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

SGA's time of possession is 7.9 minutes, so basically 8 minutes, and he's assisted on a paltry 15% of his shots.

Not only is that a lot of ball-dominance, it's an all-time level.

And this ball-dominance is reflected in team assists - 21st last year and 11th this year - the ball isn't moving at an elite level.

If you can't understand that then you simply don't understand the stats or how to interpret them.

“Every year you can reverse sort by time of possession to see who wins”

Curry playoffs 2022: 6.5 min per game TOP, 35 MPG
Tatum playoffs 2022: 5.5 min per game TOP, 41 MPG

How did Golden State win in the Finals?

Jamal Murray playoffs 2023: 7.9 min per game TOP, 40 MPG
Jokic playoffs 2023: 5.1 min per game TOP, 39 MPG
Butler playoffs 2023: 6.4 min per game TOP, 40 MPG
Lebron playoffs 2023: 5 min per game TOP, 39 MPG

How did Denver win in the ECF and Finals?

Don’t look up Edwards time of possession vs Murray and Jokic either for this year’s playoffs!

Thank you kind sir. But just to clarify I cann0t assume credit for such excellent, well thought out arguments. I am beholden to thee LeB0n fans in this very thread, for they are the same argument that have been repeated to great extent over the past 11 years. So you can also thank the LeBorn James fans for said arguments, not just me.

LeBron keeps his spot as #1 GOAT all time.

Jordan can still release another documentary shitting on Pippen as red meat to his acolytes but that won't move the needle.

Do you think that if the Joker left Denver and teamed up with say, Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum (as an example, I am sure there are many possible all-star combo players he could potentially team up with), it would help his GOAT resume if he won 2 titles in 4 years after that? You know, since Jokic does n0t have any help?

hahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Jordan stans are so brainwashed, lmfao

This is an excellent p0int. You know, since the NBA does not evolve exp0nentially and there it n0t more international presence now in 2024 vs when lebon was peaking in the 2000’s and 2010’s, and there is no variance in team results, and it does not matter that Jokic has no heLp. An excellent argument indeed.

11 years ago fallguy spoke the truth:

Jordan's only chance at regaining more #1 votes is to make his own LeBron documentary and hire fallguy as his script writer.

Considering how MJ stans are massive PPGZ!! proponents, fallguy could rile the base with all the posting in this thread as material!

In all seriousness.

People can put Jordan as their #1 GOAT. But if they don't IMMEDIATELY follow that up with Bron 1B or Bron close 2nd GOAT all time... Then they fail the test immediately and their GOAT opinion is to be discarded.

This is a very reasonable take.

IMO an even more conservative take would be Bill Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Jordan, LeBron, and Jokic (seriously) are all tier 1 GOAT with enough error bars between them that we can never know for sure.

Too many rule differences bw eras. Differences in individual stats vs team success (Russell vs Wilt), some skill and /or athleticism improvement (Jokic dominating the “most evolved” era).

None of those answers would be wrong, per se, if you acknowledge there are different ways to look at this.

Any thinking person can figure out that these metrics can help inform, but literally cannot tell us anything useful in the absence of context. For example, a lot of this "time of possession" is just time spent bringing up the ball, holding the ball while the half-court offense gets set, holding the ball to run down the shot clock while ahead late. None of these helps the player in question in terms of conventional stats, but can potentially lead to turnovers. Sure it does also help flag certain types of players, though I think it's literally just Luka and Harden - I can't think of any other player whose "ball-domination" has been a big issue from a team offense perspective recently. And the real issue isn't even that they are holding the ball too much, but more that they don't do enough off-ball, presumably because they are exhausted from having the ball too much and also because they are just not used to having to work off-ball.

It does suit twog really well though because he's super-triggered by players with good handle and individual skills and those types of players are generally asked to handle the ball in those situations.

One might call his brand of posting "Thread dominance". But I consider it an inferior one, incapable of making good points or changing minds without serious help.

I can't put Bill Russell in the same tier because I believe Jordan and Bron to be vastly superior basketball players. If I could draft their peak as a GM I am taking either Jordan or Bron 1st, and Jokic 3rd but I am agonizing over it.

Wilt is a hard case because even though I believe him to be a superior basketball player to Bill, Wilt's playoff successes just aren't there. And nobody here was alive to watch the tape so its just based off stats and quotes from older players. But if rookie Wilt was to be drafted today, he'd probably go 1st in 95% of the drafts in the last 20 years.

