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

[penbeast0]

MavsDirk41 warned for comments attacking another poster. This is a huge project, let's PLEASE try to focus on the subject at hand and quit the petty personal stuff.

[PaulieWal]

Lol its my opinion that Jordan is better than James brother thats it. Im 47. I started watching the nba after watching Bird light up the Celtics on CBS on a Sunday afternoon game. You want me to talk about these players abilities?


Leadership - Jordan, he was never passive aggressive, always was accountable for his actions on the court, never tried to trade his teammates midseason

I know I'm not a part of the project, as I don't have as much time on my hands as I'd like, but I want to remind everyone that this is the same Jordan who reportedly tried to keep Horace Grant from eating and gave Steve Kerr a black eye.

yo wut

While this is an online board and no one cares if you have perfect grammar and spelling, but these kind of one or two word replies in text speak are too much and not well received. Can you please stop with this?

Typing 'yo wut' and 'yo what' or 'can you give more context' all took me around the same time.

[ShaqAttac]

I know I'm not a part of the project, as I don't have as much time on my hands as I'd like, but I want to remind everyone that this is the same Jordan who reportedly tried to keep Horace Grant from eating and gave Steve Kerr a black eye.

yo wut

While this is an online board and no one cares if you have perfect grammar and spelling, but these kind of one or two word replies in text speak are too much and not well received. Can you please stop with this?

Typing 'yo wut' and 'yo what' or 'can you give more context' all took me around the same time.

uh oka. when did mk keep grant from eatin n why

[Franco]

yo wut

While this is an online board and no one cares if you have perfect grammar and spelling, but these kind of one or two word replies in text speak are too much and not well received. Can you please stop with this?

Typing 'yo wut' and 'yo what' or 'can you give more context' all took me around the same time.

uh oka. when did mk keep grant from eatin n why

Well, if this story from longtime NBA writer and Jordan insider Sam Smith about how #23 used to treat teammates, namely Horace Grant, after bad games is true, the answer is almost definitely not. Here's what Smith told the Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks Podcast this week:

"Players would come to me over the years and said, ‘You know what he did? He took Horace [Grant’s] food away on the plane because Horace had a bad game,’” Smith told the hosts. “[Michael] told the stewardesses ‘Don’t feed him, he doesn’t deserve to eat.’

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/this-story-about-michael-jordan-depriving-horace-grant-of-food-after-bad-games-gives-new-meaning-to-be-like-mike

[eminence]

.

Very nice post on the strength of LeBrons case. The only remaining case against is probably one focused very strongly on team accomplishment, and it probably only gets Russell over the line.

LeBron's got the individual peak/prime at the top level by any measure we can think of (and probably more evidence he's a step ahead of the other top guys than that he's a step below them, though I tend to lean towards them being on a similar level), and now he's got absurd longevity that beats out even Kareem.

[Doctor MJ]

I am curious how much of it is just longetvity, and how much of it is a shift from the initial evaluation of peak/prime.

In the peaks project, Jordan easily won as he always does. Yet, I suspect if we held that vote again it might flip or be significantly closer.

Ah, a good point.

I don't mean to imply that it's ridiculous to prefer LeBron's peak over Jordan's, only that the more you emphasize longevity, the stronger LeBron's case becomes.

[therealbig3]

The thing is, I'm not going to argue that Jordan can't possibly have had a better peak/prime than LeBron, statistically speaking. But as others have said, the numbers that would support that weren't tracked for Jordan during his prime. And given how impressive LeBron looks in the +/- era, it would really take a mythological level player to be clearly superior to him. I know that Jordan DOES get some of that mythologizing, but the numbers we do have from that era that try to quantify impact have him as an elite, but not "several tiers above next best" level player.

So I'm extremely skeptical of any claim that centers on a "Jordan would look better than LeBron in the data ball era" argument. Is there something to be said for the superior team success Jordan experienced and the higher level teams he was able to lead relative to LeBron? Maybe. Is the team success because of their differences as players? I don't think so. I think there are plenty of things that you can point to that result in that 6 to 4 difference that has nothing to do with LeBron or Jordan.

Even if we give Jordan the benefit of the doubt and say he would look comparable or even slightly better than LeBron if we had more detailed +/- data available for him (which is a huge leap of faith, honestly, because we have a similar mold of player in Kobe who also played the majority of his career in the data ball era and was a clear level below LeBron), I don't see how we can ignore the massive difference in longevity when you have such a small gap between them as actual players.

Re: the Kobe comparison...yes, Jordan was a better version of Kobe in nearly every way...but the impact profile given their respective styles of play and approach to the game would be similar, although Jordan would look better...better to the point that he erases the gap that existed between LeBron and Kobe? It's a hard thing to imagine. I could see Jordan being defended similarly to Kobe, and like Kobe, there would be defenses he tended to shred, and defenses he probably struggle big time against. For example, the 08 and 10 Celtics. Jordan in Kobe's place may shoot a bit better, play a bit better defensively, but overall, would likely struggle too. I don't see a big difference in terms of shot selection, BBIQ, and that score-first mentality between them. Jordan happens to be a superior physical specimen, and that's really where the difference between them as players is imo.

[eminence]

I largely agree with the above, though I do think it undersells the gap between MJ and Kobe. Defensively especially, with Kobe floating around league average and MJ having a fringe argument as the best defensive guard ever.

