Superior defender: MJ or LeBron?

Moderators: cupcakesnake, bwgood77, zimpy27, infinite11285, Domejandro, ken6199, bisme37, Dirk, KingDavid

Superior defender: MJ or LeBron?

Jordan
204
67%
LeBron
93
30%
It's a draw
9
3%
 
Total votes: 306

OhayoKD
Head Coach
Posts: 6,011
And1: 3,911
Joined: Jun 22, 2022
 

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#201 » by OhayoKD » Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:55 am

ScrantonBulls wrote:
Iwasawitness wrote:
KembaWalker wrote:you can do the same play by play nonsense and make anyone seem bad


1:03 zones out staring at PP, lets Allen get an easy layup
1:53 Mr. "guards 1-5" does nothing to make KG uncomfortable, easy 2
3:00 same thing is about to happen, Miami decides its better to triple than let LeBron 1on1 KG, open shot
4:14 lol no idea what LeBron is even trying to do, Rondo burns him while he just stands there for a wide open layup
4:53 again lol, LeBron picks up the wrong guy on the fast break for no reason and then sets an NFL screen on his own teammate, wide open alley oop
6:59 LeBron lazy, gives up open corner
8:42 LeBron actually plays good defense, better shot though damn

rest of the quarter he mostly spending standing around because Pietrus comes in who he picks up

this **** was not impressive at all, not sure i care enough to go past 1 quarter because its exactly what i always see watching LeBron for the last 20 years


You're using a full game vs Ohayo breaking down a video that's trying to demonstrate all the moments MJ "shuts down" Clyde. It was literally a cherry picked video. This isn't really the same lol.

I don't understand why some have to be so blatantly dishonest when discussing this topic. Strange.

Because for an honest person this is not a real debate.
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
OhayoKD
Head Coach
Posts: 6,011
And1: 3,911
Joined: Jun 22, 2022
 

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#202 » by OhayoKD » Mon Jun 24, 2024 3:06 am

First, the non-sequtir:
538 did an article on this a while back: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-value-of-the-nba-steal/. They also did some follow up stuff on it, which you can find links to here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/steals-are-predictive-but-are-they-that-important/. There’s a lot to this analysis, but basically they regressed impact on box stats and found steals to be the stat that’s most predictive of impact, and then there’s some analysis of why that might be (including that it’s not obviously replaceable like a lot of other box stats are).

It found individual steals to be the most correlative compared the individual examples of other stats which happen to happen alot more frequently(excluding blocks where there is high variance in it over/underrating players).

Jordan averaged a whopping .8 more steals than Lebron did(1.3 at their highest marks if we ignore 1988 being cooked) while also being on the high-side of "value given back" with breakdowns yielded from his gambling (incidentally if we go by d-rating correlation he generates less value off steals than a more conservative thief like Kawhi does).

What you actually need to show is their being a team-level correlation. Atm your link to the source that allegedly says that doesn't work:
Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.


We do have multiple studies(including one from 538) noting that at the team level there is little correlation with defensive goodness, and we can always just reference the top 5 or 10 steal-getting teams and their overall defensive standing to see they don't have a strong correlation.

lessthanjake wrote:
therealbig3 wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:https://youtu.be/HcTT5X5BCns?si=kjhIdGSbyWe8ioxi

If He wasn’t the only one having this kind of effect for the Bulls, but he was definitely the most important in this regard.

Ultimately, it’s great for big men to deter players from shooting near the rim. That’s typically an integral part of having an elite defense! But it can actually be just as effective to deter the pass or dribble that gets the player the ball near the rim in the first place. That’s what Jordan did, and that’s how the Bulls were able to be an all-time defense without elite rim protection.


You’re giving the majority of the credit to Jordan but why not Pippen, or Grant, or Rodman, or Cartwright, or Oakley before them?


No, obviously there were other great defenders on the Bulls. You cannot have an all-time great defense with just one great defender—that will never happen. But in this particular aspect of defense, he was the most important. This is not different from assessing any player that’s part of a team. Obviously they’re not the only piece of the puzzle!

