Is there a reasonable argument that MJ was actually better at basketball than LeBron?

[Rust_Cohle]

LeBron was basically a defensive anchor as a wing. That's insane. Jordan was never that.

And I can't really take you seriously if you think passing is close. It's not. LeBron is closer to Magic as a passer than Jordan is to LeBron.

Jordan mythologizing continues.

Wrong, on top of lebron being incredibly inconsistent as a defender after 2013, Jordan’s 87-88 season trumps lebron defensively. Jordan also has more all defensive teams on top of a DPOY.

Assist averages were awfully close, and this is with lebron playing with much better scorers than Jordan. Jordan also averaged a triple double when he did have to play PG.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, hard to take you seriously about anything

So you're determining who the better passer and overall playmaker is based on assists averages and triple doubles, and I don't know what I'm talking about? LeBron is one of the best passers of all time, he's way closer to the likes of Magic Johnson and Steve Nash and Larry Bird than Jordan is to him. Jordan didn't have the vision, the feel, the touch, or the decision-making to run an offense like LeBron.

And you're just listing defensive accolades, why not, idk, actually look at measures of defensive impact and actually watch the games? Jordan was inconsistent defensively his entire career because of how much he gambled on defense, but he had a great team and coaching around him that allowed him to do so. And LeBron may have been inconsistent in the RS, but certainly not in the playoffs. His defensive impact was insane in pretty much every playoff run.

You think Jordan was a better defensive player than Tim Duncan too? He's got a DPOY over him as well. Thankfully, we know better than to just go by media awards. Jordan never had the defensive impact of LeBron, and that's just obvious from the eye test, but it's pretty easy to objectively prove that too. Size matters, IQ matters, and LeBron trumps Jordan there.

There is so so much wrong with this post it is hard to tell where to begin.

averaged 8 APG for 1 season, 8.4 in his first title run, and 11.4 in his first Finals

Lebron played with much better scoring talent than MJ ever did. Jordan was not given the playmaking duties lebron was allowed to have. When he was, he averaged a triple double. The gap between Jordan and lebron is very small, and even smaller defensively with the edge going to MJ.

Playing in the triangle absolutely hampered Jordan’s assist numbers.

[PassMeTheBall]

If Lebron was so great why did he always need superteams or top 5 players in the league to win all of his rings? He was the best player in the league yet he needed two #1 caliber option teammates to win. Why could Kobe beat the Celtics without a superteam but Lebron needed to form a team with Wade & Bosh to overcome them. He also had the huge meltdown against the Mavericks in 2011 which officially ended any debate he had with Jordan. Jordan doesn't have 1 playoff blemish on his resume in terms of playing bad individually in a series. Lebron has 5 of them.

[therealbig3]

Jordan faced Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, and the Bad Boys Pistons 4 years in a row. LeBron faced the Demar Derozan Raptors 3 years in a row and an over the hill Paul Pierce 4 times in 5 years.

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Two things - First, perimeter defenders were allowed to put hands on the offensive player. This allowed them to more effectively direct the offensive player where they wanted them and gave them an advantage getting steals. Second, the gameplan against Jordan wasn't to stop his drive, but to clobber him with bigs who's primary talent was beating the hell out of people. I don't think it's an accurate assessment to act like KJ or Dumars were just on an island trying to defend Jordan and him beating them meant that he wasn't going against a stingy defense.

I think that's just what the Pistons tried to do, but even then, the Celtics and Pistons and Spurs that LeBron faced all had fantastic interior defense as well. Even the 09 Magic that he shredded...Dwight Howard was the DPOY and the premier rim protector in the league.

Also, the Suns in general were not a strong defense. They actually wanted to stop his drive, which is why they switched to KJ instead of Majerle. I think most teams tried to stop the drive actually, a defense intentionally allowing a superstar to get into the paint doesn't make a lot of sense. I do think the reason defensive gameplans changed to just have size inside against Jordan is because they just didn't have the personnel to stay in front of him. Which I think is really just due to a lack of good defensive talent on the perimeter. If guys like Bowen, Kawhi, Prince, Iggy, Klay, Durant, Sefalosha (only naming the really good ones, there are others that I think are actually quite good but I won't go into them) were around on the playoff teams Jordan played back then, I don't think the strategy would have been to let him get into the paint.

