Superior defender: MJ or LeBron?

[SerialChiller]

Not a big Lebron fan, but it's him. Just more versatile...

[OhayoKD]

First, 88 Jordan is in the conversation for greatest perimeter player we've ever seen. IMO it's not that close.
Unfortunately, most people here just don't remember or haven't gotten a chance to see it.

It seems "most people" includes you.

Friedly reminder it wasn't just the steals that were inflated:

Spoiler:

I wouldn’t say that analysis of 40 possessions in a random game is particularly persuasive of anything.
Alright, then how about we do another one. This time from 1988 when Jordan was the leading shotblocker on his team and 16th in blocks in the whole NBA. The first full game that shows up from CHI vs DET on youtube is Game 3 where Jordan was one of two Chicago players to record a block:

Watch on YouTube

Distribution went

Oakley 13
Corzine 9
Pippen 8
Grant 6
Jordan 3
Sam Vincient 2
Rory Sparrow 1
Elston Turner 1

(Doesn't add up exactly to 40 as there were a couple splits)

Some notes:
-> rim-load only tracks usage, not efficacy, I'd say Oakley was very effective, Corzine not, Pippen Grant and Vincient were also effective, Sparrow and Turner not.
-> Jordan was very effective the one time the other team drove, but the first 2 times he's credited as the paint-protector were quick possessions where the other team didn't really try to drive.
-> Oakley had the most possessions where if I gave secondary credit he'd also be the #2, Grant and Pippen would come after

Jordan has never been close to Lebron defensively. The question you should be asking is whether he was even better than Oakley.

Watch on YouTube

(from 15:50)

Elgee is being charitable here, but it's pretty obvious from the tape that MJ plays a high risk style of defense, going for steals and plays and frankly isn't exactly great on discipline (egregious reaching against Magic multiple times in the clip) or awareness (missing rotations). LeBron isn't perfect as a defender but at his best he makes less fundamental mistakes while being more versatile due to his size.

Elgee is not just being charitable, he's burying the lede. His video makes it seem Jordan provides comparable positive value to any non-big but is just giving some of it back via those "fundamental mistakes". But Jordan actually isn't offering a comparable amount of positive impact in the first place. Even if Jordan wasn't more mistake-prone, they would not be comparable; Lebron is a much better paint-protector, a much better floor-general, a much better rebounder, and a better help defender (and at his best (09) was also an elite man defender).

Defensively they are not close, and this was true even when Lebron was 30 and 31. But acknowledging that pretty much ends any meaningful claim for Jordan as a goat-level peak (at least by Ben's alleged criteria), so instead we have this watered down version where Jordan had a little teensy flaw as opposed to fundamentally being incapable of impacting defenses the same way wings can.

Why dont you share the mountains of evidence

Why would you care? Even if he posted mountains of very credible evidence, you literally wouldn't care and it wouldn't change your mind. You love your guy and will defend him at all costs, facts be damned. It would be a waste of his time.

Exactly- instead of that troll going after the MJ fanboys nonsensical takes “ this is insulting to Jordan blah blah blah”, he goes after my very reasonable take that LeBron has demonstrated being a more impactful defender in his prime. Dude is a waste of time.

For posterity then:

ebron 09-21
656-263 with lebron 0.714% win rate
37-73 without lebron 0.336% win rate
net rating with lebron +6.49 (59 win pace level)
net rating without lebron -5.50 (25 win pace level)
+8.6 ortg difference
-3.68 drtg difference
+12 total swing



jordan 88-98
bulls with MJ 490-176 (73.6% win rate)
bulls without MJ 90-64 (58.4% win rate)
net rating with MJ +7.7 (62 win pace level)
net rating without MJ +3.6 (52 win pace level)
+5.1 ortg difference
+1.1 drtg difference
+4 total swing

As always it comes down to Win-padding or stat-padding:

> “Michael was better at getting people to do whatever he wanted,” Pippen wrote. “I saw it over and over, from the first training camp in 1987 to the last victory rally in 1998. Here’s how it worked: Say I deflected the ball and tapped it over to him. I should get credit with the steal, right? Nope.

