LeBron > Jordan GOAT Super AIDS Containment, solved #22999 post by Matt R. (addendum #23174)
Very impressed with the minute sequence where LeBron clearly lost the ball headed to the rim, heat got the ball anyway and scored, then he elbows his defender in the chin, drawing a defensive foul and stern talking to from the official and hitting a 3.
It's these ref assisted 5 point swings in close games that truly bring out the best in great players.
Link to post of why Elon Musk is the true GOAT: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...
The thread that will go on for years..........
vs.
Pippen was given the keys to a well-oiled machine BUT ALSO that same machine, but with Pippen too, shouldn't really get any credit, it's all MJ. In fact, the 2010 Cavs were better but Bron sucks.
Winning 55 games then being on pace to win 45 or whatever after losing an alltime great level player (and then a fringe allstar one the following year) is indicative of an extremely strong supporting cast and elite coaching.
Most teams losing that level of player are horrible - The Nuggets with Jokic off the floor the last 3 seasons have a double digit negative net rating - they would struggle to win 35 games without him, forget 55. Every team Lebron has left has sucked immediately without him.
And yeah, Nuggets would probably win 55 without Jokic.
Look what the Lakers did the first year Shaq left and still had Kobe. I remember Bill Simmons pegged them to finish third in the conference. They ended up winning 34 games and missing the playoffs but still, it could've happened.
Or look what happened when Bron left Cleveland, they went from 66 and 61 seasons to a 19 win one. But still, could've happened.
I mean, I guess it seems to have only really happened to MJ but somehow that proves that he's the best ever and Pippen sucks and he saved them from the lottery.
Pippen was given the keys to a well-oiled machine BUT ALSO that same machine, but with Pippen too, shouldn't really get any credit, it's all MJ. In fact, the 2010 Cavs were better but Bron sucks.
The refusal to give up any ground, concede any part of the discussion, leads to these bizarre imagined histories discordant from the reality of what actually occurred. The annoying part is TWOG just coming back to them over and over, no matter how many times or ways they are debunked. But the fascinating part is the burning desire to want to do this. The psychological allegiance to MJ is so pure, so complete that they must invent things to replace the facts when they are inconvenient. It’s the kind of loyalty that could overthrow governments and rule nations. Supremely impressive, in its own way.
Let's not forget, Pippen = Derrick Jones Jr.
One has to wonder if Jordan had that kind of power, why didn't he turn Kwame Brown into Kevin Garnett? Why didn't he turn Jerry Stackhouse into himself?
Yeah the reason the Wizards years matter is because they blow a hole in the notion that Jordan’s sheer aura and will to win is what made all of the good aspects of the Bulls good. The Bulls winning 55 without him in his prime and losing a competitive 2nd round series speaks to this too.
It’s why certain MJ fans reinvent these events or pretend they didn’t happen.
And I take fidstar’s recent points about how the LBJ extremists:
- say 2011 wasn’t a choke
- argue the Decision was an acceptable way to announce his decision to leave Cleveland
- gloss over his culpability in a series of atrocious Lakers transactions between game 6 of the 2020 Finals and the 2023 Trade Deadline
- pretend the comments on China didn’t happen or were somehow acceptable
- engage in bad faith statistical cherrypicking to try and twist LeBron’s into having the best individual seasons (he does not)
- say “year 21” over “age 39” and use stats related to the former rather than the latter
- ignore that LeBron is deeply passive aggressive and sometimes can just be a bitch
These are men we are discussing, not mythological Gods. They are flawed and that’s okay.
He really did **** himself over with that Westbrook deal. Who knows what the team looks like today but basically got rid of 4 good players for a guy who was so bad they couldn't even start him anymore despite making like 50M.
And for what? They just won the title in 2020 with 1 of the best defenses ever.