Jordan was great, but you can be great and overrated. These kind of anecdotal stories is kind of what I’m talking about, I’ve heard this one before and it’s going to make Jordan sound amazing, but the reality is that he had his defensive weaknesses as well that were covered up by strong defensive teammates, and the actual objective data that’s been posted shows that the Bulls barely noticed a difference without Jordan.


But you see that’s just not really an accurate reading of the totality of the information we have. That’s basically just dogmatically focusing on the regular season during Jordan’s first retirement.

True. If only there was 8-years of data averaged suggesting the thing, or multiple nearly full-season samples suggesting the same thing...

We also have the Bulls being one of the worst defenses in history in Jordan’s injured 1986 year, while being way better in the surrounding years with Jordan. We have the Bulls being way better defensively in the games in 1986 where Jordan played remotely normal minutes.

And still not matching a 13-year average for Lebron...


We have the Bulls being substantially better defensively in the second-three peat years than they’d been without Jordan—including being *massively* better in the playoffs, to the point of being arguably the best playoff defense in NBA history.

And still not matching a 13 year average for Lebron...

Meanwhile, we have the Bulls having easily their worst playoff defensively in the entire 1988-1998 span in the one year they played in the playoffs without Jordan.

They also had easily their best playoff offense in the entire 1988-1998 span

We have the Bulls regular season defense in 1995 quickly getting to second-three-peat levels with Jordan once he had a few games under his belt back from retirement.

Which still would not match the 13-year average for Lebron...


And the overall picture of this type of data looks like a player with immense defensive impact.


"Immense defensive impact"

Konr0167 wrote: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



Idk the with/without that was posted before is pretty damn convincing. That’s over YEARS, and even included post prime LeBron when he was supposedly not even playing good defense anymore. Meanwhile, Jordan’s numbers were posted almost as a response, and it doesn’t look nearly as impressive.


But you see that data isn’t actually “over YEARS”. The “Bulls without MJ” piece of that is basically just in 1994 and 1995.

The data would not get significantly better including 86 or 85, no. If you can manage to find a better 8-year (overall) signal, then I'll happily replace this one with that one for future use.

Meanwhile, it’s comparing to the “Bulls with MJ” data from the entire time period. It’s comparing apples and oranges, because the team in 1994 and 1995 was a different team than the team in other years (both in terms of roster differences and player development differences), and the league context was also different. This is especially true when we talk about the earlier years in that time period, which, not coincidentally were years that bring down the “with MJ” averages.


We can go year by year, none of these yield a big swing unless you make filters and none of those swings would clear the aforementioned 13 year average.

It’s not surprising that wasn’t included, since if we took a weighted average of the Bulls’ playoff rDRTG from 1988-1998 with Jordan, it comes out to -5.4, compared to -1.3 without Jordan in the 1994 playoffs, for a large 4.1 difference with Jordan.

And I'm not surprised you neglected to mention this turning Jordan into a negative offensive player, but you know...motivated reasoning

That’s also not even mentioning that that analysis misses the massive signal from 1986 compared to surrounding years, where the Bulls had one of the worst defenses in the history of the NBA in the year Jordan missed the vast majority of games, while they were much better in surrounding years with him.

And that signal, attributed to Jordan, instead of Oakley, for whatever reason would also not get you anywhere close to a plethora of much cleaner ones for Lebron.
its my last message in this thread, but I just admit, that all the people, casual and analytical minds, more or less have consencus who has the weight of a rubberized duck. And its not JaivLLLL
therealbig3
RealGM
Posts: 29,447
And1: 16,029
Joined: Jul 31, 2010

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#203 » by therealbig3 » Mon Jun 24, 2024 3:48 am

OhayoKD basically responded the way I wanted to, that even if we were to be generous to Jordan, the numbers don't really support him having the defensive impact on the magnitude of LeBron.