Hand checking is also pretty overstated. If you just look at the film, especially in the playoffs, I'm really not seeing much difference in terms of perimeter contact. I do see more simplistic defenses in the 80s and 90s that a genius like LeBron would consistently shred over and over, especially without nearly as many great perimeter defenders to give him much resistance.

[Rust_Cohle]

Jordan faced Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, and the Bad Boys Pistons 4 years in a row. LeBron faced the Demar Derozan Raptors 3 years in a row and an over the hill Paul Pierce 4 times in 5 years.

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Another rubbish post by you as you
Know nothing about Dumars. Tony Allen was pretty short too by your logic he wasn’t as good as Paul pierce defensively

https://youtu.be/jI5rtKQD9GE?si=A98fbuYzbvQfFuZx

[Slimjimzv]

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Two things - First, perimeter defenders were allowed to put hands on the offensive player. This allowed them to more effectively direct the offensive player where they wanted them and gave them an advantage getting steals. Second, the gameplan against Jordan wasn't to stop his drive, but to clobber him with bigs who's primary talent was beating the hell out of people. I don't think it's an accurate assessment to act like KJ or Dumars were just on an island trying to defend Jordan and him beating them meant that he wasn't going against a stingy defense.

I think that's just what the Pistons tried to do, but even then, the Celtics and Pistons and Spurs that LeBron faced all had fantastic interior defense as well. Even the 09 Magic that he shredded...Dwight Howard was the DPOY and the premier rim protector in the league.

Also, the Suns in general were not a strong defense. They actually wanted to stop his drive, which is why they switched to KJ instead of Majerle. I think most teams tried to stop the drive actually, a defense intentionally allowing a superstar to get into the paint doesn't make a lot of sense. I do think the reason defensive gameplans changed to just have size inside against Jordan is because they just didn't have the personnel to stay in front of him. Which I think is really just due to a lack of good defensive talent on the perimeter. If guys like Bowen, Kawhi, Prince, Iggy, Klay, Durant, Sefalosha (only naming the really good ones, there are others that I think are actually quite good but I won't go into them) were around on the playoff teams Jordan played back then, I don't think the strategy would have been to let him get into the paint.

Hand checking is also pretty overstated. If you just look at the film, especially in the playoffs, I'm really not seeing much difference in terms of perimeter contact. I do see more simplistic defenses in the 80s and 90s that a genius like LeBron would consistently shred over and over, especially without nearly as many great perimeter defenders to give him much resistance.

I will grant that both offensive and defensive scheming have come a LONG way since the 90's, and LeBron's experience against more complicated defenses may give him an advantage. However, Jordan adjusted to all the defenses he saw, and I have no reason to believe he wouldn't have been able to adjust to more modern defenses (and better defensive players) if he had been exposed to them. I watched both guys through their entire careers and, once they got going, never saw anyone able to contain either of them. I don't know that there's a great argument either way to say one was a better scorer than the other. Lebron has longevity and played in a more uptempo era, so he has a ton more points.

I do think Lebron was a better passer, but I think Jordan was a better defender. Overall, they're pretty evenly matched. Hence all the handwringing about who was better. What bothers me is the tenor of the post that indicates it isn't close. Of course it's close. If it wasn't, this wouldn't be a topic. You don't see anyone arguing whether Shawn Bradley was a better center than Shaq.

[therealbig3]

Wrong, on top of lebron being incredibly inconsistent as a defender after 2013, Jordan’s 87-88 season trumps lebron defensively. Jordan also has more all defensive teams on top of a DPOY.

Assist averages were awfully close, and this is with lebron playing with much better scorers than Jordan. Jordan also averaged a triple double when he did have to play PG.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, hard to take you seriously about anything

So you're determining who the better passer and overall playmaker is based on assists averages and triple doubles, and I don't know what I'm talking about? LeBron is one of the best passers of all time, he's way closer to the likes of Magic Johnson and Steve Nash and Larry Bird than Jordan is to him. Jordan didn't have the vision, the feel, the touch, or the decision-making to run an offense like LeBron.

