LeBron > Jordan GOAT Super AIDS Containment, solved #22999 post by Matt R. (addendum #23174)

Twog, is it fair to say there's some connection between your once promising basketball career falling apart in college and your irrational hatred of Lebron James? Your earlier rant was completely nonsensical - well it's not that much less incoherent than your other posts, but that's not saying much - but it sounded like you're blaming Lebron for what happened to you personally.

You might want to check out how the Lakers are doing with/without AD and Lebron (either this season or past few). Feel free to also check out Pippen's career, since you seem unfamiliar with his game. While I'm giving you valuable life advice, you might also consider going back to lurking and clicking "Like" on Twog's posts like a good little lapdog for a homeless lunatic. That fits you just fine.

Looks like the Lakers are 5-4 without Lebron this year including wins over Boston and Milwaukee. NEXT.

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Twog, why did MJ average 17.7 PPG on okay efficiency in college and 14.9 PPG on terrible efficiency on the Dream Team?

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The Tar Heels averaged 80 ppg for Jordan's sophomore and junior years, so Jordan's 20 ppg represented 25% of his team's points, just like his rookie year in the NBA.. The Bulls averaged 108 ppg to 80 for Tar Heels.. Furthermore, Jordan's 8 point gap in his raw PPG average can be attributed to playing 8 more minutes as a rookie in the NBA and also higher pace and DRTG of the NBA - you guys seem to have a hard time accepting that playing on a court that is 10 feet shorter and allows full zone is harder to score on, even if the players are college level, aka crappier.. It's the same thing with international game - Luka, Giannis and Jokic get better stats in NBA and say it's easier to score in NBA.. It was the same in Jordan's day but is much worse now as Silver made it into a beginner format.

But here's another reality - college offenses in previous eras were geared for bigs and therefore stifled backcourt players.. If a guard became good enough to dominate NBA players, they invariably averaged more in those years than dominating college - this is for guards, with rare exception. For bigs, the numbers are closer because college is a big man's game.. Again, the college game stifles guards, with rare exception, such as the rare coach back then that ran offense through guards.

[QUOTE=candybar]

Also, this whole bailout thing, do you have any evidence whatsoever or are you just making stuff up? Because I looked at the numbers and it looked like Lebron was consistently one of the better bailout guys and my recollection was that MJ tended to dump the ball to his teammates in those situations. The only evidence we have was that he wasn't a big bailout guy - if he was, why were his teammates' efficiency mostly unaffected by his presence?

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The evidence is that Jordan shot better above bailout volume - so the bailout volume must have been tougher shots that he was forced to take, plus he personally said that he didn't want to take threes or be good at them.

Btw, regarding being a "bailout" guy in general, Jordan was the goat based on 4th quarter scoring, clutch-time scoring burden (last 5 within 5), overall scoring burden, or efficiency on game-winners (icewater) and also last possession of 1-possession championship ganes (Lebron never scored on last possession of 1 possession game in the Final... 0-7... lol)

You're just mad thar you're ignorant about the game and every assertion you make gets blown to pieces like a child.

And Pippen literally embarrassed himself outside of the 3-peat system that he grew up in.. if he never handed alongside MJ, no one would know who the #135 all-time PER was but everyone knows the #4 all-time PER is (AD) because people notice all-time production and performance.

[Quote=candybar]

MJ also at times seems to have dominated usage in a way that led to his teammates being out of rhythm

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Nonsense because the Bulls were known for goat chemistry, aka teammates being in rhythm, while Jordan has a massive track record of young player development (teammates growing alongside him) and teammates playing to capacity (near career highs).. All of these things refute the idea that teammates were "out of rhythm" alongside Jordan, since they literally played to capacity, grew alongside him and had all-time chemistry with many #1 offenses.

Otoh, Lebron's lack of expert jumpshooting skill and reliance on ball-dominance imposes spot-up roles that prevent teammate development, elite chemistry or teammates playing to capacity.. That's why he never had a #1 offense.