And this all is not to say that Jordan wasn't a great defensive player in his own right. He was. To have the energy to play defense the way he did while being the greatest scorer and arguably best overall offensive player ever is super impressive. But LeBron's impact signals just look better, over large sample sizes too. We can anecdotally talk about what people "said" about Jordan or look at highlights/lowlights, but that doesn't really do either player justice here. For every time people say LeBron wasn't trying on defense or looked lost, I can probably find you 10 plays where he makes a high impact play. And I honestly don't think people realize as well as they think what constitutes a good defensive decision or play (see the "highlight" videos of Jordan's defense, for example). Could do the opposite for Jordan...for every great defensive play, you can probably find a plethora of bad defensive plays. All of this talk of "I've never seen Jordan take a break on defense like LeBron did" is just nostalgia. OF COURSE he did. Maybe you didn't notice it as much because you weren't looking to criticize as much, or he didn't look as bad because he had multiple other All-Defensive players or players of that caliber flanking him. I've seen both of these guys EXTENSIVELY, as probably most of us have, so just saying "anyone that saw both thinks it's Jordan" doesn't really fly. Because you're really appealing to authority with that one, and the same authority pushed for Jordan to win DPOY and be mentioned in the same conversations as Hakeem or Robinson as a defender, which most rational basketball fans accept isn't a real discussion. The same authority never awarded Duncan a DPOY (is Jordan better than him too?), and the same authority awarded Kobe All-Defense selections when he was playing the worst defense of his career. Media narratives and awards really shouldn't have a role here, because that's as subjective as they come. And I think it's fair to point out that yes, while LeBron was anointed "the chosen one" before he stepped on the court, there's been a clear agenda by the media to also make sure the narrative never matches up to Jordan's. So they're never going to give him the same respect as a defensive player, because they don't actually want him to get on the same level. They're never going to acknowledge that as an overall offensive player, LeBron has a fantastic argument to be as good or better than Jordan, because they don't want him to actually get on that level either. That's why the conversations from the media regarding this comparison is ALWAYS with respect to the things that LeBron doesn't have relative to Jordan (scoring titles and championships...which were never really a thing for the GOAT debate until it became about Jordan...Bird and Magic were in GOAT talks before him and neither one was in conversation for best scorer ever and neither one was the winningest player ever...pretty much everyone ignores Kareem but he actually has an argument for both. And Bill Russell has almost twice as many rings as Jordan while being the defensive GOAT). And I do respect the opinion of guys who I think have more experience than I do in terms of breaking down game film and really dissecting defensive strategies and rotations, and those that have done that, objectively, without bias for either guy, tend to go with LeBron.

Thinking Basketball to me is the best when it comes to that, here's their take on both of these players:




Around 19:00 in the LeBron video he discusses his defense. Around 15:40 in the Jordan video he discusses his defense.

To me, beyond the typical Jordan mythologizing, this is more about LeBron again generally being underrated when it comes to just how good he historically is in various aspects of basketball, specifically his defense. Seems like he got his respect in real-time during his peak defensive seasons, but now that he's older and we're a little more removed from that, people are trying to act like he was good, but never that good, or that he only maintained it for a couple years and then coasted the rest of the time, which is just not true.

BTW, Thinking Basketball is using 2012-2013 as LeBron's peak, but you could easily argue that his peak was his first Cavs stint in 09-10, or his Miami years, or his second stint Cleveland years. And I think as an overall player, the best stretch of basketball he played as a two-way player was actually 2016-2018, so I actually disagree that 2012-2013 was his peak. Defensively maybe though, although the breakdowns you see with regards to the quicker players on the perimeter weren't actually as much of an issue in either Cavs stint, it was specifically a Miami thing because he was much bigger than he was at other times in his career. And I actually think he mentions that in the video.
JordansBulls
RealGM
Posts: 60,466
And1: 5,345
Joined: Jul 12, 2006
Location: HCA (Homecourt Advantage)

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#204 » by JordansBulls » Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:12 am

MJ no doubt. Lebron lost to every legit big he played against even with HCA. Dwight, KG, Dirk, Duncan, Draymond, Jokic. Jordan never lost with HCA nor won bronze for America. Lebron did that with peak Duncan and Iverson.
Image
"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."
- Michael Jordan
lessthanjake
Analyst
Posts: 3,045
And1: 2,761
Joined: Apr 13, 2013

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#205 » by lessthanjake » Mon Jun 24, 2024 6:31 am

OhayoKD wrote:First, the non-sequtir:
538 did an article on this a while back: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-value-of-the-nba-steal/. They also did some follow up stuff on it, which you can find links to here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/steals-are-predictive-but-are-they-that-important/. There’s a lot to this analysis, but basically they regressed impact on box stats and found steals to be the stat that’s most predictive of impact, and then there’s some analysis of why that might be (including that it’s not obviously replaceable like a lot of other box stats are).

