candid about this sort of thing sometimes and insist that it matters a lot. So that ball-dominant style can IMO be part of the cause of bad team performances when a guy like LeBron leaves the court. He leaves the court, and the guys that are on have barely touched the ball and therefore don’t have much offensive rhythm. The same isn’t true of a more ball-equitable style, where the whole team is constantly getting involved. It’s more conducive to teammates being in rhythm when the star leaves the court (even if they’ve not necessarily taken any more shots when the star was on—merely being involved more in the flow of the offense is a big deal IMO).

[Dr Positivity]

It is true that the Bulls hit a higher ceiling than the Heatles where Lebron had comparable enough 2nd and 3rd best players (I think those teams in the earlier Wade ones are the only Lebron ones that can be compared in top end talent to the Bulls), however it's believable to me that it could be caused by depth more than MJ vs Lebron, I'm not sure you can have as dominant seasons as 90s Bulls, 60s Celtics or 10s regular season Warriors without the best depth. In 96 and 97 3peat the Bulls definitely had more talented depth than the Heat, the first 3peat is closer on paper, but sometimes the caliber of bench play does not always match the names. To put in perspective how much MJ's teammates are a factor in the Bulls success whether that means Pippen/Grant or the bench, you can argue 1990 Jordan is as good as any Jordan in history, and they have relatively pedestrian-decent results (55 Ws, 2.74 SRS). The Bulls ending up one of the most dominant teams of all time had a lot to do with MJ obviously, but also probably perfect storm of some other factors.

It is worth discussing as a starting point though, is there something about Jordan's game that can lead to "higher ceiling"? He did have nice off the ball ability, but I think Lebron's isn't bad when he improved as a post player and shooter, and he managed to be successful beside Wade who still had a great season in 2011 and his decline after that seemingly was natural aging and physical wear done as much as anything else. You can claim that Wade not scaling 100% his 2010 form to 2011 cost the Heat, but Pippen's best individual season was also without Jordan. They do it some different ways but both players are elite athletes who can score/pass/defend. I do not think building one of the best teams ever with Lebron is that unreasonable a challenge when he has those multiple skills.

[AEnigma]

Spoiler:

I think it is fair to say that LeBron’s teams never were even particularly close to the heights of dominance that Jordan’s teams reached. And, aside from the first Cavs stint, this isn’t for lack of playing on really talented teams. LeBron’s Heat, second-stint Cavs, and Lakers teams have been really talented. The Heat in particular were unbelievably talented—so talented that LeBron himself thought they’d just waltz to countless titles. Part of that not happening was Wade eventually breaking down, but they simply weren’t very dominant even before that. They only had one 60-win season together. Their SRS averaged 5.92 in those years. And they won two titles in four years, with multiple game 7’s in those two title-winning years. They were a great team, but they struggled, despite all the talent. Meanwhile, as explained above, Jordan’s Bulls were very dominant for a long stretch. They had multiple years where they really didn’t struggle.

And I simply don’t see this as being caused by the Bulls being more talented. Indeed, I don’t actually see those Bulls as being more talented than many of LeBron’s teams. It’s clear that they were a good team without Jordan—since they did well during his first retirement (though the 55 wins in 1994 obscures that the SRS wasn’t nearly as good). Pippen was great, of course, but LeBron has had one or two similarly good teammates. And then you’re looking at guys like Horace Grant (and later Rodman) and role players. The Bulls were a really good team, of course, and were well coached, but I don’t think one can fairly say that they’d look at the names of the supporting players on Jordan’s Bulls teams and the names of the supporting players on some of LeBron’s teams and fairly conclude that Jordan’s Bulls team would be substantially more dominant.

So the conclusion I draw from all this is that Jordan was a notably better ceiling raiser than LeBron. When they both were on really good teams, Jordan made his team into a historically dominant powerhouse, while LeBron’s teams were not dominant and still struggled a good deal. And I think this is actually not surprising, when we realize that LeBron’s style of play is so ball-dominant that it genuinely does make it harder for other great players to be maximized on a team with him. Jordan liked the ball too, but his style really was nowhere near as ball dominant—with a lot more getting shots within the rhythm of the offense (especially with the triangle, but even before that too).

This is an extremely common refrain and the type of thinking that is inevitable when we spend more times looking at name than at real production.

The 1994 Bulls played at a 4.7 SRS pace when healthy, but because we need to portray the Bulls as untalented, we instead need to ignore Pippen and Grant separately missing ten games for the first time in their career. There we need to look past the “55-wins”. And then the following year, when Grant is replaced with Ron Harper and they play at a 3.8 SRS pace before Jordan’s return, well, we look at the win totals painting them as a barely over .500 team. They play like more of 6.5 team with Jordan (3.8 —> 6.5 quite the feat of ceiling raising!), and when Rodman is added to that 6.5 core, Jordan is the one who receives all the credit for that lift.

That last point is a very common trend for Jordan’s teams. 2.74 SRS in 1990, then a massive spike up to 8.57 in 1991. What changed? Jordan played 160 fewer minutes. His TS ADD went down from 315 to 301. His VORP went up 0.2, his win shares went up 1.3, and his PIPM wins went up 1.4… Then the following year the Bulls are even better: 10.07 SRS, rarefied air. But Jordan? TS ADD down to 196. VORP down 1.6, win shares down 2.6, and PIPM wins up 0.5. But of course it is not a super team. 1993, they take a step back to 6.19 SRS. A 4 SRS fall out of nowhere! And contributing to that fall, Jordan’s TS ADD is now down to 124. His win shares are down 0.5, his PIPM wins are down 0.9, and his VORP… is up 1.

So if Jordan is not the one driving these massive swings, I wonder who else possibly could be.

We see elements of this in effect more clearly in 1998, where Pippen misses a large chunk of the season. With Pippen out, the Bulls play at a +6 pace. With Pippen returns, the Bulls play at a +9.5 pace, and this is where I urge readers to remember 1995.

This entire line of thought is another instance of classic Jordan double-speak where we praise Jordan because he lifts teams people claim are less talented teams… but we also call him a “ceiling raiser” because he supposedly fits so much better with the same talent!

The reality is that (until this past trade deadline) Lebron has never played with a roster that produced +4-SRS results without him. For all that talent, for all that talk about “overlap”, none of his teams show any signals of the sort (the 2013 Heat is the only roster conceivably in that realm). Is Lebron a “good” fit with players who derive much of their value from being a high volume scorer or primary ball-handler? No, not especially… but whenever this idea comes up, we ignore that Jordan’s teams were perfectly catered to his every skillset.

Jordan played with perfectly optimized rosters throughout his career and I'm 100% sure he'd fit worse with Wade/Bosh or even Kyrie/Love than LeBron actually did.

I'm almost shocked how easily Jordan's portability is taken for granted to be honest. Jordan never played with other high level creators. He never had to change his game because of roster construction. I very much doubt anything would change the way he played.

You may argue that in most situations, Jordan wouldn't need to change his style to make it work. I can see that, although it's far from given. At the same time though, I don't think Jordan shooting 25 times per game next to another high volume perimeter scorer would be a good thing. I doubt Jordan would bring that much value (relative to other GOAT candidates) next to someone like Wade or Kobe. I don't even love his fit with someone like Curry.