Regarding Jordan's #1 offenses, he achieved them with no 3rd scoring option, a sidekick with all-time low efficiency, and 4 on 5 lineups (Rodman).

Since Jordan had all-time offenses despite weak scoring help, we know the chemistry was all-time goat (teammates were in rhythm).

[Quote=candybar]

When MJ's asked to carry a scoring burden, it doesn't result in some crazy efficiency.

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One of the biggest misconceptions about Jordan's career is that you can compare other guys' scoring burden to his...

There's no level like MJ's.. Everyone in history needed teammates to lead in scoring for entire playoff runs, while MJ led every SERIES by 10-30 ppg over all teammates.. Everyone in history had great scoring help at various times during their career, except the GOAT.

The reality is that ONLY JORDAN shot well as a standard at 25+ FGA's - see stats in previous post above.

Antawn Jamison scored most of his 20k points (more than Pippen) before joining Lebron - he was averaging 22/9 right before joining Lebron and becoming a spot-up shooter.

And Mo was averaging the same PPG before Lebron and 50% more APG..

So again, it's pretty nice to have a better scorer than Pippen (Jamison) at third option (more scoring options than the 1st three-peat Bulls), while also having better team defenses as well..

Mike Brown is a reputed defensive coach and made a top 3 defense out of the Cavs' elite shot-blockers, while a bevy of good rebounders made Lebron 4th on the team in rebounds.. So Lebron's early Cavs teams had better rebounding help, rim protection and more athletic guards than the 1st three-peat Bulls, while also having more scoring help.

I know that Jordan won the attrition battle - his jumpshooting and zippy ball movement wore down defenses, so they had less capacity for offense, whereas Lebron's ball-dominance lets defenses rest, so they have more capacity to "get hot" offensively..

Everyone's brand of ball looks great and gets hot and confident against the plodding bron-ball, even 1-star teams like the Magic, Mavs or Nuggets, while Bron-ball has a lottery record vs the Spurs and Warriors.

That's how I knew the Nuggets would sweep the Lakers last year - if there was ever a brand of ball to usurp Bron-ball like the 14' Finals, it was Jokic-ball.. I was surprised the games were somewhat close but Lebron's cast was more stacked then ever top to bottom - the league conspired to make his team the hottest squad entering the playoffs and he still got swept - a career of losing with preseason favorites and hyped rosters.

Antawn Jamison played 0 games on the 08-09 Cavs that went 66-16. He played 25 games on the 09-10 Cavs and they went 44-13 in games he did not play. I wonder what explains this sorcery. How could they play so well without such an esteemed scorer in Antawn Jamison? Oh yeah, Lebron James.

Antawn Jamison did play 56 games on the 10-11 Cavs however. They went 9-47 in those 56 games.

The Antwan Jamison + Mo Williams combination was +8.9/100 in 09-10. The same combination was -12.5/100 in 10-11. In other words, they were an astounding 21.4/100 worse in 10-11 versus they were in 09-10. What could possibly explain this? Once again, it's Lebron James.

The Lakers in 10-11 went 57-25 (NR: +6.7) with Phil Jackson as the HC.
The Lakers in 11-12 went 41-25 (NR: +1.6) with Mike Brown as the HC with essentially the same roster plus healthier Bynum.

In other words, the Lakers were +5.1/100 worse with Mike Brown than they were with Phil Jackson. That's roughly the difference between an MVP player and an average player for a full season. And that's probably the worst version of Phil Jackson that seemed kind of checked out. I mean that was literally his last season and the change in defensive philosophy and the emphasis on 3-point shooting were starting to make the triangle look dated. Losing this worst-ever version of Phil Jackson for Mike Brown seemed to have even more impact than literally losing prime Michael Jordan.

Yet here we are.

I'm not sure if you can understand what this means but the Lakers are -5.6/100 without Lebron and +2.1/100 with Lebron. With AD, they are +0.2/100 and without AD, they are -2.9/100. Of course, even that's a fairly small sample size, so we can go back a few years and yeah they all pretty much tell the same story. Lebron is a superstar and AD, while really good, seems consistently less important than Lebron.