> More often than not, the steal went into his column on the stat sheet, and I could do nothing about it.

> “One night, a scorekeeper came into the locker room after the game to hand the stat sheets to Phil Jackson and the coaching staff. The sheet breaks down the points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots, turnovers, and so on for everyone who played the game. I couldn’t believe the look the guy gave Michael: ‘See MJ, we take care of you.’ No wonder in the nine full seasons we played together, he averaged more steals than me in every year except two.”

Since switching to point guard for the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan has become statistic conscious. He has started checking with statisticians to see how close he is to a triple-double. He had a string of seven consecutive triple-doubles broken Friday night.
"The guys at the scorer's desk let me know what I need," Jordan said.
So, too, do the Bulls' assistant coaches.
"They keep reminding me when I get back to the huddle," Jordan said. "They say, 'You need three more of this. You need four more of that.' "

In general, I tried to give Michael room to figure out how to integrate his personal ambitions with those of the team. “Phil knew that winning the scoring title was important to me,”

According to one official, Hughes was explicitly told by Jordan to get him the ball if he wanted to play. When Hughes began passing it to Stackhouse as much as to Jordan, he was soon benched. Point guard Tyronn Lue, the official said, obliged and began finding Jordan every time he played. ''He was scared to death of what would happen to him in his career if he didn't,'' the player said of Lue. ''He was always looking at the bench at Michael.''

Late last fall, Richard Hamilton and Jordan got into an ugly shouting match. The two officials said it began when Hamilton told Jordan he was tired of being a ''Jordannaire,'' the term used for Jordan's role players in Chicago. ''Rip was a young, brash guy who threatened the idea of Michael being the guy here,'' the official said.

And things were still being run through Michael Jordan. And I think Doug Collins – I love Doug. But I think that was an opportunity for him to make up for some ill moments that they may have had back in Chicago. So, pretty much everything that Michael wanted to do. We got off to a pretty good start, and then I think he didn’t like the way the offense was running, because it was running a little bit more through me. He wanted to get a little more isolations on the post, of course, so we had more isolations for him on the post.

"Biggest drive to win" though

[Rust_Cohle]

Lebron fell off hard defensively after 2013 overall (although 2016 was good)

Last 8 years or so he has given up on that end.

That seems kinda crazy to say. He's always been a plus-defender although nothing to write home about

Nah, very very inconsistent especially after 2016. He’s been coasting quite a bit on that end.

People were noticing as early as 2014:


https://deadspin.com/no-its-not-just-you-lebron-really-has-been-bad-on-de-1561440624/

[52-12-7]

Why dont you share the mountains of evidence

No thanks- I don’t waste actual basketball discussion with trolls.

I cant believe you were a mod before. Ive never seen you post anything intelligent on here before.

It really is mind boggling how someone so immature could be a mod on a forum with vast audience. Dude literally calls everyone who doesn't stan Lebron troll or clowns, but he has been caught "trolling" on several MJ threads. I'm beginning to think being a biased lebron homer is a criteria to be a mod on this site.

[GreenBloodedC]

MJ had a DPOY gifted to him.

Lebron had his DPOY robbed from him by a guy that didn’t even make All-NBA first team.

Lebron is the better defender and it’s not even close but most casuals will say MJ is better because he has 1 DPOY to Lebron’s 0 and cause the media told them MJ was a GOAT wing defender.

Or maybe it should be phrased that the guy who won the DPOY was robbed of being an All-NBA first team.

[52-12-7]

I hate Lebron, but I have to say he is superior, when he actually tries. He is more versatile and being bigger and stronger makes him a better rim protector which is more valuable than perimeter defense. But I can't take him over MJ because Lebron constantly takes plays off on defense conserving energy to pad offensive stats. MJ brought the effort night in and night out, and defense is all about the effort.