Fitting with Pippen is nothing like fitting with Wade. Jordan made an adjustment (or more accurately was advised to make an adjustment by Phil Jackson) to give Pippen more ballhandling primacy, and that is used as de facto proof of his offensive (reminder that defence scales too…) scalability next to players like Wade. … But Jordan’s dominant skill is not ballhandling, it is scoring. And he cared about that skill a lot.

Does that sound like a guy who is legitimately worried about not deferring enough? No. Now, as I said, Wade was not Pippen. I do not think Jordan would have taken the same approach with Wade, although obviously we have no real way of knowing. But I do think Jordan was dramatically less likely to be worried about not stepping on the toes of this other elite scorer. Jordan supporters might chalk that up to superior mentality; “Jordan knew he was the best scorer and would rightly force Wade to adjust at the outset!” Whatever. But that is not really a point for his “scalability”.

So then we look at what is being sacrificed, and here we have a nice little sample of what Pippen looks like with no Jordan eating up the entire scoring load. And… he takes like one or two extra shots a game. Pippen was not really being asked to sacrifice anything by playing with Jordan — not in the way someone like Wade, who on his own was taking just as many shots as Jordan (albeit much less effectively). And for all those comments from Phil, what did Jordan sacrifice from 1988? Again, like a shot or two a game. The mentality may have changed as advised, but the total scoring load? Pretty much the same. As mentioned, he also sacrificed some general control of the offence to Pippen, and that was very successful, because Pippen was (or at least developed into) a better passer than Jordan, and passing was his best offensive skill. Contrast this with Wade, who is a worse scorer than both Jordan and Lebron, is a worse playmaker than Lebron, and has explicitly talked about not wanting to act as the point guard on offence… but who is an elite player because on any other team he would be one of the best scorers and playmakers in the game. Suddenly that question of who sacrifices what and how much becomes a lot murkier.

It is not original to say that in many ways Lebron is like taking Pippen and giving him some of Jordan’s scoring acumen. Lebron does not really care much about scoring titles (despite how many of his detractors refuse to admit that). He is an all-time scorer regardless, so it makes sense for him to score a lot, and he does have some ego about scoring (in before the “ten points in every game!” streak gets brought up), but that is not his primary game, and even though he has basically always been the best scorer on his teams, he is perfectly happy to share the scoring load, whether it be with Wade, Kyrie, or Davis.

Lebron likes playmaking in general. This is more traditionally his best skill… but there too he is not exactly unwilling to share — with Wade, with Kyrie, or with Westbrook. Westbrook, in sort of a similar situation as Pippen, really only has abstract value now as a passer, although without his scoring threat, and without any spacing ability, it is not exactly a high value offering. But to accommodate that, what does Lebron do? He tries to pull a Jordan. He relinquishes ballhandling, focuses more on scoring, for the first time in over a decade legitimately pushes for a scoring title… but the team’s defence is bad with Davis “suffering from hurt”, the roster overall is a mess, and a diminished Westbrook is still a pretty active negative who cannot be any actual analogue for even a younger Scottie Pippen. But is any of that a real consequence of some fundamental inability of Lebron to score next to a lead ballhandler?

Kyrie and Wade like ballhandling too. Neither have anything on Lebron’s playmaking or passing ability, and to some extent they both probably know that (questionable with Kyrie lol), but Lebron is happy enough to share. With Kyrie, this works well because Kyrie is an elite spacer. With Wade, this does not work as well, because Wade is a relatively poor spacer. But then we consider Jordan and Pippen again. Is Pippen a good spacer? Not really, and not to an extent I would put him beyond Wade. Well, alright, then is Jordan a better spacer and more capable of working past the spacing limitations of players like Wade and Westbrook and Pippen? There I would say the answer is maybe, and the reason why it is maybe is why era differences are important to this question (as has been discussed).

Jordan was a pretty strong spacer in his era. 3s were not a focus and illegal defence rules limited the extent to which an individual top scorer could be hounded compared to what happened once those rules were dropped… but nevertheless, he is one of the best ever midrange scorers, and he has a degree of raw scoring gravity that really only Curry has competed with as a perimetre player. Lebron, on the other hand, has no leniency from illegal defence. Lebron takes threes, and is enough of a threat to make them that he does draw attention out there, while always having a pretty strong degree of raw scoring gravity of his own. In Jordan’s era, I definitely give the advantage as a spacer to Jordan. In a more modern era? Well, obviously some fans like to argue Jordan would become a strong three-point shooter, but if we take his skills at face value, and his own commentary about feeling that reliance on threes is bad for his own mentality, it seems a lot more debatable whether at that point he actually fits all that much better as a spacer with Pippen or Westbrook or Wade.

So we know Lebron is willing to relinquish ballhandling, as Jordan did. We know he is willing to relinquish scoring primacy, as Jordan did not do and expressly did not want to do but hypothetically could have done if given the opportunity. We know era disparities penalise spacing in different ways, to an extent that it is not clear whether in Lebron’s era Jordan would fare better playing with non-spacing (/non-defending) teammates than Lebron did. We know that Pippen did not particularly eat into Jordan’s scoring and that Jordan’s presence barely affected Pippen’s scoring load. What exactly does all that tell us about how much better Jordan fits with random teammates than Lebron does?

I would say exceedingly little. What I am comfortable saying is that Jordan fits better on offence in his own era with non-spacers than Lebron would — and in that sense, relative to their own respective eras too. I am comfortable saying Jordan fits better with non-scoring ballhandlers than Lebron would, pretty much regardless of era, in the specific sense that Lebron loses more of his innate value from that situation than Jordan does. But on the other side, I think Lebron fits better with spacers and/or off-ball players than Jordan does, by virtue of being better able to take advantage of their skillsets with his passing. I think Lebron fits better with poor defenders than Jordan does. I think Lebron also fits better with Kyrie-type playmakers than Jordan does — scorers who space and like to have some offensive control but are overtaxed as a team’s first choice to perform either skill. And I think it is unclear which of the two fits better on offence in the modern era with that particular breed of player who does not space well yet is best maximised as an on-ball scorer… such as Dwyane Wade.

Mind you, this analysis has been mostly about duos. Think back to that comment about wanting to win the scoring titles. Is that easier with Horace Grant and/or Dennis Rodman, or with Chris Bosh and/or Kevin Love? We talk all about how these third stars oh so tragically were placed into a box next to Lebron. Okay, what does Chris Bosh look like next to Wade and Jordan? Is he suddenly freed up? Is a higher volume scorer asking Bosh to score more too? Is a weaker defender letting Bosh lower his defensive load? Does the team no longer want him to space the floor? Kevin Love has more of a passing game, so he is more interesting (not that either Blatt or Lue seemed to figure out how to make that work well even with Kyrie), but there too it is hard to say his scoring volume would increase next to Jordan or that he would struggle less on defence or that his spacing would be less important.