It is funny because people said he sucked as a GM before that, when he really hadn't been that bad (think basically everyone deals #1 for Love at that point and the 1st run Cavs deals were probably the best they could do, also think Kyrie had a lot of leverage with threatening knee surgery and that was a little more Griffin than LeBron, who likely knew he was leaving regardless in a year at that point and didn't really care too much)
But then he made/OKd the worst trade of his career after that narrative that LeGM was trash was already established.
He really did **** himself over with that Westbrook deal. Who knows what the team looks like today but basically got rid of 4 good players for a guy who was so bad they couldn't even start him anymore despite making like 50M.
And for what? They just won the title in 2020 with 1 of the best defenses ever.
It is funny because people said he sucked as a GM before that, when he really hadn't been that bad (think basically everyone deals #1 for Love at that point and the 1st run Cavs deals were proba
I personally believe the decision to “freshen up” the squad in 2020 was the bigger mistake given the shorter offseason and truncated regular season ahead. You have to run it back in that spot imo.
The Westbrook deal was terrible but I’d say both LeBron and AD had their injury woes from 2021 front and centre and felt they needed a third “star” to make it work. But you look at them in this series against Denver or last year and wonder how much a Caruso or KCP could help. Alternative realities though - no guarantees those guys become what they are if they hadn’t got the minutes they got elsewhere.
But you make a good point - the LeGM stuff at Cleveland was mostly fine. If Kyrie wanted out in summer 2017 then what are you going to do? It also wasn’t really rational to run it back again after they had been so badly outmatched in the finals by the Durant Warriors even with LeBron averaging a triple double.
Winning 55 games then being on pace to win 45 or whatever after losing an alltime great level player (and then a fringe allstar one the following year) is indicative of an extremely strong supporting cast and elite coaching.
Most teams losing that level of player are horrible - The Nuggets with Jokic off the floor the last 3 seasons have a double digit negative net rating - they would struggle to win 35 games without him, forget 55. Every team Lebron has left has sucked immediately without him.
I think that is the whole point from fallguy.
Which players LeBron ever developed or played under Lebron and was better afterwards ( meaning they learned something ?) .
People has the narrative LeBron makes other players play better and yet we never seen much of any ascendant players playing under LeBron or afterwards ?
With mj clearly we see many players getting much better .
Seem players actually do learn under mj and since mj focus on certain thing and respect a system of play ( compare to the « lebron system ») , players get actual skills and the chance to play and getting better …..
So kinda normal once LeBron leaves, team collapse because the system of play they had and played under just disappears…and they didn’t de flop much of anything .
I think that is the whole point from fallguy.
Which players LeBron ever developed or played under Lebron and was better afterwards ( meaning they learned something ?) .
People has the narrative LeBron makes other players play better and yet we never seen much of any ascendant players playing under LeBron or afterwards ?
With mj clearly we see many players getting much better .
Seem players actually do learn under mj and since mj focus on certain thing and respect a system of play ( compare to the «
This is some truly amazing spin.
It's one thing to be the cult leader (TWOG), it's another to be dumb enough to believe what he says.
- say 2011 wasn’t a choke
- argue the Decision was an acceptable way to announce his decision to leave Cleveland
- gloss over his culpability in a series of atrocious Lakers transactions between game 6 of the 2020 Finals and the 2023 Trade Deadline
- pretend the comments on China didn’t happen or were somehow acceptable
- engage in bad faith statistical cherrypicking to try and twist LeBron’s into having the best individual seasons (he does not)
- say “year 21” over “age 39” and use stats related to
This doesn't really belong there - the whole 2011 happened because Lebron choked narrative (very similar to the narrative that Curry choked in 2016) is a mostly a casual fan narrative that's been repeatedly debunked:
https://priceofdata.wordpress.com/mark-c...