It's much harder to separate Pippen and MJ on the Bulls - Pippen has slight better +/- than MJ in 96-97, while in 97-98, MJ appears to have better raw +/-. but much of this is due to Pippen missing a lot more games (so Pippen's off numbers are much more disproportionately minutes where MJ played).

I know you're cognitively challenged but I hope even you don't think that your 9-game sample size means a ton here.

His favorite thing is tiny sample sizes, if he can find a 4 game stretch to fit his narrative the other 75/200/etc obviously are irrelevant

To be fair there are a lot of LeBron fans that use a 3 games sample size as the defining reason they have LeBron over MJ.

[QUOTE=fallguy;58499997].
EFFICIENCY AT HIGH VOLUME - PLAYERS WITH 25 FGA AND 45% FG:

Regular Season:

Michael Jordan....................... 1987, 1993
Rick Barry.................................1967, 1975
Bob McAdoo........................... 1975
George Gervin........................ 1982
Kobe Bryant............................ 2006
Elgin Baylor............................. 1963
Tiny Archibald........................ 1973
Dominique.............................. 1988


Playoffs (10 game min):

*Michael Jordan......................1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998
Elgin Baylor............................. 1960, 1961, 1968
Bob McAdoo........................... 1974, 1975
George Gervin........................ 1975, 1982
Jerry West................................ 1966
Rick Barry................................. 1977
Hakeem Olajuwon.................. 1995
Kobe Bryant............................ .2007
Dominique............................... 1988
Allen Iverson............................ 2005
Kareem Jabbar......................... 1975

The alltime overrated list

Contested midrange jumpers are the worst possible shots.

Yeah you can see it in the .gifs TWOG has chosen a few posts above - shots that we understand now as sub optimal decisions. It’s a simple way to illustrate your previous point that ‘we know more’.

Oh baby

No no no, back in the day you needed to be a gangster to play basketball, and shooting a long two while getting clotheslined is the pinnacle of basketball.

All this spacing and shooting 3s is sissy basketball.

A big analysis of Wemby vs. LeBron rookie years would be interesting.

Yeah, that's a scary stat, better win % without him. They average 120 points a game with LeBron's arse on the bench, with a low of 110. Hell, they've been under 100 a bunch of times with him. Maybe that's because he's not standing there dribbling half of their possession time away. Seems they don't miss him much. Maybe they don't award enough points for bouncing.

Twice't as scary is that the Cavs teams in his first go round there were better without him in those early years, first four years. In fact those years cumulative they were on a pace to win 60 in games he sat (9-3). I gotta see the Bulls relative record with Mike out, Lakers with Magic or Kobe out, etc. You can't really do that for Chamberlain except for one season.

Haha, ‘better win percentage without him’ is clever.

Wemby easy. LeBron wasn't great in his rookie year (obviously still very good for a 19 year old).

Carmelo was a legitimate rookie of the year candidate the first year. Not a huge gape between them at the time. Obviously diverged quickly afterwards.

Wemby has clearly had a better rookie season than LeBron.

Wemby gonna average 6.5 blocks a game next year.

Really hope they add a couple of pieces around him in the offseason

The Lakers were in the 10 spot last year when Lebron got hurt for an extended period of time and the entire world thought the Lakers season was over, they ended up going in to the playoffs as the 7 seed. When Lebron had the opportunity to lead the pre-AD lakers to the playoffs in a similar spot in 2019 he failed miserably. In 2021 the lakers were up 2-1 against Phx in rd 1, AD gets hurt and they lose the series 2-4, not even coming close to winning another game.

But like all of Brons teammates throughout history AD gets 100% of the blame when things go wrong and Lebron gets 100% of the credit when things go right. Before joining the Lakers at the age of 26 AD was almost unanimously viewed as one of the top 5 players in the world, now he is viewed as borderline top 10 even though he just turned 30 years old. That’s called the Lebron effect.