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

Hahah this is your evidence for the bulls being a lottery team if Jordan doesn't come back? Great stuff.

So now what the Hawks did (kinda of they snuck in the playoffs at 38 wins) and what Pippen did as a year 2 player is magically relevant in his 8th year in his prime. Fascinating.

This is ALMOST as good as pretending 20 win garbage wasn't in fact 20 win garbage.

I don't care if youre impressed by the 94 Bulls.I'm not pretending they're the 98 Bulls. But they're leaps and bounds better than the Lebronless Cavs. You can roll around your bed in a Cavaliers Antoine Jamison jersey and Mo Williams shorts if you want. That doesn't change the facts.

Wow a steely stare! Why didn't LeBron think of that!

And no Jordan wasn't unstoppable at times every game. That's just a clown thing to say.

Good point though the guy who is 39 years old and still playing a high level with a great work ethic isn't competitive at all.

LeBron has been scary good since basically the day he came into the league. Whether or not Jordan is better doesn't change that.

I mean don't get me wrong, BPM (and the box score in general) is pretty trashy. But for whatever it's worth, it sides with MJ. The fact that Lebron has the best 5-year RAPM (something I agree is a very good metric) in pbp era doesn't mean squat. He absolutely should have, it's a requirement of being in this conversation, it isn't remotely surprising.

Just to get this out of the way, Jokic is awesome and has an argument for the highest offensive peak in history. However, there are a few problems with his GOAT case, especially now that the bar is set so high (Lebron).

Playing time

Between the ages of 20 and 28, Jokic played 21078 minutes. Lebron played 27252 minutes at the same age. That's an enormous gap. While there are some metrics that show Jokic to be near the very top in efficiency, it's important to understand that Jokic is putting up otherworldly efficiency in far fewer minutes than Lebron did.

Efficiency

For modern players that played their entire careers during the databall era where play-by-play data is available, RAPM is probably the best way to judge their efficiency. Keep in mind that this is per-possession and needs to be weighted by playing time in case there's significant disparity (i.e. Jokic, Curry, Ginobili). Keep in mind this is based on on/off, accounting for all players on the court and literally what BPM is designed to predict.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nbadiscussion/c...

Jokic is far enough behind that there's realistically no way for him at this age to catch up. Now, without age and coach adjustment, Jokic does take the top place:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nbadiscussion/c...

But that's still not anywhere near enough to overcome the disparity in playing time. This is also comparing mostly prime Jokic against mostly out-of-prime Lebron. Even just looking at this, it's certain that Peak Lebron > Peak Jokic even on a per-possesion basis and this isn't close once you account for playing time (per year). Lebron's best seasons are also likely penalized here - his impact during 08-09 and 09-10 seasons was so statistically improbable that Lebron likely didn't get the full credit.

Longevity

While we don't know how Jokic will age, it's extremely unlikely that Jokic will make up ground towards the end of his career given that Lebron is still playing like a top-10 player at age 39.

Playoffs

We can think about this either from a qualitative perspective or a quantatitve perspective. Jokic has very clear defensive weaknesses and by virtue of being a center, limits his team's small ball options. This can get exposed in certain match-ups. Again, this is true of most top players, but Lebron is just an impossible comparison because prime Lebron single-handedly plugged his team's holes on both ends against any matchup.

Does that also show up in the data?

Nuggets NRtg with Jokic On/Off

2019 Playoffs
Jokic On: +7.0
Jokic Off: -16.7
Overall record: 7-7
Series record: 1-1

2020 Playoffs
Jokic On: -3.5
Jokic Off: -0.5
Overall record: 9-10
Series record 2-1

2021 Playoffs
Jokic On: -8.4
Jokic Off: -0.2
Overall record: 4-6
Series record 1-1

2022 Playoffs
Jokic On: -14.4
Jokic Off: +2.1
Overall record: 1-4
Series record 0-1

2023 Playoffs
Jokic On: +9.0
Jokic Off: +6.9
Overall record: 16-4
Series record 4-0

I wouldn't put too much stock in the Off #s since that's a small sample size, but it is somewhat damning that the Nuggets were outscored with Jokic 3 out of 5 playoff series (age 23-27). How does this compare with early career Lebron?