I think Jokic, Bron and Jordan to be in very similar talent ceilings. Maybe Kareem is in there, but if he isn't, he is right up there very close.

People **** on Jokic for losing a 20 point lead in game 7 but the man just averaged 30/13/9 on great efficiency in these playoffs. That's GOAT level ****.

Because of the way caps work now Joker's equity to win even 4 championships is probably 0.

Teams have so much money now and with the new TV deal coming in, role players on championship team will be thrown the bag.

But I hope the guy wins like 7 MVPs just so that he can be in the conversation concretely.

Jokic already has one of the best peaks ever but it’s highly unlikely he’ll play long enough to enter the GOAT conversation. He doesn’t seem to care at all about accolades, etc and probably will retire earlier than we think based on his press conferences etc.

I think he’ll certainly age better and completely different styles of play obviously but I think at this point his most likely outcome is a Shaq-level career or something like that.

He’s also an amazing individual player, but hasn’t really had the level of team success you’d like to see from a GOAT candidate. Like not talking rings, but regular season and playoff record. His on off metrics are otherworldly but he’s had two 50 win seasons and never beaten a 50 win playoff team, and he’s 29 years old already.

This is what I’ve had since 2016, and at this point nothing could really happen to change my mind. I’d have given LeBron #1 if he could somehow have beaten one of those Durant GSW teams.

LBJ wins by a mile for greatest career.

Sure has been a fun ride tho!

A+

Randomly throwing Tatum out there once his team is a massive favorite to ship this year is just so LoL. Especially since he fails the FallGuy “needs too much help to win” test more than any other top 10 guy since the GSW run. Dude has had multiple AllStars and AllNBA guys basically his entire career.

I think you have to first make up your mind as to whether you're talking who's better on an absolute basis or a relative basis and also acknowledge that the results won't be close. One of the bigger mistakes people make in these discussions is not clearly distinguishing between the two.

If we're talking about who's better on an absolute basis, no one before Lebron is realistically in the discussion as today's players are just flat out better. Jokic has a reasonable case for the GOAT peak in that case. If we're talking about who's best relative to their own era, Jokic I think is clearly not in the top tier, though not far from it. This would be how I'd rate players relative to their era (ordered by debut year within tier) in terms of sustained peak:

Tier 1
Russell, Kareem, Lebron

Tier 2
Wilt, Magic, Hakeem, MJ, Shaq, KG, Duncan, Curry

Tier 3
Jerry West, Oscar, Dr J, Bird, D-Rob, Kobe, Giannis

I'm sure I missed some players but you get the point. I would put Jokic in Tier 2 right now which warrants some GOAT consideration, but Tier 3 I think is justifiable as well.

For offense only, this is probably Tier 1: Magic, Nash, Lebron, Curry, Jokic. Jokic is very easy to overrate because he's at his peak right now, he puts up good stats (but isn't nearly as good as his stats would indicate) and he's not a particularly good defender.

Candybar,
With all due respect, you are the twog of the LeBron side. I actually just changed my mind and it’s Jordan clearly #1 (on both an absolute and relative scale), and LeBron is fringe top 10. 6 rings vs 4 and superteam hopping etc etc.

See how that works?

Magic or Kobe were gifted great players in Kareem or Shaq, while KD was gifted a great team (Warriors) and Bird was gifted the goat franchise, so only Jordan had to develop players, teams and franchises.

Ant is coddled by comparison just like everyone else, since he was gifted All-NBA teammates and then he was gifted the goat defender as well based on DPOY's... Ant was actually raised by KAT, so KAT helped develop Ant, while Ant doesn't have to develop anyone.

In addition to the lower scoring burden, Ant averages 0.7 offensive rebounds, compared to 1.6 for Jordan... Jordan averaged more offensive rebounds than a lot of frontcourt players like Lebron for example.. So it's a completely different caliber - Jordan is bigger, stronger and faster, while Ant can't offset this with better scoring, clutch or defense, since he's inferior in these areas as well.. Ant could never achieve Rodman-level rebounds for an entire playoff run like MJ did in 97' - MJ and Rodman co-led the rebounding on that run, while Ant will never be a rebounding leader for his team.

the rebounding, blocks, and steals are relevant because Ant and MJ play the same position.

Ultimately, there isn't a single aspect of basketball that Ant isn't inferior to MJ.. MJ even shoots threes better at today's volumes than Ant.

twog is the Kobe Bryant of this thread. All the volume, got the right idea, misses more than he makes.

Kobe Bryant is a top-15 player of all-time.

TWOG is more like Jordan Poole.