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

i dk man i was doubting MJ's goatness but i just witnessed 6 gifs of him making shots across his career and am pretty sure that seals the deal

If I had to pick one scoring skill that encompassed the greatest combination of effectiveness against all defenses, degree of difficulty, and skill, it would be the turnaround jumper.. If someone has mastered the footwork, muscles and movements for a turnaround, they probably have a bunch of other kinds of jumpers that they can get off in polished/mastered/seamless fashion..

So even though the turnaround jumper isn't used as much today, I would still pick out the best jumpshooters and sort by turnaround.. the exception is Curry, who's 3ball is the best ever.

Sort by turnaround jumper between Brunson, Booker, Durant, Tatum, Maxey, Kyrie, Derozan, Kawhi, Jamal Murray, Ingram, McCollum, Derrick White and whoever else has a great jumper... I think Tatum, Brunson, Kyrie and KD have great turnarounds, so I'll start with them, quite possibly in that order now that KD is older.

There's tons of guys I missed like white guys and euros because for some reason I just haven't seen highlights of that many good-scoring white guys although I know they exist in the league.. Jokic and Luka obviously but I hesitate to call a guy like Luka an expert jumpshooter when he can't come off screens.

Btw, there's tons of lesser guys like Jordan Poole, who has a sick bag but he stopped getting better and has been left behind, while Michael Porter Jr is probably one of the most naturally-talented players and shooters of this era but he hasn't taken that leap.. Now's his chance tbh.

The selection of those gifs is designed to demonstrate the type of shot that Edwards lacks - that's all.. I'm not sure what else you thought the gifs represented - there's obviously a lot more than just those gifs, but the point was to show the type of shot, not every single shot..

Edwards clearly lacks 6 to 15 foot shots that occur in heavy traffic, which require a touch and shot-making diversity that Ant lacks - again, the gifs show these types of shots and a capability that we don't see from Ant... In addition to the tough mid-range gifs, other gifs show the chest-to-chest, extended-arm layups specifically over bigs, that require more length and bigger hands than Ant has.. Ant needs both hands on the ball until the last instant on layups - he can't extend with one arm and sweep around a big like MJ can (see gifs).

Look at the shot that MJ made over Divac to send Game 3 of the 91' Finals into overtime - Ant could never convert a shot like that - that's Tony Parker-like touch on an impossible floater from a 6'6" goat athlete.. Goat athletes like Lebron, Giannis, Dominique, Zion, etc - none have goat touch - MJ is the only goat athlete that was also a goat jumpshooter on 2's or 3's.. His touch and quickness was like a 6'2" player.

Overall, Ant shot 35% from mid-range on no volume this season, and he shot poorly outside the restricted area in the paint (43%) - that's because he lacks the type of shots in those gifs.

What Kobe thinks about
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What him thinks about MJ .
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And then you have candybar ….

Who to believe I wonder …

I see why McLovin left you off the thread title - you obviously say a lot of dumb stuff.

This was definitely one of the dumber things

I mean, it's a good attempt to turn Jordan's aerial abilities against him by saying he avoided contact but it's so obviously untrue like saying the sky is pink - MJ was the best at drawing fouls at the rim and AND1's... Are you trying to get me to post AND1 gifs?... Because no one has better AND1's in history - the best combination of brute power coupled with goat finesse and hang-time in the history of the game...

Magic said "his strength is like a big man's.. He's the strongest guard - I'm talking about body-wise - to ever play".. (here)...

Jordan had big-man hands and the goat drop-step for a non-big man outside of maybe Dr. J.. He was devastating when you fouled him and you had to actually try to HURT him to stop him... I don't remember Bill Russell or Hakeem saying they were literally trying to HURT wilt or shaq... But listen to Rodman and Salley say that the goal was to literally hurt MJ - "we tried to physically hurt Michael"... (here).. Only the goat requires that level of attention.

Why would Rodman and Salley try to HURT jordan if he was a weak little twig?.. Perhaps he was infact the strongest guard to ever play - BODY-wise, like Magic said.

Another false narrative - young Jordan averaged equal assists to Lebron and more in the playoffs, while everyone grew by leaps and bounds alongside Jordan and achieved their career highs, so all those crazy shots were still necessary..

That's just how bad his roster was because Jordan didn't enter the league with the East all-star center on his team like Lebron... He also didn't add a HOF coach and 22/5/5 all-defender before entering his first playoffs as a 3rd year high seed - Jordan entered the playoffs in Year 1 as a rookie low seed with nothing.

