Michael Jordan vs LeBron James

in #sports7 years ago (edited)

I'm here to talk to you about the greatness of Scottie Pippen.

A master defender and uniquely team-oriented for someone of his overall ability, Pippen does generally get his due.

But I'm not sure it's appreciated how perfectly complimentary he is for Jordan.

Typically when superstar players combine, there's plenty of negative overlap. Basically, if their value is predicated on holding the ball and being the primary scoring option, then there isn't really room for both of them to fully express themselves.

But the skill set Pippen brings fits more fluidly with other great players.

If you let Jordan have literally whichever player he wants, I'm not sure he could have picked anyone who elevates him more. Maybe David Robinson, or a different great big man? But I'm not sure. The list can't be that long.

And I think that's really important to stop and appreciate. It isn't that Pippen is vaguely serviceable and MJ can find a way to make it work or something. It's a lot closer to Jordan basically having the pick of the litter.

And then he gets Horace Grant or the great Dennis Rodman, and solid coaching from Phil Jackson.

If you're a budding superstar in the 1990s, can you really ask for more than that?

And then LeBron is kind of the exact opposite. It actually seems hard to dream up a career path that was less favorable to him.

Cleveland

He was the 1-man team during the first stretch of his career in Cleveland. And you can say "well he was developing during that time anyways".

But I think most people would tell you LeBron was uniquely "NBA ready" and was good enough to win early (imo, earlier than MJ). So you have to consider that, in a different situation, this is a really wide stretch of years where he could have been stacking championships.

I just know the LeBron James who beat the Pistons in '07 has some theoretical championships in him. And by playing in Cleveland he was reduced to basically 0% chance to realize any of them.

(MJ probably wasn't ever really winning championships in the 80s, even if similarly he was a 1-man team for a few years.)

Miami

So then there's the 4 years of "super team" in Miami.

And it's funny that people criticize him for this or act like it was a stacked deck. Really I think I'd take Pippen and Grant or Pippen and Rodman, kind of easily. (Especially in the context of it being a well coached team that had years to form together.) So LeBron's unfairly good team is basically what Jordan had the whole time.

People will dog him for the two losses during these years. But remember they were an underdog the year they beat the Thunder, and they were up against Duncan's Spurs twice. Winning 2 seems totally solid.

And this is where the whole "Jordan never lost in the finals thing" can be blinding. Ya, that's cool, and I think you can give style points to his legacy for it. (You can give style points for other reasons too, like holding his pose on that shot against the Utah Jazz.) But it doesn't mean this becomes the expectation of what other people should do and all other legacies are necessarily tarnished if they don't have this particular feature to them.

Just as a matter of science and probability and stuff, there's always a chance of losing in the finals. Jordan dodging that whammy might have more to do with luck and happenstance than that it's embedded into him that this is what Jordan does.

(For example, if he played in a uniquely weak Eastern Conference and had some of the bad and shaky teams that LeBron had, he would have finals losses.)

So you shouldn't use this as the benchmark just because Jordan's career happened to play out that way.

Winning 2 championships in 4 years is perfectly good.

Cleveland Part II

It's kind of 3 unique years:

  • Love and Kyrie are injured and LeBron is the 1-man team again
  • They're healthy and defeat a 73-win team in the finals
  • Kevin Durant joins forces with the Warriors and it's kind of impossible for anyone else to win

Of these it's essentially one viable crack at a title.

Sure, you want to feel like they're superheroes and that they should overcome whatever challenge. But that's just not how it works. If there's a disproportionate amount of talent on the other side, it's just not reasonable to hold it against them if they aren't able to win.

(None of Jordan's wins were against a uniquely good collection of talent or done with a uniquely poor supporting cast. So it's not like there's some standard of this happening.)

And so with the 4 years in Miami, that makes a total of five seasons where you could say he's given a reasonably viable chance to win.

Which seems absurd, and especially when you consider that he was good early and has stayed good late. He should easily have at least 10-12 viable tries.

And within the wasted years, he's basically never under-performed or lost earlier than he absolutely had to (mixed in with a couple "whoa, he beat them?" type of things).

It seems just so hard to be any more dominant.

So "Jordan never lost in the finals". But consider LeBron has really only ever lost 2 playoff series of all the series where winning was a decently reasonable possibility. So besides blaming him for things that are outside of his control, he's every bit of the flawless consummate winner sort of thing that people think applies to Michael but for some reason not to LeBron.