Jordan pretty much always got to play his way. He was never forced into a situation where he seriously had to consider relinquishing his league high scoring load (his principle and most personally valued skill). He was almost never asked to take a role that did not suit him. Because we know that Lebron struggled a little bit in those situations that Jordan never faced, we conclude that Jordan is an easier fit with more players? Nonsense. This guy is not Steph — not as a spacer (obviously), nor as someone who seems at all willing to sacrifice scoring volume. And he is also not Kobe or Iverson or Carmelo, in the sense that it almost always should be best practice for him to be that primary scorer… but then it similarly has almost always been best practice for Lebron to be both the primary scorer and creator, and despite his clear willingness to compromise on either, that is being held against him, with zero evidence of whether Jordan could maintain his “impact” next to players who would force him to adapt his game or otherwise see their own games disrupted next to him. When Lebron gets strong fit teams that allow him to balance his skills, they are dismissed because he was not as good on bad fitting teams. But when Jordan wins six titles on teams that allow him to maximise his scoring above any other responsibilities? Well, that is just a good example of how scalable he is!

I have said it before, but we are essentially rewarding Jordan for having a less dynamic skillset: “well, both of them probably see diminishing returns as scorers next to other high volume scorers by virtue of both being some of the highest volume scorers ever, but Lebron’s superior passing sees more diminishing returns next to high volume creators, so that means Jordan fits better with more players!” Like, fine, for those of you who want to give Jordan an easy 38% three-point shot on good volume, this is not going to matter for you as much. Just like there are those of you who will never move past six titles, or how scoring is the number one skill, or what a failure 2011 was, or how Jordan was actually a god-tier defender, or how Lebron is a coward for not sticking with the Cavaliers from the start. But for those of you looking at the type of spacers they actually are and are ostensibly trying to be objective and properly critical of the context in which each played? You should be asking a lot more.

More briefly: I am not a fan of the demonstrable groupthink that elite scalability is when a team is built around a single volume scorer, comprised of players who are not looking to be volume scorers themselves (Pippen took an extra two shots a game without Jordan in 1994 and Grant took an extra shot and a half). There is only one ball, and on the Bulls, that ball was relentlessly funnelled straight to Jordan. It is not especially distinct from throwing Lebron onto a roster with George Hill and Mikal Bridges and Shane Battier and Rasheed Wallace, and then declaring him an all-time scaleable force for not taking more away from their playstyles. It is an inconsistent standard built around a hypothetical never evidenced.

I guess I’ll respond since you’re actually being sort of civil here, and I’m hoping we can keep it friendly. I’m not sure I see the point with saying the Bulls were at about a +6.5 SRS pace in the games after Jordan came back in 1995 or the games Pippen missed in the 1997-1998 season. I guess the point is to suggest that Rodman and Pippen were the element that made those teams super elite?

But there’s a few issues with that line of argument:

1. Obviously Pippen mattered a lot. Obviously, after they lost Grant, getting Rodman was a big deal. No one would ever suggest that those weren’t really good and really important players. And that’s inherent to someone who was a ceiling raiser—you can’t be a ceiling raiser if your team isn’t really good, and your team wouldn’t be really good if it is missing really good players! Jordan isn’t going to turn a relatively mediocre-talent-level or injured team into a 10 SRS team. No one is. But I have real doubts that LeBron could turn any team into a 10 SRS team. He certainly never showed he could, despite being on very talented teams. Jordan showed he could do it, and did it a bunch of times, and IMO that matters a lot.

And no one other than Russell “showed” they could win 11 rings either, yet most of us are not putting him at the peak. You know, by the same standard, Jordan quite literally never showed he could lead a team any higher than 50 wins without Pippen starting, whereas Pippen did that immediately without Jordan! Never made a conference finals without Pippen starting either, but Pippen did that shortly after leaving the Bulls. Ergo, Pippen carried Jordan.

There is no real logic to this approach. It strikes me as patently absurd that you are apparently arguing that while Lebron could take a pretty bad team and elevate them to an 8.7 SRS… there is no path to getting to 10 SRS.

2. You talk about Jordan’s teams playing at a 6.5 SRS and 6.0 SRS pace without Rodman/Pippen as if that’s not very good. But that’s actually roughly equivalent, if not better, than the Heat’s SRS in LeBron’s years there. It’s roughly the same as the Lakers’ SRS in 2019-2020. And it’s higher than the Cavs’ SRS in any of the second-stint years. It’s really not an indictment on Jordan for the Bulls to have played as well or better without Pippen or without Rodman/Grant than LeBron’s most talented teams played! That’s actually suggestive of strong floor-raising from Jordan—especially the no-Pippen time period, which was both longer than the 1995 period (and therefore a much more meaningful sample size) and missing a better player (such that the team actually wasn’t really good at that point).

… Okay so again we get back to trying to have it both ways. Jordan’s teams were not that talented, they just had old players who could ceiling raise a 6 SRS team into a 9 SRS one.

I really do not see how you expect this to be read honestly. We literally have on-court data here, and you want to place all accomplishments on Jordan. Jordan brilliantly leads a 10.7 SRS team in 1997. +13.3 on-court rating. Lebron has two seasons on that level: 2013, with +13.2 on-court, and 2009, with a monumental +15 on-court. Of course, neither teams were 10 SRS, so evidently the real advantage Jordan has over Lebron is his ability to ceiling raise teams when he is on the bench.

And then you talk about playoffs. Magnificent Jordan and his stunning postseason success where his teams only lost 4 times. Yet there again:

Lebron matches or exceeds him in on-court rating.

I have never seen someone more rewarded for how their team performs without them than Jordan. And that is with him rarely staggering with Pippen!

3. Not sure what the point is about Jordan’s stats year to year. Stats always fluctuate some year to year, and Jordan played great in all the relevant years. I guess your point is that he played great before they were dominant and he played great but not necessarily any better while they were dominant, so clearly he wasn’t the reason they were dominant? To some extent there’s truth to that, in that obviously the team had to improve around him (in particular, Pippen and Grant had to develop) before they could become dominant. But the fact that the team improved around him does not mean he wasn’t an enormous ceiling raiser. It just means that it took some time for the team around him to become really good such that they were even eligible to be ceiling raised to that hyper-dominant level. Jordan was obviously the biggest factor that made them that dominant, even if he was not the last piece of the puzzle to be put into place. And, ultimately IMO, LeBron had teams with the talent level to be eligible to be ceiling raised to a hyper-dominant level, but LeBron was not the type of player to be able to do that, since his style is more of a floor-raiser style.

Again you are not actually backing this up with anything. Just gut feeling and vibes. Makes discussion difficult.

4. As for LeBron not playing on teams that produce 4+ SRS without him, it’s really just comparing apples and oranges. LeBron didn’t play on teams that lost him for an entire year in the team’s heyday. How a team plays in a few games that a star player is out is really not the same as how a team plays in an entire season that player is retired. It’s much harder for a team to play well in occasional games its star player misses, because the team is otherwise built around that star in terms of how they play together.

Literally every team he has ever left has immediately collapsed, even when accounting for lineup changes.

So when that star misses games, the team is a bit like a fish out of water. And that’s exacerbated when you have a ball-dominant player like LeBron—for whom the team’s systems were built around to a huge degree.

More vibes based analysis. Kyrie and Wade cannot run offence without him now?

And again, for reference, the KD Warriors only won 51% of their games that Steph missed. Do we honestly think that team would’ve been only a .500 team if they had a whole season they were playing without Steph? Almost certainly not. It’s just a completely different thing and not remotely comparable.