It found individual steals to be the most correlative compared the individual examples of other stats which happen to happen alot more frequently(excluding blocks where there is high variance in it over/underrating players).

Jordan averaged a whopping .8 more steals than Lebron did(1.3 at their highest marks if we ignore 1988 being cooked) while also being on the high-side of "value given back" with breakdowns yielded from his gambling (incidentally if we go by d-rating correlation he generates less value off steals than a more conservative thief like Kawhi does).


The point is that it found individual steals to be correlated with a substantial amount of impact. This obviously runs contrary to your claim that steals have little to no correlation with team defensive performance, which you stated in response to someone pointing out Jordan has a significant steals advantage over LeBron. In fact, an individual getting more steals has repeatedly been found to correlate with superior team defensive performance, as we see from the information I’ve provided.

Meanwhile, the idea that he would be on the “high-side of ‘value given back’ with breakdowns yielded from his gambling” has no factual basis or evidence to it. Nor does that even conceptually account for the fact that someone who “gambles” more and is quite good at it is also likely to deter more high-value passes, so there’s reason to think that that style of play is really a huge positive (at least when you’re a massive outlier in how good you are it, like Jordan was—obviously someone who isn’t so good at it won’t deter much).

What you actually need to show is their being a team-level correlation. Atm your link to the source that allegedly says that doesn't work:
Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.


We do have multiple studies(including one from 538) noting that at the team level there is little correlation with defensive goodness, and we can always just reference the top 5 or 10 steal-getting teams and their overall defensive standing to see they don't have a strong correlation.


I don’t know what to tell you, buddy. I went back to my post and clicked that link and it worked just fine. So it seems like a you problem.

I’d also note that team-level data is not the same as individual-level data for these purposes. The point is to assess how much impact an individual player’s steals have, so obviously data on the impact of an individual’s steals on team results is most relevant! I’ve not seen any of the info you’re referring to, and you don’t link to it here, while I linked to something that says otherwise. However, team steals very well may not correlate as well with impact as individual steals do, for a lot of team-level reasons. Team-level steals stats will depend a lot on how the team gets attacked. To give one example, steals are more common in transition, so if a team gets stuck defending in transition a lot (maybe they’re bad at getting back, just bad at offense, or perhaps they tend to force the game to a high pace), they’ll likely rack up steals but give up lots of points. Steals are also relatively common in pick and roll actions, so if a team is easy to just effectively attack with PnR, we’d expect teams to attack them that way more, in which case they’d likely give up more points but have more steals. Relatedly, at a team level, higher steals can also be caused by running certain types of lineups where the plus is more steals but there’s inherently a minus that comes along with it—for instance, a team that goes for small ball will likely get more steals but give back that impact in other ways (giving up mismatches, bad rebounding, etc.). It’s also the case that we wouldn’t even necessarily expect the really-high-impact steals guys to have teams with tons of steals overall, because the highest-impact steals guys will deter risky passes from being made in the first place. The value there will actually come from worse opponent FG%’s, fewer FTs, etc., as a result of high-value actions being deterred, rather than their team getting more steals. This can mean that the teams with the most steals aren’t actually always the teams with the most impactful guys in this regard—instead, they actually may include teams that opposing teams take tons of risky actions against because they’re not all that deterred. The result there might be relatively more steals than if those actions *were* deterred, but worse defense overall, since the high-value actions would be succeeding a lot (hence why opposing teams are trying them more). Looking at the impact of steals at an individual level will do a better job of picking up on this stuff, and avoiding being confused by team-level factors. It’s also just obviously more directly relevant to the question at hand.

The other thing I’d note is that this is all kind of dumb and unnecessarily academic, because we actually saw Jordan’s Bulls and anyone who watched them knows full well that for that team this was a huge factor in why their defense was so good. Even if you don’t think this is effective in general (a view that evidence doesn’t support), it just very obviously was effective for Jordan’s Bulls, and that’s the thing that matters here.

We also have the Bulls being one of the worst defenses in history in Jordan’s injured 1986 year, while being way better in the surrounding years with Jordan. We have the Bulls being way better defensively in the games in 1986 where Jordan played remotely normal minutes.