And you're just listing defensive accolades, why not, idk, actually look at measures of defensive impact and actually watch the games? Jordan was inconsistent defensively his entire career because of how much he gambled on defense, but he had a great team and coaching around him that allowed him to do so. And LeBron may have been inconsistent in the RS, but certainly not in the playoffs. His defensive impact was insane in pretty much every playoff run.

You think Jordan was a better defensive player than Tim Duncan too? He's got a DPOY over him as well. Thankfully, we know better than to just go by media awards. Jordan never had the defensive impact of LeBron, and that's just obvious from the eye test, but it's pretty easy to objectively prove that too. Size matters, IQ matters, and LeBron trumps Jordan there.

Jordan was also very consistent on defense in the playoffs. Lebron was a much better passer. Jordon was a much better defender. Both IMO.

I don't see Jordan's advantage on defense at all, outside of accolades. I think LeBron could do everything Jordan could do but better, just given his size and strength and overall defensive versatility. I also think LeBron played a crucial role especially on the Cavs and Heat and Cavs again in terms of quarterbacking the defense, probably in large part due to seeing what KG did for the Celtics. I've seen him consistently predict what the offense was trying to do and blow it up time and time again. Directing teammates to where they need to be, calling out when they need to switch and when they need to stay on their man, and then often times taking on the toughest defensive assignment himself and shutting them down. I never really saw that with Jordan, I think he was a great individual defender who tended to gamble a lot, but had defensive personnel around him that could cover for it. I don't think he really approached what LeBron did as far as team defense and actually being the anchor for the team. LeBron's playoff teams pretty consistently fell off hard defensively whenever he went to the bench. When Jordan left in the 90s, the Bulls were still a dominant defense and didn't really miss him in that regard. Without really having time to find an adequate replacement either.

+/- metrics over the years paint LeBron as one of the greatest perimeter defenders of all time.

[Slimjimzv]

I don't see Jordan's advantage on defense at all, outside of accolades. I think LeBron could do everything Jordan could do but better, just given his size and strength and overall defensive versatility. I also think LeBron played a crucial role especially on the Cavs and Heat and Cavs again in terms of quarterbacking the defense, probably in large part due to seeing what KG did for the Celtics. I've seen him consistently predict what the offense was trying to do and blow it up time and time again. Directing teammates to where they need to be, calling out when they need to switch and when they need to stay on their man, and then often times taking on the toughest defensive assignment himself and shutting them down. I never really saw that with Jordan, I think he was a great individual defender who tended to gamble a lot, but had defensive personnel around him that could cover for it. I don't think he really approached what LeBron did as far as team defense and actually being the anchor for the team. LeBron's playoff teams pretty consistently fell off hard defensively whenever he went to the bench. When Jordan left in the 90s, the Bulls were still a dominant defense and didn't really miss him in that regard. Without really having time to find an adequate replacement either.

+/- metrics over the years paint LeBron as one of the greatest perimeter defenders of all time.

As a Jazz fan through the 90's, I can tell you that they did their best to scheme their offense away from Jordan. I didn't watch every game against every other team, but what I saw of him, he was a terror on defense. I will grant that Pippin was the real anchor of that defense, so you may have a point there, but when Jordan was locked in, he was shutting down his man. He and Pippen took turns breaking Kukoc in the Olympics.

In total transparency, I probably have a bias since I watched Jordan kill my teams over and over again, and the Thunder were only good enough to get crushed by LeBron once, and that series wasn't his total dominance as much as it was the big 3 of the Heat coming together to beat the inexperienced Thunder. It's hard to overcome bias, though, so my pick for GOAT is Jordan. In 10 years, I strongly suspect more people will choose LeBron as GOAT though.

[therealbig3]

Jordan faced Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, and the Bad Boys Pistons 4 years in a row. LeBron faced the Demar Derozan Raptors 3 years in a row and an over the hill Paul Pierce 4 times in 5 years.