It is something I would look into more if we did not have such a strong record of the team performing without him in the postseason. Data does not get rejected just because it is inconvenient to our preferred narratives.

As is any assessment of how LeBron’s teams did after he left, when he’d specifically leave teams when he saw their cycle as a really good team ending.

Incredible how one offseason can take a Finals core supposedly overflowing with talent and leave it mired deep in the lottery.

It’d be like if we saw what the Bulls would’ve done in 1999 without Jordan—very likely wouldn’t have been a +4 SRS team!

No, but that also does not need to be the bar for a declined 1998 team.

I think we can use our common sense and look at the talent on some of LeBron’s teams and see that they were clearly really good teams. He just didn’t create really dominant teams from them. And it’s not rocket science why that’d be—ball-dominance doesn’t scale up all that well as you add more talent to a team.

Vibes analysis. Please try harder to support these stances; it should not be that difficult if it is as “common sense” as you want to claim.

5. As for Jordan having a uniquely fit team around him, I’m not really sure I see it. Was it a good fit? Well, in a sense the team obviously fit well because they were extremely dominant. But the 1990’s Bulls were really two different teams, with the only common denominators being Jordan and Pippen.

And the bulk of their offensive system, but hey, details.

So the only argument that Jordan had some uniquely great fit team would basically *have* to be about Pippen. And, to begin with, is a team uniquely fit around a guy just because of one teammate? I’m not so sure.

Probably because there is more to team structuring than whether one specific teammate is present.

Moreover, it’s hard to really see how Pippen is some uniquely incredible fit with Jordan. He was a good fit in the sense that he could get a lot of value on the defensive end and could be trusted to playmake on the break and while Jordan was off the ball. But that’s pretty basic stuff.

And he also took nothing away from Jordan and had a skillset which let him play in his most maximised style. Very basic.

Draymond is not a unique fit with Steph either. Yeah, he provides a lot of defensive value and can do some post passing while Steph is off the ball, but that is pretty basic!

It seems fairly obvious to me that Jordan could’ve fit well (and perhaps even better) with a great center—after all, Kobe did so, and their styles of play were very similar (intentionally so from Kobe).

Wish we could have seen how Lebron fit with an elite centre.

Would a ball-dominant perimeter scorer have been the best fit alongside Jordan? No, I don’t think so. But I think it would’ve been a better fit than it was with LeBron, because Jordan genuinely didn’t need the ball nearly as much.

No, he just needed to shoot the ball much more.

He played off-ball a lot. Indeed, that’s part of what made Pippen a good fit—he was a good playmaker on the ball when Jordan was off the ball.

And Jordan was not a historically excellent on-ball playmaker. Once more rewarding players for being limited. Lebron is a very potent off-ball player and has showed that time and time again. He is just so much better on-ball that it is not a maximising strategy.

In any event, this is all just in the land of speculation. The bottom line is that LeBron played on several really talented teams and never had a team reach the level of dominance that Jordan’s team reached a bunch. If someone wants to say that that’s only because Pippen was just such a uniquely great fit with Jordan, then I guess that’s fine, but I don’t see it.

The bottom line is that you are looking at teams in their whole and essentially eyeballing the talent to make your determinations. If you want to say that was because Jordan was just such a uniquely great off-court presence, then I guess that is fine, but I do not see it.

[Moonbeam]

I guess a decent test for this approach would be seeing how Russell ranks comparatively.

Here's Russell:

Code: Select all

Season  #1 Seed  Top 3 Seed   ESW   EChamp
1957     0.014     0.085     0.282   0.010
1958     0.075     0.348     0.695   0.028
1959     0.151     0.540     1.439   0.106
1960     0.223     0.654     1.948   0.196
1961     0.260     0.698     1.906   0.180
1962     0.491     0.864     2.682   0.376
1963     0.328     0.762     2.037   0.202
1964     0.594     0.906     2.415   0.273
1965     0.420     0.827     2.689   0.389
1966     0.176     0.584     1.596   0.129
1967     0.055     0.277     0.556   0.020
1968     0.012     0.076     0.206   0.006
1969     0.034     0.188     0.418   0.014


Russell ranks 14th in expected #1 seeds with 2.834, 14th in expected top 3 seeds with 6.809, 9th in expected series wins with 18.870, and 7th in expected championships with 1.930.

[lessthanjake]

It is true that the Bulls hit a higher ceiling than the Heatles where Lebron had comparable enough 2nd and 3rd best players (I think those teams in the earlier Wade ones are the only Lebron ones that can be compared in top end talent to the Bulls), however it's believable to me that it could be caused by depth more than MJ vs Lebron, I'm not sure you can have as dominant seasons as 90s Bulls, 60s Celtics or 10s regular season Warriors without the best depth. In 96 and 97 3peat the Bulls definitely had more talented depth than the Heat, the first 3peat is closer on paper, but sometimes the caliber of bench play does not always match the names. To put in perspective how much MJ's teammates are a factor in the Bulls success whether that means Pippen/Grant or the bench, you can argue 1990 Jordan is as good as any Jordan in history, and they have relatively pedestrian-decent results (55 Ws, 2.74 SRS). The Bulls ending up one of the most dominant teams of all time had a lot to do with MJ obviously, but also probably perfect storm of some other factors.

It is worth discussing as a starting point though, is there something about Jordan's game that can lead to "higher ceiling"? He did have nice off the ball ability, but I think Lebron's isn't bad when he improved as a post player and shooter, and he managed to be successful beside Wade who still had a great season in 2011 and his decline after that seemingly was natural aging and physical wear done as much as anything else. You can claim that Wade not scaling 100% his 2010 form to 2011 cost the Heat, but Pippen's best individual season was also without Jordan. They do it some different ways but both players are elite athletes who can score/pass/defend. I do not think building one of the best teams ever with Lebron is that unreasonable a challenge when he has those multiple skills.

I think Jordan’s scalability probably rests primarily on off ball scoring capability and great defense. He had an offensive game that could work well in a system like the triangle that focuses a lot on sharing the ball around. When you have a really great team, sharing the ball around a lot with everyone is going to end up creating better offense. Jordan had an offensive game that was conducive to getting tons of points within the rhythm of a more ball-equitable offense like that. Meanwhile, of course, great defense scales well with a great team since it’s obviously not depriving the ball from anyone.

LeBron just isn’t as scalable IMO. His offensive style really requires him to have the ball a huge amount of the time. And his shooting has almost never been good enough for him to be some giant threat if/when he is off the ball. If your team is really good, but LeBron has the ball the vast majority of the time, then all those really good players you’ve got on the team aren’t really getting a chance to do their thing nearly as much. They’re effectively often just reduced to role players who wait to get a shot LeBron creates. And in the occasional times LeBron cedes the ball, you’ll have another star that really just wants to be ball-dominant themselves because they want to get their shots in—and LeBron’s relatively mediocre shooting means his presence on the court for this doesn’t make things way easier for them in these moments. So you end up with a your-turn/my-turn situation that doesn’t maximize anyone at all. On the defense side of things, prime LeBron was definitely scalable in the sense of being great at defense. But even there, LeBron wasn’t a great defender for as long as Jordan was IMO, so his defense wasn’t super scalable for as long.

