Cavsfansince84 wrote:KembaWalker wrote:
Winning with the same aging core is much harder than changing teams, especially repeating. That’s why nobody even tries anymore. This argument isn’t swaying anyone, ever
a. I don't get the 'no one even tries anymore' statement. Everyone tries(except for Kawhi in 2020) and some succeed.
b. Re the bolded part. If its so much easier to just switch teams why didn't MJ just do that rather than retire at 35? The reason he didn't is he knew full well how hard it would actually be and how it would be setting himself up for failure rather than retiring with his 6-0 in finals record in tact and his legacy secure. He didn't want to mess with that the same way he retired after the first 3 peat because deep down he knew how hard it would be to do 4 in a row and he'd rather sit out than risk losing. That's what I think. He said over and over again how burnt out he was(which I'm sure he was) but what it comes down to is him not wanting to have a season below the standard he'd set for himself which is a copout tbh. LeBron whether you like him or not just kept coming back and making finals runs season after season after season. No early retirements, no years off.
I actually think this is right. I’d be surprised if skepticism regarding winning again didn’t play a big part in Jordan retiring after the 1998 title. The team was really old and there was organizational strife, so if he’d stayed, there would’ve been huge roster and coaching turnover, or alternatively they’d have fielded a team that would’ve been clearly past it (and with a new coach). Obviously, that made there be a lot of uncertainty as to how things would’ve gone. Going to a different team was I guess theoretically an option, but it wasn’t something that a player of Jordan’s iconic title-winning stature did at that point. Magic, Bird, and Russell had been one-team players, and Kareem had left a team early in his career but not for basketball reasons. Wilt was the only super high-stature guy who did something similar, but it was sort of seen as evidence of weakness and an acknowledgment of inferiority, and he was not seen as a winner. For Jordan to have left for a different team at that point would’ve honestly been profoundly bizarre. LeBron himself ultimately changed the mindset on this a lot (and got a lot of criticism—I think mostly undeserved—for doing so), but I doubt Jordan thought very seriously about leaving Chicago at that point. I think the main options were just to retire as the virtually unanimous GOAT or to endure a rebuild at age 35+.
And I think what’s important to realize about this is that the incentives for these two guys are different. By the time he retired after the 1998 title, Jordan was already widely understood to be the GOAT. If you’re already virtually unanimously acknowledged to be the GOAT, there’s little reason to bother dealing with a rebuild in order to try to achieve even more. He was already clearly at the top of the mountain! And if you’re at the top already, there’s basically nowhere to go but down. That’s just not the case with LeBron. He has never been the consensus GOAT, and so he has always had something to chase. There has never been a time when he could sit back and rest on his laurels and feel like there’s no good reason to keep going because he’s already at the top of the mountain. I feel like anyone who has done competitive things and experienced both chasing others’ achievements and then passing them should understand the huge difference there is there.
The end result of these differing incentive structures is that LeBron probably has a bigger longevity gap over Jordan than he would if you reversed which one came first chronologically, while Jordan may have a more immaculate fairy-tale-like career than if he’d felt like there was real competition at the top of history and therefore felt more reason to keep going. Interestingly, those things are two of the biggest arguments each one has over the other, and I do think they’re at least partially (but not entirely) a product of circumstance/chronology.