[Franco]

I wonder when the RealGM shift took place, since in the oldest project IIRC Wilt came out as #1. I wasn't around for that so I have no idea what the arguments were back then.

[Doctor MJ]

I wonder when the RealGM shift took place, since in the oldest project IIRC Wilt came out as #1. I wasn't around for that so I have no idea what the arguments were back then.

I don't think there's just one "shift" to be talked about, but rather myriad shifts which have some connections to each other.

I'll note that in the very first project in 2003, which was before my time, Jordan was 1 and Wilt was 2. That flipped in 2006 (my first project), but unfortunately neither of those first two projects are available for us to peruse now. From a Wilt perspective though, 2008 is the first time we saw him fall behind contemporaries (Kareem & Russell), and that project can be perused. As I say that, looking back on the posts of that project I see it as considerably less elaborate in the analysis by the posters compared to the Retro POY project of 2010 or the 2011 Top 100, so I might say those other projects are the best things to dive into to see the reasoning.

I don't actually think though that there was much shift involving Jordan until LeBron became a threat in 2020.

[RSCD3_]

As I have said before, my top three is cemented as Lebron, Kareem, and Russell.

For this vote, my top pick will be going to Lebron. I am sympathetic to the other two, but I do give him an edge over Russell for having such a substantial advantage in time played and for more obviously translating across time. Absolutely no one dominated their own league like Russell did, and I am fine with people making that a permanent stance… but it does need to be a permanent stance, because no one will ever dominate the league to that extent again. You look at other leagues… Henri Richard had 11, although not all as the best player. Yogi Burrell had 10, and again not all as the best player. Russell was 11/13, and coming off two NCAA titles, and was the best player on his team for every one of them (as is disproportionately the case in basketball). He is the greatest individual winner in team sports, and he always will be. Personally, I prefer an evolving standard, but I respect those who commit to enshrining him as the permanent GOAT.

Kareem is a more direct comparison for Lebron. Both were generational prospects (I see them as the two best ever) immediately marked as likely GOAT contenders to the extent that almost anything short of that would qualify as a disappointment… and neither really disappointed that standard. Both thoroughly dominated a for over a decade even if for team reasons that did not always translate to titles. Both were top players on four title teams (for obvious reasons I see the 1987 and 1988 championships as less relevant to Kareem’s legacy, but they are nice bonuses all the same). Both had effectively unprecedented longevity, and it is still a debate which of them has been better into their late 30s (although I expect Lebron can start gaining separation if he has a healthy season next year). Lebron has the overall more productive NBA career, but I do support acknowledging that Kareem was almost certainly better as an NCAA talent locked out of the NBA than Lebron was as an NBA player immediately out of high school. They read as broadly comparable in 22-turning-23 seasons through their 26-turning-27 seasons. However, I think Lebron probably gains some separation starting with what was his 2013 season compared to Kareem’s 1975 season, and while Kareem keeps pace, I am not sure he ever managed to make up much ground until it was too late.

From the angle the bigs have a strong innate advantage over perimetre players, I could see putting both ahead. Still, I think Lebron is a massive outlier as a perimetre player. He has created more points for his teams than any player ever has, by a cavernous margin, and he has similarly accumulated far more defensive value than any other non-big. And of course this is all helped by being a perimetre player who is close to the same size as some bigs (Karl Malone always the easy physical comparison). He does not have the latent defensive impact of centres, but as the most valuable offensive player ever (in totality), I think the defensive impact he has exerted can bridge the gap.

Lebron has been the best player on his team for nineteen or twenty seasons, which is absolutely unparalleled. Even if you only look at the standard of “best player on a playoff team”, I am not sure whether anyone can top the resultant fifteen or sixteen. Top eight team, not sure anyone can top the resultant fourteen or fifteen. He has been my personal pick for league’s best player ten times, on par with Russell (~eleven but with uncertainty in 1958, 1962, 1964, 1966, and 1968) and Kareem (nine to thirteen depending on how we feel about 1970, 1977, 1981, and 1982). He narrowly trails Russell in career RealGM Player of the Year shares, which seems appropriate.

Lebron is the all-time leader in MVP shares. He is tied for most all-star appearances (almost certain to be sole holder next season), with the clear most as starter. He has the clears most all-NBA selections and all-NBA first team selections (and he would have the most even if forwards only had one spot), as well as the most combined first and second team selections. He has led all-NBA voting the most times (nine). He has led all-star voting the most times (ten), which I mention not as a “win” over Kareem or Russell but more because it is an interesting advantage over other similarly or more popular players. For as much as those can be attributed to “longevity”, he is also securely the most valuable APM player of the databall era by basically any measure, with few indications that the other perimetre player in this competition could push him.

He has been the best player on title teams for three separate franchises, with three separate coaches and three distinct rosters. In the postseason, he leads everyone in:

- wins
- road wins
- series wins
- road series wins
- series wins as an SRS underdog
- games played
- minutes played
- points

He is also top twelve in appearances outright (Stockton/Malone at 19, Duncan/Kareem at 18, and Shaq/Kidd/Parker at 17). He has the second highest playoff road win percentage among anyone in the consensus top twelve (Magic). He has the third highest playoff win percentage among anyone in the consensus top twelve (Magic and Jordan). He has the most consecutive series with a road playoff win. He has the second best road series win percentage, with five times the sample as Russell’s 3-1 record.

