OhayoKD wrote:The Russell analogy is odd. Bill Russell, like Lebron, came close as close to monopolizing the side of the court he was gifted at and, like Lebron, functioned as an on-court coach directing his teammates where to go and making adjustments for himself and even the team based on the opposition. Bill Russell, also like Lebron, looks like an incredible floor-raiser and, like Lebron has won a championship against a better opponent than anyone Jordan's beat in any round with a team that was bad without him.
Bill Russell, like Lebron, does not take as many shots as Jordan does and could conceivably fit better next to high-volume scorers(Pippen was not that, Kyrie and Love were).
Bill Russell, like Lebron, was a capable defensive centerpiece who was able to anchor elite defenses with a variety of support, even alongside defensive negatives(smush and mosgov were that before they were traded to Cleveland, Kyrie and Love were that throughout).
Bill Russell, like Lebron, is as or more capable as a passer/ball-handler than he was as a scorer.
And Bill Russell, like Lebron, has actually proven their ability to fit-in and win with a variety of co-stars, in a variety of situations.
Micheal Jordan does not share any of these traits or achievements. Moreover many of the assumptions you've made to arrive at the conclusion that Jordan is a better cieling-raiser do not actually line-up with what has actually happened. The argument may "start there", but for it("port") to actually work you have to establish the following:
-> Lebron, with various advantages that we know are integral to high-level teams(including Chicago)(communication, rim-protection, passing, ect) is a worse fit on a majority of potential/likely championship winners that would somehow add up to more championships than the amount of teams Jordan is a worse fit on
-> Lebron, a generally more valuable player becomes less valuable as a result of this questionable fit. I imagine this is a bit difficult considering that Lebron empirically looked as or more valuable(similar rs, but his teams scale up more in the postseason) for multiple championships in what should have been a bad-fit in Miami
Without establishing those two-points, "floor-raiser" is just a buzz-word. And for those who actually look into the apparent impact Lebron has had in situations this theory predicts he should be disadvantaged relative to Jordan(poor-spacing, next to other helios, ect, ect), I think it becomes rather apparent, it doesn't really hold up.
Most of this is just your own subjective judgments. And they’re also not really relevant to the point I was making, since they’re just random comparisons about random things. The point I was making is that when you have great teammates, it can be more optimal for a player to be extremely proficient at a specialized thing or two, rather than being a player who is responsible for everything. A great team inherently has teammates that are great at stuff, and therefore they can handle a lot of things. The best way to add the most marginal value to a team like that is to be miles above the pack at a major thing—i.e. MJ with scoring, Russell with defense, Steph with shooting/gravity, etc. When on a great team, that’s the way to provide value that is as non-redundant as possible. That’s how you optimally ceiling raise.
LeBron’s style is to do everything, but he’s not just a complete historical outlier supernova at any specific thing. At his prime, he was incredible at scoring, passing, and defense, for instance. It was an amazing combination, but he was not GOAT-tier at any of those (passing is the closest, but he’s still below a guy like Magic). And that makes it harder for him not to step on other great players’ toes a bit in terms of their impact. This manifests itself fairly obviously. LeBron put together a team with the #1, #2, and #4 players in PER the year before, and in their first season together, they had just a +11.83 net rating in RS+PS when all three were on the court. It was +12.53 the next year, then +10.07 the year after that (and then down to a +4.74 the final year, when Wade was broken down, so it’s not a super relevant data point IMO). Those are great net ratings! But they’re not transcendent, GOAT-team material. They’re not what you might expect from a team that has put together that level of talent alongside a GOAT candidate—a level of talent that LeBron himself thought would be enough for them to easily waltz to a ton of titles.
For reference, with Steph, Durant, and Draymond on the floor, the 2016-2017 Warriors had a +20.04 net rating. They coasted a bit the next two seasons and it was still +13.86 and +15.45. In the pre-Durant years, they were +17.07 and +16.90 with Steph, Draymond, and Klay. We don’t have data for the Bulls dynasty as a whole or on pbsstats, but even in 1996-1997 (i.e. not even the team’s best year), the Bulls were +16.8 in the RS with Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman on the floor. Heck, the Nuggets were +14.53 with Jokic, Murray, and Porter Jr. on the court this past year. The 2008 Celtics were +14.81 with Garnett, Pierce, and Allen on the court (and then were +13.83 the next year, and +13.60 two years after that). The 2005 Spurs were +15.78 with Duncan, Ginobili, and Parker on the floor. The 2007 Spurs were +13.80 with those three. Even the 2006 Spurs were +14.50 with those three! The 2010 Lakers were +17.17 with Kobe, Gasol, and Odom on the floor. To be fair to LeBron, he did notch up a +14.17 with Kyrie and Love in 2014-2015 (but it was +10.55 the next year, and then +10.24 the year after that). But the overall story we see is one where LeBron teamed up with extremely good players for many many years, and it didn’t work with them all on the court together as much as other teams have made it work with top-tier all-time greats and a couple really good players around them (and guys like Odom and Porter Jr are pretty iffy on the “really good player” part). LeBron’s really talented teams have hit a bit of a glass ceiling. I know you’d like to look at how these teams did with LeBron out and try to say that LeBron’s teams were somehow bad despite all the talent. But I think it’s just hard to look at who was on those teams and to have watched those players play and think that they were *actually* anything other than super talented players. And it’s honestly kind of breathtaking that, with all that talent for all those years, *LeBron James* was unable to hit the kind of three-stars-on-court net rating heights that a lot of other teams have hit. It’s a phenomenon that demands an explanation, and I think there’s a fairly obvious explanation that people pretty easily diagnosed while watching them.
You’re free to reject that explanation and instead look at some fairly low-sample-size off data to try to tell us that people like Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love actually weren’t nearly as good as other guys I listed above. But it’s just not super plausible, since we know that they were really good players. Data isn’t everything, especially where all data we have on off samples has a high margin of error and lots of confounding factors. And, in any event, the data also isn’t really all that damning on LeBron’s great teammates anyways, compared to many of the above examples. For instance, in the first three years in Miami, Wade + Bosh with LeBron off had a +3.48 net rating. In three years together, Durant + Draymond + Klay with Steph off had a +3.66 net rating. And yet, when you added Steph to the mix, it went up to +15.92, while adding LeBron to that mix only made it go up to +11.36. In Garnett’s first four years in Boston, Pierce and Allen with Garnett off were +2.41 (i.e. lower than Wade + Bosh without LeBron), but they became +12.30 when Garnett was added (i.e. higher than LeBron + Wade + Bosh). It’s just genuinely true that LeBron has proven to not be an optimal ceiling raiser. And my explanation for that is this issue of specialization. You’re free to disagree if you’d like, and to either reject the premise that LeBron had really talented teammates or to come up with other explanations.
