RGM GOAT Debate Thread (Part 2)

[RRR3]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

[bledredwine]

Career value is a pretty common way to view these kind of debates. Baseball writers and HOF voters are obsessed with raw career WAR and stuff like JAWS that tries to blend it with peak value. Ben Taylor at ThinkingBasketball created an entire list based on career value.

It’s only common if by career value, you’re not speaking longevity but achievements, stats and marketing value as well. Otherwise, it’s not career value. It’s longevity, which is just one aspect of that.

You’re basically disguising longevity as career value to use longevity/cumulative stats, since it’s the one set of stats where Lebron looks better. But it certainly doesn’t imply better player, more achievements and more dominance, which all go to Jordan. You’d use those stats if MJ wasn’t on top.

You can tweak how you want to calculate career value to put more or less emphasis on peak. A lot of the lists I listed (including mine further down the thread) explicitly weight peak and prime years more.

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

[ScrantonBulls]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

Let's just be honest about it. Longevity (i.e., performing at a high level for a long time) is quite clearly an important thing to consider when evaluating a player. It's important in baseball as it is in basketball. The only reason you have people trying to downplay longevity is because they are butthurt MJ fans that are upset about LeBron performing at a high level for so long. Anybody with a brain knows that longevity is important in all time rankings.

[michaelm]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

Let's just be honest about it. Longevity (i.e., performing at a high level for a long time) is quite clearly an important thing to consider when evaluating a player. It's important in baseball as it is in basketball. The only reason you have people trying to downplay longevity is because they are butthurt MJ fans that are upset about LeBron performing at a high level for so long. Anybody with a brain knows that longevity is important in all time rankings.

LeBron was very good at a very young age, and should get credit for that. While in Jordan’s era players didn’t start so young it can’t be assumed he would have been as good, young LeBron was physically freakish.

Both of them deserve great credit for being close enough to their peaks to lead teams to titles at the age of 35, impressive longevity by any standard.

If you want to hang your hat on past his best LeBron being better than past his best Jordan, go for it, but I don’t think it really adds much to any argument that he is the superior player overall. If you want to look at players aged over 35 years old then Kareem has them both beat as has been said, he contributed to the winning of multiple titles if not as the leading player.

[Special_Puppy]

It’s only common if by career value, you’re not speaking longevity but achievements, stats and marketing value as well. Otherwise, it’s not career value. It’s longevity, which is just one aspect of that.

You’re basically disguising longevity as career value to use longevity/cumulative stats, since it’s the one set of stats where Lebron looks better. But it certainly doesn’t imply better player, more achievements and more dominance, which all go to Jordan. You’d use those stats if MJ wasn’t on top.

You can tweak how you want to calculate career value to put more or less emphasis on peak. A lot of the lists I listed (including mine further down the thread) explicitly weight peak and prime years more.

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet its LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

[michaelm]

You can tweak how you want to calculate career value to put more or less emphasis on peak. A lot of the lists I listed (including mine further down the thread) explicitly weight peak and prime years more.

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet it’s LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

And this was connected with reality/proven how exactly ?.

If you believe him the argument is over in any case, Jordan had the better peak and impressive longevity and LeBron had a lower but still high peak and even greater longevity.

I obviously would take the higher peak which was quite prolonged anyway and concede LeBron is the better player after age 35 playing for a team which is not seriously contending.

[ChiTownHero1992]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

Let's just be honest about it. Longevity (i.e., performing at a high level for a long time) is quite clearly an important thing to consider when evaluating a player. It's important in baseball as it is in basketball. The only reason you have people trying to downplay longevity is because they are butthurt MJ fans that are upset about LeBron performing at a high level for so long. Anybody with a brain knows that longevity is important in all time rankings.

LeBron was very good at a very young age, and should get credit for that. While in Jordan’s era players didn’t start so young it can’t be assumed he would have been as good, young LeBron was physically freakish.

Both of them deserve great credit for being close enough to their peaks to lead teams to titles at the age of 35, impressive longevity by any standard.

If you want to hang your hat on past his best LeBron being better than past his best Jordan, go for it, but I don’t think it really adds much to any argument that he is the superior player overall. If you want to look at players aged over 35 years old then Kareem has them both beat as has been said, he contributed to the winning of multiple titles if not as the leading player.