MC: That is the most ridiculous thing any sportswriter has ever said. Now, if you think when Kevin Durant walked off the court he thought, yeah, I didn’t play quite hard enough, right? Now you can say he wasn’t put in a position to succeed, you can say they didn’t run the right plays, they didn’t get the ball to him on the block enough. And if you were smart you’d come out and you’d have substance. You’d say you know what, this is how many plays they ran to him on the block. Here’s how Miami defended it. Now you can also argue the Pat Riley way is always the same way, all the time. Miami played it the same way all the time, and then we can have a discussion about adjustments. like last year, did we play harder than the Heat, is that what you think it was?
SB: No, I don’t. I think Lebron disappeared, and shrank in crunch time of the fourth quarter. I can just show you the numbers of what he didn’t do in every fourth quarter.
MC: Wo we get no credit for not putting him in a position to succeed. RIght. We played the Heat—
SB: He put himself in, all he did was stand out on the perimeter.
MC: Now how do you think we defended that? WHy do you think he was standing out there?
SB: Uh, uh, you didn’t have to defend him.
MC: Oh right, so no matter what we did, he was just going to stand there and do nothing?
SB: That’s all I saw. That was a lot of it.
MC: That’s exactly right, “that’s all you saw.”
SB: Hope that Dwyane Wade saves the day for him.
MC: You’re exactly right. That’s all you saw. You didn’t look. Right? I mean, that’s a complete insult to us, to say you know what, the adjustments that we made–
JC: What did you do to force him out there?
MC: We had different, we had like six, seven different types of matchups in our zone, and we played man-to-man, and we had a variety of different switches, right? So we knew that ninety percent of the shots were going to come from the left-hand side, right. We knew that if you gave him room from the left, he was going to drive. We didn’t have the ahtletes that oklahoma city did, so we had to plan differently–
JC: Sure–
MC: So we need to make sure we pushed him out, away, and that we gave him different looks every time he had the ball, because just making, just forcing him to make a decision, to think about what he had to do, taking the time to read, are we in a zone, what type of zone we in, how are we matching up, what kind of rotations are we in, making him think forced him to pass around the perimeter, which gave us a chance to adjust. Now they’re smarter, they’re a better team this year, they deserved to win this year, but you know, that’s the way we played it. So it wasn’t just Lebron. Lebron actually played it right more often than not. He made the right pass to the right guy, who didn’t make the right play. And that’s exactly what we wanted: we wanted to get the ball out of his hands and and into the hands of somebody else. We wanted him to play Michael Jordan and make somebody play Steve Kerr. Now last night — Mike Miller…
JC: They had several Steve Kerrs.
MC: They had everybody stepping up and they deserved every bit. You know, so you talk in generalities.
SB: No I’m not.
MC: Yeah, you are.
SB: You spewed out some generality about players don’t care. Let me tell you for a fact — and you can verify this, Stephen A — Lebron James listened to what I said for about, what, eight years? Because that’s all I heard. He said I was his Howard Cosell. (Cuban smiles). And this year for the first time to his credit, he tuned out all the noise, that’s all we saw was, he’s reading The Hunger Games trilogy before the games. He’s meditating on the bench before the games. He tuned us out.
MC: This is a Skip Bayless special. Lebron lost last year because he was paying attention to Skip Bayless. Lebron won this year because he wasn’t paying–
SB: No
MC: That’s what you just said. Did he not just say that? (laughs)
SB: Here’s what he didn’t do against you guys. He let you off the hook, because he didn’t do what we saw him do for four straight games. He didn’t drive through your zone, and slash it up and dish. He didn’t post up at all. This was a new deal, this was a new post-up game we saw this year from Lebron. He shredded the Oklahoma City defense because he drove and he dished.
MC: Ok. What kind of defense–
SB: He wanted to be a pretty jump shooter against you guys and it played right into your hands because he’s a below-average jump shooter from the perimeter.
MC: Ok, Skip, so when he was on the post, what were the different defensive schemes that Oklahoma City ran last night?
SB: They had, they used Sefolosha on him, they used Durant on him–
MC: When he was in the post what were the different defensive schemes they used?
SB: Ibaka was supposed to come hard
MC: Was supposed to come hard?
