How long has the 6-0 Arguement for MJ been around?

[Michael Lucky]

98...

Should have been 8-0 but clearly he wasn't as fanatic about basketball as others.

[Ito]

Didn’t he put 6 fingers up himself

[leolozon]

Russell 11-1 in 13 seasons!

[msmoore66]

It began as soon as LeBron left the womb.

[Rust_Cohle]

Since the memory of losing to shaq and penny in the 95 playoffs became inconvenient

Losing to the Pistons doesn't matter either. Don't get me wrong, 6-0 in the finals is amazing, but if they played the 2016-18 Warriors instead of the 91 Lakers, 92 Blazers, and 93 Suns, then MJ wouldnt be 6-0, he'd have fallen short to atleast two of those teams.

But imagine how many more rings he could’ve had playing the 8th seed Heat in the finals

[zimpy27]

Didn’t he put 6 fingers up himself

This needs some punctuation or something

[Rust_Cohle]

The funny thing is that if any current star player won basically 6 straight finals and hit multiple clutch shots along the way they would be considered the undisputed GOAT by fans. That was MJ in the 90s, it's just weird that people want to find ways to knock him nowadays.

It's a gen z thing. But I'm sure when people had Messi as the goat maradonna fans were livid but the same will happen to LeBron when whoever comes out in the next 15 years.

[NZB2323]

If he never stepped away, it could have been 8-0. In those two years he retired the Rockets won the title back to back.

Bulls finished 3rd in the East both those years. The Bulls record was 34-31 record for the 1994-95 season. Before he said "I'm back" and won another 3 titles.

I think the Bulls lose in 95 with no Grant or Rodman.

But 7-1 is still really good.

[FarBeyondDriven]

1998. He had passed Magic and Bird in the top 3 and the championships advantage as well as being undefeated in the Finals was a major differentiator.

[Infinite Llamas]

[DowJones]

Unpopular opinion: 6-0 in the Finals is worse than 6-(any number higher than zero).

It depends on how many seasons each individual play. It was so impressive because he onlyplayed 11 full seasons. The man retired twice at the literal top of the game.

[ScrantonBulls]

Unpopular opinion: 6-0 in the Finals is worse than 6-(any number higher than zero).

It depends on how many seasons each individual play. It was so impressive because he onlyplayed 11 full seasons. The man retired twice at the literal top of the game.

Quitting when you're at the top of your game isn't a good thing - despite what the MJ mythologists like to say. The so-called "ultimate competitor" quitting twice during his prime is laughable and a stain on his legacy.

[DowJones]

Unpopular opinion: 6-0 in the Finals is worse than 6-(any number higher than zero).

It depends on how many seasons each individual play. It was so impressive because he onlyplayed 11 full seasons. The man retired twice at the literal top of the game.

Quitting when you're at the top of your game isn't a good thing - despite what the MJ mythologists like to say. The so-called "ultimate competitor" quitting twice during his prime is laughable and a stain on his legacy.

I couldn’t disagree more. He mastered the game. They won 3 in a row the first time and no series they played in was all that competitive. The second time he retired because management wanted to break the team up.

Jordan had nothing more to prove. Nobody was beating him.

[Jables]

We say talking point like there's something to argue with? 6 rings leading one team as the guy is the biggest modern NBA achievement, the difference with Bill Russell was simply the professionalism of the era, even then few are arguing that 11 rings isn't on paper the better achievement.

That's the thing with all the arguing about finals losses, they will always be arguments because there's nothing to actually argue. Those losses happened and they are important context. Do they mean you should or shouldn't believe x player is the best? It doesn't really matter, because the majority will always think one player is the greatest and your one vote ain't deciding it.

Here's an example of why the finals losses actually matter. If we add context in leBron's favour, winning the greatest ring is important right? So LeBron beating the Warriors is the greatest achievement ever right? But what about Dirk vs LeBron? Well he only had one ring and I personally don't think his individual performance 100% got them that ring. Oh so now we start taking context into account and twisting it so only LeBron's achievements matter and his cons don't, because he also lost it in that position!

It's pure bias either way, everyone already picked a side.

[Rust_Cohle]

Unpopular opinion: 6-0 in the Finals is worse than 6-(any number higher than zero).

It depends on how many seasons each individual play. It was so impressive because he onlyplayed 11 full seasons. The man retired twice at the literal top of the game.

Quitting when you're at the top of your game isn't a good thing - despite what the MJ mythologists like to say. The so-called "ultimate competitor" quitting twice during his prime is laughable and a stain on his legacy.

