GOAT NBA Discussion: Biggest fraud poster: fallguy. Super AIDS Containment thread

I thought you were a big fan of twog? Either way, it doesn't matter what you believe, there isn't a particularly strong case for MJ's era-relative peak being on par with Russell/Kareem/Lebron and his peak also doesn't stand out much from the others in Tier 2. I don't have an axe to grind - though it's clear that you do - it's just that when you realize the fragility of evaluating players by box stats and try to understand all factors, it's easy to see that the overall body of evidence is simply stronger for Russell/Kareem/Lebron than it is for MJ.

Anyway, no offense but you have no idea how you're even supposed to compare players (you are not that far from twog from an analytic standpoint, you're just not as crazy and more willing to blend in mainstream consensus as your own opinion) and frankly this thread is of no use, it mostly exists so that we can make fun of twog. The player comparisons board on RealGM is way better than here:

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewfor...

Now, about 90% of the posts are garbage too, but that's way better than here, where like 99.9% of the takes are garbage and completely uninformed. It's also not hard to see that even there, the worst posters (and there's a ton even there that pretty much works backwards from MJ being the GOAT) massively overrate MJ, while the best posters tend to have strong arguments in favor of Kareem and Russell. Lebron supporters are kind of in-between - there are some fanboys with poor arguments, but also good posters.

Ant shoots 35% on threes, so you can say he's better at threes but I don't buy it - MJ shot better from three at today's volumes than Ant and he didn't grow up with the shot like Ant did - there's no comparison with their shooting form or touch, while MJ is also the better FT shooter.

So aside from threes where we will agree to disagree, what aspect of basketball is Ant as good as MJ?... There's nothing.. Jordan is bigger, faster and stronger - and all this matters because they play the exact same position on the floor (SG).

I refute what you guys say - you guys don't refute what I say or rarely have the balls to try

When I say that SGA is a massive ball-dominator and I back it up with time of possession, low assisted rate and his low-assist teams, this is treated as poppycock only because you didn't hear it on TV or your media of choice... But it's literal fact - time of possession, assisted rate and team assists are direct measures of ball-domination..

Nonetheless, right after I post this stuff, some idiot will come on here and say some dumb **** about how MJ led the league in usage, so he was ball-dominant too.. So you guys are just dumb about basketball and I'm guessing most of you aren't even 6 feet tall.

And of course the idea of chemistry is ignored by casual fans and guys that never played, but it's basketball 101 that some skillsets yield better chemistry, which yields better-performing casts, aka better teams.. Lebron is bad at chemistry based on his many bad fits, coaching turnover and zero young player development - this is the historical record.

You guys can't refute Lebron's bad chemistry and that his "down-hill" skillset isn't 5-man basketball... You can't refute that only Jordan had to build teammates, teams and franchises, while everyone else was gifted one of more of these things.. It's a pretty simple statement but it won't get refuted.. It proves MJ is goat and it's the historical record, but yet will be treated as if it's poppycock.

Carry on... I'll keep educating you guys until this gets to 1000 pages then I'm out

I refuted your claim that LaBron "mostly lost" with the Heat (2/4 in rangz), and you just straight up ignored me.

Remember Allen's three title didn't count.

It's almost like basketball gods are conspiring to make fun of twog now:

Turnaround jumper, so easy that even Gobert can do it.

On a more serious note though, this is the kind of skill gap I'm talking about and why offensive efficiency has exploded. Back in twog's days, this was something that lots of players, even decently skilled, could not execute well at all. In today's game, even one of the least offensively skilled players can pull this off. But the bar for efficiency is so high now - MJ's career TS would now be well below average in today's NBA - that casual fans don't realize that lots of role players in today's game can do all the things that only the most skilled offensive players used to be able to do in the past, they just can't do it effectively enough to meet the high efficiency bar that today's game demands.

Basketball is a game of relative efficiency, so it's not enough to be able to do something well enough, you have to do it more efficiently than your alternative options.

It isn't for lack of balls. It's just the fatigue of refuting 8-10 bad takes in every post to a guy who repeatedly craps on the value of Pippen, Rodman, Phil, and Shaq, while claiming 2. Kobe and won't entertain that LeBron is even close to #2.