It’s possible that if LeBron had been forced to play a more scalable offensive style that he could’ve made it work. But we never really saw it. With Jordan, we did, and it worked to the tune of some pretty extremely dominant teams.

[One_and_Done]

I never thought I would see the day when 'scalability' was the argument for Jordan over Lebron. If Jordan played today he would far less scalable than Lebron, because he is a meh 3 point shooter. The concept of what makes a player scalable has completely changed since the 90s.

What is also silly is determining who is the greatest player of all time by reference to how well they can play second fiddle. Like, of course Lebron will have the ball in his hands most of the time. That's the optimal strategy for winning games!

That said, Lebron is one of the most scalable top 10 type players you're ever going to find. He fits anywhere, and is super adaptable. He played with Wade, who was a poor fit, and made it work. Nor did he seem to have issues playing with high usage, dribble master Kyrie.

And that's just on one side of the ball. Defensively Lebron is more versatile and scalable.

[eminence]

Votes
1. LeBron James
2. Bill Russell*

*Not a strong commitment to Bill here, open to switching to KAJ/Duncan next thread.

Russell reasoning first:
+Win win win win

Now on to LeBron:
His longevity at this point is the best ever (coming off easily the best 20th season in NBA history) and there still seems to be more in the tank. Essentially stacking together two full top 20 careers with Cavs1+Heat and Cavs2+Lakers. The only true longevity competition is Kareem and that's if you give a boost for his college years. Offensively he can shift seamlessly between league leading scorer and ATG playmaker in a way only Oscar begins to match, and nobody can compare in career value when factoring in longevity. Defensively he's not a rim protecting big man, and that's pretty much the worst I can say - he's essentially a large PF with incredible quickness and brilliant defensive understanding, who has quite probably racked up the most defensive value of any non-KG, non-C player (Duncan is a C, they just played 2 centers). Has generated huge impact across team settings, and at this point across league environments. Off the court he's a bit cheesy sometimes, but a model athlete when it comes down to it. It's been a pleasure to watch his career in full and the first season that kicks off without him will feel like it's a whole new league.

[lessthanjake]

I really do not see how you expect this to be read honestly. We literally have on-court data here, and you want to place all accomplishments on Jordan. Jordan brilliantly leads a 10.7 SRS team in 1997. +13.3 on-court rating. Lebron has two seasons on that level: 2013, with +13.2 on-court, and 2009, with a monumental +15 on-court. Of course, neither teams were 10 SRS, so evidently the real advantage Jordan has over Lebron is his ability to ceiling raise teams when he is on the bench.

Actually kind of yeah. I’ve explained this a bit above. But if you have a really ball-dominant style, when you go to the bench, your teammates will have not really touched the ball much in the flow of the offense beyond just finishing some plays with a shot, so they’ll be less in rhythm overall. This can result in them performing less well when suddenly they’re not in an offensive rhythm and they need to create offense because the star isn’t on the court. A more ball-equitable style is much more conducive to guys being in rhythm when the star leaves the court. I’m sure you’ll say this is an unmeasurable vibe, but it’s also something you can find NBA players candidly talking about. And just personally it has always seemed obvious and intuitive to me that supporting casts will hold up with the star off the floor a lot more in offensive systems with a lot of ball movement where everyone’s had lots of touches in the flow of the offense.

Literally every team he has ever left has immediately collapsed, even when accounting for lineup changes.

Yes, and you may be confusing correlation for causation to a large degree. LeBron leaves teams when he thinks they are on the brink of collapsing and not being really good anymore. Obviously, those teams would be better with LeBron—he’s a player we’re discussing as a possible #1 all time! But what happens with LeBron is akin to if we saw the Bulls in 1999 without Jordan.

Vibes analysis. Please try harder to support these stances; it should not be that difficult if it is as “common sense” as you want to claim.

“Vibes” are an inherent part of the analysis, buddy. There’s not an immutable truth here, and we’re talking about players who did not play against each other, in a sport where there’s not an overly large amount of data (especially for players of Jordan’s era), and the data that does exist all has major flaws and blind spots. There’s not going to be indisputable proof that one of these players is greater than the other, and everyone’s rationale is going to at least in some way rely on some gut feeling views about certain things—whether that’s a gut feeling about the quality of supporting casts or a gut feeling that ball-dominance doesn’t scale as well or something else. You’ll find that essentially every post on this thread setting forth a ranking is filled with plenty of gut feelings. I’ve provided a good deal of data backing my view (including the relative dominance of the two players’ teams). You don’t think that that data leads to the same conclusion that I think it does, because you have a different explanation to explain it (i.e. that actually Jordan’s teams were substantially better than LeBron’s). My gut feeling is that your different explanation isn’t right, and I don’t think the info you or others have presented to say that I’m wrong about that is particularly persuasive, since it includes pretty serious flaws like really low sample sizes, assuming how a team plays when a star player misses some games is substantially similar to how the team plays when a star player misses a season, mistaking correlation for causation when it comes to LeBron’s teams after he leaves, etc. Sometimes, data is too flawed to be helpful/informative. Ultimately, we know the talent level LeBron had on many of his teams. If you want to present me with flawed data analysis to try to get me to somehow agree that LeBron’s teams weren’t actually that good, then that’s fine. I’m not going to agree, because I watched the players on those teams and I know how talented they are. If you want to criticize that as being based on “vibes” that’s fine, but it’s not actually the case that flawed data analysis is inherently better than “vibes.”

And the bulk of their offensive system, but hey, details.

If the argument is that Jordan just had a uniquely great “fit” for his team not because of the personnel around him but because of the offensive system, then I think we’re really losing the plot here, because LeBron has essentially always played his preferred offensive system that fits his strengths. This really isn’t some distinguishing factor that would explain why Jordan’s teams were more dominant. Indeed, if you think the offensive system that fits Jordan the best is the triangle, then that’d actually lead to a conclusion that it was Jordan who played in a less ideal situation, since he spent a larger percent of his career outside of that system than LeBron did outside of playing LeBron ball.

Probably because there is more to team structuring than whether one specific teammate is present.

What is your point? I think maybe you’re losing the thread a bit here. I’ll remind you. I was responding to someone saying that Jordan’s Bulls were a uniquely good fit for him. I pointed out that those Bulls were really two teams, so it’s hard to see how the roster could’ve truly been some uniquely good fit unless you’re talking about the one common denominator—which was Pippen. Otherwise, you’d have to be asserting that Chicago twice formed a team that was a uniquely great fit around Jordan, whereas LeBron apparently couldn’t get such a uniquely good fit ever in twenty years on multiple different teams. And I don’t think that’d be a great argument to be making, since it would just as easily suggest that Jordan was easier to make a great-fit team around.

And he also took nothing away from Jordan and had a skillset which let him play in his most maximised style. Very basic.

Draymond is not a unique fit with Steph either. Yeah, he provides a lot of defensive value and can do some post passing while Steph is off the ball, but that is pretty basic!

You’re so close to getting there. Why did Pippen not take away from Jordan, and why does Draymond not take away from Steph? Is it perhaps in part because Jordan and Steph work well off the ball, so guys like Pippen and Draymond who actually want to be handling the ball to get their offensive impact can get that impact without taking away from Jordan or Curry? Is it possible for a player like that to get their offensive impact without taking away anything from LeBron? And does the fact that the answer to that question is definitely no tell you something about the scalability of LeBron as a ceiling raiser compared to Jordan?