Very much like your post and highly respect it, great job!

I've always wondered why it is held against Jordan that he had to play 3 years of college, or why it is held against Jordan that he is one of less than maybe a 1000 total athletes ever to play multiple-professional level sports. Add those 4-5 years back to his career what does that add to his state lines, or is there a possible extra ring or two? Obviously all what ifs but come in these things should not be held against his "longevity case"

[Special_Puppy]

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet it’s LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

And this was connected with reality/proven how exactly ?.

If you believe him the argument is over in any case, Jordan had the better peak and impressive longevity and LeBron had a lower but still high peak and even greater longevity.

I obviously would take the higher peak which was quite prolonged anyway and concede LeBron is the better player after age 35 playing for a team which is not seriously contending.

It’s to give an example of what I’m talking about when I discuss career value and show that even an approach that concedes that Jordan had a materially higher peak than LeBron and *weighs peak+prime more* still has LeBron over Jordan in total career value.

[michaelm]

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet it’s LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

And this was connected with reality/proven how exactly ?.

If you believe him the argument is over in any case, Jordan had the better peak and impressive longevity and LeBron had a lower but still high peak and even greater longevity.

I obviously would take the higher peak which was quite prolonged anyway and concede LeBron is the better player after age 35 playing for a team which is not seriously contending.

It’s to give an example of what I’m talking about when I discuss career value and show that even an approach that concedes that Jordan had a materially higher peak than LeBron and *weighs peak+prime more* still has LeBron over Jordan in total career value.

What I am asking is how this was derived ?. Seems to me both peak and longevity can be varied arbitrarily to give different outcomes. Coming up with some sort of number doesn’t make that number any more valid than opinions on here as to the value of peak vs longevity. that I can see.

I am willing to take notice of metrics etc which predict outcomes, but this is not such a number.

Several staunch LeBron fans seem to be conceding longevity is their main argument. As I have said I don’t consider numbers put up while a player’s team is not really contending to prove much. I hope Curry my favourite player won’t go too long, and didn’t enjoy MJ at the Wizards, although I guess the point is whether he enjoyed it himself. Tim Duncan one of my other favourites managed to contribute to his team contending in his late 30s but I didn’t want him to go any longer than he did either.

[Special_Puppy]

And this was connected with reality/proven how exactly ?.

If you believe him the argument is over in any case, Jordan had the better peak and impressive longevity and LeBron had a lower but still high peak and even greater longevity.

I obviously would take the higher peak which was quite prolonged anyway and concede LeBron is the better player after age 35 playing for a team which is not seriously contending.

It’s to give an example of what I’m talking about when I discuss career value and show that even an approach that concedes that Jordan had a materially higher peak than LeBron and *weighs peak+prime more* still has LeBron over Jordan in total career value.

What I am asking is how this was derived ?. Seems to me both peak and longevity can be varied arbitrarily to give different outcomes. Coming up with some sort of number doesn’t make that number any more valid than opinions on here as to the value of peak vs longevity. that I can see.

I am willing to take notice of metrics etc which predict outcomes, but this is not such a number.

Several staunch LeBron fans seem to be conceding longevity is their main argument. As I have said I don’t consider numbers put up while a player’s team is not really contending to prove much. I hope Curry my favourite player won’t go too long, and didn’t enjoy MJ at the Wizards, although I guess the point is whether he enjoyed it himself. Tim Duncan one of my other favourites managed to contribute to his team contending in his late 30s but I didn’t want him to go any longer than he did either.

I got the 100-95-90-85 etc weighting from football reference here (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm).

Generally the rank order of the 100-95-90 weighing matches up with a JAWS approach (https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/jaws.shtml) and an approach that using logistic regression to see what the odds of a player winning a championship in any given year are given their weighted WAR that year (viewtopic.php?p=116606833#p116606833). I would note that LeBron passes MJ in this metric after his 2019 season. LeBron’s 2020+2021+2022+2023 seasons where he was around the 3rd best, 8th best, 7th best, and 13th best player in the league are just the icing on the cake

[Special_Puppy]

Let's just be honest about it. Longevity (i.e., performing at a high level for a long time) is quite clearly an important thing to consider when evaluating a player. It's important in baseball as it is in basketball. The only reason you have people trying to downplay longevity is because they are butthurt MJ fans that are upset about LeBron performing at a high level for so long. Anybody with a brain knows that longevity is important in all time rankings.