SB: And he did not come hard, he let Lebron get to the rim repeatedly, and Perkins was nowhere to be seen.
MC: I just asked a simple question.
SB: And I just told you.
MC: No, you said “so and so was supposed to…,” no they, they doubled from down, right, and they doubled, and they passed and they hit their shots, when they kept on doubling, they changed, right, because they passed it out and Mike Miller hit the open shot. But that’s just one example.
SB: Did he get in the lane against you guys last year? Not at all in the fourth quarter.
MC: Why do you play a zone, Skip?
SB: Well, again, I’ve seen him slash up any kind of defense, when he feels like it. He’s a freight train! You just said you don’t have the athletes that they have.
MC: Right. And that’s why we played more zone than possibly Oklahoma City did. Because we had smarter players that are not necessarily as athletic. But the thing about the Miami Heat, they play the Pat Riley way. RIght? They play the exact same way, all the time. And I thought this series was going to be about adjustments. Oklahoma City felt like they had to do it a certain way, you know, it just didn’t work, right? But it certainly wasn’t the way we played them. So if you want to sit here and discuss … let me put it another way. Every team tracks everything these days. So in game, we have five guys tracking what happens in a pick and roll situations, what happens in a post-up situation with Lebron, what happens with Lebron’s posting and we run this type of zone, that type of zone. So you know in game exactly what the percentages are going. And if you are paying attention, you know those things as well. Oklahoma City didn’t seem to make the number of adjustments they needed to make.
SB: I agree.
MC: And if you go through and look at the stats that I’m sure they have, that’s what surprised me.
SB: Well you can throw all those stats out the window because, as Doc Rivers always says, it’s a make or miss league.
MC: Yep.
SB: You won the championship last year because Dirk started making shots like he’s never made ‘em before. He played as tall as he is. Seven feet tall. And Lebron and Dwyane Wade started missing shots, or whoever else you want to throw in the equation.
MC: No, actually, actually, we put Dirk in a position to succeed because we knew what Miami was going to do. They didn’t make a lot of adjustments, they kept on playing the Pat Riley way. That increased our confidence as the game went by, as the games went by, right? So when we got to game four and everything was still the same, we knew we were going to win.
SB: Are you criticizing the Pat Riley way?
MC: Last year I was, this year it was perfect.
JC: What was different?
MC: Last year versus this year?
JC: Yeah.
MC: They made their shots, and I don’t think that they were — there wasn’t as many adjustments against them.
JC: Right. That’s where I was going. Your club made the adjustments throughout the series. How surprised were you that Oklahoma City did not.
MC: You know, I don’t want to say anything about Oklahoma City because it’s not like they had all season to work on these things.
JC: Right.
MC: RIght? We had the advantage of a full season where we played in, in, um, Chicago preseason last year, we played a whole game in nothing but zone. Nothing but zone. Because we knew we were going to have to go to the zone as our way to mix things up. And if you look at the..offensive results against our zone, you’d see, it was good. This year, because we had new guys, we didn’t have as much time to practice, Okla–Indiana, same thing, why didn’t they play zone? You don’t have time to practice zone in a lockout shortened season when you don’t practice. And I’m sure Oklahoma City faced the same thing. It’s nice to say they could put in a zone, but if you don’t have time to work on it, they can’t. And I think that gave Miami a huge advantage.
SB: So bottom line: You’re saying Lebron didn’t shrink under the pressure last year, you guys just took him out of the game.
MC: I think we did a great job of taking him out of the game. Maybe he could have done more, but I think he played a Magic Johnson game last year against us and he needed other guys to step up and they didn’t.
SS: Of all the things that have been said, I take issue with just one thing the great Mark Cuban had to say. I’ll address that in a second though. I know we’ve got to go to break.