He has led six top 50 relative playoff teams (four titles plus 2009 and 2017), which is the same number as Jordan — and he had a better on-court and on/off rating than Jordan did across those respective six teams, despite false claims about his inability to lead teams to similar ceilings. He is tied for the third most conference finals (behind Kareem and Russell), and he is tied with Kareem for second most finals (with three of Kareem’s coming as a tertiary figure).

I see him as the player with the top career, top prime, top title peak, top runner-up peak, top conference finalist peak… This is just Lebron for me, and outside of ring-counting I do not see a real case for any other non-big. Others will make more of a data-focused case, and for posterity I encourage them to do so, but to an extent that preaches to the choir (so to speak) because anyone disagreeing is not interested in the cold data to a significant extent. And because Kareem and Russell are the two I see as his true rivals in career status, I am more interested in taking approaches that to some extent give them equivalent points of comparison.

My alternate vote will go to whichever of Russell or Kareem seems to be gaining more traction, specifically looking ahead to next vote. I have never managed to decide which of the two I back over the other, and that will be more of my personal focus in this thread and the next. And the starting point for that will be: how does 1970-82 Kareem compare to 1957-69 Russell?

VOTE: Lebron James

If you could list the SRS wins as the underdogs I'd love to see them, if you have it on hand ofc

[MyUniBroDavis]

Lol its my opinion that Jordan is better than James brother thats it. Im 47. I started watching the nba after watching Bird light up the Celtics on CBS on a Sunday afternoon game. You want me to talk about these players abilities?


Leadership - Jordan, he was never passive aggressive, always was accountable for his actions on the court, never tried to trade his teammates midseason

I know I'm not a part of the project, as I don't have as much time on my hands as I'd like, but I want to remind everyone that this is the same Jordan who reportedly tried to keep Horace Grant from eating and gave Steve Kerr a black eye.

yo wut

If you added an e at the start you wouldn’t have gotten the blue text

[ty 4191]

I have Russell, Jordan, and Wilt above Kareem still.

Fascinating.

Can you expound on this? At length, perhaps?

Thank you, penbeast. You’re a scholar. And, this is one hell of a discussion and endeavor!!!!!!

[PaulieWal]

I know I'm not a part of the project, as I don't have as much time on my hands as I'd like, but I want to remind everyone that this is the same Jordan who reportedly tried to keep Horace Grant from eating and gave Steve Kerr a black eye.

yo wut

If you added an e at the start you wouldn’t have gotten the blue text

He got the blue text because the way he types comes off as pretty passive aggressive and others posters have complained about the discourse. You type pretty informally, but at least you are forming complete sentences and are coherent.

I am sorry but no one types okay or ok as "oka". It's a pretty obvious act.

[AEnigma]

As I have said before, my top three is cemented as Lebron, Kareem, and Russell.

For this vote, my top pick will be going to Lebron. I am sympathetic to the other two, but I do give him an edge over Russell for having such a substantial advantage in time played and for more obviously translating across time. Absolutely no one dominated their own league like Russell did, and I am fine with people making that a permanent stance… but it does need to be a permanent stance, because no one will ever dominate the league to that extent again. You look at other leagues… Henri Richard had 11, although not all as the best player. Yogi Burrell had 10, and again not all as the best player. Russell was 11/13, and coming off two NCAA titles, and was the best player on his team for every one of them (as is disproportionately the case in basketball). He is the greatest individual winner in team sports, and he always will be. Personally, I prefer an evolving standard, but I respect those who commit to enshrining him as the permanent GOAT.

Kareem is a more direct comparison for Lebron. Both were generational prospects (I see them as the two best ever) immediately marked as likely GOAT contenders to the extent that almost anything short of that would qualify as a disappointment… and neither really disappointed that standard. Both thoroughly dominated a for over a decade even if for team reasons that did not always translate to titles. Both were top players on four title teams (for obvious reasons I see the 1987 and 1988 championships as less relevant to Kareem’s legacy, but they are nice bonuses all the same). Both had effectively unprecedented longevity, and it is still a debate which of them has been better into their late 30s (although I expect Lebron can start gaining separation if he has a healthy season next year). Lebron has the overall more productive NBA career, but I do support acknowledging that Kareem was almost certainly better as an NCAA talent locked out of the NBA than Lebron was as an NBA player immediately out of high school. They read as broadly comparable in 22-turning-23 seasons through their 26-turning-27 seasons. However, I think Lebron probably gains some separation starting with what was his 2013 season compared to Kareem’s 1975 season, and while Kareem keeps pace, I am not sure he ever managed to make up much ground until it was too late.

From the angle the bigs have a strong innate advantage over perimetre players, I could see putting both ahead. Still, I think Lebron is a massive outlier as a perimetre player. He has created more points for his teams than any player ever has, by a cavernous margin, and he has similarly accumulated far more defensive value than any other non-big. And of course this is all helped by being a perimetre player who is close to the same size as some bigs (Karl Malone always the easy physical comparison). He does not have the latent defensive impact of centres, but as the most valuable offensive player ever (in totality), I think the defensive impact he has exerted can bridge the gap.