2006 Playoffs
Lebron On: -4.8
Lebron Off: +16.3
Overall Record: 7-6
Series Record: 1-1

2007 Playoffs
Lebron On: +4.9
Lebron Off: -19.3
Overall Record: 12-8
Series Record: 3-1

2008 Playoffs
Lebron On: +5.6
Lebron Off: -19.0
Overall Record: 7-6
Series Record: 1-1

2009 Playoffs
Lebron On: +11.6
Lebron Off: +3.2
Overall Record: 10-4
Series Record: 2-1

2010 Playoffs
Lebron On: +4.6
Lebron Off: -18.6
Overall Record: 6-5
Series Record: 1-1

2011 Playoffs
Lebron On: +1.6
Lebron Off: +16.2
Overall Record: 14-7
Series Record: 3-1

2012 Playoffs
Lebron On: +10.9
Lebron Off: -13.4
Overall Record: 16-7
Series Record: 4-0

Up to the same point (in terms of age), Lebron had 7 playoff runs and his team outscored with him on the court just once (his age 21 season). Had 15 playoff series wins to just 8 for Jokic.

So adding this all up, I think Jokic has practically no GOAT equity at this point, though he could certainly get to a point where he has a reasonable argument against everyone except Lebron, especially since the error bars for older players are a bit higher. But we literally have play-by-play data for each of Lebron's and Jokic's years.

Btw, it certainly seems possible that Jokic at his best might been a better overall basketball player than Lebron at his best has been on an absolute basis. But I don't think that's a particularly reasonable basis for GOAT.

To be clear, BPM 1.0 sides with Lebron, BPM 2.0 sides with MJ. Lebron's peak BPM seasons as well as MJ seasons that were in the play-by-play era were already in the data set for BPM 1.0, so most of the change between the 2 versions is due to extrapolation from modern data that don't have either MJ's or Lebron's peak seasons.

This is simply incorrect - there's a reasonably strong chance that MJ does not have the top 5-year stretch in his own era, based on circumstantial evidence. If I had to guess, Magic, D-Rob and MJ would be the top 3 (in no particular order) and I would probably take the field against any one player. Also, these are preset spans of 5 years for all players, which happens to cut Lebron's absolute peak in two separate spans (07-11, 12-16), yet these they were #1 and #2. It seems extremely unlikely that in a similar exercise, MJ would have the top-2 5-year spans. The correlation between box stats and impact stats isn't strong enough for us to have that much confidence in MJ's impact.

What's also remarkable (I understand this is super wonky stuff that most of you that don't care about how RAPM is arrived at won't necessarily understand) is I that Lebron generally comes up #1 even without box office priors.

Also some of MJ's seasons did end up in the play-by-play era (4 to be exact), so we can statistically extrapolate (which is how BPM works) how good MJ must have been age-adjusted based on that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nbadiscussion/c...

Yeah, so there's that.

Again, the point here is that Lebron's case is extremely robust and doesn't rely on box stats - he does well whether you talk about the playoffs or the regular season, box stats or impact stats and peak or longevity. MJ's case is extremely fragile and relies on putting our trust in box score stats, when we literally know for sure that they aren't that accurate. We also know that MJ cared a lot about box score stats and he's known to wield his influence to ensure that his team play in a way that ensure he puts up good stats.

So which players got better under lebron ?

Is this part of the standard criteria you can use to evaluate and compare players across eras or some bullshit twog made up that you're dumb enough to swallow and regurgitate?

I mean, should we give extra credit to Shaq for developing Kobe and to Kareem for developing Magic? Or for that matter Worthy for developing MJ? Do we take this into account for any sports? Any other basketball players? Or is this transparently reverse-engineered from the realization that the Bulls were pretty good without MJ and Pippen was an excellent player, as to give MJ credit for Pippen and the Bulls being pretty good, all while of course denying that Pippen was a great player (but if it was, somehow that was all due to MJ).

There's literally zero evidence that players have significant influence on other players' development, and even if they did, there's no real way to measure the impact and even if there was, we don't know that MJ would come out ahead of Lebron under this hypothetical measurement.

Bold is just ridiculous (unless you're using a super loose defintion of 'reasonable chance' I guess). Literally only you thinks this. Honestly you're as bad as fallguy.

If by some chance we get full PBP stuff back to the 80s and you are correct, MJ is only like 3rd or something, then he absolutely falls out of GOAT conversation himself (assuming we trust RAPM, which personally I do)

For anyone reasonable, MJ is clearly the best player in his era and Lebron is clearly the best in his, and comparing is where the difficulty lies. But they need to be the clear best players of their era for this to even be a convo.

I don't even know what that last link is meant to say but just going to go ahead and ignore anything that based on extrapolating backwards from old age seasons after a three year retirement. Grats to Lebron on being the GOAT 39yo if that's your sorta thing I guess

Really , well I guarantee you , if not being a ****** , anyone learning, participating /practising with the goat in any field will make u better , and usually at much rapid rate then anything else …
Especially when you already a gifted professional player .