In other words, literally the person who had inside information on what the defense was trying to do, and looked at the tracking data based on every decision Lebron made thought Lebron did a pretty good job and did enough to give his team a chance to win. And a bunch of casuals who literally have no problem with superstars shooting their teams out of games and would not have said anything had Lebron made much worse decisions but put up decent looking conventional stats, are talking about how Lebron choked because well, he didn't put up the stats and had bad body language or something. Also:
It's important to understand that Miami Heat played almost as well on offense as you'd expect - their regular season ORtg was 111.7 and the Mavs regular season DRtg was 105. The Heat had an ORtg of 107.9, which is pretty close to average. So the Mavs' overall defensive scheme (which was centered entirely around messing with Lebron and not super-concerned around everyone else) worked, but didn't have huge success exactly because Lebron recognized what was going on and made the right decision.
Basketball is not like baseball - stats are extremely far from being able to distinguish individual contribution even across a very large sample, let alone a single series.
I personally believe the decision to “freshen up” the squad in 2020 was the bigger mistake given the shorter offseason and truncated regular season ahead. You have to run it back in that spot imo.
The Westbrook deal was terrible but I’d say both LeBron and AD had their injury woes from 2021 front and centre and felt they needed a third “star” to make it work. But you look at them in this series against Denver or last year and wonder how much a Caruso or KCP could hel
yeah I remember when they lost to the suns and people were killing the danny green/schroder deal, i disagreed with that. With Bubble Rondo gone, they needed some secondary playmaking and someone that can actually dribble the ball as LeBron was getting older (he just overdid it with Russ)...Bubble Rondo was very good in the 2020 run but he wasn't coming back, they needed to replace him and then some. Green also was getting old anyway. Caruso/KCP is enough defense first guys.
Their other move that offseason was getting Harrell cheap, I dunno, he went from 6th man scoring machine to useless and unplayable pretty fast. That seemed like a decent deal at the time too.
Can't even remember their other moves that offseason, getting rid of Dwight I guess. But nothing major.
Trading KCP and Kuzma + a 1st for Russ then letting go of Caruso/Schroder while paying THT, now thats a bad offseason.
I personally believe the decision to “freshen up” the squad in 2020 was the bigger mistake given the shorter offseason and truncated regular season ahead. You have to run it back in that spot imo.
The Westbrook deal was terrible but I’d say both LeBron and AD had their injury woes from 2021 front and centre and felt they needed a third “star” to make it work. But you look at them in this series against Denver or last year and wonder how much a Caruso or KCP could help. Alternative realities thoug
Lebron's influence on and approach to team-building has had problems, but it's really difficult to measure the impact, because we can't separate his impact from the decisions that were made and GM in general is just a high-variance role that takes far more time for things to even out. Also, when we evaluate how good Lebron has been as a player, we need to reverse how we think about his impact here. The worse we think the Lebron was at LeGM'ing, the better we must conclude Lebron was as a player and vice-versa. My general assessment is that his meddling lowered the variance and ensured that he had at least viable squads often enough, but also lowered the ceiling and made it difficult for truly dynasty-type teams to emerge. With that said, a generational coach is practically a requirement for dynasty-type outcomes and I don't think he's ever had that.
Atlanta Hawks with the same starters and playing 70+ games each year - Horford, Millsap, Korver, Teague and Carroll:
2014 Hawks............. 38 wins
2015 Hawks............. 60 wins
2016 Hawks............. 45 wins
Why should I be impressed with 2015?.. It was clearly a one-off and there's a million reasons for a one-off.. In the case of the 94' Bulls, they were happy to sneak up on everyone and face opponents that no longer circled their calendar or planned what to tell grandkids - it was a big letdown playing the 94' Bulls.
See you guys can't fathom it because Lebron isn't this great - it wouldn't be that much of a letdown, whereas facing MJ was like facing Babe Ruth, Ali, or 'god in basketball shoes'.
Lebron is almost never "scary" or god-like on the court.. I remember he had one game in 2012 against the fossil Celtics where everyone jumped up and down but MJ had many games like that and reached that "unstoppable" caliber at some point in EVERY game.. That steely stare was the determination that opponents faced EVERY night from MJ.. Lebron only had that stare out of narcissistic legacy-save, while MJ was truly competitive - the genuine article that did things the hard way.