And still not matching a 13-year average for Lebron...


That’s factually inaccurate. The Bulls defense had a 5.9 better rDRTG in 1987 compared to 1986, and 3.5 better rDRTG in 1985 compared to 1986. If we average those out, that’s a 4.7 better rDRTG in the surrounding years with Jordan.

We have the Bulls being substantially better defensively in the second-three peat years than they’d been without Jordan—including being *massively* better in the playoffs, to the point of being arguably the best playoff defense in NBA history.

And still not matching a 13 year average for Lebron...


That’s absolutely not true of the playoffs, where they had a 7.0 better rDRTG during the second-three-peat years than they did without Jordan in the 1994 playoffs. And even if we measure as against what they did without Jordan in the 1994 regular season instead of just the small sample of that one playoff, the second-three-peat Bulls had a playoff rDRTG that was 4.7 better than what the 1994 Bulls put up.

And, again, this is important because Jordan’s Bulls consistently ramped up defensively in the playoffs. Meanwhile, in the regular season, there was real diminishing marginal returns at play for Jordan’s Bulls, because the team was so good with Jordan that they were frequently just blowing teams out, and teams ends up letting up when they get big leads. This analysis of “swing” doesn’t take into account this pretty obvious concept, and therefore is quite biased against Jordan. Playoff data is at least a bit less biased in this regard (since you can rack up higher relative ratings before diminishing returns kick in), and that’s unsurprisingly where we see an enormous signal that outdoes the signal you’re talking about for LeBron.

Meanwhile, we have the Bulls having easily their worst playoff defensively in the entire 1988-1998 span in the one year they played in the playoffs without Jordan.

They also had easily their best playoff offense in the entire 1988-1998 span


This is blatantly false, and you know full well it is false because I’ve already pointed this out to you recently. They had just had a higher rORTG in the 1993 playoffs just before that, not to mention having a much higher rORTG in the 1991 playoffs.

We have the Bulls regular season defense in 1995 quickly getting to second-three-peat levels with Jordan once he had a few games under his belt back from retirement.

Which still would not match the 13-year average for Lebron...


This is technically correct, but it’s again missing the obvious fact of diminishing marginal returns. The Bulls had a -5.2 rDRTG in those games with Jordan, and had a +10.61 net rating in those games, so we’re again talking about incredible defense combined with a net rating that is really high. Diminishing returns obviously come into play here, making the increase substantially more impressive than the overly simplistic “swing” analysis would suggest. This should be pretty obvious stuff, to be honest.

It’s not surprising that wasn’t included, since if we took a weighted average of the Bulls’ playoff rDRTG from 1988-1998 with Jordan, it comes out to -5.4, compared to -1.3 without Jordan in the 1994 playoffs, for a large 4.1 difference with Jordan.

And I'm not surprised you neglected to mention this turning Jordan into a negative offensive player, but you know...motivated reasoning


No, it’s just that this thread is about defense, not offense, so that point is just whataboutism. As I’ve said to you before, if we were talking about offense, you’d be free to try to swim up a waterfall and attempt to use the 1994 Bulls playoffs rORTG to argue that Jordan’s offense wasn’t actually that good. Good luck with trying to make that case in the context of the full data picture though. Meanwhile, I’m quite comfortable with the argument I’m making here about Jordan’s defense in the context of the full data picture, as I’ve explained here and also otherwise exhaustively dismantled your talking points repeatedly across many other threads now. And that’s what’s relevant to the subject of this thread.

That’s also not even mentioning that that analysis misses the massive signal from 1986 compared to surrounding years, where the Bulls had one of the worst defenses in the history of the NBA in the year Jordan missed the vast majority of games, while they were much better in surrounding years with him.

And that signal, attributed to Jordan, instead of Oakley, for whatever reason would also not get you anywhere close to a plethora of much cleaner ones for Lebron.