Again, Jordan passed more than Lebron thru half their chips or thru the first 9 years of their playoff careers - Lebron didn't start averaging more assists than MJ in the playoffs until Curry's spacing era made offense easier from 2015 onwards.

This must be one of the dumbest things that you've ever said in your entire LIFE

Literally no one in the history of the game got by defenders better or easier than Jordan, which is why he didn't need to dominate the ball and use a lot of live dribbles to get by guys like today's players need.

smh, wow

MJ had a great step back - better than today's players, even though they didn't allow the travel step-back like they allow today.. You just haven't watched MJ if you don't think he used a step-back frequently - he did - all the time - his game-winner over Russell was a step-back... And he has the goat fadeaway.. Seriously, wtf are you talking about..

I think these series of statements is the worst post you ever had..

Magic Johnson:

"Jordan's strength is like a big man's... He's the strongest guard - I'm talking about body-wise - to ever play"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSPo7lPy...

If Jordan and Edwards were skeletons, Jordan's would be bigger due to bigger bone structure like longer arms, legs, hands, and superior neck/shoulders, including being more ripped - Jordan's muscle was better muscle despite being skinnier and having more capacity to add muscle optimally than Edwards, who is already bulky.

And I don't remember Hakeem or Bill Russell saying they were trying to physically hurt Shaq or Wilt... So if Jordan was such a skinny twig, then why did the Pistons openly say on TV that they were trying to physically hurt Jordan ([url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpFafk92I6Q&t=32s]here[/url])???... I'm guessing that Magic was right - Jordan's strength was like a big man's and he was the strongest guard to ever play.

Thank god that title has been changed

I mean this is crazy talk.

Anyway. I've probably watched 200 MJ games.

I'll ask again. How many Any games have you watched?

Wow, Jordan was an absolutely *terrible* decision maker.

Not talking about and-1's - there's more to finishing through contact than drawing and-1's. We already know that MJ wasn't very good at finishing at the rim - he played 4 seasons in the PBP era and his shooting percentage at the rim (within 3 feet) in those four seasons (keep in mind, this is after MJ consciously bulked up specifically to better handle contact):

96-97: .524
97-98: .644
01-02: .615
02-03: .614

Anthony Edwards on the other hand:

20-21: .647
21-22: .658
22-23: .674
23-24: .707

And again, this matches what we know about MJ from watching him - he was a good slasher but not a particularly efficient finisher. I don't even think Ant is that good at finishing at the rim (he's fairly MJ-like in this regard) by today's standards. Don't bother looking at Lebron's stats, it can't be good for your health.

I mean even you can't be this dense - obviously they were being physical because he was like a twig. This isn't even disputed - even MJ thought he needed to bulk up to better handle the physical defense and did. You don't see teams try to do this on Shaq or Lebron, but teams try to do this on Curry and KD. You'd think this is obvious but apparently not to you.

Not seeing that in your gifs - looks like a guy that's struggling to get past (really bad) defenders and putting up terrible shots as a result.

What good is a move if you can't execute it when you need it? Again, you literally have no idea how to watch tape. You're also confusing the timeline - MJ got better at these skill moves over time and kept adding to his bag, he wasn't capable of executing these at Ant's age and frankly wasn't really much of a jump shooter at all. By today's standards, he was very raw and relied heavily on his athleticism. Literally any super athlete can do the types of stuff that you posted and it will work some of the time, the entire point of all these basketball moves is to avoid having to do that and set up a consistent shot. Your basketball ignorance astounds me, Mr 4 points in college.

At-rim percentage is era-specific - we're talking packed paints of previous eras vs today's open paints, so it's impossible to compare at rim percentages, but Ant trails MJ significantly at every other distance if you want to post all the distances

and again, the gifs shown earlier, paint shots that aren't right at the rim - Ant stinks at those because he lacks the shot-making diversity and touch required - old Jordan was far better at these paint shots outside the restricted area due to touch and shot-making diversity - your stats shows this.

Also, Ant's at-rim percentages trail 1st-three-peat Jordan despite the era disadvantage that MJ still faced (packed paints) and taller players (average height was 1 inch greater in the 80's and 90's than now).. MJ's at-rim percentage in 92' was 75% or something according to posting legend PHILA (here)

So everything in my previous posts on this page stands.. carry on

this is gold thank you

MJ was forced to take a lot of tough shots because look at the stats of his teammates - they were low-producers that frequently didn't have it going, so this required Jordan to "take over" and carry the offense on many possessions.