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Another rubbish post by you as you
Know nothing about Dumars. Tony Allen was pretty short too by your logic he wasn’t as good as Paul pierce defensively

https://youtu.be/jI5rtKQD9GE?si=A98fbuYzbvQfFuZx

Tony Allen was 6'5, not that small.

But yes, I think a 6'6 forward who had quick enough feet to stay in front of you and was strong as an ox, and was as savvy as they come, is a tougher defensive matchup than a 6'3 guard who, to his credit, is also strong, quick, and smart as hell. But size matters.

[lessthanjake]

The rationale behind that was basically well-they-have-the-league's-best-record-and-they-have-LeBron-so-I-guess-they-will-win. Nobody was exactly gushing about 'Mo Williams and Anthony Parker lol. If the roster was worth a damn they wouldn't have been the league's worst team the following season. And I know what you're going to say - that they were "built for LeBron" and blah blah. Except there is no such thing as a championship team that collapses without its best player. They still manage to be respectable (or in Bulls' case, win 55 games). The fact that Cleveland was literally the worst team in the league in 2011, even when they fully came into that season with the intention to win, tells you everything you need to know about them.

They were not even remotely the same team the next year. Like look at the 2011 Cavaliers and think about how many games were actually played by guys who were major players on the 2010 Cavaliers. Basically everyone on the 2010 Cavaliers either left or missed a huge portion of the 2011 season. Out of the guys that played the top 7 most minutes for the Cavaliers in the 2010 playoffs (i.e. the core of their playoff rotation), 3 players (including LeBron) were not there the next year, and three of the others played 31, 36, and 56 games. Anthony Parker was literally the only guy who was there and actually played a lot of games. And meanwhile, the coach was also different. So you’re just comparing to a team that was not even remotely similar.

So yeah, it is actually true that the team was built for LeBron (specifically to optimize around his heliocentric style). But it’s also the case that that’s not the most important thing when it comes to a comparison to the 2011 Cavaliers, since at a more basic level they also simply weren’t even remotely the same team.

As for saying it was just “well-they-have-the-league's-best-record-and-they-have-LeBron-so-I-guess-they-will-win,” that’s part of it of course, but this just handwaves away the fact that the performance of the supporting cast is a significant part of why they had the league’s best record in the first place. LeBron’s teams typically didn’t have the league’s best record, even when he had tons of talent around him and was still in his peak years! Saying “well they have the league’s best record and they have LeBron,” is essentially akin to saying “well they have LeBron and a good team around him.” And yeah, that *is* why they were big favorites.

Because the 2009 and 2010 Cavs are essentially GOAT-level floor raising seasons.

LeBron himself literally never had a team do as well in the regular season as the 2009 Cavs did (tied for his best regular season record, and easily is the best SRS his teams ever got). And yet you somehow think that those Cavs were bad and only had good results because of LeBron? That’s basically just waving a magic wand at things and deciding to believe whatever you want. The reality is that teams don’t do that well without a high-performing supporting cast. And it makes no sense to selectively deny that in this case and say it was all about LeBron, when we know that LeBron hasn’t had teams do that well even when he *did* have high-performing supporting casts while still in his peak years. The simple and obvious answer here is that they were a great team, that played great defense and was built really well around LeBron.

Furthermore, this whole explanation again just isn’t consistent with contemporaneous perception of the teams. If people thought LeBron had just hard carried a team in the regular season that wasn’t actually good enough, then they wouldn’t have had pre-playoff title odds that were incredibly good. And they especially wouldn’t have had them in 2010, after people had already seen them lose in the playoffs once after a great regular season. People had a lot of confidence in them because they were a really good team that was consistently performing at a very high level!

What defensively slanted roster . They were starting Shaq's corpse, Jamison and 'Mo Williams at 3 of the 5 positions. LeBron was so good from 09-13 that pretty much anything around him was bound to look like a "good fit".

