GSWFan1994 wrote:I'm not against longevity. You have to take it into account, obviously, when analyzing a player's career.
But you play the game to win. You compete. You try to beat your opponent to the fullest.
Nothing more, nothing less. You don't play to accumulate stats.
It's as simple as that.
And when do you think LeBron became the kind of player you are describing? The one who plays to accumulate stats?
TheNG wrote:If a player plays so many years but even though he has such a long career he has less MVPs and less rings than others, it says a lot about his dominance.
If you are not able to really dominate, adding more years will not change your status...
I don't really think this says anything at all about a players dominance, at least not when it comes to those things you just mentioned.
For one, MVP's are not all created equal, same with championships. They aren't something you stack up against one another, compare with the number another player has, and determine who was truly more valuable to their teams. Otherwise, Jordan has no argument of being greater than Bill Russell, who has the same number of MVPs, and more championships in a shorter amount of years played (13 to 15, and even if you take away the two seasons Jordan played in Washington, that means that even at an equal amount of seasons played, Russell still achieved more). These kinds of things require a deep dive and legitimate understanding behind the why and how, otherwise they're just empty accolades (in another example, Jordan's got more MVPs, but none are arguably as impressive as LeBron's 2013 MVP, which was one vote shy of making him the first unanimous MVP). Same thing applies to the championships (Jordan has the perfect finals record, more championships, but LeBron has beaten two different finals opponents who had superior SRS scores than his, including the 73 win Warriors who had almost a 5+ SRS advantage, where as Jordan always went into his finals series with his teams possessing superior SRS scores).
Second, it is a well known fact that LeBron purposely coasted during the regular season after the 2013 NBA season, where as Jordan usually didn't. So it stands within reason that Jordan would have more MVP's at the very least. But even despite this, there were two different seasons where LeBron even when not playing at 100% effort (2018 and 2020), he was still second in MVP voting and some still argue to this day he should have won said awards (I say yes to the former, no to the latter).
Saints14 wrote:I have LeBron #1 largely due to his large longevity gap over Jordan but the counter-argument I find compelling is basically "gun to your head, who would you take to win a Finals series". And many would say that Jordan proved he was the best by that measure and that it wasn't a fluke, and anything beyond that is gravy.
I would still go with LeBron in that scenario.