This thing about Oakley is a really bizarre thing that you constantly try to pass off, despite it obviously being silly. You suggest that there’s no reason to attribute the Bulls’ massive improvement in defensive rating between 1986 and 1987 to Jordan instead of Oakley, when Jordan only played 16 games in 1986 and played all 82 games in 1987, while Oakley played 77 games in 1986 and 82 games in 1987. On its face that is just obviously a bizarre thing for you to suggest. To the extent you’ve ever tried to justify this idea, it’s been to say that Oakley played more minutes per game in 1987 than in 1986, but of course you completely ignore that Jordan’s MPG increased more between 1986 and 1987 than Oakley’s did. There’s just no reasonable basis for the narrative you have crafted about this. You clearly just desperately want to have some sort of reason to explain away an obviously massive signal from Jordan and this is the best you could come up with. It’s hard to really take what you say as having any credibility when you’re willing to say things like this again and again.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
dhsilv2
RealGM
Posts: 49,317
And1: 26,599
Joined: Oct 04, 2015

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#206 » by dhsilv2 » Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:50 pm

Tottery wrote:
dhsilv2 wrote:
Tottery wrote:
Sure, then let's forget Jordan has 10 scoring titles as well. The steals and blocks are pretty close, but Jordan still pulls ahead. Missed the other post, my bad.


Why do we care about scoring titles in the context of defense? I'm so confused. And aren't we responding to someone saying MJ deserved the DPOY because he was by far the CLEAR better defender and using blocks and steals?


This post makes no sense to me man. Are you ok?


You're the one that switched the conversation from steals and blocks to rebounds. If you can bring up other statistics, why can't anyone else?


Because my stats are on topic and yours aren't. Rebounds are a critical part of defense. Scoring isn't.
dhsilv2
RealGM
Posts: 49,317
And1: 26,599
Joined: Oct 04, 2015

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#207 » by dhsilv2 » Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:51 pm

JordansBulls wrote:MJ no doubt. Lebron lost to every legit big he played against even with HCA. Dwight, KG, Dirk, Duncan, Draymond, Jokic. Jordan never lost with HCA nor won bronze for America. Lebron did that with peak Duncan and Iverson.


Outside of a coach benching AI, nobody was winning gold with how AI played.
bledredwine
RealGM
Posts: 14,562
And1: 5,730
Joined: Sep 17, 2010
   

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#208 » by bledredwine » Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:43 pm

Bergmaniac wrote:
therealbig3 wrote:
bledredwine wrote:
wrong. look at the DPOY and player interviews, or watch games lol


You’re honestly going to pretend like Jordan was the same caliber of defender as Hakeem or DRob because of the DPOY Award, but then accuse people that pick LeBron here as being fans and not being objective?

It's always hilarious when the biggest Jordan fanboy on this board accuses others of being too biased.


It's always hilarious when the biggest Lebron fanboys resort to insults because they literally have nothing pertinent to say,
since Jordan dominates nearly all angles of this stupid debate that doesn't exist in the first place.
LeBron has a 17.8% field goal percentage and a 12.5% 3-point percentage in clutch situations, and also made 20 of 116 game winning/tying shots in 4th/OT during his career :wink:
User avatar
Impuniti
General Manager
Posts: 9,885
And1: 7,809
Joined: Jan 18, 2016

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#209 » by Impuniti » Mon Jun 24, 2024 7:15 pm

LaLover11 wrote:
therealbig3 wrote:
Impuniti wrote:So Hakeem was in his prime for only 2 seasons? What happened every other post season when MJ was playing? What is your argument even here, the guy with 3 championships ran away from a guy that's never won because.. he was. . . scared?

I'm legitimately curious what absolutely asinine story you've cooked up in your head! :lol:


He didn't run away from Hakeem, but I do think a guy like Hakeem was the perfect counter to Jordan's Bulls at the time. I think it would have been fascinating to see the Bulls face the Rockets with Hakeem at his peak. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it.


The true answer was MJ got in trouble but still could've played. The league told him to take a few seasons off because Hakeem! Bulls would've had no answer for the Dream and his team

He would've been 3-2 in the finals after losing 2 in a row vs Hakeem and tarnished his fake legacy

Pippen would've definitely asked to be traded after losing twice on the finals. And MJ would've became a player that couldn't reach the finals without Pippen

In other words, complete made up nonsense about MJ having answers to Hakeem. Must be nice that he played vs much better players in Bird and Magic, but the guy that had never won it before is the real x factor.