LeBron was very good at a very young age, and should get credit for that. While in Jordan’s era players didn’t start so young it can’t be assumed he would have been as good, young LeBron was physically freakish.

Both of them deserve great credit for being close enough to their peaks to lead teams to titles at the age of 35, impressive longevity by any standard.

If you want to hang your hat on past his best LeBron being better than past his best Jordan, go for it, but I don’t think it really adds much to any argument that he is the superior player overall. If you want to look at players aged over 35 years old then Kareem has them both beat as has been said, he contributed to the winning of multiple titles if not as the leading player.

Very much like your post and highly respect it, great job!

I've always wondered why it is held against Jordan that he had to play 3 years of college

There weren't any rules preventing Jordan from declaring for the draft straight out of high school. It was just norms that were discouraging players from doing so. I would also say that even if those norms weren't in place, the earliest a NBA team would consider drafting Jordan in the lottery is probably after his sophomore year in college. He just wasn't good enough in high school or as a freshman to warrant going in the lottery let alone 1st overall like LeBron did.

[Special_Puppy]

Let's just be honest about it. Longevity (i.e., performing at a high level for a long time) is quite clearly an important thing to consider when evaluating a player. It's important in baseball as it is in basketball. The only reason you have people trying to downplay longevity is because they are butthurt MJ fans that are upset about LeBron performing at a high level for so long. Anybody with a brain knows that longevity is important in all time rankings.

LeBron was very good at a very young age, and should get credit for that. While in Jordan’s era players didn’t start so young it can’t be assumed he would have been as good, young LeBron was physically freakish.

Both of them deserve great credit for being close enough to their peaks to lead teams to titles at the age of 35, impressive longevity by any standard.

If you want to hang your hat on past his best LeBron being better than past his best Jordan, go for it, but I don’t think it really adds much to any argument that he is the superior player overall. If you want to look at players aged over 35 years old then Kareem has them both beat as has been said, he contributed to the winning of multiple titles if not as the leading player.

Very much like your post and highly respect it, great job!

I've always wondered why it is held against Jordan that he had to play 3 years of college, or why it is held against Jordan that he is one of less than maybe a 1000 total athletes ever to play multiple-professional level sports. Add those 4-5 years back to his career what does that add to his state lines, or is there a possible extra ring or two? Obviously all what ifs but come in these things should not be held against his "longevity case"

We aren't "punishing" Jordan. We never give athletes credit for years they don't actually play so the question is why should Jordan be the exception? Him voluntarily retiring (partially due to the murder of his dad tbf) is much less sympathetic than Magic being pushed out of the league due to basically bigotry or Robinson losing the early years of his career due to navel service or Kareem being unable to enter the league until after his senior year.

[Whetzell]

Dating for Sex.

Most realistic adult game

[bledredwine]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

Wait, so there is a baseball player who's beaten out in achievements, stats, peak, and is considered GOAT simply by playing longer?

and this is despite ring chasing by teaming up with multiple Allstars?


Who?

[RRR3]

Someone brought up baseball rankings and it's interesting because if we ranked basketball players like they do baseball players LeBron would definitely be consensus GOAT (at this point his WAR or whatever equivalent NBA stat there is would dwarf MJ's). That doesn't mean I'm saying LeBron is the GOAT, I just found that interesting.

Wait, so there is a baseball player who's beaten out in achievements, stats, peak, and is considered GOAT simply by playing longer?

and this is despite ring chasing by teaming up with multiple Allstars?


Who?

Now type this without crying.

[MavsDirk41]

It’s to give an example of what I’m talking about when I discuss career value and show that even an approach that concedes that Jordan had a materially higher peak than LeBron and *weighs peak+prime more* still has LeBron over Jordan in total career value.