Wish we could have seen how Lebron fit with an elite centre.

You’re just spitting out one-sentence retorts that are non-sequitors. The point being discussed was whether Pippen was somehow some uniquely great fit for Jordan. I mentioned I think Jordan could’ve worked really well with a great center, as a counterpoint to that—i.e. there’s a whole other category of star completely different from Pippen that I think Jordan could’ve worked great with, which suggests Pippen wasn’t exactly some *uniquely* great fit. Your response is…that LeBron fit well with Anthony Davis…?

And Jordan was not a historically excellent on-ball playmaker. Once more rewarding players for being limited. Lebron is a very potent off-ball player and has showed that time and time again. He is just so much better on-ball that it is not a maximising strategy.

And this is where we disagree. If you have a really great team, IMO it is almost certainly not a “maximizing strategy” to have one guy be super ball dominant. And ultimately, as good as LeBron is and as good as a lot of the players he’s played with are offensively, LeBron’s teams were never the most efficient offense in the NBA, while Jordan’s were 4 times out of 7 seasons with the triangle.

[lessthanjake]

I never thought I would see the day when 'scalability' was the argument for Jordan over Lebron. If Jordan played today he would far less scalable than Lebron, because he is a meh 3 point shooter. The concept of what makes a player scalable has completely changed since the 90s.

What is also silly is determining who is the greatest player of all time by reference to how well they can play second fiddle. Like, of course Lebron will have the ball in his hands most of the time. That's the optimal strategy for winning games!

That said, Lebron is one of the most scalable top 10 type players you're ever going to find. He fits anywhere, and is super adaptable. He played with Wade, who was a poor fit, and made it work. Nor did he seem to have issues playing with high usage, dribble master Kyrie.

And that's just on one side of the ball. Defensively Lebron is more versatile and scalable.

When I refer to “scalable” I’m specifically referring to the ability to ceiling raise. Perhaps there are other ways to use the term (or maybe I’m just using it wrong!), but what you’re talking about here is just not what I’m referring to. I’m not referring to who might hypothetically be able to do great in other eras. I’m not talking about who can play in more offensive systems. I’m talking about who is going to scale up a really good team into a completely dominant one.

[One_and_Done]

Because the Bulls were the GOAT offenses? You do get how 3 point shooting and defensive versatility are part of ceiling lifting too right?

[falcolombardi]

It is true that the Bulls hit a higher ceiling than the Heatles where Lebron had comparable enough 2nd and 3rd best players (I think those teams in the earlier Wade ones are the only Lebron ones that can be compared in top end talent to the Bulls), however it's believable to me that it could be caused by depth more than MJ vs Lebron, I'm not sure you can have as dominant seasons as 90s Bulls, 60s Celtics or 10s regular season Warriors without the best depth. In 96 and 97 3peat the Bulls definitely had more talented depth than the Heat, the first 3peat is closer on paper, but sometimes the caliber of bench play does not always match the names. To put in perspective how much MJ's teammates are a factor in the Bulls success whether that means Pippen/Grant or the bench, you can argue 1990 Jordan is as good as any Jordan in history, and they have relatively pedestrian-decent results (55 Ws, 2.74 SRS). The Bulls ending up one of the most dominant teams of all time had a lot to do with MJ obviously, but also probably perfect storm of some other factors.

It is worth discussing as a starting point though, is there something about Jordan's game that can lead to "higher ceiling"? He did have nice off the ball ability, but I think Lebron's isn't bad when he improved as a post player and shooter, and he managed to be successful beside Wade who still had a great season in 2011 and his decline after that seemingly was natural aging and physical wear done as much as anything else. You can claim that Wade not scaling 100% his 2010 form to 2011 cost the Heat, but Pippen's best individual season was also without Jordan. They do it some different ways but both players are elite athletes who can score/pass/defend. I do not think building one of the best teams ever with Lebron is that unreasonable a challenge when he has those multiple skills.

I think Jordan’s scalability probably rests primarily on off ball scoring capability and great defense. He had an offensive game that could work well in a system like the triangle that focuses a lot on sharing the ball around. When you have a really great team, sharing the ball around a lot with everyone is going to end up creating better offense. Jordan had an offensive game that was conducive to getting tons of points within the rhythm of a more ball-equitable offense like that. Meanwhile, of course, great defense scales well with a great team since it’s obviously not depriving the ball from anyone.

LeBron just isn’t as scalable IMO. His offensive style really requires him to have the ball a huge amount of the time. And his shooting has almost never been good enough for him to be some giant threat if/when he is off the ball. If your team is really good, but LeBron has the ball the vast majority of the time, then all those really good players you’ve got on the team aren’t really getting a chance to do their thing nearly as much. They’re effectively often just reduced to role players who wait to get a shot LeBron creates. And in the occasional times LeBron cedes the ball, you’ll have another star that really just wants to be ball-dominant themselves because they want to get their shots in—and LeBron’s relatively mediocre shooting means his presence on the court for this doesn’t make things way easier for them in these moments. So you end up with a your-turn/my-turn situation that doesn’t maximize anyone at all. On the defense side of things, prime LeBron was definitely scalable in the sense of being great at defense. But even there, LeBron wasn’t a great defender for as long as Jordan was IMO, so his defense wasn’t super scalable for as long.

It’s possible that if LeBron had been forced to play a more scalable offensive style that he could’ve made it work. But we never really saw it. With Jordan, we did, and it worked to the tune of some pretty extremely dominant teams.

Yet it was lebron teams that reaches higher offensive ceilings?

[AEnigma]

I really do not see how you expect this to be read honestly. We literally have on-court data here, and you want to place all accomplishments on Jordan. Jordan brilliantly leads a 10.7 SRS team in 1997. +13.3 on-court rating. Lebron has two seasons on that level: 2013, with +13.2 on-court, and 2009, with a monumental +15 on-court. Of course, neither teams were 10 SRS, so evidently the real advantage Jordan has over Lebron is his ability to ceiling raise teams when he is on the bench.

Actually kind of yeah. I’ve explained this a bit above. But if you have a really ball-dominant style, when you go to the bench, your teammates will have not really touched the ball much in the flow of the offense beyond just finishing some plays with a shot, so they’ll be less in rhythm overall. This can result in them performing less well when suddenly they’re not in an offensive rhythm and they need to create offense because the star isn’t on the court. A more ball-equitable style is much more conducive to guys being in rhythm when the star leaves the court. I’m sure you’ll say this is an unmeasurable vibe, but it’s also something you can find NBA players candidly talking about. And just personally it has always seemed obvious and intuitive to me that supporting casts will hold up with the star off the floor a lot more in offensive systems with a lot of ball movement where everyone’s had lots of touches in the flow of the offense.

Nah this is not even about vibes, at this point we are engaging in total fiction. Bench units play better because they are in rhythm? Jordan’s teams were better because… he ate up more of the team’s shot volume?

You are barely trying now. Do you want to look up how Jordan’s offences fared with him off the court? Do you think that might be relevant, or do you prefer random speculation about stuff that feels true.

Literally every team he has ever left has immediately collapsed, even when accounting for lineup changes.