Varejao was one of the league’s best defenders in those years. Delonte West was a defensively-slanted player. So was Anthony Parker IMO, as well as obviously Ilgauskas. And that’s not even talking about the 2009 Cavs, which had Ben Wallace. Moreover, leaving aside the actual roster itself, they had Mike Brown, who was one of the very best defensive coaches of the era. Overall, the 2009 and 2010 Cavs put up 5.9 and 3.5 relative DRTGs—which was very elite defensively, in an area of the game that is inherently dependent on the team performing well as a whole and really cannot be plausibly considered to be carried by one player (and especially one that isn’t a big man). And, indeed, it’s even more implausible that that’d be the case when we see that when LeBron went to the Heat while still in his defensive peak, his teams weren’t as good defensively overall as those 2009 and 2010 Cavs were (the 2011-2014 Heat averaged a 2.8 relative DRTG). Those Cavs supporting casts played objectively great defense. If you think that those Cavs weren’t defensively slanted, then that just reflects that despite being good enough defensively to be undeniably elite defensively, they possessed enough offensive ability (including, probably most notably shooting ability) that you don’t think they were really “slanted” towards defense. But that would support my conclusion, not yours.

if that 2009 Cavs team was so great outside of LeBron, why couldn't they make the finals when LeBron had the GOAT postseason? Ya know, the year he had a 37.4 PER in the playoffs.

Well, let’s dig into that.

The Cavs utterly destroyed the teams they faced in the first two rounds, sweeping them in completely dominant fashion, in a way that you wouldn’t expect to see from a team that wasn’t a really great team. This included being utterly dominant defensively. So the first two rounds of the playoffs actually support the idea that that team was great outside of LeBron.

So this point you’re making really just boils down to one series. As an initial matter, one series is just one series. So the answer may just be that things randomly didn’t fall their way—especially when they were facing a good team (59-win, 6.5 SRS Magic) and the series was close. But I think we can look at it more granularly than that. What specifically caused them to lose that series? Well, it certainly wasn’t the offense. The Cavs scored 110.6 points per 100 possessions against the Magic—a team that only gave up 101.9 points per 100 possessions in the regular season. So the Cavs’ offense held up really well. Indeed, they were significantly better offensively against the Magic than they had been in the regular season (+4.4 rORTG in the regular season vs. +8.7 rORTG against the Magic). Of course, some of that increase can be attributed to LeBron playing even better than normal offensively in that series. But what we can definitely say is that the Cavs’ offense held up very well in that series, despite the lack of a “proper #2 option” that people talk about. In fact, the Cavs torched the Magic’s defense just as much as the Lakers did in the Finals (where the Lakers won in 5 games).

So why did the Cavs lose despite having a great offense in the series? Well, the Magic actually torched the Cavs defense. Why did that happen? Well, I think it’s a combination of a matchup issue that the Cavs weren’t quite able to figure out, combined with a good deal of positive shooting variance from the Magic. Basically, the Magic could play four-out with Dwight, and the Cavs couldn’t really single-cover Dwight. That probably would have been fine (few teams had someone who could really single-cover Dwight), except the Magic wings shot incredibly well on their threes. Lewis and Pietrus both shot almost 50% from three on a pretty high volume, and Turkoglu shot above his season average too! It ended up being too much, but it was a series the Cavs probably would’ve won with shooting variance being a bit more favorable to them. Sometimes there’s series like that, and it’s probably why the 2010 Cavs were such big favorites again, even after having lost the previous year—people recognized that them losing in 2009 was not really indicative of some fundamental weakness, but rather was a bad matchup combined with an opponent getting hot from three.

[Rust_Cohle]

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Another rubbish post by you as you
Know nothing about Dumars. Tony Allen was pretty short too by your logic he wasn’t as good as Paul pierce defensively

https://youtu.be/jI5rtKQD9GE?si=A98fbuYzbvQfFuZx

Tony Allen was 6'5, not that small.

But yes, I think a 6'6 forward who had quick enough feet to stay in front of you and was strong as an ox, and was as savvy as they come, is a tougher defensive matchup than a 6'3 guard who, to his credit, is also strong, quick, and smart as hell. But size matters.

Buddy Tony Allen was 6’4, an inch taller than Dumars.