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He was in 88' and 89', but players develop alongside an assist target like MJ, so Pippen got better... This contrasts with Lebron's ball-dominance and zero young teammates growing from low producer to meaningful producer on his watch (zero young player development in 2 decades)
It's kind of hard to develop guys when your skillset turns guys into spot-up shooter because you lack expert jumpshooting skill and great instinct to play off teammates (off-ball).
Or look what happened when Bron left Cleveland, they went from 66 and 61 seasons to a 19 win one. But still, could've happened.
The Bulls cratered in 1999 after MJ left but no one mentions it because the Bulls didn't just lose MJ - they lost Pippen and Rodman too.
Similarly, the 2011 Cavs didn't just lose Lebron - they lost their entire starting five and 8 years of chemistry development - the 8-year organic juggernaut was blown up - the team lost Zydrunas, Varejao, Mo, Shaq and Delonte, which was 52 ppg and many years of chemistry development.
So there's no need to keep repeating the lie that you've been told about teams cratering without Lebron - they don't - his teams crater the whole team is blown up after he team-hops and bounces.. Team-hoppers gut teams and that's what happened to the 2011 Cavs... Meanwhile, the 15' Heat were injured but nearly made the 16' ECF, and of course Love was injured in 2019, so that explains the Cavs' drop-off.. Again, stop believing the lies you see on cable.. It's unbelievable that people fall for this stuff.
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Lebron had more help:
But did much less in far more seasons:
These people wanted to give MJ Pippen, give Kobe Shaq, give Bird and Magic fellow hall of famers, and give Lebron a bag of dicks and say "rangz"
Lebron mostly lost with 2 stars from 2011-2017
MJ mostly won with 1 star from 1991-1998
When Lebron had "normal" casts like Jordan with 1 franchise player, 1 all-star teammate and good defenses, he got destroyed from 2005-2010 and 2019-2024 -
even the bubble ring doesn't count because Lebron was 2nd option and AD is a franchise player, which makes 2 franchise players on 1 team - that isn't normal.
These people wanted to give MJ Pippen, give Kobe Shaq, give Bird and Magic fellow hall of famers, and give Lebron a bag of dicks and say "rangz"
Pippen was nothing compared to all-time dominators like Kareem, McHale, Wade or AD - Pippen compares much better to the 3rd options like Worthy, Bosh or Parish and actually doesn't compare at all to elite franchise players like Kareem or Wade.
Show me where Pippen went to the Finals and outplayed MVP Barkley like Kyrie did to Curry, or like AD did to Jokic, or like Wade outplayed Dirk?..
Pippen was never expected to compete on the same level as the top players - Pippen would be compared to a guy like KJ, Nance or Schrempf - not even Stockton, Payton or Penny... he was often UNFAVORABLY compared to Grant Hill... And of course he was never compared to guys that led teams to the Finals like Hakeem, MJ, Ewing, Barkley, Malone, Drexler, Shaq or Robinson (the best players in the 90's).
These people wanted to give MJ Pippen, give Kobe Shaq, give Bird and Magic fellow hall of famers, and give Lebron a bag of dicks and say "rangz"
Pippen cost MJ 3 rings from 88-90', while also having worst-ever efficiency on the 93' run (15 on 33% vs Dominique and 46 TS in the Finals), and 17.6 on 41% for the 96-98' Playoffs (that included worst-ever shooting splits in 96' and 98')...
So he only had 2 viable runs in 91' and 92', except he nearly caused massive upset loss by getting dominated by X-Man in the famous 7-game series in 92', so he really only had 1 viable run (91') - he wet the bed on every other run.. This includes his post-Bulls career if we want to look at the 99' Playoffs (18 on 32%) or his 6th option role in Portland where he achieved more historic choking embarassments.