For the bolded part , We actually do And its called how team perform and how those players perform better and worst in what situation .
It isn’t a surprise LeBron team or players can’t do much good afterwards.
even when they join LeBron all their numbers take a deep dive .
And lebron can’t respect any system because the team play the LeBron system so when he leaves what’s left ?

When mj left , the triangle stayed in place and anyone had their role very define for years and still could play the same way without too much trouble and they all peaked that year at the same time (pippen,Armstrong, Grant) enabling to score a little more to compensate MJ absence .
But they weren’t anymore of a championship squad tho but could still played and they had a great work ethic thx to mj .

It’s funny I hear many time mj benefited to have perfectly fit players to him and yet people seem do not believe team chemistry can be a great quality in winning teams even tho mj wouldn’t be there anymore .
Like that great chemistry would disappear with mj ….

Nonsense... Curry, Kobe and Duncan won more rings, better Finals records, and won more despite having "normal" casts of 1 franchise player as opposed to 3 franchise players (super-team) that Lebron had.

No one in history lost so many times with high-producing teammates - he lost with Wade getting 27 ppg in the 2011 Finals, or Kyrie getting 29 ppg in the 17' Finals, or AD getting nearly 30 ppg in various series or seasons.

Brand of ball, chemistry, and teammate development MATTERS, along with how a skillset impact strategic capacity/coaching - these things matter because they dictate winning more than the roster talent - Lebron is simply had at all of it, so he's the biggest loser in NBA history based on Finals record or bad losses (sweep losses, upset losses, record losses, locked up in losses, losses with multiple all-star teammates, losses with preseason favorites, losses with 1 or2 seeds) .. No one was a bigger turnover machine, bricklayer in the clutch, ball-dominator, or needier skillset than Lebron James.

Nah it s more about not being blinded by hate …..
It’s not because u dislike someone it means his actually 100% wrong .

I think fallguy has some relevant points .
Doesn’t mean I agree 100% with him .

Are you projecting again?

I guarantee you no one ITT hates anything or anyone as much as TWOG hates LeBron James. It's psychotic and cultish. No one else cares that much.

EVIDENCE

1) There's a massive historical trend - there's a long list of bad fits for Lebron and teammates playing below capacity, along with zero young player development, while there's a massive trend of great fits for Jordan and frequent young player development... These clear-cut opposite trends are evidence that these 2 guys have opposite impacts on teammates.

2) Lebron lowers teammates' assists and increases their play-finishing rate (assisted rate) - since he turns guys into spot-up shooter, zero young players grew from low producer to meaningful producer on his watch (zero young player development in 2 decades), while literally everyone developed alongside MJ's off-ball game, or Curry's or Bird's or Kobe's... Jumpshooters fit with everyone - this is bball 101

Most people think Jordan is the GOAT so what are you even talking about?

It would be rather silly to hold losses against Lebron in his late 30s when he's far better than anyone else at the same ages in NBA history. That's not remotely up for debate. If you're gonna count it at all it actually moves him closer to Jordan not further away. Nice pretzel logic though again as per usual. "lebron is better at Jordan at this age (and it's not close) therefore he can't be the GOAT". Make that make sense. It's almost as good as "Lebron lost in the finals with a complete joke of a team he sucks".

At least as expected this year he lost to the -400 Nuggets which as you've taught us in the past is better than losing in the finals. Now if the Lakers really want to impress you next year they'll win 20 games since apparently that's the mark of a real juggernaut. It's what the real great players, Legends like Antione Jamison do.

Cowherd said the Lakers need another star, however the Lakers are the only team with 2 franchise players on 1 team.. Lebron's inferior brand of ball and weak fits cannot win with "normal" rosters of 1 franchise player like Jokic"s team, or Curry's, or MJ's.. Lebron"s weaker chemistry needs 3 franchise players (super-team) or 2 franchise players where it's arguable that he's 2nd option to AD.

lmao@thinking Chris Bosh and Kevin Love are franchise players.

Don't blame age because Lebron and AD averaged 28 each just like Lebron/Kyrie in 2017, or Lebron/Wade in 2011 - he lost with all of these elite performances by teammates.

So the question is how can Lebron lose with AD and Reaves playing amazing - 2 guys giving pippen production tonight and yet another loss like his entire career of losing with great teammate production.

The answer is brand of ball and chemistry... Basketball is a battle of attrition where a player's energy is FINITE - extra effort on one end takes away from capacity on the other end.. Lebron's ball-dominance doesn't win this attrition battle because it lets defenses rest, so they maintain offensive capacity.. Meanwhile, Lebron's team gets worn down by zippy ball movement and has less capacity for offense aa the game progresses, as we saw in this series.