Jordan was nearly beating the champs in 89' without Phil, Rodman, or effectively Pippen - the Bulls were the only team in the league to win any playoff games off the 89' Pistons and they could've beaten them if Pippen didn't miss Game 6 (the original "migraine")..

Phil was excused for losing to the 90' Pistons because of the well-known "migraine", but his predecessor Doug Collins experienced a much worse version of Pippen and the original "migraine" in 89'... So the Bulls already had the spark and the severe upward trajectory in 89' with the "shot", which propelled a low seed to the ECF and nearly beating the champs - this experience made them contenders going forward instead of 1st Round losers that missing the "shot" would've produced.. TLDR: Phil inherited a team that was already on the cusp of a title.

Btw, Phil's triangle is a literal joke offense that was LAUGHED AT AND REJECTED by literally every team - only MJ or his clone made it a winner - it has zero rings without MJ or his clone (kobe).

Do you guys agree or disagree that certain skillsets yield better chemistry than others?... Using team assists as a barometer for "chemistry", jumpshootes like Curry or Bird had great chemistry, while fundamental bigs like Duncan, Kareem or Jokic did too, but ball-dominators like Lebron, Luka, Harden, Westbrook, SGA and many others have bad chemistry and often have weak fits, while winning titles far less often.. Bad fits include Luka/Brunson, Lebron/Westbrook, Lebron/Ingram, Lebron/Love, Lebron/Bosh, Lebron/(insert non-elite jumpshooter).

When Pau arrived in LA, he was a 1x all-star, but similar to other winning sidekicks, he was perennial all-nba after winning titles and being part of a historic run - this is similar Klay, Pippen, and Parker - inflated by the winning spotlight.. Their play was good but never that top level of an elite franchise player or elite producer, yet their multiple All-NBA accolade indicates otherwise.

The point is that Kobe's skillset and superior scoring diversity (elite on-ball and off-ball) produced better fits/chemistry that allowed winning with less talent (1x all-star Pau)... Kobe won with a Bosh-level player at 2nd option, while Lebron needed Bosh at 3rd option, yet still had a more beatable team.

We've learned that 2/4 is best-case scenario, and it's the thinnest 2/4 possible.. He either barely won via teammate bailout, or he had goat choke and then record loss.. That's a polarized range - not optimal here.... Anytime he has a 17 ppg sidekick and top 10 defense, he should be exclusively sure things that don't need a game 7 - this is if he wants to achieve goat-caliber performance.

Btw, teammates staved off an 0-3 deficit in the 2013 Finals while Lebron averaged 16 on 39% for the first 3 games.. His 23 on 43% was insufficient through 6 games and required Ray Allen to force game 7 - the Heat never won with Lebron on the floor since he had a zero plus/minus and negative net rating for the series..

Lebron also shot 52.9 true shooting, which is less than MJ's worst Finals in 96' (53.8%)... And again, Lebron's 23 on 43% was insufficient through 6 games, while MJ's 27 on 42% was sufficient and he had already cinched the series with 31 on 46% through 3 games (3-0 lead) instead of 16 on 39% like Lebron (nearly 3-0 deficit).

Are you really posting a gobert hail mary fade away as evidence that players today are better?

Ever heard of arvedis sabonis or Hakeem Olajuwan btw?

Are you following the conversation at all? Or for that matter, do you know who Rudy Gobert is? The very fact that you're bringing up the most skilled big men from the 90's kind of says it all - Rudy Gobert's name comes up all the time as an example of a player that literally has no offensive skills by today's standards. And today's game is often derided for not emphasizing the mid-range, with old school folks talking about how today's players don't know how to score in the mid-range.

Yet, we literally just saw Gobert, one of the least offensively skilled players in the game, pull off a turnaround fadeaway from the mid-range in a close playoff game that you would never see from rookie MJ, who would later go on to dominate the NBA from the mid-range in the 90's and become known as the most skilled player of his generation.