What I am asking is how this was derived ?. Seems to me both peak and longevity can be varied arbitrarily to give different outcomes. Coming up with some sort of number doesn’t make that number any more valid than opinions on here as to the value of peak vs longevity. that I can see.

I am willing to take notice of metrics etc which predict outcomes, but this is not such a number.

Several staunch LeBron fans seem to be conceding longevity is their main argument. As I have said I don’t consider numbers put up while a player’s team is not really contending to prove much. I hope Curry my favourite player won’t go too long, and didn’t enjoy MJ at the Wizards, although I guess the point is whether he enjoyed it himself. Tim Duncan one of my other favourites managed to contribute to his team contending in his late 30s but I didn’t want him to go any longer than he did either.

I got the 100-95-90-85 etc weighting from football reference here (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm).

Generally the rank order of the 100-95-90 weighing matches up with a JAWS approach (https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/jaws.shtml) and an approach that using logistic regression to see what the odds of a player winning a championship in any given year are given their weighted WAR that year (viewtopic.php?p=116606833#p116606833). I would note that LeBron passes MJ in this metric after his 2019 season. LeBron’s 2020+2021+2022+2023 seasons where he was around the 3rd best, 8th best, 7th best, and 13th best player in the league are just the icing on the cake

Both won a championship at 35 years old but James won his during the bubble season with a 4 month break after playing around 60ish games. James also had the benefit of playing with a teammate like Anthony Davis who was incredible during those playoffs in 2020. At 35 Jordan had Pippen who missed half the season with injuries and got hurt again in game 6 of the finals. Rodman was what? 36/37 and pretty much out of the league after that season.

As far as seasons 21-23 yes James has the longevity argument but Malone has that over Bird and Magic but i wouldnt take him over those two.

[Special_Puppy]

What I am asking is how this was derived ?. Seems to me both peak and longevity can be varied arbitrarily to give different outcomes. Coming up with some sort of number doesn’t make that number any more valid than opinions on here as to the value of peak vs longevity. that I can see.

I am willing to take notice of metrics etc which predict outcomes, but this is not such a number.

Several staunch LeBron fans seem to be conceding longevity is their main argument. As I have said I don’t consider numbers put up while a player’s team is not really contending to prove much. I hope Curry my favourite player won’t go too long, and didn’t enjoy MJ at the Wizards, although I guess the point is whether he enjoyed it himself. Tim Duncan one of my other favourites managed to contribute to his team contending in his late 30s but I didn’t want him to go any longer than he did either.

I got the 100-95-90-85 etc weighting from football reference here (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm).

Generally the rank order of the 100-95-90 weighing matches up with a JAWS approach (https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/jaws.shtml) and an approach that using logistic regression to see what the odds of a player winning a championship in any given year are given their weighted WAR that year (viewtopic.php?p=116606833#p116606833). I would note that LeBron passes MJ in this metric after his 2019 season. LeBron’s 2020+2021+2022+2023 seasons where he was around the 3rd best, 8th best, 7th best, and 13th best player in the league are just the icing on the cake

Both won a championship at 35 years old but James won his during the bubble season with a 4 month break after playing around 60ish games. James also had the benefit of playing with a teammate like Anthony Davis who was incredible during those playoffs in 2020. At 35 Jordan had Pippen who missed half the season with injuries and got hurt again in game 6 of the finals. Rodman was what? 36/37 and pretty much out of the league after that season.

As far as seasons 21-23 yes James has the longevity argument but Malone has that over Bird and Magic but i wouldnt take him over those two.

If Malone had equaled the sum total of Bird/Magic’s career by age 34 and then he kept playing until he’s 40 then I’d probably take Malone over Bird/Magic

[MavsDirk41]

I got the 100-95-90-85 etc weighting from football reference here (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm).