The difference is mostly just the course they had and where the barriers were and how it gets displayed to us, rather than there are real reasons to think MJ had a better psychological edge or was a better winner or something.

Durant impact

I don't "blame" Durant for doing what he did.

At first I thought it was weird. Like so little to gain vs the downside of what happens if you go to Golden State and lose with them. I was surprised that he wanted that.

But then I started to get it. With LeBron at the height of his powers and Golden State so good, there wasn't much of any other path to a title. So he just wanted to technically have a ring to check that box and never have to worry about it again.

So Durant didn't do anything wrong but LeBron is still harmed by it. It's bad for him that the game theory of the NBA reduces to where great players will join forces until they're good enough.

(In Jordan's time, Stockton and Malone just tried to beat you. The culture wasn't to join forces. So being the best player in the league meant a bit more and would take you further.)

It's almost like LeBron is playing Mario Kart and getting hit with the blue shell and whatnot, whereas in Jordan's era if you were the best you could just run away with it.

Conclusion

So I mean, Jordan basically lowkey had a super team the whole time, and the rest of the league didn't do anything interesting to challenge them.

LeBron at the height of his powers has to deal with a totally different circumstance of the players joining forces and it always being a struggle.

While it's just conjecture to say who would have done what in the other's shoes, I do think it's clear that they had totally different paths and different windows of opportunity. And that you can't compare them outside of this context.

LeBron's resume is clearly worse, and I'm okay with being a little overly fixated on rings when it comes to declaring someone the GOAT (it's good to make them battle for it and make the games mean something). But it seems mostly outside of his control and impossible for it to not be worse. So to me it's just murky, and any subsequent title LeBron can add would strengthen his argument.

In my mind LeBron is better, but I'd like a 4th title before I put him in the hall of GOATs.

Analytics

It's more of an afterthought than a foundation to my case here. But also consider that LeBron plays in an era where advanced analytics are a thing.

LeBron's team can use analytics too, but if you're the best player then you'd prefer nobody was using them.

With analytics, now there's an outside factor that stretches the game into something more than just the player abilities. Now it also matters how good your team is at using analytics and forming strategies. It's kind of like if having the hottest cheerleaders improved your team's chances -- naturally now a superstar is less dominant and has less impact on the outcome than before, because now the game also includes this other thing.

More on Pippen

There just aren't that many Scottie Pippens.

I'm gonna make a really controversial statement: Pippen wins 6 championships more often than MJ does.

Not because he's better than Jordan. (I'm going outside the box but not off my rocker.)

MJ wins one championship more often than Pippen. MJ elevates a bad team into a pretty good team better than Pippen does. But I claim Pippen elevates a great team into an ATG GOAT type of team better than Jordan does.

There's just more room for him to fit.

Somewhere on the spectrum, when a team has enough talent, there comes a point where you prefer adding Pippen to adding Jordan. (At least, I claim this is so.)

Because of the negative overlap and how players compliment each other. Pippen is the rare puzzle piece that can effectively compliment other elite talent, and essentially is like the magic elixir that you need if you want to have one of those mysteriously good, how do you possibly beat them type of teams.

Any elite player who got Scottie Pippen was going to be a juggernaut, even if they wouldn't have necessarily done as much as MJ did with it.

So if you shuffle up all the players from the 90s and run every permutation of them playing together (and I guess you want to stay within the confines of whatever would fit in a salary cap), I feel like Pippen might be attached to more GOAT dynasty type of teams, just because of the way he meshes with elite talent.

(Jordan would win more championships overall, but Pippen would have more wildly good extreme outcomes.)

So even though Jordan is clearly the better player, it's a weird thing where it could actually be Pippen who's more responsible for the enigmatic sort of magical quality about the Bulls.

Tin Foil Hat

It's no secret that Jordan as we know him is a success of marketing. And he came at a time where the NBA probably felt they needed a little adrenaline boost, with the great teams of the 80s fading off and whatnot.

If you want someone to seem like the god and savior, what better sidekick for him than someone who lowkey is actually helping a bunch but will tend to not absorb much of the credit for it.

I'm gonna say it may not have been an accident that the Bulls got Scottie Pippen.