Yes, and you may be confusing correlation for causation to a large degree. LeBron leaves teams when he thinks they are on the brink of collapsing and not being really good anymore. Obviously, those teams would be better with LeBron—he’s a player we’re discussing as a possible #1 all time! But what happens with LeBron is akin to if we saw the Bulls in 1999 without Jordan.

No, because without Jordan the Bulls could and demonstrably had played like a playoff team. You dismiss his results because of “talent” but also dismiss their collapse because obviously they were not talented anymore.

Vibes analysis. Please try harder to support these stances; it should not be that difficult if it is as “common sense” as you want to claim.

“Vibes” are an inherent part of the analysis, buddy.

Lmao.

There’s not an immutable truth here, and we’re talking about players who did not play against each other, in a sport where there’s not an overly large amount of data (especially for players of Jordan’s era), and the data that does exist all has major flaws and blind spots.

In the sense that it does not support your gut feelings.

There’s not going to be indisputable proof that one of these players is greater than the other,

Not if you reflexively dispute it, no.

and everyone’s rationale is going to at least in some way rely on some gut feeling views about certain things—whether that’s a gut feeling about the quality of supporting casts or a gut feeling that ball-dominance doesn’t scale as well or something else.

Right but you do not really seem like you are recognising how any of that can be measured. You just say the words and treat them as if they speak for themselves.

You’ll find that essentially every post on this thread setting forth a ranking is filled with plenty of gut feelings. I’ve provided a good deal of data backing my view (including the relative dominance of the two players’ teams). You don’t think that that data leads to the same conclusion that I think it does, because you have a different explanation to explain it (i.e. that actually Jordan’s teams were substantially better than LeBron’s). My gut feeling is that your different explanation isn’t right, and I don’t think the info you or others have presented to say that I’m wrong about that is particularly persuasive, since it includes pretty serious flaws like really low sample sizes, assuming how a team plays when a star player misses some games is substantially similar to how the team plays when a star player misses a season, mistaking correlation for causation when it comes to LeBron’s teams after he leaves, etc. Sometimes, data is too flawed to be helpful/informative.

No, you just dislike the implications and prefer data that suggests what you believe even if it does not logically hold (e.g. “Lebron’s team is +15 with him on the court but because the bench is bad he can never be on an elite team”).

Ultimately, we know the talent level LeBron had on many of his teams.

Apparently not.

If you want to present me with flawed data analysis to try to get me to somehow agree that LeBron’s teams weren’t actually that good, then that’s fine.

Nah I can recognise a lost cause when I see one.

I’m not going to agree, because I watched the players on those teams and I know how talented they are.

Why, because you know they were good scorers?

If you want to criticize that as being based on “vibes” that’s fine, but it’s not actually the case that flawed data analysis is inherently better than “vibes.”

Well one reflects reality and the other reflects the story you like, but sure, not “inherently better” when you prefer the latter.

And the bulk of their offensive system, but hey, details.

If the argument is that Jordan just had a uniquely great “fit” for his team not because of the personnel around him but because of the offensive system, then I think we’re really losing the plot here, because LeBron has essentially always played his preferred offensive system that fits his strengths.

So now the assertion is that the 2006-10 Cavaliers, 2011-14 Heat, 2015-18 Cavaliers, and 2019-23 Lakers have all involved the same system. Fascinating.

This really isn’t some distinguishing factor that would explain why Jordan’s teams were more dominant.

No, this is regarding your theory about scaling. They were more dominant because they had a larger league relative talent advantage across the board.

Indeed, if you think the offensive system that fits Jordan the best is the triangle, then that’d actually lead to a conclusion that it was Jordan who played in a less ideal situation, since he spent a larger percent of his career outside of that system than LeBron did outside of playing LeBron ball.

Define “Lebron-ball” for me.

Probably because there is more to team structuring than whether one specific teammate is present.

What is your point? I think maybe you’re losing the thread a bit here. I’ll remind you. I was responding to someone saying that Jordan’s Bulls were a uniquely good fit for him. I pointed out that those Bulls were really two teams, so it’s hard to see how the roster could’ve truly been some uniquely good fit unless you’re talking about the one common denominator—which was Pippen. Otherwise, you’d have to be asserting that Chicago twice formed a team that was a uniquely great fit around Jordan

By following an incredibly similar recipe of support around the same two stars? Yeah man that is mind-blowing.

whereas LeBron apparently couldn’t get such a uniquely good fit ever in twenty years on multiple different teams.

Nope. Love when people make comments like “think you are losing the plot” and then proceed to immediately lose the plot.

since it would just as easily suggest that Jordan was easier to make a great-fit team around.

No, the fact something happened does not mean it was innately easier. Bill Russell won 11/13 titles and therefore winning every year is easy.

And he also took nothing away from Jordan and had a skillset which let him play in his most maximised style. Very basic.

Draymond is not a unique fit with Steph either. Yeah, he provides a lot of defensive value and can do some post passing while Steph is off the ball, but that is pretty basic!

You’re so close to getting there. Why did Pippen not take away from Jordan, and why does Draymond not take away from Steph?

Because they are not scorers… What scorers on par with Pippen has Lebron minimised.

Is it perhaps in part because Jordan and Steph work well off the ball, so guys like Pippen and Draymond who actually want to be handling the ball to get their offensive impact can get that impact without taking away from Jordan or Curry?

In part, but in larger part is that neither of them are good enough on-ball for the offence to benefit (would Curry relinquish as much if he were a Nash-level passer?).

Is it possible for a player like that to get their offensive impact without taking away anything from LeBron? And does the fact that the answer to that question is definitely no tell you something about the scalability of LeBron as a ceiling raiser compared to Jordan?

No, that tells me Lebron is a much better on-ball playmaker than Jordan. Again, rewarded lack of skill.

Wish we could have seen how Lebron fit with an elite centre.

You’re just spitting out one-sentence retorts that are non-sequitors. The point being discussed was whether Pippen was somehow some uniquely great fit for Jordan. I mentioned I think Jordan could’ve worked really well with a great center, as a counterpoint to that—i.e. there’s a whole other category of star completely different from Pippen that I think Jordan could’ve worked great with, which suggests Pippen wasn’t exactly some *uniquely* great fit. Your response is…that LeBron fit well with Anthony Davis…?

Pippen was a better fit with Jordan than someone like Pau, yes. Do not complain about non-sequiturs you start. There are multiple types of players who fit well with both. As a distributor, Lebron fits much more naturally with scorers like Davis than Jordan would.

And Jordan was not a historically excellent on-ball playmaker. Once more rewarding players for being limited. Lebron is a very potent off-ball player and has showed that time and time again. He is just so much better on-ball that it is not a maximising strategy.

And this is where we disagree. If you have a really great team, IMO it is almost certainly not a “maximizing strategy” to have one guy be super ball dominant.

Yeah that is why the best playoff offences ever were led by Nash and Lebron.

And ultimately, as good as LeBron is and as good as a lot of the players he’s played with are offensively, LeBron’s teams were never the most efficient offense in the NBA, while Jordan’s were 4 times out of 7 seasons with the triangle.

Incredible how beat for beat you hit all the exact same quarter-baked talking points that have been refuted dozens of times before.