[MavsDirk41]

No thanks- I don’t waste actual basketball discussion with trolls.

I cant believe you were a mod before. Ive never seen you post anything intelligent on here before.

It really is mind boggling how someone so immature could be a mod on a forum with vast audience. Dude literally calls everyone who doesn't stan Lebron troll or clowns, but he has been caught "trolling" on several MJ threads. I'm beginning to think being a biased lebron homer is a criteria to be a mod on this site.

Yep 100%. I asked him for the mountain of evidence he claimed to have and he called me a troll lol. He does nothing but throw insults at people who disagree with him.

[Kawaii Leonard]

Lebron at his best was an okay defender.

Spat out my food. Anyone need a sig?

[CobraCommander]

This is a question of your age- anyone that saw both of them play would never say Lebron

No one - that saw them both says Lebron

I've seen them both play and I still say LeBron.

As well as multiple people in this thread. Let's stop with baseless statements like this that have no validity. We can do better than that.

They don’t have merit- Lebron has been good a defender but he has never been the shut the best guy down guy. KD pretty much came at him and Lebron was like - “help!!!”.

The bulls have had games and series where MJ was
Absolutely locked in on stopping his opponents.

Lebron also never focused on defense like MJ did. Mj, pip, Rodman were as good on defense as offense sometimes-

It’s not a slight to say MJ is better

Plus I’m calling it right now - you are early 30s to mid 30s - if so I’m calling BS on seeing and understanding MJ-

[lessthanjake]

One thing that I think is worth noting about Jordan’s defense is that the Bulls defense was often at a different level in the playoffs. According to Thinking Basketball’s data, the second-three peat Bulls had one of the top few three-year rDRTG’s in history. They’re above famous defensive teams like the mid-2000’s Pistons, the Bad Boys Pistons, the 90’s Knicks, etc. And they’re only barely behind the best three-year stretch for the Spurs in terms of playoff defense (which was 1998-2000). And in earlier years they weren’t quite at that level, but they virtually always were super elite at the defensive end in the playoffs. And what’s interesting here is that they did not have a conventional rim protector. At their best, Jordan’s Bulls were probably the best defense in history that wasn’t anchored by an elite rim protector (and they weren’t particularly far behind the best teams that did have that). Which does make you think a bit about Jordan’s defensive impact.

Obviously, team defense is a team effort, and the Bulls had great defenders that weren’t Jordan. But we do have some indication that Jordan was the one that stirred the historically-elite-defense pot here. For instance, Pippen and Rodman each missed a whole bunch of games in the second-three-peat years, and the Bulls actually had a better defensive rating in the games Pippen missed than in the games Pippen played, and had an essentially identical defensive rating in the games Rodman missed as games Rodman played. Meanwhile, while they were unsurprisingly a good defense when Jordan had been retired, they were definitely a rung below what they became when he came back, and the one playoffs he missed was easily the Bulls’ least impressive playoff defense in the entire 1988-1998 timeframe. So I think we do have some indication that Jordan was the key element behind one of the greatest defenses ever, and almost certainly the best defense that wasn’t anchored by a historically elite rim protector. This is a very good signal regarding Jordan’s impact, and actually tends to push against this idea that he can’t have had the defensive impact of a larger player. That’s a good general assumption, but if there’s ever going to be an exception to that, we’d probably expect it to be on the team that was the exception in terms of being an historically elite defense without a major rim protector!

The other thing I’d note is that when Jordan missed the vast majority of the 1986 season, the Bulls became one of the worst defenses in the history of the NBA. Meanwhile, in the surrounding years when Jordan played, the defense was quite a bit better (albeit still not good). This is, again, indicative of large defensive impact from Jordan—the change here really is the type you’d expect to see from an elite big man. I’ve seen people here try to reason their way out of this being a great signal by pointing out that the Bulls defense wasn’t actually better in the few games Jordan played in 1986. But the thing is that Jordan was on a really strict minutes restriction in a lot of those games, and if we instead look at the few games he actually played even remotely normal minutes (either 30+ mins or 35+ mins), we find that the Bulls defense was way better in those games and was in line with how they did defensively in the surrounding years.