And yet his quitting wasn’t as bad as the 2011 finals. Imagine “quitting” and coming back to win nearly as many titles as the #2 guy in NBA history who has to play 20+ years still trying to chase you.

[leolozon]

If he never stepped away, it could have been 8-0. In those two years he retired the Rockets won the title back to back.

Bulls finished 3rd in the East both those years. The Bulls record was 34-31 record for the 1994-95 season. Before he said "I'm back" and won another 3 titles.

I think the Bulls lose in 95 with no Grant or Rodman.

But 7-1 is still really good.

Oh yeah, a guy that was mentally spent and needed time to recharge would have made 8 Finals.

You can also make the argument that if Jordan doesn’t leave basketball, he mentally collapses and the Bulls never go on their 2nd 3 peat.

[ScrantonBulls]

It depends on how many seasons each individual play. It was so impressive because he onlyplayed 11 full seasons. The man retired twice at the literal top of the game.

Quitting when you're at the top of your game isn't a good thing - despite what the MJ mythologists like to say. The so-called "ultimate competitor" quitting twice during his prime is laughable and a stain on his legacy.

And yet his quitting wasn’t as bad as the 2011 finals. Imagine “quitting” and coming back to win nearly as many titles as the #2 guy in NBA history who has to play 20+ years still trying to chase you.

But but but whatabout LeBron?!11

Hope that whataboutism makes you feel better about him quitting.

[Special_Puppy]

lessthanjake made a fantastic post on the 6-0 argument. The point behind the 6-0 line of thinking isn't the 6-0 record in a vacuum but converting on expectations. That's what in many eyes makes Jordan better than Lebron and other GOAT candidates. That he didn't leave opportunities on the table.

To me, the “6 for 6” stuff never made much sense, because of course it is better to lose in the Finals than to lose before the Finals. I get that people pay more attention to the Finals, so losing in the Finals maybe ends up worse practically speaking because more people see you fail. But if we’re really having a retrospective discussion about it, it’s not worse to lose in the Finals than to lose before the Finals.

That said, I don’t think the argument for Jordan really relies on the “6 for 6” thing in any meaningful way.

At a very basic level, winning 6 titles is of course better than winning 4 titles, regardless of whether the guy with 6 had meaningful failures or not.

But even looking beyond that, I think we could expand how we think about this to talk about how often these players converted having a legit contending team into a title. By that measure, Jordan isn’t 6 for 6 anymore, but he still looks much better than LeBron IMO.

For instance, in the years the Bulls didn’t win the title, the only years that their pre-playoffs title odds were +1000 or better were in 1990 and 1995. Their odds were +800 and +500 respectively in those years. They were not the favorites either year, but in those two years they were amongst the top few favorites. I think those years can be considered failures from Jordan, because he had a contending team and did not come away with a title. The other years, his team was not a contending-level team and was not given much of any chance of winning the title, despite how good Jordan himself was. So that leaves Jordan as basically being 6 of 8 in terms of titles while on a contending team.

In contrast, we have a lot more years where LeBron had a contending team and didn’t win. Let’s do the same analysis for LeBron. How many non-title years did his team have pre-playoffs title odds of +1000 or better? Eight years! LeBron had non-title-winning years where his teams’ pre-playoffs title odds were +160, +160, +200, +225, +300, +400, +405, and +800! That’s *a lot* more times failing with a contending team. By this measure, LeBron is 4 of 12 with a contending team, while Jordan was 6 of 8.

Of course, one retort to this may be that title odds take into account how good the star is, so LeBron’s teams only had such good odds because of how good he was. That is true. But I think to believe that that created this difference in conversion rate between Michael Jordan and LeBron James, you’d have to believe that LeBron James was considered far better individually than Jordan was—which is not something that strikes me as being plausible. LeBron being on his teams wasn’t moving those odds way more than Jordan being on his teams did.

Another retort to this would be that LeBron had to face the dynasty Warriors. But the Warriors being incredible was baked into the odds in those years (i.e. LeBron’s Cavaliers had worse odds because everyone knew how good the Warriors were), and is relevant for less than half of those listed years anyways.

In any event, I think one can find various excuses for LeBron’s vastly worse conversion rate while being on a contender, but ultimately that conversion rate is part of the story of their greatness, even if you think there’s ways to explain why LeBron converted so much less. Greatness is about what happened. And part of what happened is that Jordan’s teams almost always won the title when they were a contender, and LeBron’s teams usually didn’t win the title when they were contenders.