Sort:  

The "dream team" that made up the bulls back in the day, is the reason I'll always be a bulls fan. They were just so amazing, so it really isn't fair to judge individual players based on their accomplishments.

It's probably not fair for me to even use the term fan. As I'm definitely not fanatic about any professional sports. I love playing, but never really got that into watching others play, and I'm sure that no-one wants to see me play. Throwing up brick after brick makes for a good meme, but that's about it.

I really do enjoy how well you present your case, support it with evidence then drop the mic. :)

I've been on a bit of a steemit "sabbatical," but finally got a new post up if your interested in reading it, should be a bit of fun.

My mind is intrigued. That post seems amazing.

..processing....

I will revisit it over coffee in the morning! lol

It's the violent epicenter of perceived insanity colliding with potential creativity.

that's where the magic happens :)

Wow! First of all. this is totally worth the wait!

On to the argument, Jordan did have a super team, didn't he? And ya they lasted more than Lebron's. Things really didnt go Bron's way as they did for Jordan true. I mean he had to leave Cleveland for Miami--even though sometimes I wonder if he could have stayed and have a team built for him-- and of course he had to leave Miami cos Wade was getting old, Bosh was getting old. And once again in Cle Love and Ky got injured; and then Ky had to leave again, so ya, LeBron sure hasnt had it as easy as Jordan.

I like the Warriors, but I also felt kinda weird when KD chose to leave OKC. I mean they had just given the Warriors their toughest run yet and were so close to winning; I mean that WCF might be the reason CLE won in the first place, but ya I get how he felt going to GSW might be his best path to a ring--it sure did pay off.

I think another ring will be splendid for Bron's case, but honestly I don't see him getting it. Not with this CAVS; Not with this Warriors and Rockets; not with Bos and Tor building strong future for their franchises.

Your arguments really made me feel sympathy for Bron's case, man, but I'm afraid in the end people like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. wouldn't care how hard Bron's had it. But I do. That guy's a baller and he's gone HAM in virtually all the Final's he's played.

Do I think he's GOAT? Naa. But hey I might be wrong and Bron goes into supernova mode and bags another ring. Now that'd be something, wouldn't it!

While it's just conjecture to say who would have done what in the other's shoes,

Sadly it is. But just to indulge a bit, I think Bron would have rocked in the 80s!

Ya, LeBron's super team compared to Jordan's.. it was like LeBron's was shoestringed together whereas Jordan's was well coached and had time to develop together. It's like Jordan's was actually the ideal scenario yet LeBron gets the criticism.

My least favorite thing about the KD thing is I would have liked to see LeBron go against the Warriors a few more times, like on more even footing without them being impossibly good. I'm curious how it would have played out.

It's hard to imagine how LeBron gets another ring. He's in a weird spot because the only way to do it right now seems to be to have a huge collection of talent around you, and then he's regarded as ring-chasing or joining a superteam or whatever. I feel like he pulls it off, somehow. I feel like he has one more in him. But it's hard to imagine how.

I'd like to see him win a ring with Westbrook, I love Westbrook.

At the end of the day it's hard to say, and Jordan seems sick. He seems like a real Warrior. And it's easy to be biased towards the size and brawn of James. So I dunno. What I'm sure of is that they had very different paths, and the perception of Jordan being flawless and James being more likely to fumble or whatever is largely driven by the circumstances they faced.

And ya, people like Stephen A etc will always look at rings and not dig too deep for much else hehe.

I freaking love Westbrook too, bro. I swear nobody goes as hard and gives his all as that dude. What a game it would be if everyone played like Westbrook. LeBron-Westbrook would be huuuuge! Add a decent center and they compete for the ring every time!

I came into this article to read about Scottie Pip and got completely blindsided by an article that convinced me that LeBron has been dealt poor teammate hands. Jordan is still the greatest and most storied player of our era but LeBron should be recognized as a Top 10 All Timer. I saw LeBron lose in High School in person, but in warm ups he was burying half court warm up 3s like they were from the free throw line. lol. Jordan always had the killer instinct though, LeBron settles for terrible shots at the end of games, in the worst times in my opinion. And I grew up in the same area code as LeBron so this is basically blasphemous. ha (Jordan signed a shirt of him making the last shot against Utah for me when I was 12 and it hung on my wall the rest of my youth......so I'm highly biased. lol)

so thaaaat's where the Jordan love originates from!