You're looking at one stat. He's clearly not the player he was in 2017 or 2011.
And even with that one stat-

NBA team ppg average:
2024: 114.2
2017:105.6
2011:99.6

So obviously 28 ppg is worth more in 2011 and 2017 than it is today. He's fallen off a ton defensively since his prime. He's still a very good player but he's a long way from being the best player in the league like he was back then.

Somehow you don't realize that playing at a high level for longer than other players is a good thing for Lebron not a bad one. Much like losing in the first round instead of the finals, you think if he was a washed up cancerous scrub like Kobe 3 years ago that would be better for him. It's totally illogical.

The answer to your question- he's playing a better team with the best player in the league.
You want to talk about years he was favored to win the championship and didn't win (where he's still a dog to win them) then play stupid when Denver was -400 to win the series.

As for AD playing amazing- He disappeared in the second halves of game 2 and tonight- both 2 point last second losses on the road. Tonight due obviously due to injury which is no doubt also somehow Lebron's fault.

They were among the top 1st options in the game especially Love - he was basically Luka at the time but no sidekick like Brunson or Porzingas.. Both Bosh and Love were #3 in PER the year before joining Lebron.

Lebron took the top 3 players in the conference (Lebron, Wade, Bosh) and put them on 1 team - so no one cares about him beating DeRozan and Rose when he should be facing Wade and Bosh.

Btw, if Draymond was the best scorer on a team, the team would win zero games, while baby Love won 40 in the West with zero cast.. Ask 2019 Lebron how hard that is

hhahaha franchise players don't consistently win 20-30 games as the best player on their own team when they don't have much help.
they win 50-60 games and go to conference finals and finals.

kevin love and bosh franchise players hahaha. incredible just incredible.

Love won 40 once. he also won 17 and 26 as a full time starter. ask Lebron how hard that would be to do bc he could probably do it at 55 years old.

Btw Draymond is a glorified role player not a franchise player what the hell does he have to do with anything?

Of course he should have been facing Wade and Bosh with no help. That's what guys like you wanted for Lebron's entire career. No help for Lebron, every other star gets tons of help and you can say "see Lebron isn't that great he can't win a championship". Meanwhile your (lmao) #2 all time gets to be the second best player on his own team.

It's like having a 100 yard dash, making one guy start from 120 yards out and when he loses by 15 yards saying "derp derp he's so much slower than these other guys".

Nearly every young star loses a lot in their early years, so you're blaming Love for losing in his first few years when Lebron lost too and was only winning 45 games by Year 5 despite more help than Love had - Lebron entered the league with the East all-star center on his team and proceeded to be lottery for 2 years.

And again, if Jordan had the East all-star center and then received a HOF coach and an acquisition that was playing better than 1990 Pippen - he would obviously 3-peat with all that and yet Lebron had all this before entering his first playoff!!

Despite all this help, Lebron was only winning 45 games in Year 5 before receiving another all-star that spaced the floor and opened up Lebron's game... By Year 7, the Cavs had acquired a superior scorer than Pippen to play 3rd option, so they had more scoring options than the 1st three-peat Bulls, while also having better defensive ranking since 07' (long before Lebron was all-defense).

So Lebron was following the same organic path as Curry, MJ, Jokic and Giannis by having an organic juggernaut by Year 7 with a "normal" cast of 1 franchise player... These casts require chemistry but Lebron gave up on this chemistry learning curve in 2011 - he obtained better casts than the 1 franchise player model by getting 3 franchise players on 1 team (super-team), yet still mostly lost (Bron-ball).

Well look, maybe I'm a casual...but I felt the words from the man himself on his podcast recently say it all. 'I played like **** and we would have won if I had played better'. I think you are right to note that Dallas did a phenomenal job of mixing things up on him, daring him to lean into his relative weaknesses, etc. And they played out of their minds as a team.

But LeBron was not LeBron in the way he was for each of the next 7 years; and then once again in 2020 (and to an age limited extent last year and this year).

Yeah look I disagree on letting Rondo / Dwight go, at that point. Just run back what was working. Dwight and JaVale were providing ~25 strong minutes inside per game, and what they brought in instead (Gasol, Drummond, etc) struggled against Ayton the following playoffs.

Harrell was unlucky, sure.

Yeah look I'm not arguing this - it was an epically bad trade. 2022 was lost due to injury, but you can reasonably contend that the Lakers had to work way harder than they should have in the 2023 / 2024 regular season when LeBron / AD have been healthy, due to the trade. You can also look at what they have specifically lacked against Denver last year and this year and trace it back to that offseason.