Also, the point isn't that he made it - it's very clear from his footwork that he knows how to do it. If you go back to like 84 when MJ started his career, a lot of players might have been able to improvise shots (see twog's MJ gifs), but not many players would've known how to properly execute that in a repeatable manner.

gobert makes that shot maybe 6 times out of 100, so not the best example of how the bar for efficiency has been raised in today's game. unless youre just trolling fg in which case bravo

Pau was one of the best defensive players in the league in LA.

And how many titles did Kobe win without Phil? How many excuses are you gonna make up for those?

I'm not gonna argue that LeBron didn't have more talent around him or that he was better than MJ. But to have Kobe way ahead of LeBron and Shaq is psychotic.

Not sure what your fetish is with the idea of the 2-point jump shooter, twog, but w/e man, you do you.

Yes I'm following the conversation from the last two pages. I mean this thread is generally unreadable so I feel pretty accomplished being able to do that. But posting Gobert hitting a hailmary fade away and arguing "because he showed the proper footwork" shows how offensive players have vastly improved is just not a very sound argument. There's A LOT of "rim runners" in today's game who could not hit that outside of the 6 of 100 stat that was posted. The difference in talent is the 6'7 to 6'10 swingmen in today's game imo

And it's because they are generally not as bulky and are faster and grew up shooting 3s. See: Davis brothers as examples. Those guys would be stretch 5s today if they grew up in that environment. But back then they were "power forwards ". And you know what PFs did? Guard and rebound

It wasn't meant as an argument - it's just something that illustrates a vast skill gap between today's game and MJ's era. Rudy Gobert - literally one of the least skilled players in the game - was out there doing something that MJ himself could not do when he was young, despite being an MVP-caliber offensive player as a guard. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, I don't expect you to understand.

The point is that in 84, back when MJ entered the league, most NBA players didn't know how to do that at all, never mind the accuracy.

No, he's done this before and he looks efficient enough by 90's half-court offense standards and that's without having the benefit of specifically looking for this shot. It's obviously terrible offense in today's NBA and in this case he only took the shot because of the shot clocking running down.

I assume you guys are simply unfamiliar with the game (so you have no idea what I'm saying really) but 6 out of 100 is a terrible estimate. Once the footwork is there, a shot is a shot - the hard part of the execution is having consistent footwork that lets you get the separation so that the shot becomes repeatable (i.e. you don't have to improvise to get the shot off like young MJ often did before developing these shots, this is the entire point of all these skill moves). That's what you look for here and the point is that it looks repeatable. I mean a contested in-game shot is rarely going to be high-percentage and Rudy Gobert not being a good shooter makes this a novelty, but it's a clean look, so wouldn't be much worse than 30% and could very well be higher.

Again, the point is that today's players are so skilled that Rudy Gobert - who only gets to do this probably like once every 20 games or so and is famously unskilled - can do this, whereas many star players in 80's who would've become vastly better had they worked on this shot and were considered highly skilled compared to their peers, couldn't. Obviously you can use just about every skill to demonstrate this, but twog literally called this out as some kind of ultimate basketball skill, so it's funny that Gobert did this.

If anything, the worse you think Rudy Gobert is at making the shot, the stronger this becomes as evidence of gap between today's game and 80's/90's basketball.

The difference in skill is just massive everywhere.

This is a myth - today's players are generally bigger than when MJ played. There was a brief period of time in the late 90's and 00's when teams started carrying huge centers but big men for most of MJ's career were quite a bit skinnier than today's big men.

Raw athleticism is probably the thing that improved the least, in part because some raw athletes that would've easily been able to play in 80's or 90's NBA are no longer welcome in a league that requires a much higher skill level as a baseline. Also I think you're thinking late 90's / 00's when the game slowed down and more teams had these lumbering giants as backup centers.

This is a lazy perspective. It's more that they grew up playing basketball and received incomparably better basketball instruction from when they were young. The overall skill level outside of 3-point shooting probably improved even more. 3-point shooting is something that casual fans can see easily but practically every star forward in today's game would be a complete outlier from a skill perspective in the 80's and 90's even without the 3-point shooting. Consider how Carmelo Anthony would be perceived in the 80's/90's (an outlier from a skill/size combination perspective) and how he would be perceived in today's game (yikes).