[therealbig3]

Another rubbish post by you as you
Know nothing about Dumars. Tony Allen was pretty short too by your logic he wasn’t as good as Paul pierce defensively

https://youtu.be/jI5rtKQD9GE?si=A98fbuYzbvQfFuZx

Tony Allen was 6'5, not that small.

But yes, I think a 6'6 forward who had quick enough feet to stay in front of you and was strong as an ox, and was as savvy as they come, is a tougher defensive matchup than a 6'3 guard who, to his credit, is also strong, quick, and smart as hell. But size matters.

Buddy Tony Allen was 6’4, an inch taller than Dumars.

I mean, if you want to compare the two, I think Tony Allen is one of the best individual defenders of all time and clearly a little better than Dumars anyway, so I don’t think it’s the same comparison.

I do think size matters though. Tony Allen was good enough that he made it not so a lot of the time, but yeah, I still think a 6’6 wing with some athleticism and strength offers a tougher defensive matchup than a 6’3 guard. Unless in really rare circumstances where that guard is one of the singular best individual defenders ever (like Allen, or Payton). Dumars was very good, but he wasn’t that. In general, I also think if you compare elite perimeter defenders, I’d still take a bigger defender with equal smarts and skills (I’m taking Iguodala and Kawhi over Payton and Allen every time).

[lessthanjake]

So you're determining who the better passer and overall playmaker is based on assists averages and triple doubles, and I don't know what I'm talking about? LeBron is one of the best passers of all time, he's way closer to the likes of Magic Johnson and Steve Nash and Larry Bird than Jordan is to him. Jordan didn't have the vision, the feel, the touch, or the decision-making to run an offense like LeBron.

And you're just listing defensive accolades, why not, idk, actually look at measures of defensive impact and actually watch the games? Jordan was inconsistent defensively his entire career because of how much he gambled on defense, but he had a great team and coaching around him that allowed him to do so. And LeBron may have been inconsistent in the RS, but certainly not in the playoffs. His defensive impact was insane in pretty much every playoff run.

You think Jordan was a better defensive player than Tim Duncan too? He's got a DPOY over him as well. Thankfully, we know better than to just go by media awards. Jordan never had the defensive impact of LeBron, and that's just obvious from the eye test, but it's pretty easy to objectively prove that too. Size matters, IQ matters, and LeBron trumps Jordan there.

Jordan was also very consistent on defense in the playoffs. Lebron was a much better passer. Jordon was a much better defender. Both IMO.

I don't see Jordan's advantage on defense at all, outside of accolades. I think LeBron could do everything Jordan could do but better, just given his size and strength and overall defensive versatility. I also think LeBron played a crucial role especially on the Cavs and Heat and Cavs again in terms of quarterbacking the defense, probably in large part due to seeing what KG did for the Celtics. I've seen him consistently predict what the offense was trying to do and blow it up time and time again. Directing teammates to where they need to be, calling out when they need to switch and when they need to stay on their man, and then often times taking on the toughest defensive assignment himself and shutting them down. I never really saw that with Jordan, I think he was a great individual defender who tended to gamble a lot, but had defensive personnel around him that could cover for it. I don't think he really approached what LeBron did as far as team defense and actually being the anchor for the team. LeBron's playoff teams pretty consistently fell off hard defensively whenever he went to the bench. When Jordan left in the 90s, the Bulls were still a dominant defense and didn't really miss him in that regard. Without really having time to find an adequate replacement either.

+/- metrics over the years paint LeBron as one of the greatest perimeter defenders of all time.

Regarding the bolded, I don’t think that’s really right.