Lebron has been the best player on his team for nineteen or twenty seasons, which is absolutely unparalleled. Even if you only look at the standard of “best player on a playoff team”, I am not sure whether anyone can top the resultant fifteen or sixteen. Top eight team, not sure anyone can top the resultant fourteen or fifteen. He has been my personal pick for league’s best player ten times, on par with Russell (~eleven but with uncertainty in 1958, 1962, 1964, 1966, and 1968) and Kareem (nine to thirteen depending on how we feel about 1970, 1977, 1981, and 1982). He narrowly trails Russell in career RealGM Player of the Year shares, which seems appropriate.

Lebron is the all-time leader in MVP shares. He is tied for most all-star appearances (almost certain to be sole holder next season), with the clear most as starter. He has the clear most all-NBA selections and all-NBA first team selections (and he would have the most even if forwards only had one spot), as well as the most combined first and second team selections. He has led all-NBA voting the most times (nine). He has led all-star voting the most times (ten), which I mention not as a “win” over Kareem or Russell but more because it is an interesting advantage over other similarly or more popular players. For as much as those can be attributed to “longevity”, he is also securely the most valuable APM player of the databall era by basically any measure, with few indications that the other perimetre player in this competition could push him.

He has been the best player on title teams for three separate franchises, with three separate coaches and three distinct rosters. In the postseason, he leads everyone in:

- wins
- road wins
- series wins
- road series wins
- series wins as an SRS underdog
- games played
- minutes played
- points

He is also top twelve in appearances outright (Stockton/Malone at 19, Duncan/Kareem at 18, and Shaq/Kidd/Parker at 17). He has the second highest playoff road win percentage among anyone in the consensus top twelve (Magic). He has the third highest playoff win percentage among anyone in the consensus top twelve (Magic and Jordan). He has the most consecutive series with a road playoff win. He has the second best road series win percentage, with five times the sample as Russell’s 3-1 record.

He has led six top 50 relative playoff teams (four titles plus 2009 and 2017), which is the same number as Jordan — and he had a better on-court and on/off rating than Jordan did across those respective six teams, despite false claims about his inability to lead teams to similar ceilings. He is tied for the third most conference finals (behind Kareem and Russell), and he is tied with Kareem for second most finals (with three of Kareem’s coming as a tertiary figure).

I see him as the player with the top career, top prime, top title peak, top runner-up peak, top conference finalist peak… This is just Lebron for me, and outside of ring-counting I do not see a real case for any other non-big. Others will make more of a data-focused case, and for posterity I encourage them to do so, but to an extent that preaches to the choir (so to speak) because anyone disagreeing is not interested in the cold data to a significant extent. And because Kareem and Russell are the two I see as his true rivals in career status, I am more interested in taking approaches that to some extent give them equivalent points of comparison.

My alternate vote will go to whichever of Russell or Kareem seems to be gaining more traction, specifically looking ahead to next vote. I have never managed to decide which of the two I back over the other, and that will be more of my personal focus in this thread and the next. And the starting point for that will be: how does 1970-82 Kareem compare to 1957-69 Russell?

VOTE: Lebron James

If you could list the SRS wins as the underdogs I'd love to see them, if you have it on hand ofc

This is going by memory and thinking more, perhaps someone like Hakeem tops him.

- 2007 Pistons
- 2012 Thunder
- 2015 Hawks
- 2016 Warriors
- 2017 Raptors (granted everyone knew how this would go lol)
- 2018 Pacers, Raptors, and Celtics
- 2023 Grizzlies and Warriors

Ten total.

Again, going off memory for Hakeem…
- 1986 Lakers
- 1987 Blazers
- 1994 Suns and Knicks (Jazz borderline, and a pro-Hakeem argument could correctly call them better after the Hornacek trade)
- 1995 Jazz, Suns, Spurs, and Magic
- 1996 Lakers
- 1997 Sonics

So saying Lebron was correct via some technicalities lol, but yeah, in my eyes he would be only the second most reliable player for SRS upsets.

Literally speaking the answer is almost certainly Robert Horry (I think at least eleven — six with Hakeem, four with Shaq, and at least one with Duncan), but feel like the assumption is we are talking about team leaders.

[OhayoKD]

yo wut

If you added an e at the start you wouldn’t have gotten the blue text

He got the blue text because the way he types comes off as pretty passive aggressive and others posters have complained about the discourse. You type pretty informally, but at least you are forming complete sentences and are coherent.

I am sorry but no one types okay or ok as "oka". It's a pretty obvious act.

Have seen high-schoolers/college kids type that.

Actually know someone who likes to use "ohkieee"

[lessthanjake]

The thing is, I'm not going to argue that Jordan can't possibly have had a better peak/prime than LeBron, statistically speaking. But as others have said, the numbers that would support that weren't tracked for Jordan during his prime. And given how impressive LeBron looks in the +/- era, it would really take a mythological level player to be clearly superior to him. I know that Jordan DOES get some of that mythologizing, but the numbers we do have from that era that try to quantify impact have him as an elite, but not "several tiers above next best" level player.

I think that’s all valid, and to some degree it can make sense to prioritize the best player of the data-ball era over the best pre-data-ball era, since we should have a higher level of certainty about a data-ball player’s greatness.