This is common knowledge and also intuitive - MJ"s crazy shot highlight reel is another demonstration of his weak help.

Furthermore, the only real decision is to decide NOT to dominate the ball and allow the team to run a ball movement offense instead (allow the team to be coached) - knowing how to execute the best brand of ball, chemistry, teammate development, high assist teams and #1 offenses - that's "high IQ"... Otoh, finding the open man is just vision, which gets conflated with IQ (understanding and executing the best brand of ball and chemistry that elevates teammates)

If young Jordan wasn't a "willing passer", then why did 80's Jordan average equal assists to young Lebron in the regular season and more assists in the playoffs, while teammates grew by leaps and bounds alongside him?

Lebron has no history of teammate development, while Jordan has a tremendous history of teammate development during the 80's, while averaging the same assists as Lebron in the regular season and more in the playoffs.

It's a completely false narrative that young Jordan wasn't a "willing passer" - this misperception began in the 80's when the media needed a reason for why Jordan didn't win like Bird and Magic, without acknowledging their respective casts.. The narrative took off from there but everyone actually knew that Jordan was a great passer by 89' when the 26-year Jordan was a 1st-time point guard and instantly the league's best PG - that's goat talent for the game of basketball.

Are you too dumb to answer this question yourself?

Yeah perhaps it's much harder to score at the rim now with substantially more talented rim protectors around, who knows.

These don't look legitimate - they literally don't add up to MJ's actual verified stats:

MJ's 3P FG% during those 3 seasons: .338.
MJ's 3P FG% according to shot-tracking in a post from a deleted account: .383

These games also imply that MJ averaged 24.8 FGA per game, when he actually averaged 23.0. I'm going to assume that either some MJ fan made stuff up or a lot of games are available online specifically due to MJ's performance (who the hell cares about random Bulls games from the 90's otherwise), which adds a ton of bias here.

Also looks like people found that his tracking was way off when it comes things like on/off:

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

So I'm guessing the guy is no bueno when it comes to tracking things accurately (or youtube games create way too much of a bias) which makes this whole data set rather suspect.

In particular, he has MJ at 629/847 at the rim, but just 679/1021 for at the rim + short mid-range (I assume this is within 10 feet). So did MJ really just shoot 50/174 or .287 from 3-10 feet in the literal physical prime of his career? I guess that's not impossible especially now that we've seen twog's GIFs and what they imply about MJ's tendency to take some terrible shots from this distance. But I have more respect for MJ than that and I'm fairly sure (assuming this is a legitimate effort) that this is due to the tracker being biased towards thinking that misses were not at the rim and the makes were at the rim.

This whole thing is quite funny given twog's proclamation:

MJ career 3-10 (in the tracking era) FG%: .377
Ant career 3-10 FG%: .382
MJ 3-10 at the peak of his powers according to the data set quoted by twog: .287

Just for fun:

Lebron career 3-10 FG%: .428
Lebron 3-10 FG at age 35+ (i.e. post MJ 2nd retirement age): .460

Again, I don't think it should really be that controversial that modern players legitimately have so many advantages and access to so much information that allow them being far more skilled earlier in life than MJ and his generation. Tons of good high school players nowadays have literally mastered lots of moves that were practically unheard of during MJ's time. This isn't unique to basketball - high school baseball players nowadays literally have access to training and knowledge (pitching, swinging mechanics, pitch design, etc) that weren't available to the professionals in the 90's.

This does not diminish MJ's greatness - it's just how the sport has evolved.

The only real sense in which this affects the GOAT debate is that it makes Lebron somehow still being competitive with the new generation while nearing 40 even more impressive. Because his generation didn't really benefit from this skill revolution. But Lebron is already the GOAT without taking any of this into account, so this is just icing on the cake.

Today's high school players learn dribbling moves but rarely have fundamentals and effective moves that previous eras mastered like jump hooks and jab steps and upfakes.. These are short cuts to the "moves" that you speak of - the final part of a "move" is the actual shot and final footwork - previous eras mastered these parts better than today's era and that's all that mattered.. All the fancy dribbling before that means nothing and is actually a bad brand of ball that loses.