The Bulls had such a great offense with Jordan that they were really coming up against the area where you have diminishing marginal returns on defense, because you’re just destroying teams. When you are blowing teams out, your defense naturally lets up, and those Bulls were hitting up against historical net rating highs so this came into play a whole lot for them. The Bulls offense when Jordan was retired wasn’t all that good, so this didn’t come into play as much. I think what’s really telling in this regard is how the Bulls defense did in the playoffs. In the playoffs, you can hold teams further below their normal offensive rating before hitting the zone where you’re just blowing teams out, because the teams you’re playing normally do really well and win. With that in mind, it’s surely not a coincidence that the dynasty Bulls always had a much better relative defensive rating in the playoffs than they did in the regular season. In fact, the second-three-peat Bulls had the 3rd best three-year playoff relative DRTG in NBA history, and the only two teams above them all lost early in the playoffs at some point in that span. So the second-three-peat Bulls have a good case for being the best playoff defense in NBA history. The first-three-peat Bulls also leveled up a good bit on defense in the playoffs. Meanwhile, in the playoffs they played without Jordan, the 1994 Bulls had…a decent defense and that’s it. It was worse than their regular season defense, which was already worse than what the Bulls were averaging in the playoffs with Jordan (and was way worse than what they did in the second-three-peat playoffs). To put some numbers on this, the second-three-peat Bulls had a ridiculous -8.3 rDRTG in the playoffs (negative numbers are good). The first-three-peat Bulls had a -4.4 rDRTG in the playoffs. Without Jordan, the 1994 Bulls had a -1.3 rDRTG in the playoffs. That was easily the worst the Bulls defense did in the playoffs in any year since 1987. So I think a proper way of reading this would probably be that the Bulls did actually get a lot better defensively with Jordan, and that that simply manifested itself most obviously in the playoffs (though it is also true that they became better defensively even in the regular season, when Jordan came back).

The other thing I’d note is that Rodman and Pippen both actually missed a lot of games in those second-three-peat years, and the Bulls’ DRTG in those missed games were very similar or better than in the games those guys played. So there’s not much reason to believe that those were the guys really driving the Bulls defense being so elite.

Finally, I’d note that Jordan missed almost the entirety of the 1986 season, and the Bulls proceeded to have one of the 50 worst defenses in the history of the NBA (as measured by relative DRTG)! The Bulls were massively better defensively in both of the surrounding years, when Jordan actually played, including becoming 5.9 DRTG points better in 1987. (Note: The Bulls were also a lot better defensively in the few games in that 1986 season that Jordan played in and played remotely normal minutes in).

[Rust_Cohle]

Tony Allen was 6'5, not that small.

But yes, I think a 6'6 forward who had quick enough feet to stay in front of you and was strong as an ox, and was as savvy as they come, is a tougher defensive matchup than a 6'3 guard who, to his credit, is also strong, quick, and smart as hell. But size matters.

Buddy Tony Allen was 6’4, an inch taller than Dumars.

I mean, if you want to compare the two, I think Tony Allen is one of the best individual defenders of all time and clearly a little better than Dumars anyway, so I don’t think it’s the same comparison.

I do think size matters though. Tony Allen was good enough that he made it not so a lot of the time, but yeah, I still think a 6’6 wing with some athleticism and strength offers a tougher defensive matchup than a 6’3 guard. Unless in really rare circumstances where that guard is one of the singular best individual defenders ever (like Allen, or Payton). Dumars was very good, but he wasn’t that. In general, I also think if you compare elite perimeter defenders, I’d still take a bigger defender with equal smarts and skills (I’m taking Iguodala and Kawhi over Payton and Allen every time).

I agree, I would take Kawhi but iggy not for me

[Lalouie]

geeeeez. do you stans ever stop?

[LaLover11]

If Lebron was so great why did he always need superteams or top 5 players in the league to win all of his rings? He was the best player in the league yet he needed two #1 caliber option teammates to win. Why could Kobe beat the Celtics without a superteam but Lebron needed to form a team with Wade & Bosh to overcome them. He also had the huge meltdown against the Mavericks in 2011 which officially ended any debate he had with Jordan. Jordan doesn't have 1 playoff blemish on his resume in terms of playing bad individually in a series. Lebron has 5 of them.

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[PassMeTheBall]

If Lebron was so great why did he always need superteams or top 5 players in the league to win all of his rings? He was the best player in the league yet he needed two #1 caliber option teammates to win. Why could Kobe beat the Celtics without a superteam but Lebron needed to form a team with Wade & Bosh to overcome them. He also had the huge meltdown against the Mavericks in 2011 which officially ended any debate he had with Jordan. Jordan doesn't have 1 playoff blemish on his resume in terms of playing bad individually in a series. Lebron has 5 of them.