We can't know how much influence he has had, absolutely. It will likely be a subject of contention over the next 20 years, with LeBron's narrative and counter narratives from others aired out across multiple documentaries and books.

Spot on. Cleveland was really badly run during his first stint, to the extent that winning a title was likely impossible, that is beyond debate at this point.

Miami were really well run, offered him more stability and organisational coherence than he enjoyed anywhere else. There were no excuses in Miami, and he went to four straight finals and won two titles, which LeBron would say should have been three. Great situation, great outcome.

The second Cleveland stint is where it got weird again. Some of it was bad luck - Love and Kyrie going down in 2015; some of it was unavoidable - Kyrie feeling he had to be the man elsewhere; and some of it was bad acquisitions or players hitting the wall earlier than expected - Isaiah Thomas being cooked after the injury or Love ending up a replacement level player come 2018.

But it's a fair point - the more you criticise "LeGM" the more you need to marvel at LeBron as a player.

He had it in Miami, and if he had stayed in Miami and worked through a rebuild under Riley and Spo I think it's interesting to speculate on whether he would have won more titles overall.

I think LeBron has probably been too quick to undermine coaches and change up supporting casts. I would surmise that every year he feels a need to see new faces and feeds off new energy in the locker room. And there's no way the Lakers failed to consult him about the Westbrook trade.

I thought this was a really reasonable treatment of the topic:

And remember that I believe LeBron's peak is right up there with MJ and has impactful stretches MJ never touched (2016 Finals, 2018 playoffs), largely because LeBron had way more to carry in those scenarios as you rightly point out.

Curry has four rings, same as LeBron, and was only Finals MVP for one of them.

Durant has two rings and two Finals MVP, two less than LeBron.

(And if you think GS 2016 - 2019 wasn't a super team I don't know what to tell you!)

Kobe has one more ring than LeBron, sure, but was only Finals MVP for two of them.

You just spew constant nonsense easily corrected with a quick google. It has been LeBron's era, and I know you know it too.

No, you're extremely uninformed if you think just because MJ is conventionally thought of the best player during that period that this implies a very high chance that MJ would rank as the best player according to this particular version of RAPM, especially given that this is based on predetermined 5-year periods.

Even just looking at this data set, Shaq's best is just 16th, Kobe's 26th, Wade's 40th and Harden's 51st. Kyle Korver is ahead of Shaq at 15th and KG (3rd and 13th), Dirk (7th and 12th) and Duncan (8th and 11th) are the only players other than Lebron to have more than 2 separate 5-year spans in the top 15. There's approximately zero chance that you'd be able to guess these results without having seen similar stats based on PBP data. It's extremely impressive that Lebron has the top two spots given how much this disagrees with pure box stats or conventional player rankings and also how no one else even has two top-10 spots. The other thing that's legitimately crazy is that these two 5-year stretches are also #1 and #2 in minutes played.

People have also looked at playoff #s and have concluded that Lebron appears to be better than MJ in terms of impact as well (I think people were able to get PBP for MJ's playoffs).

I would also disagree with this. MJ could very well come 3rd and still have an argument for the highest peak. You're putting way too much trust in stats that, if you understand how they are arrived at, all have a lot of flaws. RAPM is fundamentally not about how good you are as a basketball player, but rather an estimate of how much value you added in the circumstances you were put in.

We simply do not have the data to be reasonably certain that MJ was the clear best player in his era. While his team success is impressive, collinearity is a huge issue for discerning his individual impact versus that of Pippen and Phil Jackson and we already know how fragile individual stats are.

Again, I think you're really underestimating how hard it is to compare players and how Lebron due to a number of factors (playing in the PBP era, unprecedented longevity, unprecedented versatility, success across significant era changes, a large number of team contexts) stands alone in terms of how confident we can be about his impact.

Also, this is why longevity matters purely from an epistemological perspective even if all you cared about who truly was the best player at their best. It's very hard to be certain that you had truly GOAT-level peak or simply circumstances that maximized your value.

MJ's 96-97 and 97-98 season were in the play-by-play era. Keep in mind when you're looking at BPM and say, whoa MJ was amazing in 91 or whatever, this is statistically what's going on as well. We only have the play-by-play data from 96-97 season and forward and BPM is trying to extrapolate based on box stats what MJ might have looked like in a PBP era. That's really not that different from looking at MJ's actual play-by-play data (which does include two of his late prime seasons) and trying to figure out how good he must have been in his prime. These are both very loose approximations of what we're trying to understand.