So the Bulls didn't have a good cast, but MJ carrying the cast to a gaudy ring count makes it look good to new fans - the stats back up what I'm saying, not what you're saying - you only have superlatives and media propaganda, while I have the statistical record of Jordan's carry-jobs.
These people wanted to give MJ Pippen, give Kobe Shaq, give Bird and Magic fellow hall of famers, and give Lebron a bag of dicks and say "rangz"
it's a statistical fact that Jordan went 1 on 5 offensively for his 2nd three-peat - Rodman wasn't allowed to shoot, while Pippen averaged 17.6 on 41% for the 96-98' Playoffs - this was among the least offensive help in the league - nearly every team had more and better scoring options..
Btw, as an example of the Bulls crappy help, the Knicks had 5 players that were equal or better than Horace Grant, such as all-time floor general Mark Jackson, X-Man, Oakley, Mason, and Charles Smith.. And they still had Ewing, while Starks averaged 20/5/5 and all-defense.. They were far superior top to bottom, while teams like the Blazers, Suns and Sonics also show decorated players top to bottom - only the Bulls had 2 viable players and complete robots/role players thereafter - only the bulls had a weak roster like this.
Aaron Gordon and Pope are literally rejects from other teams, while Porter has always been a disappointment and Murray has never made an all-star team
To call these guys an "incredible cast" is absurd... Wade, Bosh and Allen is an incredible cast, while the Nuggets' cast is a "normal" cast of 1 franchise player and a secondary-producing sidekick, and also role players whose marginal stats have impact due to the great chemistry development of the team.. Lebron cannot have a great team with "normal" casts because his skillset cannot generate the required chemistry (he imposes spot-up roles, aka reduces teammate assists and increases their assisted rate/play-finishing)
Ultimately, we see that players with low hold-time like Jokic and expert jumpshooters (MJ, Curry) can win with "normal" casts because their skillset allows great ball movement and the required chemistry to win with these "normal" casts.. Lebron's inability to develop great chemistry and subsequent need for "more help" (talent) is a skill deficit, namely his lack of expert jumpshooting skill or great instinct to play off teammates (off-ball).
Similarly, the 2011 Cavs didn't just lose Lebron - they lost their entire starting five and 8 years of chemistry development - the 8-year organic juggernaut was blown up - the team lost Zydrunas, Varejao, Mo, Shaq and Delonte, which was 52 ppg and many years of chemistry development.
This is, of course, as usual complete nonsense. The Cavs got significantly better outside of Lebron. Aside from Lebron, their #2-#5 in minutes during the 09-10 season were Mo Williams, Anthony Parker, Anderson Varejao and JJ Hickson. All of these players were back in 10-11. The Cavs were outscored by 9.8/100 when these 4 players played together. Sure Mo Wiliams was traded and Varejao got hurt, but the Cavs weren't any better before that. Their best player was probably Ramon Sessions who wasn't on the 09-10 team. Their second best player was probably Jamison who played much more in 10-11 than in 09-10 on the Cavs.
Sure, Big Z, Shaq and West were no longer on the team, but this was because they weren't good enough - these 3 players literally combined just 4 more seasons in the NBA.
Again, we got to see how these players' careers turned out. It wasn't completely crazy to hold on this idea that Lebron was surrounded by limited, but capable role players during 09-10. It's insane to hold on to that belief now that we've seen how their careers turned out without Lebron:
I don't think people remember how absurd it was that the Cavs somehow had the best record in both 08-09 and 09-10. Both teams were completely awful outside of Lebron. And by that, I don't mean a bad supporting cast for a good team, but rather two of the worst teams ever assembled.
In the 09-10 season, these were the team leaders in minutes played:
Lebron
Mo Williams
Anthony Parker
Anderson Varejao
JJ Hickson
Delonte West
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Shaquille O'Neal
Here's how each player performed without Lebron
fallguy - You can think MJ is GOAT and still be impressed with how well the Bulls did without him.
