Cavsfansince84 wrote:Something I've given a little more thought to as it relates to MJ/LeBron and LeBron's perceived coasting on defense from 2015-2019 is that no player since the Celtics's teams of the 60's played as many games in consecutive years as LeBron did from 2011-2018. Most people agree MJ coasted a bit in 93 and that was coming off of only 2 straight finals runs. LeBron by 2015 was coming off of 4 straight and then also had been playing a full nba schedule since he was 19. I think it's something that probably should be brought up a little more. MJ after 3 straight was ready to retire for a while. LeBron doing 8 straight while being a dpoy candidate for the first 4 is pretty damn amazing.
In general, people severely overrate Jordan on defense. He was a great wing defender but few in his era that were his positional opposite could give him fits like the wings do today. And what more, his wing defense was not transformational the way Pippen’s was. He was great 1v1 but he also gambled for steals.
What more, the primary scorers in his era were bigs, he rarely had to defend the opposition’s best player. He should never have won DPOY, he simply was never as valuable defensively as the best defending bigs of his era. Kobe similarly got a lot of accolades in defense long past he was truly transformational.
Never mind the exhaustion argument you bring which is also true. I’d take a locked in LeBron even in year 17 over Jordan’s peak years as a defender as LeBron is just that much more valuable, particularly in a positionless basketball era which requires big players to switch on smaller faster players more often.