2009: +13 net offensive impact to team, +7.3 on-court offence relative to league
2010: +15.3 net offensive impact to team, +8.2 on-court offence relative to league
2011: +4.6 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league
2012: +12.4 net offensive impact to team, +5.9 on-court offence relative to league
2013: +11.9 net offensive impact to team, +10.7 on-court offence relative to league
2014: +9 net offensive impact to team, +7.1 on-court offence relative to league
2015: +13.6 net offensive impact to team, +9.9 on-court offence relative to league
2016: +12.6 net offensive impact to team, +9 on-court offence relative to league
2017: +14.8 net offensive impact to team, +9.6 on-court offence relative to league
2018: +7.9 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league

Wow, look at that, a decade of offensive dominance in the regular season. I sure am glad I did not pretend that Lebron played every minute and was solely responsible for how his team performed while he was on the bench.

[letskissbro]

I really do not see how you expect this to be read honestly. We literally have on-court data here, and you want to place all accomplishments on Jordan. Jordan brilliantly leads a 10.7 SRS team in 1997. +13.3 on-court rating. Lebron has two seasons on that level: 2013, with +13.2 on-court, and 2009, with a monumental +15 on-court. Of course, neither teams were 10 SRS, so evidently the real advantage Jordan has over Lebron is his ability to ceiling raise teams when he is on the bench.

Actually kind of yeah. I’ve explained this a bit above. But if you have a really ball-dominant style, when you go to the bench, your teammates will have not really touched the ball much in the flow of the offense beyond just finishing some plays with a shot, so they’ll be less in rhythm overall. This can result in them performing less well when suddenly they’re not in an offensive rhythm and they need to create offense because the star isn’t on the court. A more ball-equitable style is much more conducive to guys being in rhythm when the star leaves the court. I’m sure you’ll say this is an unmeasurable vibe, but it’s also something you can find NBA players candidly talking about. And just personally it has always seemed obvious and intuitive to me that supporting casts will hold up with the star off the floor a lot more in offensive systems with a lot of ball movement where everyone’s had lots of touches in the flow of the offense.

Both Luka Doncic and James Harden have actually played under the exaggerated caricature that people have made "LeBron ball" out to be, yet their teams fare significantly better when they're off the court than LeBron's teams and often field positive net ratings with their stars on the bench.

LeBron's average times of possession in that 16-21 stretch from Ben's graph (minus 2019): 5.3, 6.4, 6.7, 7.4, 6.4
Corresponding net ratings for those teams while he sat: -4.3, -8.8, -0.5, -0.9, -2.0

Luka (20-23): 8.9, 8.9, 9.3, 9.1
Off NetRtg: +4.2, +0.3, +3.4, -2.7

Harden (17-23): 9.3, 8.8, 9.3, 8.6, 8.6, 9.2, 8.6
Off NetRtg: +3.7, +5.2, +1.1, -3.4, +2.4, +1.2, +2.8

If LeBron spends approximately six seconds with the ball in his hands, and that leads to over-reliance on him, why is it that Harden and Luka, who hold the ball for 50% longer, dribble the ball significantly more per touch, play under a similar team setup, and have comparable usage rates, see their teams perform well in their absence?

Most teams see their offensive rating plummet when their offensive superstar goes to the bench. People just selectively choose language that really just projects their aesthetic biases through their analysis. When it's a shoot first guard like Steph Curry or Michael Jordan they're celebrated: "Look at how impactful their ceiling raising is!". When it's LeBron James, it's "Well he takes his teammates out of rhythm."

The more plausible, albeit uncomfortable for some, explanation is that LeBron's unique combination of volume scoring + playmaking + all-time wing defense provides a greater lift on both ends of the court compared to Jordan, allowing him to take worse rosters to higher highs. The only caveat being that he couldn't do it for 48 minutes a game.

[penbeast0]

Vote: Bill Russell. His degree of success is so unprecedented and he did it with the most dominant defense ever while turning over pretty much his entire rotation and despite a decade plus of weak offenses. And average Russell led defense gets separation from the league the likes of absolute peak years from incredible defenders like Hakeem or Ben Wallace. The 60s were a bit weaker than Jordan's peak era and clearly weaker than LeBron's but the level of success was enough higher to make up the difference for me.

Alt: LeBron. Again, great with varying casts and in different situations. I probably should put him #1 for his incredible longevity as well.

Why not Jordan? Always was my 1B before but just think that his toxic personality would not work with many coaches. Fortunately he was blessed to work with Phil Jackson, my GOAT coach.

Why not Kareem? At his peak, I feel like some of his Milwaukee and earlier Lakers teams underperformed and he was notorious for his standoffishness from his teammates. Completely understandable for a highly intelligent and sensitive man who became a Muslim in the racial tensions of the 70s and faced both his own racist fan base (particularly in Milwaukee) and the horrific murders of Muslims in one of his houses but I do feel that his off court issues impacted his teams a lot.

Why not Wilt? The greatest individual talent to ever play the game (yes, even more than LeBron!) but while he had incredible success against everyone else, he couldn't get his teams past Russell and the Celtics outside of 67. One or two years, maybe 3 or 4, you could point to issues but this was a decade of coming in second on teams that ranged from clearly inferior to equal to more talented and still he lost. However, note that his playoff series win percentage against everyone but the Celtics is better than that of Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, or pretty much anyone else that's in the conversation other than probably George Mikan.

[eminence]

.

On Kareem, I think worth clarifying that the murders were carried out by the Nation of Islam and were not directly tied to the racism of fans/Milwaukee in particular.

Kareem was then a pallbearer at the funerals, so agreed that it was an incident that profoundly changed him.

[eminence]

On LeBrons off-court minutes in Miami. Basically, they didn't play significantly worse than what I would expect given the squad. I don't see some unexpected failure by the cast here, and have seen even less evidence to assign that blame to LeBron even if one sees it.

'11-'13 LeBron/Wade/Bosh On-Court, 8920 possessions, +14.5 rating
'11-'13 LeBron/Wade On-Court, 1641 possessions, +11.5 rating
'11-'13 LeBron/Bosh On-Court, 1944 possesssions, +6.2 rating
'11-'13 Just LeBron On-Court, 3247 possessions, +6.5 rating
'11-'13 Wade/Bosh On-Court (no LeBron), 1642 possessions, +1.5 rating
'11-'13 Just Wade On-Court, 842 possessions, -2.1 rating
'11-'13 Just Bosh On-Court, 1238 possessions, +2.5 rating
'11-'13 None On-Court, 1568 possessions, -12.6 rating

'07-'10 LeBron On-Court, 23109 possessions, +8.8 rating
'07-'10 Cavs no-LeBron On-Court, 6654 possessions, -7.3 rating
'07-'10 Wade On-Court, 18580 possessions, +2.2 rating
'07-'10 Heat no-Wade On-Court, 11134 possesssions, -8.8 rating
'07-'10 Bosh On-Court, 20097 possessions, +2.3 rating
'07-'10 Raptors no-Bosh On-Court, 10251 possessions, -5.1 rating

Left out '14 due to what I felt was clear Wade decline, adjust if you see fit.

Wade and Bosh simply don't show strong evidence of being the types of floor raisers to be able to float those no-LeBron lineups to a high level (not that they did particularly poorly either, being not-LeBron isn't the worlds harshest criticism).