Overall, these are immense signals for Jordan, and are actually indicative of a player that may really have had defensive impact akin to an elite rim protector. Of course, the counterpoint to these immense signals is that the Bulls regular season defense actually got *better* in 1994 when he was retired. There’s a fair point there, but the fact that the Bulls had easily their worst playoff defense of the era that year puts a bit of a damper on this. It’s also the case that the roster improved defensively that year in other ways—adding superior centers, and adding Toni Kukoc, a player who didn’t have a defensive reputation for reasons probably relating to him being European, but who has fantastic defensive impact numbers (and not surprising, given his length). The playoff point is an important one I think, because the Bulls with Jordan virtually always significantly ramped it up defensively in the playoffs (i.e. their rDRTG got better in the playoffs), so it’s fairly clear that their regular season defensive numbers with Jordan weren’t a particularly good representation of quite how good they were defensively. That also makes sense when we realize how good they were offensively with Jordan—at a certain point your overall regular season net rating is so high that you’re often just blowing teams out and letting up on defense some because of it (which happens less in the playoffs, and the playoffs basically allow the rDRTG ceiling to be higher since you’re playing good teams). The playoffs don’t suggest that the 1994 Bulls had anywhere near the same kind of true defensive ceiling that Jordan’s Bulls teams did.

All of this is to say that I think there’s actually quite a lot of information suggesting Jordan’s defensive impact was super elite. And this is also consistent with how he was seen at the time. What might be the reason for this? Well, we know he was a fantastic point of attack defender, got lots of steals, and was a great shot blocker for a guard. But I think to answer this question, we might want to think about what it was about the Bulls defense that made them probably the best defense in history that didn’t have an elite rim protector. I think the easiest answer to this is that they just completely smothered teams on the perimeter. They were so good at just denying passes and playing passing lanes that they really deterred even basic ball movement. So they may not have been able to deter teams at the rim like a conventional elite defense, but they sort of just deterred teams from even running what they wanted to run and making passes that might actually lead to a good shot in the first place, because those passes felt too dangerous against the perimeter attack dogs the Bulls had. And, while he certainly wasn’t all of it, Jordan really was first and foremost at this—being the most feared guy on the team in terms of disruption.

This isn’t to say that I think Jordan was a better defender than LeBron at his best defensively. The above isn’t entirely conclusive, and we lack a ton of good data on Jordan’s defense. As a result, I think there’s a pretty wide confidence interval on exactly how impactful Jordan was defensively. Given some of the stuff I mention above, the high end for Jordan is above LeBron IMO, but I’d say my median guess would still be to adhere to the heuristic that size matters for basketball defense and go with LeBron peaking higher defensively, while also noting that LeBron didn’t give it his all defensively throughout his career in the way Jordan did so there’s a good argument Jordan is ahead when looking holistically at their career defense.

[Pb]

Those Bron fans again at it, and again they lose. Lebron is and was a mediocre defender, beyond being big and not getting fouls cause you know king ****, he was slow rotating, couldnt keep in front of his guy most of the time, he was just good at being a big body around. I still remember Durant shooting 3s all over him in the finals, and Bron just looking at him as in awe, so **** funny.

[Ritzo]

Lebron had his DPOY robbed from him by a guy that didn’t even make All-NBA first team.

Gasol had a better DWS, DBPM, DRTG, averaged more stocks, and his team finished #2 in DRTG to LeBron's #9.

"robbed"

Hakeem led all those stats over MJ, and MJ's DBPM wasn't even top 10 that year. But I bet you wouldn't say he robbed Hakeem.

[OdomFan]

The poster boy of reserving energy for offense should not be compared to Michael Jordans defense. Lebron was capable of making great defensive stops. Capable of doing the chase down block that he was known for, but he didn't play like that all the time. Michael of course got scored on. Everybody does. Its the pros ffs, but the difference is consistency.