And today's big men are substantially more skilled at these things too. If you watch a random 80's game, it's shocking how often the defense just breaks down or players literally don't know how to do basic things. And this is despite the scheme being much simpler - there wasn't even much to do in the first place.

Well, I'm 38. So I can't speak too much on 80s basketball. If you want to criticize my knowledge of basketball, ok...but you don't know me and I'm not typing out these ridiculously long dissertations that are mostly insulting.

Do you realize that growing up in the 90s I was flat out told that a 3 point shot was "a bad shot"? Just the way it was.

But honestly, to assume that because you didn't see Jordan shoot these shots doesn't mean he couldn't. That's just silly. The dude made a living as the greatest jump shooter ever and you think at 23 years old he would struggle to shoot fadeaways? I'm guessing you saw a tremendous amount of NBA games in the 80s and early 90s and specifically Bulls games. I grew up in Indiana and got WGN on cable so I got to see the majority of Bulls games throughout the early to late 90s.

I am not going to argue the overall skill of a random player in the league today isn't better than 30 years ago. That's just nonsense and I can't imagine anyone outside of TWD is arguing that. I do agree with some of his thoughts in how Lebron decides to run offenses and his presence guts franchises future but I can't exactly blame that on him. His copy and pasting **** is ridiculous. But your rather quick to try and insult and as someone mentioned the yin to his yang.

You literally believe you know more about ball than any random you run into here and automatically assume you have more experience? That alone calls into question the validity of your claims.

if you watched the series you'd know rudy shot about 25% on clean floaters in the lane over a decent sample. i'll bet my life he can't replicate that shot at 30%. just look at wolves bench player afterward... he reacts exactly like someone who just won the lottery.

fact is wolves were on some angels in the outfield **** in that 2nd half. if you watch the replay in slow motion you can see the angel guide it into the hoop. i'm with you that relative skill level of players today is higher, ant is jordan 2.0, etc. this is just a terrible illustrative example.

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Jordan would eat antman alive. And I like Edwards a lot and said a couple years ago this dude has the build and rythym MJ has. He's gonna be great.

Everything else I 100% agree with you

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Most SG's in today's game are 6'2" to 6'4" - Scotty Barnes is the only SG listed at 6'7", whereas there were tons of 6'7" shooting guards in Jordan's era:

6'7" REGGIE LEWIS













6'7" DALE ELLIS (one of the greatest 3-point bombers ever with He-Man physique in the 80's):













"THUNDER" DAN MAJERLE:

Tons of other 6'7" shooting guards like Clyde Drexler, Reggie Miller, Reggie Theus, Gervin, Willie Anderson, Malik Sealy, Michael Finley, and more.

Since they didn't allow the traveling and carrying in previous eras, shooting guards didn't have the kind of handle that today's players have, so SG's were taller back then to make up for it and more rugged overall.. This is just another reason Jordan would average 40 today - the league-average height in today's game is a full inch shorter, in addition to the spaced-out, hands-off, open paint beginner format.

It's okay. I found evidence that they were better at shooting 3s in the 90s because Rodman made one.

Today's game takes 40 threes per game compared to basically zero in the 80's.. In the absence of three-point strategy or use, turnarounds from mid-range were the primary and preeminent way to score - everyone had a great turnaround and this includes role players... James Edwards had one of the best turnaround jumpers of all-time... Vinnie Johnson had a killer turnaround... Players were forced to take more turnarounds because the hand-checking forced them to turn their back to defenders and offenses ran through the post, not perimeter drive-and-kick like today's game.. Today's game shuns the mid-range, so turnarounds are shunned and few players are good at them or even allowed to take them... When someone makes a turnaround in today's game, it's a highlight like Gobert's shot... Whereas previous eras literally lived off the shot - they usually weren't highlights.. So you couldn't be more wrong - role players had great turnarounds and obviously any good scorer had a killer turnaround - Bernard King, Alex English, Dominique, Jordan, Bird, Kiki Vandeweghe - amazing turnaround jumpers.. Rookie Jordan already had a great turnaround although he didn't need it as often due to his athleticism at that time.. Don't make me start posting a bunch of Jordan turnarounds, but he was doing the windshield wiper move from COLLEGE, let alone the NBA.

lol