Generally the rank order of the 100-95-90 weighing matches up with a JAWS approach (https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/jaws.shtml) and an approach that using logistic regression to see what the odds of a player winning a championship in any given year are given their weighted WAR that year (viewtopic.php?p=116606833#p116606833). I would note that LeBron passes MJ in this metric after his 2019 season. LeBron’s 2020+2021+2022+2023 seasons where he was around the 3rd best, 8th best, 7th best, and 13th best player in the league are just the icing on the cake

Both won a championship at 35 years old but James won his during the bubble season with a 4 month break after playing around 60ish games. James also had the benefit of playing with a teammate like Anthony Davis who was incredible during those playoffs in 2020. At 35 Jordan had Pippen who missed half the season with injuries and got hurt again in game 6 of the finals. Rodman was what? 36/37 and pretty much out of the league after that season.

As far as seasons 21-23 yes James has the longevity argument but Malone has that over Bird and Magic but i wouldnt take him over those two.

If Malone had equaled the sum total of Bird/Magic’s career by age 34 and then he kept playing until he’s 40 then I’d probably take Malone over Bird/Magic

Well if you think James equaled the sum total of Jordan’s career at age 34/34 then we will just agree to disagree because i dont see it.

[lessthanjake]

You can tweak how you want to calculate career value to put more or less emphasis on peak. A lot of the lists I listed (including mine further down the thread) explicitly weight peak and prime years more.

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet its LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

This is a bit nitpicky and very likely doesn’t change the bottom line here, but I feel like applying WAR to the playoffs is a bit flawed (especially when weighting it more highly).

Great players will tend to accumulate WAR the more games they play, but there’s a lot of confounding factors regarding the number of games a player plays in the playoffs. Even leaving aside that they don’t entirely control how far their team gets in the playoffs (which is a confounding factor but also one at least in part in their control), talking about playoff WAR will tend to reward a player for playing in a long series, rather than a short one, even though that’s generally the opposite of what one actually wants (assuming one wins the series). That sort of factor probably cancels out when assessing two players’ whole career (i.e. there isn’t likely to be a systematic difference in games played per series—with one caveat mentioned below), but it could *potentially* have major impact when we are weighting the best seasons most highly. For instance, LeBron’s 2013 season and Jordan’s 1991 season will both get high weight, and their playoff WAR in those years is really similar (6.0 for Jordan and 5.8 for LeBron), but Jordan played 17 playoff games that year while LeBron played 23 playoff games. This is because the Bulls won the title more easily than the Heat did. The fact that Jordan played 6 fewer playoff games than LeBron basically punishes him for something that definitely isn’t a bad thing (and vice versa).

And then we get to the fact that, in prior eras, the first round was best-of-three or best-of-five instead of best-of-seven. This will tend to routinely give a player like MJ about one or two fewer playoff games each year to accumulate WAR than a player like LeBron would have. It’s not a huge deal, but that adds up, especially when you’re doubling the weighting of them and they’re often against teams that these guys smoke (and therefore probably accumulate a lot of WAR against). It effectively gives LeBron like 2-4 extra games of WAR accumulation each year, on average. While that’s not a huge factor, considering that the overall numbers you list are close to begin with (258.3 vs. 248.3), my guess is that this factor probably accounts for somewhere around half the difference.

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In any event, I think that this analysis you did is generally good, but I think the specific results are not super meaningful. What you’ve done is accumulate season-by-season WAR data and apply some specific weightings to the playoffs and to better seasons, in order to meld together a measure of longevity and peak value and to recognize the importance of playoff basketball. The result was very close (again, 258.3 vs. 248.3). Crucially, while the weightings don’t seem unreasonable to me, they are ultimately entirely arbitrary, with there not actually being any particular reason to use these over other weightings. And, given how close this is, I’m sure if we changed those weightings a bit in certain ways, the result could easily flip. So I think this more suggests that a statistical melding of career and peak value can and probably does have these two close, rather than that such analysis invariably has LeBron ahead. Which is simply consistent with an idea that they’re both valid GOAT candidates, IMO.

[Special_Puppy]

Sure, but you can also weight achievements, stats as well. They’re both a part of the picture. Could the guy get it done? Did he ever put his team in the position to lose as his own fault? And so on.
Longevity is nice, but if we’re weighing it that heavily, I have Kareem over lebron anyway.

The video I posted earlier looked from several angles, as one should.

This is what Kobe fans used to do- prioritize Championship count and scoring.