I’d push back a bit on the last sentence though. In the actual RAPM data that we do have (i.e. no box-score components), Jordan kind of does end up several tiers above the next best player. In Squared’s RAPM data from 1984-1985, 1987-1988, 1990-1991, and 1995-1996, Jordan is ranked 1st in the league all but his rookie year, and no one is all that close to him in those years—with Jordan being between 13% and 29% above 2nd place each of those years (he’s also 6th in his rookie year, and 4th among stars). In JE’s RAPM estimation using quarter-by-quarter box scores and minutes data, Jordan comes up as 1st in the 1990’s decade, and he is 30% above the next highest player who actually played a lot in the decade. In the 1996-1997 season, he was 2nd in RAPM, but only behind a random bench player and is about 25% above the next highest player who could be classified as a star, and he was 2nd in playoff RAPM (and 1st amongst stars). He slips a bit in the 1997-1998 season, but is still 11th in RAPM (and more like 6th amongst stars), and he was 1st in playoff RAPM that season. This is actually a picture of a player who *does* look several tiers above the next best player. It’s just that it’s all tiny snippets, so we can’t have a high degree of confidence that it would hold if we had more data. Meanwhile, the WOWY stuff isn’t as great for Jordan as compared to his peers, but most of the various WOWY measures have Jordan ahead of LeBron anyways, so it’s not really a set of measures that supports LeBron over Jordan overall anyways (and is also just a flawed set of measures that probably shouldn’t be given much weight anyways).

Meanwhile, the idea that LeBron was “several tiers above next best” in impact data is I think a bit overblown. LeBron James has incredible longevity. He was great from the moment he came into the league and is still great 20 years later. So, when we look at 25-year career-long data for players, he’s going to have a significant gap with others, because other players didn’t start as well and/or age as well. But that aggregate data obscures a bit that LeBron wasn’t just dominating RAPM data constantly throughout his career, and indeed that the other best player of last decade (Steph Curry) actually spent a large swath of time consistently being above LeBron in RAPM.

Here’s LeBron’s RAPM ranking in the league by season, based on NBAshotcharts:

2009-2010: 1st
2010-2011: 6th
2011-2012: 14th
2012-2013: 1st
2013-2014: 25th
2014-2015: 6th
2015-2016: 3rd
2016-2017: 3rd
2017-2018: 62nd
2018-2019: 32nd
2019-2020: 5th
2020-2021: 7th
2021-2022: 182nd
2022-2023: 16th

Individual seasons can be noisy with RAPM, so let’s take 5-year spans instead, as per the data NBAshotcharts has:

2011-2016: 2nd
2012-2017: 2nd
2013-2018: 3rd
2014-2019: 3rd
2015-2020: 3rd
2016-2021: 3rd
2017-2022: 12th
2018-2023: 9th

So he looks really good when we take longer time horizons, but definitely not several tiers above the rest. Crucially, the people above him are not random each time. Most notably, Steph Curry is above LeBron in every one of those time periods starting with 2013-2018 (and is just below LeBron at 3rd place in the first two time periods). Of course, this doesn’t include earlier spans in LeBron’s career, and it also doesn’t include playoffs, but I don’t think it can really fairly be said that LeBron is “several tiers above the rest” in RAPM, when Steph Curry has spent the better part of a decade above LeBron, including in timeframes that were during LeBron’s prime.

But that’s just one measure of RAPM. Let’s take another: https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/. Where does LeBron rank in this RAPM measure, which goes from the beginning of LeBron’s career through 2018-2019?

2003-2004: 331st
2004-2005: 74th
2005-2006: 14th
2006-2007: 15th
2007-2008: 25th
2008-2009: 1st
2009-2010: 3rd
2010-2011: 5th
2011-2012: 15th
2012-2013: 4th
2013-2014: 47th
2014-2015: 4th
2015-2016: 4th
2016-2017: 7th
2017-2018: 63rd
2018-2019: 88th

This is not several tiers above the rest. And, I’ll note that, from 2013-2014 to 2018-2019, Steph Curry was 7th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, 1st, and 3rd. As in, above LeBron every season in that span. And, according to this measure, Curry was above LeBron in playoff RAPM 3 out of those 6 years too.

The above I think demonstrates two things: (1) LeBron was not consistently dominating everyone in RAPM, and indeed prime Steph was above LeBron, even while LeBron was still in his prime; and (2) RAPM is a noisy stat, so when get down to smaller sample sizes like single seasons, LeBron’s ranking is actually often all over the place.

The latter point is a pretty notable one actually, as it maps onto Michael Jordan. With Jordan, we saw that in a bunch of snippets of data we have (i.e. individual seasons, individual playoffs, and snippets of seasons), Jordan almost always comes out 1st in the NBA or pretty close to it. The worst snippet of data we have is 11th in the 1997-1998 regular season, and most of the RAPM data points for Jordan are 1st place in the NBA, and several others are 2nd place. For a noisy stat to so consistently have Jordan come out so high in low sample sizes of data is actually pretty surprising, and, if anything, is suggestive of Jordan being so massively above his peers that even the random noise of small sample sizes can’t push him off his perch (which they do for LeBron—as we can see from the season-by-season data above). If anything, this is suggestive of it being Michael Jordan that was further above his peers in RAPM than LeBron—though again I wouldn’t draw any strong conclusion from the limited data we have.