Mike was consistently a better defender, and a better leader who made sure his guys around him were bringing it on both ends of the floor so that the overall team could succeed at getting the ball back. This is how the Bulls were able to win 67 in 1992, 57 in 93, 72 in their most famous season, and then 69 after that. Not to mention 62 in their final season together in 1998. They were a absolute monstrous core of talent together with MJ leading the way.

There is absolutely no logical argument for Lebron over MJ as a defender.

[Johnny Bball]

*Not an actual argument, just a cool photo of LeBron blocking a 7 footer.

This is obviously fake news AI generated by Klutch to advance the LeBron James GOAT Replacement Theory. Nice try, Brasco. We're not going to fall for it.

LOL! He blocked Tiago Splitter. True accomplishment.

And he's not 7'.

It is a cool photo though.

[Lakers824]

Jordan is simply better, defensively. He's on the short list of best perimeter defenders ever. Lebron - while good in his prime - was never in that tier. And he's been a shadow of himself on the defensive end since 2013 (possibly due to prioritising offense).

This is hardly a debate to anyone who watched both.

[Curmudgeon]

Not a big Lebron fan, but it's him. Just more versatile...

Yes. He can defend every position. 100% switchable.
But yes, if you only look at the perimeter, MJ was probably better.

[Iwasawitness]

This is a question of your age- anyone that saw both of them play would never say Lebron

No one - that saw them both says Lebron

I've seen them both play and I still say LeBron.

As well as multiple people in this thread. Let's stop with baseless statements like this that have no validity. We can do better than that.

They don’t have merit- Lebron has been good a defender but he has never been the shut the best guy down guy. KD pretty much came at him and Lebron was like - “help!!!”.

The bulls have had games and series where MJ was
Absolutely locked in on stopping his opponents.

Lebron also never focused on defense like MJ did. Mj, pip, Rodman were as good on defense as offense sometimes-

It’s not a slight to say MJ is better

Plus I’m calling it right now - you are early 30s to mid 30s - if so I’m calling BS on seeing and understanding MJ-

The problem with this argument is that you’re ignoring another aspect of defense entirely. Yeah, when it comes to locking up the opposing teams best player, MJ was superior. I don’t think anyone is going to argue against that. But that isn’t where LeBron’s greatest strength on defense was. The whole idea was that he floated, constantly switched and disrupted entire offensive sets. He was basically the quarterback on defense. And because of his height and strength, he was able to defend far more positions. He basically made Cleveland an elite defense almost entirely on his own during his first run (09 and 10 speaking). MJ could never do anything like this.

That’s where LeBron’s advantage lies. And in that aspect, he definitely had a greater defensive impact. That’s why many people prefer his defense.

[Iwasawitness]

Those Bron fans again at it, and again they lose. Lebron is and was a mediocre defender, beyond being big and not getting fouls cause you know king ****, he was slow rotating, couldnt keep in front of his guy most of the time, he was just good at being a big body around. I still remember Durant shooting 3s all over him in the finals, and Bron just looking at him as in awe, so **** funny.

Again, as I mentioned before, a mediocre defender doesn’t become runner up to DPOY twice. He was obviously an elite tier defender. I don’t why it’s so hard for people to give LeBron credit. Are you guys really that threatened by him?

[CBS7]

Lebron had his DPOY robbed from him by a guy that didn’t even make All-NBA first team.

Gasol had a better DWS, DBPM, DRTG, averaged more stocks, and his team finished #2 in DRTG to LeBron's #9.

"robbed"

Hakeem led all those stats over MJ, and MJ's DBPM wasn't even top 10 that year. But I bet you wouldn't say he robbed Hakeem.

He didn't lead all those stats over MJ.
However, with the new information that came to light, I think its fair to consider that MJ didn't deserve that DPOY.

[CBS7]

Its crazy how much trashing the other person goes into arguments for the player they like better