A decent amount of this is because Jordan’s supporting casts were either awful or great with basically no in between (besides 1993). With LeBron he rarely had casts as bad as Jordan’s 1988+1989 crew, but also never had supporting casts as good as Jordan’s 2nd three peat Bulls

[Rust_Cohle]

Quitting when you're at the top of your game isn't a good thing - despite what the MJ mythologists like to say. The so-called "ultimate competitor" quitting twice during his prime is laughable and a stain on his legacy.

And yet his quitting wasn’t as bad as the 2011 finals. Imagine “quitting” and coming back to win nearly as many titles as the #2 guy in NBA history who has to play 20+ years still trying to chase you.

But but but whatabout LeBron?!11

Hope that whataboutism makes you feel better about him quitting.

Considering how barely anyone remembers him quitting, but remembers how he dominated a decade in a way we have never seen in the last 40 years. Could’ve been worse, could’ve made a tv show announcing his decision. Does that make you feel better Taj?

[Rust_Cohle]

lessthanjake made a fantastic post on the 6-0 argument. The point behind the 6-0 line of thinking isn't the 6-0 record in a vacuum but converting on expectations. That's what in many eyes makes Jordan better than Lebron and other GOAT candidates. That he didn't leave opportunities on the table.

To me, the “6 for 6” stuff never made much sense, because of course it is better to lose in the Finals than to lose before the Finals. I get that people pay more attention to the Finals, so losing in the Finals maybe ends up worse practically speaking because more people see you fail. But if we’re really having a retrospective discussion about it, it’s not worse to lose in the Finals than to lose before the Finals.

That said, I don’t think the argument for Jordan really relies on the “6 for 6” thing in any meaningful way.

At a very basic level, winning 6 titles is of course better than winning 4 titles, regardless of whether the guy with 6 had meaningful failures or not.

But even looking beyond that, I think we could expand how we think about this to talk about how often these players converted having a legit contending team into a title. By that measure, Jordan isn’t 6 for 6 anymore, but he still looks much better than LeBron IMO.

For instance, in the years the Bulls didn’t win the title, the only years that their pre-playoffs title odds were +1000 or better were in 1990 and 1995. Their odds were +800 and +500 respectively in those years. They were not the favorites either year, but in those two years they were amongst the top few favorites. I think those years can be considered failures from Jordan, because he had a contending team and did not come away with a title. The other years, his team was not a contending-level team and was not given much of any chance of winning the title, despite how good Jordan himself was. So that leaves Jordan as basically being 6 of 8 in terms of titles while on a contending team.

In contrast, we have a lot more years where LeBron had a contending team and didn’t win. Let’s do the same analysis for LeBron. How many non-title years did his team have pre-playoffs title odds of +1000 or better? Eight years! LeBron had non-title-winning years where his teams’ pre-playoffs title odds were +160, +160, +200, +225, +300, +400, +405, and +800! That’s *a lot* more times failing with a contending team. By this measure, LeBron is 4 of 12 with a contending team, while Jordan was 6 of 8.

Of course, one retort to this may be that title odds take into account how good the star is, so LeBron’s teams only had such good odds because of how good he was. That is true. But I think to believe that that created this difference in conversion rate between Michael Jordan and LeBron James, you’d have to believe that LeBron James was considered far better individually than Jordan was—which is not something that strikes me as being plausible. LeBron being on his teams wasn’t moving those odds way more than Jordan being on his teams did.

Another retort to this would be that LeBron had to face the dynasty Warriors. But the Warriors being incredible was baked into the odds in those years (i.e. LeBron’s Cavaliers had worse odds because everyone knew how good the Warriors were), and is relevant for less than half of those listed years anyways.

In any event, I think one can find various excuses for LeBron’s vastly worse conversion rate while being on a contender, but ultimately that conversion rate is part of the story of their greatness, even if you think there’s ways to explain why LeBron converted so much less. Greatness is about what happened. And part of what happened is that Jordan’s teams almost always won the title when they were a contender, and LeBron’s teams usually didn’t win the title when they were contenders.

A decent amount of this is because Jordan’s supporting casts were either awful or great with basically no in between (besides 1993). With LeBron he rarely had casts as bad as Jordan’s 1988+1989 crew, but also never had supporting casts as good as Jordan’s 2nd three peat Bulls

Lebron got to handpick a lot of his supporting cast after his first Cleveland stint. I mean MJ never had a big man as good as AD, rodman was amazing defensively of course but shocking offensively. And they had to start luc longley as well. Some of LeBron’s teams had way more depth than those Bulls teams who really only went 7 players deep. They never had great centers or PG’s