So I'm extremely skeptical of any claim that centers on a "Jordan would look better than LeBron in the data ball era" argument. Is there something to be said for the superior team success Jordan experienced and the higher level teams he was able to lead relative to LeBron? Maybe. Is the team success because of their differences as players? I don't think so. I think there are plenty of things that you can point to that result in that 6 to 4 difference that has nothing to do with LeBron or Jordan.

Even if we give Jordan the benefit of the doubt and say he would look comparable or even slightly better than LeBron if we had more detailed +/- data available for him (which is a huge leap of faith, honestly, because we have a similar mold of player in Kobe who also played the majority of his career in the data ball era and was a clear level below LeBron), I don't see how we can ignore the massive difference in longevity when you have such a small gap between them as actual players.

Re: the Kobe comparison...yes, Jordan was a better version of Kobe in nearly every way...but the impact profile given their respective styles of play and approach to the game would be similar, although Jordan would look better...better to the point that he erases the gap that existed between LeBron and Kobe? It's a hard thing to imagine. I could see Jordan being defended similarly to Kobe, and like Kobe, there would be defenses he tended to shred, and defenses he probably struggle big time against. For example, the 08 and 10 Celtics. Jordan in Kobe's place may shoot a bit better, play a bit better defensively, but overall, would likely struggle too. I don't see a big difference in terms of shot selection, BBIQ, and that score-first mentality between them. Jordan happens to be a superior physical specimen, and that's really where the difference between them as players is imo.

I don’t think the Kobe comparison is a good one. I definitely get why you made it, since they genuinely do have very similar styles. But let’s remember that they were very different players in terms of production. For reference, Kobe Bryant did not have a single season with as high a PER as Michael Jordan’s average PER with the Bulls, and only one Kobe season was even close. Of course, box-score data like PER doesn’t necessarily tell us much about impact data, but I don’t think we can make any assumption that two players with similar styles but substantially different production with that style would have similar impact data.

[OhayoKD]

To be clear, this is not for you. This is for posterity.

The thing is, I'm not going to argue that Jordan can't possibly have had a better peak/prime than LeBron, statistically speaking. But as others have said, the numbers that would support that weren't tracked for Jordan during his prime. And given how impressive LeBron looks in the +/- era, it would really take a mythological level player to be clearly superior to him. I know that Jordan DOES get some of that mythologizing, but the numbers we do have from that era that try to quantify impact have him as an elite, but not "several tiers above next best" level player.

I think that’s all valid, and to some degree it can make sense to prioritize the best player of the data-ball era over the best pre-data-ball era, since we should have a higher level of certainty about a data-ball player’s greatness.

There is also the matter of what we do have consistently favoring Lebron:

There is very little of what "you" consider impact data but of course you are rather inconsistent with what is "good-faith" running with WOWYR while complaining about much more straightforward "adjustments". As it so happens, "WOWYR" is the one and only type of metric Jordan actually looks "good" in relative to Lebron. Using your standard of what counts as an impact metric we have:

-> Playoff on/off
(Lebron looks better)
-> On/off
(Lebron looks better, 97/98 rank below 17 and 18 lebron years respectively)
-> On+ON/off
(Lebron looks better, 2nd and 5th best regular season teams rank 8th and 11th respectively)
-> WOWY
(Lebron looks better, and Jordan ranks 4th amongst his contemporaries, literally does not matter what you use)
-> Indirect samples(what eminece outlined in the #2), Lebron looks much better
-> AUPM
(Lebron looks better with the exception of 3-year consecutive where MJ is a bit behind Duncan)
-> Squared RAPM
(Lebron looks better in the same set)
-> Full RAPM
(Lebron looks better with the potential for Jordan to close in if his early years score better)

Notably the metric which Jordan scores closest his AUPM which is partially calculated by BPM which assumes Jordan's blocks are more valuable than Timothy Duncan's. I will note that if we allow the tiny-sample multi-year extraps from WOWYR(which put Jordan somewhere between 4 and 7 depending on interpretation and what Kareem's corrected wowyr looks like), much larger sampled, less convoluted 82-game "off" would put a juiced up signal for "PEAK" Jordan well below what we have for Lebron, Kareem and on par with a retiring Bill Russell. It would also place him right down with his contemporaries for the first part of his prime(magic advantaged, drob advantaged but playoffs, Hakeem depends on framing but is a bigger playoff riser) which 96 Pollocks' +/- and simple WOWY already do.


You're also being rather selective with this RAPM analysis....

but most of the various WOWY measures have Jordan ahead of LeBron anyways, so it’s not really a set of measures that supports LeBron over Jordan overall anyways (and is also just a flawed set of measures that probably shouldn’t be given much weight anyways).

No. I am not sure why you keep repeating this. You can refer to eminence's "indirect", the raw wowy list, or the indirect extraps, but Lebron is consistently advantaged. In WOWY Jordan ranks 28th. Lebron ranks 8th, and that completely excludes these:

MJ:
'84 to '85 Bulls (w/MJ): +11 wins
'93 (w/MJ) to '94 Bulls: +4 wins
'95 (pre/MJ) to '95 Bulls (w/MJ): +20
'95 (pre/MJ) to '96 Bulls (w/MJ): +29 (alternatively +17 from '94 to '96)(duh)

LeBron:
'03 to '04 Cavs (w/LeBron): +17 wins
'10 (w/LeBron) to '11 Cavs: +46 wins
'10 to '11 Heat (w/LeBron): +12 wins
'14 (w/LeBron) to '15 Heat: +18 wins
'14 to '15 Cavs (w/LeBron): +26 wins
'18 (w/LeBron) to '19 Cavs: +31 wins
'18 to '19 Lakers (w/LeBron): +7 wins

Meanwhile, the idea that LeBron was “several tiers above next best” in impact data is I think a bit overblown. LeBron James has incredible longevity. He was great from the moment he came into the league and is still great 20 years later. So, when we look at 25-year career-long data for players, he’s going to have a significant gap with others, because other players didn’t start as well and/or age as well.