I came into this article to read about Scottie Pip and got completely blindsided

hahah ya! Big fan of Pip (as you can see).

I like that in an article about Jordan vs James I found the courage to start it off with Pippen.

And ya, however you rank them seems pretty open to interpretation and I can't really disagree too hard with Jordan. What I'm most sure about is that Bron has had a kind of raw deal.

That's sick that you saw LeBron play in high school!!!

That game was against GJR George Junior Republic which is a reform school i believe and they could play until they were like 21 so i'm not sure that's exactly fair lol, i don't think it was a conference game. But they did lose in a great game. I also got to watch the slam dunk contest that year in cleveland and the mcdonalds all american game was there too, i personally thought he lost the dunk contest to JR Giddeons that ended up at Kansas U, pretty sure. But, LeBron got the title. Mike Vick was a judge in that dunk contest pre dog fighting scandal, they likely cut a deal. :)

So sick!!! Ya, I feel like it would be easy to be biased towards LeBron. Crowd erupts, he's the center of attention. If he executes his dunk a lot of judges will probably give it to him haha.

That was the exact scenario in a gist, he was playing in the all american game and dunk contest literally down the road from his house. lol, keep the good stories coming brother.

Hmm, that was very interesting comparison. I have never thought about that. I always thought Michael Jordan was the best of the best. However, reading your article I realized he did have all these stars around him and basically his charm and of course talent made him so popular. On the other hand LeBron is mostly a one player between the others who assist him, that’s how I see it. Anyway I love all these players you mantioned Pippen, Durant, Malone...

Hi man!
Wow, that is one long and good article. I mean I am not an expert when it comes to basketball (history) although I have heard about every person of these three. So, well, I have learned quite a lot reading your post dude. Well written, I think and I really agree with you that it is often like that: A 'prodigy' often is better if he is playing "alone" than with another prodigy/boss in his team together; I mean, that probably is very difficult for such outstanding players to play perfectly together. Of course you cannot generalize it.
However, apparently it is possible that they do "harmonize". :D
Damn, I am so tired now - moreover my eyes haha.

You're an expert in my mind, Gandalf!!!

Ya, and you do of course need other talent around you, so as long as the players don't have an ego it's never a bad thing and will always help. Just, any time you can add talent in a way that has minimal drawback or overlap, all the more valuable.

Haha, thx - but more like in other things than basketball; magic, fighting and so on. ;D
True that. Only egos would/could probably destroy your "teamplay".

If you're a budding superstar in the 1990s, can you really ask for more than that?

I think you might be right. MJ having all these superstars around him made it for him being a star of such a caliber. Now, LeBron James whenever he goes his team wins. In my childhood I loved to watch Chicago bulls playing with Michael, it was pretty exciting. For whatever reason it’s not anymore. The spark has died, at least for me. One is for sure, all these players you mentioned are legends especially LeBron who of course is still playing! Great post though!

A solid case indeed. I heard Nick Wright say a few weeks ago, “name one thing Michael Jordan is better at than LeBron James without saying 6 Rings.” He has a point.

Ya! Even if there are answers to his question, that's a good way of showing how close it is or how hard the argument is other than the rings.

@full-measure LeBron James is one of the best players in the league. None of the best players he has played. He has won three league titles and two league titles. He has been awarded the best player of the season in 2004, the best player in the league three times and the best player in the league.

Olaraga is interesting @ full-measure many people who like basketball sport, but in our area of football a lot of fond, maybe because Indonesian people's posture is shorter cause less basketball, but I appreciate all kinds of sports because it can nourish our body.

Ya it can nourish our body our mind and our soul imo.

I like sport and competition. Professional sports can often be bastardized into marketing events, and like they don't test the players for drugs properly because they lowkey want them to be high performance, and then it becomes a weird thing where pro athletes are actually doing very unhealthy things.

Lol, went on a tangent. But ya, it's nourishing!

Looks like you really like sports basketball friends, hobby that is very interesting friends, very good friends

friends friends and more friends!

Sorry if I call you a friend, but I realize we only know disteem not in real world, I just want to apologize if I overdo it.

No, I like being called your friend! I don't know if I need it 3 times in one sentence, but I like it.

Ok thank you, maybe I am too much but I will improve my sentence

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