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What did I say that isn't true?

[MavsDirk41]

Not really. LeBron is the more dominant overall force on both sides of the ball. MJ was a slightly better scorer, specifically as a shooter off the dribble and from the FT line. Otherwise, LeBron basically did everything better, and impact metrics prove it.

Add on the fact that he sustained that level of play a lot longer and there’s no debate here other than from 90s heads engaging in nostalgia.

Jordan was the better defender and better offensive player…better handles, better mid range shot, better post game, quicker, better first step, more explosive getting to the rim…James is a better passer but thats it. You want me to provide some metrics? Goes both ways…

[MavsDirk41]

MJ better scorer,
LeBron is a better passer , rebounder, and defender, (while being close as a scorer)

James isnt a better defender than Jordan. Not sure where people get that

[ScrantonBulls]

MJ better scorer,
LeBron is a better passer , rebounder, and defender, (while being close as a scorer)

James isnt a better defender than Jordan. Not sure where people get that

they're both elite defensively. What leads you to definitively saying one is better than the other?

[NZB2323]

Jordan faced Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, and the Bad Boys Pistons 4 years in a row. LeBron faced the Demar Derozan Raptors 3 years in a row and an over the hill Paul Pierce 4 times in 5 years.

You have clips of Rodman guarding Jordan at times, but his primary defender was Dumars. Dumars was 6'3" and gave up a ton of size and strength to Jordan. Sorry if I'm not too impressed.

Paul Pierce is a tougher man defender to go up against than Dumars to be honest with you. He's 6'6", deceptively quick, and strong as hell. Also the type of guy that is allowed to get away with a ton of contact. With KG backing him up. LOL, you're really trying to use the Celtics as an example of a team that had weak defense?

It's not really close man, the Suns were using 6'1" Kevin Johnson on Jordan for crying out loud, because the apparently all-defensive Dan Majerle moved like his feet were stuck in cement and KJ was the only one with any hope of staying in front of Jordan.

The fact that A. Majerle made All-Defense, and B. KJ was the only one that could stay in front of Jordan really tells you how freaking weak perimeter defense was at the time. EVERY team now (at least every good one) has a 6'5-6'8 wing that is strong and athletic and can actually somewhat keep up with other great athletes, even freaks like Jordan and LeBron. And Majerle would be a defensive liability. A wing that has no lateral quickness and couldn't stay in front of an opposing wing with any sort of consistency making All-Defense is wild lol.

Are we using team defense or individual defenders? You have to be consistent. If we talk team defense Jordan went against teams with Ewing, Rodman, Horace Grant, Shaq, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Mourning, and Mutumbo. You can’t count KG for Lebron and then not count these bigs for Jordan.

Your argument is they’re short, so they’re bad defensive players. Smart is 6’3” and won DPOTY. White and Holiday are 6’4”. Are they bad defensive players? I guess Green must have been terrible as a defensive big because he’s only 6’6”, and Jordan played against taller defensive bigs.

Your argument is that Jordan went up against a defensive player that was 3 inches shorter than him, but Paul Pierce is 3 inches shorter than LeBron. Pierce was also 30, 32, 33, and 34 in years he went up against LeBron in the playoffs. Iggy is also 3 inches shorter than LeBron, and went up against LeBron when he was 32-35. It’s just amazing that as a forward, LeBron faced taller defensive players than a guard did.

You say Marjerle would be a defensive liability, but LeBron went up against Hedo Turkoglu. Who is the great defensive player that LeBron faced on the Demar DeRozan Raptors that he faced 3 years in a row?

There’s over an hour of footage of Rodman guarding Jordan, and he’s 3 inches taller than Jordan! Tim Duncan must be the GOAT, since he beat Shawn Bradley in the playoffs twice, and Shawn Bradley is 7’6”!

The 1997 Chicago Bulls are the only team in NBA history to beat the tallest player in NBA history, Gheorghe Mureșan, who was 7’7” in a playoff series, and they swept him! He’s 13 inches taller than Draymond Green, so he must be a much better defensive player, and this makes Jordan better than LeBron.