There's nothing to be impressed about a 34-31 record in 95' after being the goat dynasty with MJ.
The 55 wins was clearly a one-off, while the 95' and 96' Bulls had a lottery trajectory without MJ - this is the historical record..
So there's just nothing to be impressed about and I was there - I was watching those games and following the NBA - no one was particularly impressed because everyone knew they were kind of flying by the seat of their pants and under the radar - reality hadn't set in yet and everyone knew it would.. And when it did, they were 34-31 and that was after being thoroughly embarrassed in the previous playoffs.
It's quite likely that MJ's return in 95' allowed the Bulls to hang on to their low seed... Regardless, where would the mighty tandem of Pippen and Kukoc be in 96' after another early playoff loss in 95 and continued downward trajectory?... They would be just a nothing team heading nowhere and most likely lottery, whereas they were the goat team with MJ... Similarly, the Bulls would never have developed into anything if MJ was never there in the 80's - where would 89' Pippen take the team without MJ?... Nowhere - no titles - no 3-peat so they could have a one-off 55 wins
- engage in bad faith statistical cherrypicking to try and twist LeBron’s into having the best individual seasons (he does not)
I'm not sure what you mean here, but the general data-driven consensus is that Lebron had the highest peak. As long as we focus on the actual impact, MJ's case against Lebron requires making a lot of assumptions in MJ's favor. Lebron has easily the best impact-stat (RAPM) in the play-by-play era and MJ doesn't look like a strong outlier relative to his peers when try to tease out MJ's impact (since he played the majority of his career during a period when play-by-play stats weren't available) using methods available.
Looking at individual seasons, Lebron has more impressive regular seasons (08-09 and 09-10, again in terms of impact) as well as more impressive playoff runs (16, 15) in terms of success relative to teammates and competition. MJ has been better at putting up box stats that correlate with RAPM I guess? Keep in mind, while MJ has the higher BPM, BPM is designed to approximate 5-year RAPM. And Lebron has the best 5-year stretch in the sample and the second best 5-year stretch:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/abo...
So this whole MJ has the higher BPM 2.0 than Lebron is a bit misleading because Lebron is the outright leader in RAPM which BPM is designed to approximate and there's not a ton of circumstantial evidence (by looking at how the Bulls did without MJ) that leads us to think MJ had the type of impact that Lebron demonstrated.
I think this is the best summary of available statistics for Lebron vs MJ in terms of peak seasons:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtop...
[QUOTE=OhayoKD]Seems if we just use box-stat aggregators(per, ws/48) lebron comes out ahead in the postseason and mj comes out ahead in the regular season. Maybe that's due to lebron coasting in the rs after 2010. Maybe it's due to mj being more intense or something.
If we use impact stats like bpm, rapm, wowy, and pipm, lebron seems to come out ahead in regular season and postseason in his best years due to defense.
Also seems like if we combine everything lebron's 2009 comes out as the #1 "peak" in most everything. His regular season is either at or near the top and then his postseason just kills everything. Maybe that's just because of defense since 09 is also the #1 defensive year by impact stuff for both these players.
So i guess it comes down to how you weigh box-stats vs impact-stats and rs/postseason tho i usually prefer impact because a. they predict winning better especially as players change teams and b. they're rooted in winning and c. they're not as biased towards offense/bad defensive indicators like steals and blocks[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure what you mean here, but the general data-driven consensus is that Lebron had the highest peak. As long as we focus on the actual impact, MJ's case against Lebron requires making a lot of assumptions in MJ's favor. Lebron has easily the best impact-stat (RAPM) in the play-by-play era and MJ doesn't look like a strong outlier relative to his peers when try to tease out MJ's impact (since he played the majority of his career during a period when play-by-play stats weren't available)
This is just utter nonsense lol. "We don't have RAPM for both, we do have BPM for both which is designed to predict RAPM, and it predicts Jordan's would be better, but that's misleading because Lebron has the highest RAPM (which we don't have for both)"