That is also misleading/ Presumably you are referring to this?
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2301003
Lebron owns 7 of the best 5-year stretches. Playing longer is a disadvantage as averages generally go down the more you play. Lebron has a per-possession edge for the rs over kg and duncan despite playing way more minutes and he is the only player with over 200,000 possessions who sees his score go up in the playoffs.

This sort of outlierness is also there with the sets used by Ben, JE, ect.

Moreover, even the "bearish" set you mention from shotscharts only dislikes Lebron over 5-year samples(post 2010 thus excluding his best 2 "impact" years). Over 3-years Lebron is league best post 2010 for two stretches, and then is a direct rival for regular season steph's best 3-years and best 1-year. Keep in mind that using raw wowy-like comparison, Steph grades as a more valuable regular season player than Mike. And off course if we do a raw comparison(because RAPM artifically suppresses outliers and is not really great for distigingushing between 1-year highs), lineup-ratings and WOWY see Lebron's "impact" as flalty comparable in the rs from 15-17 to what we have steph(and advantaged over what we have for Micheal).

Similarly, with a like for like comp, KG and Duncan also look more or as valuable as Jordan who again, does not grade out as a "best in the league force" pre-expansion by "wowy" despite you falsely alleging it favors Micheal.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt on 'misunderstanding" as opposed to willfully misleading but it has been explained to you 4 times that "wowy"=/"wowyr". You pretending they're the same a 5th time seems like an attempt at deliberately misleading readers.


So I will put this in bold:
WOWY ranks jordan 28th, 4th among his contemporaries, and well behind 8th ranked Lebron. WOWY entirely excludes what I cited for Eminence. If you are going to go with a multi-year extract like 94-96(honestly pretty reasonable), than this just gets worse for Jordan because a similar extract from 84 puts Jordan miles behind the best stuff for Lebron despite a bunch of generous assumptions.

It is one thing to say there's not enough data to know. But to argue that what we have presents jordan as an equal(or even a slight superior?) is just disingenuous.

[MyUniBroDavis]

yo wut

If you added an e at the start you wouldn’t have gotten the blue text

He got the blue text because the way he types comes off as pretty passive aggressive and others posters have complained about the discourse. You type pretty informally, but at least you are forming complete sentences and are coherent.

I am sorry but no one types okay or ok as "oka". It's a pretty obvious act.

‘Twas a joke man

[lessthanjake]

Spoiler:

To be clear, this is not for you. This is for posterity.

The thing is, I'm not going to argue that Jordan can't possibly have had a better peak/prime than LeBron, statistically speaking. But as others have said, the numbers that would support that weren't tracked for Jordan during his prime. And given how impressive LeBron looks in the +/- era, it would really take a mythological level player to be clearly superior to him. I know that Jordan DOES get some of that mythologizing, but the numbers we do have from that era that try to quantify impact have him as an elite, but not "several tiers above next best" level player.

I think that’s all valid, and to some degree it can make sense to prioritize the best player of the data-ball era over the best pre-data-ball era, since we should have a higher level of certainty about a data-ball player’s greatness.

There is also the matter of what we do have consistently favoring Lebron:

There is very little of what "you" consider impact data but of course you are rather inconsistent with what is "good-faith" running with WOWYR while complaining about much more straightforward "adjustments". As it so happens, "WOWYR" is the one and only type of metric Jordan actually looks "good" in relative to Lebron. Using your standard of what counts as an impact metric we have:

-> Playoff on/off
(Lebron looks better)
-> On/off
(Lebron looks better, 97/98 rank below 17 and 18 lebron years respectively)
-> On+ON/off
(Lebron looks better, 2nd and 5th best regular season teams rank 8th and 11th respectively)
-> WOWY
(Lebron looks better, and Jordan ranks 4th amongst his contemporaries, literally does not matter what you use)
-> Indirect samples(what eminece outlined in the #2), Lebron looks much better
-> AUPM
(Lebron looks better with the exception of 3-year consecutive where MJ is a bit behind Duncan)
-> Squared RAPM
(Lebron looks better in the same set)
-> Full RAPM
(Lebron looks better with the potential for Jordan to close in if his early years score better)

Notably the metric which Jordan scores closest his AUPM which is partially calculated by BPM which assumes Jordan's blocks are more valuable than Timothy Duncan's. I will note that if we allow the tiny-sample multi-year extraps from WOWYR(which put Jordan somewhere between 4 and 7 depending on interpretation and what Kareem's corrected wowyr looks like), much larger sampled, less convoluted 82-game "off" would put a juiced up signal for "PEAK" Jordan well below what we have for Lebron, Kareem and on par with a retiring Bill Russell. It would also place him right down with his contemporaries for the first part of his prime(magic advantaged, drob advantaged but playoffs, Hakeem depends on framing but is a bigger playoff riser) which 96 Pollocks' +/- and simple WOWY already do.