Overall, today's era is better 3-point shooters because they practiced the shot, and this is mostly spot-up shooting of open shots (today's spacing strategy yields mostly open threes)... In addition to threes, today's players are also better ballhandlers because ball-handling is perfectly correlated with the amount of carrying and traveling allowed, which has steadily-increased over time.

Otherwise, our spaced-out, hands-off beginner format means that players develop a drive-and-kick skillset - that's all they're learning in high school - so they're inferior at other formats that involve post, ball movement or lesser spacing/quicker instinct... The proof is in the results - international players solve our beginner format and achieve goat stats despite being extremely slow (Jokic, Luka, Embiid), or unskilled (Giannis).. So what would guys like Bird, Duncan, Kareem, Hakeem, Robinson, and Shaq do? .. It's impossible that today's best is better than previous era's best..

Lebron and MJ both won at 35 years old... But after that, Lebron isn't competitive because he barely makes playoffs with AD and a stacked cast, or gets completely embarrassed repeatedly by the same opponent that only has 1 good player.

That isn't "competitive"... It's underachieving with a stacked cast because he's old.. And the reason they're underachieving is because Lebron must play a weak brand in old age to get his stats - this includes lumbering to the hole in a driving/posting-up sort of fashion that expends the team's entire possession to get him a drive..

He's always lacked expert jumpshooting skill and instinct to play off-teammates (off-ball).. This skill deficit is exposed more in older age and is causing his teams to underachieve by more than they did in his prime - none of his previous teams were this this beatable, which is really saying something because every team that he's ever had was extremely beatable and mostly lost... But these Lakers take the cake.. Of course the coaching carousel tells the story of his career - a bad and uncoachable brand of ball that yields the worst fits and chemistry of any all-timer.

I never needed PHILA's data - I brought that up for you since you never saw MJ and maybe this guy's numbers would get you to accept the historical record.. The historical record of course is that MJ was a goat finisher at the rim prior to his baseball stint... MJ posterized bigs much more often than Lebron or Ant and that's just one aspect of his at-rim superiority - Lebron was only better at the bully-ball aspect, which is often a style detrimental to team chemistry, and tons of guys are much better at bully-ball than Lebron, so it's a weak argument to begin with.

Regarding Anthony Edwards, in addition to his poor mid-range efficiency, he's bad at paint shots outside the restricted area due to the touch and shot-making diversity required, while young MJ was elite at every level except threes...... And threes weren't used by any team back then (not part of the game) and Ant isn't elite at threes anyway.

Meanwhile, prime MJ was elite at literally every level including threes whenever he had today's volume (3+ attempts).. Specifically, from 85' to 93', Jordan shot 36.4% on threes in regular season games where he had 3+ attempts, and he shot 39% in series with 3+ attempts (regular line only) - this is mega-elite for that time period and since he was shooting 36-39% without practice, he would shoot over 40% today WITH practice in today's game.. Btw, MJ had no regular season games or playoff series with 3+ attempts in 98', so 85' to 93' is the only relevant period at the regular line.

Btw, the reason the Bad Boys said they tried to hurt MJ when he came to the hole is that a regular foul or bump did nothing to MJ - he would just absorb it and hang in the air - you had to literally take him out of the air to stop him, which is why MJ is the only player in history where his opponents said they tried to hurt him.. You never heard Russell or Hakeem say they tried to HURT wilt or shaq.. Only MJ's goat combination of quickness, power and finesse required such treatment... Just look at the power on MJ's drop-step - it's completely unparallelled among perimeter players... Btw, it's interesting that MJ had the goat first-step, jab-step, hop-step and drop-step (among perimeter players).

So, you've refused to answer this twice. I'm assuming you've never watched a full game of Ant's. Yet you are an expert.

that is interesting. i was skeptical of this claim so checked out historical stats for said steps and he is indeed #1 in all of them

Yes I do and thx specifying today in the paint it’s harder then when mj played to compare ant and mj at the rim lol …

Ps: What can I say , I trust more a guy like KD & Kobe opinion on mj greatness than a bedroom coach like you .
Especially when u claim so much crazy **** on MJ …..

Yeah especially when he actual made it .
Pretty much summarized this thread.
Mj success and skills ends in failures and LeBron lack of success and always differ to lower skills players on a though shot is the utmost success .

Because the goat shouldn’t thrive in tough spots .

I bet you are excellent at poker