Poor Jordan, he really loses in these imaginary situations you've made up in your head. :lol:
Bergmaniac
Head Coach
Posts: 7,443
And1: 11,188
Joined: Jan 08, 2010
 

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#210 » by Bergmaniac » Mon Jun 24, 2024 7:25 pm

bledredwine wrote:
Bergmaniac wrote:
therealbig3 wrote:
You’re honestly going to pretend like Jordan was the same caliber of defender as Hakeem or DRob because of the DPOY Award, but then accuse people that pick LeBron here as being fans and not being objective?

It's always hilarious when the biggest Jordan fanboy on this board accuses others of being too biased.


It's always hilarious when the biggest Lebron fanboys resort to insults because they literally have nothing pertinent to say,
since Jordan dominates nearly all angles of this stupid debate that doesn't exist in the first place.

Why do you keep posting in these threads about what you claim is a non-existent debate? Seems like a total waste of time.
xxSnEaKyPxx
RealGM
Posts: 18,432
And1: 19,060
Joined: Jun 02, 2007

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#211 » by xxSnEaKyPxx » Mon Jun 24, 2024 7:29 pm

Would love if mods would just stick a Jordan vs LeBron thread at the top of this forum.

People want to talk about it, and thats great, but the second this thread dies out, another will start. Just put a permanent sticky up top so the people who want to debate this 24/7, with no one ever changing their minds, can do it there.
PassMeTheBall
Sophomore
Posts: 148
And1: 178
Joined: Mar 22, 2024

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#212 » by PassMeTheBall » Mon Jun 24, 2024 8:01 pm

Jordan was great on defense for his entire career with the Bulls while James was only good during part of his 1st Cavs stint & with Miami.
User avatar
Chanel Bomber
RealGM
Posts: 23,902
And1: 42,012
Joined: Sep 20, 2018
 

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#213 » by Chanel Bomber » Mon Jun 24, 2024 8:08 pm

LeBron was a more complete defender because of his positional versatility and his ability to provide rim protection.

Much like Duncan, it's a bit silly he never won DPOY.

I still rank MJ over LeBron as a player but defensively LeBron was dominant in a way Jordan couldn't be.
bledredwine
RealGM
Posts: 14,562
And1: 5,730
Joined: Sep 17, 2010
   

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#214 » by bledredwine » Mon Jun 24, 2024 8:12 pm

Bergmaniac wrote:
bledredwine wrote:
Bergmaniac wrote:It's always hilarious when the biggest Jordan fanboy on this board accuses others of being too biased.


It's always hilarious when the biggest Lebron fanboys resort to insults because they literally have nothing pertinent to say,
since Jordan dominates nearly all angles of this stupid debate that doesn't exist in the first place.

Why do you keep posting in these threads about what you claim is a non-existent debate? Seems like a total waste of time.


It’s both fun and amusing :)
LeBron has a 17.8% field goal percentage and a 12.5% 3-point percentage in clutch situations, and also made 20 of 116 game winning/tying shots in 4th/OT during his career :wink:
ScrantonBulls
Starter
Posts: 2,342
And1: 3,293
Joined: Nov 18, 2023
     

Re: Superior defender: MJ or LeBron? 

Post#215 » by ScrantonBulls » Wed Jul 17, 2024 4:26 am

Bergmaniac wrote:
bledredwine wrote:
Bergmaniac wrote:It's always hilarious when the biggest Jordan fanboy on this board accuses others of being too biased.


It's always hilarious when the biggest Lebron fanboys resort to insults because they literally have nothing pertinent to say,
since Jordan dominates nearly all angles of this stupid debate that doesn't exist in the first place.

Why do you keep posting in these threads about what you claim is a non-existent debate? Seems like a total waste of time.

His arguments are so nonsensical and ridiculous that I think he's purposely trying to make MJ fans look bad. There's just no way he is serious with the stuff he posts. It's a shame really, because there are a lot of smart MJ fans here that make a good case, but people like him steal the spotlight.
bledredwine wrote:There were 3 times Jordan won and was considered the underdog

1989 Eastern Conference Finals against the Detroit Pistons, the 1991 NBA Finals against the Magic Johnson-led Los Angeles Lakers, and the 1995 Eastern Conference Finals against the NY Knicks

Return to The General Board