You're also being rather selective with this RAPM analysis....

but most of the various WOWY measures have Jordan ahead of LeBron anyways, so it’s not really a set of measures that supports LeBron over Jordan overall anyways (and is also just a flawed set of measures that probably shouldn’t be given much weight anyways).

No. I am not sure why you keep repeating this. You can refer to eminence's "indirect", the raw wowy list, or the indirect extraps, but Lebron is consistently advantaged. In WOWY Jordan ranks 28th. Lebron ranks 8th, and that completely excludes these:

MJ:
'84 to '85 Bulls (w/MJ): +11 wins
'93 (w/MJ) to '94 Bulls: +4 wins
'95 (pre/MJ) to '95 Bulls (w/MJ): +20
'95 (pre/MJ) to '96 Bulls (w/MJ): +29 (alternatively +17 from '94 to '96)(duh)

LeBron:
'03 to '04 Cavs (w/LeBron): +17 wins
'10 (w/LeBron) to '11 Cavs: +46 wins
'10 to '11 Heat (w/LeBron): +12 wins
'14 (w/LeBron) to '15 Heat: +18 wins
'14 to '15 Cavs (w/LeBron): +26 wins
'18 (w/LeBron) to '19 Cavs: +31 wins
'18 to '19 Lakers (w/LeBron): +7 wins

Meanwhile, the idea that LeBron was “several tiers above next best” in impact data is I think a bit overblown. LeBron James has incredible longevity. He was great from the moment he came into the league and is still great 20 years later. So, when we look at 25-year career-long data for players, he’s going to have a significant gap with others, because other players didn’t start as well and/or age as well.

That is also misleading/ Presumably you are referring to this?
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2301003
Lebron owns 7 of the best 5-year stretches. Playing longer is a disadvantage as averages generally go down the more you play. Lebron has a per-possession edge for the rs over kg and duncan despite playing way more minutes and he is the only player with over 200,000 possessions who sees his score go up in the playoffs.

This sort of outlierness is also there with the sets used by Ben, JE, ect.

Moreover, even the "bearish" set you mention from shotscharts only dislikes Lebron over 5-year samples(post 2010 thus excluding his best 2 "impact" years). Over 3-years Lebron is league best post 2010 for two stretches, and then is a direct rival for regular season steph's best 3-years and best 1-year. Keep in mind that using raw wowy-like comparison, Steph grades as a more valuable regular season player than Mike. And off course if we do a raw comparison(because RAPM artifically suppresses outliers and is not really great for distigingushing between 1-year highs), lineup-ratings and WOWY see Lebron's "impact" as flalty comparable in the rs from 15-17 to what we have steph(and advantaged over what we have for Micheal).

Similarly, with a like for like comp, KG and Duncan also look more or as valuable as Jordan who again, does not grade out as a "best in the league force" pre-expansion by "wowy" despite you falsely alleging it favors Micheal.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt on 'misunderstanding" as opposed to willfully misleading but it has been explained to you 4 times that "wowy"=/"wowyr". You pretending they're the same a 5th time seems like an attempt at deliberately misleading readers.


So I will put this in bold:
WOWY ranks jordan 28th, 4th among his contemporaries, and well behind 8th ranked Lebron. WOWY entirely excludes what I cited for Eminence. If you are going to go with a multi-year extract like 94-96(honestly pretty reasonable), than this just gets worse for Jordan because a similar extract from 84 puts Jordan miles behind the best stuff for Lebron despite a bunch of generous assumptions.

It is one thing to say there's not enough data to know. But to argue that what we have presents jordan as an equal(or even a slight superior?) is just disingenuous.

“WOWY” and “WOWYR” are just different methodologies/approaches centered around the same general concept. I’ve consistently noted the results of both, and unlike you I don’t choose to give preference to the one that is least good for Jordan over the others that look better for Jordan (nor do I do the opposite). You’re welcome to do so if you want, but I choose to summarize the data here as a whole and draw a conclusion about what that big picture suggests, especially when any given methodology can have a bunch of holes poked in it (seriously: Anyone who has ever reviewed academic papers for publication—which I have—can tell you that their methodology is often/usually flawed in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, even when the authors are prominent figures in their field. It’s best not to weigh any one approach too much).

Perhaps more importantly though, my post you were responding to was actually centered on the various snippets of *RAPM* data we have for Jordan, not on WOWY or WOWYR. The RAPM data we have consistently has Jordan ranked at or very near the top of the league, in a way that is actually more consistent than if you look at individual years for LeBron’s RAPM. It’s limited data, so I don’t think we should draw a strong conclusion about it, but it’s actually fairly remarkable on its face to have a whole bunch of fairly small sample sizes for RAPM (i.e. single seasons, single playoffs, and snippets of seasons) all come out so good for Jordan in a stat that is so noisy.

As a sidenote: I recognize that Curry’s impact data is really great, so me noting LeBron is below Curry for a lot of years is not an attack on LeBron as much as pointing out the fairly unremarkable fact you can’t be many tiers above your peers in a stat if one of your peers outdid you for a substantial time period. You’ll find that I’ll be bringing Steph into the overall discussion fairly soon actually (at least as a nomination), as I do actually think he has an argument to be as high as #5 all time.