For Jordan, we prioritize everything because he was that dominant all around. You’ll hear everything mentioned, not just longevity, or just championships, or just stats, or just peak etc.
These people prioritizing longevity are doing it because they are Lebron fans and that’s the one general GOAT criteria he has over Jordan.

I just want to walk you through an example of a career value calculation. Going to use RAPTOR WAR (a stat created by Nate Silver formally at 538 you can download the data here to recreate what I am showing https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nba-raptor). I'm going to use an adjusted version of RAPTOR that weighs the playoffs twice in a nod towards the fact that the goal of each season is to win a championship. I'm then going to weigh each player's best season 100%. Their 2nd best season 95%. Their 3rd best season 90%. This gives more weight to peak and truly excellent seasons. I'm then going to add every season together using this weighing mechanism I just described. According to the adjusted version of this metric, Jordan's 7 best seasons were worth a total of 221.6 wins. LeBron's 7 best seasons were worth 198.0 wins. So Jordan is comfortably ahead in peak value. And yet its LeBron who comes out in front using this career metric overall with 258.3 weighted career WAR to Jordan's 248.2. So in a metric that explicitly weighs peak seasons more and sees Jordan's peak as comfortably better than LeBron's, LeBron still comes out ahead in career value. Yes some of this is just longevity, but LeBron having the 2nd best peak in the data set also helps a lot in a metric that explicitly weighs peak years more.

This is a bit nitpicky and very likely doesn’t change the bottom line here, but I feel like applying WAR to the playoffs is a bit flawed (especially when weighting it more highly).

Great players will tend to accumulate WAR the more games they play, but there’s a lot of confounding factors regarding the number of games a player plays in the playoffs. Even leaving aside that they don’t entirely control how far their team gets in the playoffs (which is a confounding factor but also one at least in part in their control), talking about playoff WAR will tend to reward a player for playing in a long series, rather than a short one, even though that’s generally the opposite of what one actually wants (assuming one wins the series). That sort of factor probably cancels out when assessing two players’ whole career (i.e. there isn’t likely to be a systematic difference in games played per series—with one caveat mentioned below), but it could *potentially* have major impact when we are weighting the best seasons most highly. For instance, LeBron’s 2013 season and Jordan’s 1991 season will both get high weight, and their playoff WAR in those years is really similar (6.0 for Jordan and 5.8 for LeBron), but Jordan played 17 playoff games that year while LeBron played 23 playoff games. This is because the Bulls won the title more easily than the Heat did. The fact that Jordan played 6 fewer playoff games than LeBron basically punishes him for something that definitely isn’t a bad thing (and vice versa).

And then we get to the fact that, in prior eras, the first round was best-of-three or best-of-five instead of best-of-seven. This will tend to routinely give a player like MJ about one or two fewer playoff games each year to accumulate WAR than a player like LeBron would have. It’s not a huge deal, but that adds up, especially when you’re doubling the weighting of them and they’re often against teams that these guys smoke (and therefore probably accumulate a lot of WAR against). It effectively gives LeBron like 2-4 extra games of WAR accumulation each year, on average. While that’s not a huge factor, considering that the overall numbers you list are close to begin with (258.3 vs. 248.3), my guess is that this factor probably accounts for somewhere around half the difference.

____________________________________

In any event, I think that this analysis you did is generally good, but I think the specific results are not super meaningful. What you’ve done is accumulate season-by-season WAR data and apply some specific weightings to the playoffs and to better seasons, in order to meld together a measure of longevity and peak value and to recognize the importance of playoff basketball. The result was very close (again, 258.3 vs. 248.3). Crucially, while the weightings don’t seem unreasonable to me, they are ultimately entirely arbitrary, with there not actually being any particular reason to use these over other weightings. And, given how close this is, I’m sure if we changed those weightings a bit in certain ways, the result could easily flip. So I think this more suggests that a statistical melding of career and peak value can and probably does have these two close, rather than that such analysis invariably has LeBron ahead. Which is simply consistent with an idea that they’re both valid GOAT candidates, IMO.

So I agree 100% with the playoff critique and I 100% agree with the critique about how you can flip the result based on different parameters. With the playoffs I just think that including playoff WAR and weighing them twice as much you closer to the truth than not including playoff WAR at all