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

you got the ages wrong - kobe did that at 21 years old against top 10 all-time SG Reggie Miller

At 22 and 23, he dominated the Spurs, while Lebron was worst-ever against the Spurs and Celtics at 22 and 23 years old

no one thinks this was the GOAT choke, which obviously belongs to Lebron's 2011 Finals

in addition to averaging 17.8 ppg and getting outplayed by Jason Terry,, there's a famous pic where Lebron has a panicked look while posting up a 5-footer - think about how mind-f*cked he was.

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2008 JAMISON............ #14 for MVP........ 2x all-star
2008 PAU...................... nothing.............. 1x all-star

2005 ZYDRUNAS.......... 2x all-star
2008 PAU...................... 1x all-star

* Jamison has 20k points and outplayed Lebron HU in the 07' 1st Round by averaging 32 on 48% compared to 28 on 45% for Lebron.

Lebron has zero rings without putting the top 3 players in the conference on 1 team (the "decision")

Meanwhile, Kobe won with a sidekick that was worse than Jamison, Love, Bosh and not that far ahead of Zydrunas.

You guys gave up when no one responded to this (posts 22576 and 22580):

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ASSISTS PER GAME AS A STARTER WITH AND WITHOUT MJ:

1993' BJ..................... 4.0
94-96' BJ.................... 3.9 (no MJ)

90-93' Pippen........... 6.2
94-95' Pippen........... 5.4 (no MJ)
96-98' Pippen........... 5.8
99-03' Pippen........... 5.1 (no MJ)

89-93' Horace........... 2.5
94-02' Horace........... 2.3 (no MJ)

90-95' Rodman......... 1.7 (no MJ)
96-98' Rodman......... 2.8
99-00' Rodman......... 1.3 (no MJ)

93-94' Longley.......... 1.2 (no MJ)
96-98' Longley.......... 2.4
99-00' Longley.......... 1.1 (no MJ)

80-87' Cartwright..... 1.6 (no MJ)
89-94' Cartwright..... 1.5

ASSISTS PER GAME AS A STARTER WITH AND WITHOUT LEBRON:

12-14' Kyrie............... 5.8 (no Lebron)
15-17' Kyrie............... 5.3
18-24' Kyrie............... 5.8 (no Lebron)

04-10' Bosh............... 2.2 (no Lebron)
11-14' Bosh............... 1.6
15-16' Bosh............... 2.3 (no Lebron)

11-14' Love................ 3.0 (no Lebron)
15-18' Love................ 2.1
19-21' Love................ 2.8 (no Lebron)

05-08' Mo................... 5.7 (no Lebron)
09-10' Mo................... 4.6
11-13' Mo................... 5.3 (no Lebron)

09-10' Chalmers........ 4.2 (no Lebron)
11-14' Chalmers........ 3.6

99-04' Snow................ 6.9 (no Lebron)
06-07' Snow................ 4.1

01-05' Hughes........... 3.8 (no Lebron)
06-08' Hughes........... 3.3

2018 Ingram.............. 3.9 (no Lebron)
2019 Ingram.............. 3.0
20-25' Ingram............ 5.2 (no Lebron

2019 Kuzma............... 2.5
22-25' Kuzma............. 3.8 (no Lebron)

2018 Ball..................... 7.2 (no Lebron)
2019 Ball..................... 5.4
20-22' Ball................... 6.1 (no Lebron)

00-09' Jamison........... 1.8 (no Lebron)
2010 Jamison............. 1.3
11-12' Jamison........... 1.9 (no Lebron)

04-10' Wade............... 6.6 (no Lebron)
11-14' Wade............... 4.7

19-22' D-Lo................. 6.7 (no Lebron)
23-25' D-Lo................. 6.2

09-21' Westbrook....... 8.5 (no Lebron)
2022 Westbrook..........7.1

15-18'' KCP.................. 2.0 (no Lebron)
19-21' KCP................... 1.6
22-25' KCP................... 2.2 (no Lebron)

Teammates' assists are higher without Lebron, and lower alongside him.. Teammates see lower assists alongside Lebron because Lebron's ball-dominant scoring is assisted at a much lower rate than normal forwards, so teammates have less opportunity to assist alongside Lebron than other teams, while also being in spot-up roles more often alongside Lebron's high volume of unassisted buckets.. Lebron's lowering of teammate assists isn't sufficiently-offset by his own assists to produce a high-assist team.

To summarize - Lebron lowered all his cast-members' assists, with almost no exceptions, while MJ increased all his teammates' assists, with rare exception... Since teammates saw higher assists alongside MJ, we know that MJ's assists weren't offsetting a teammate reduction like Lebron, so high-assist teams and strategy were possible with MJ's skillset.

Ultimately, high assist teams are possible with highly-assisted skillsets like Curry, Duncan, Kobe, Kareem, Russell - all the dynasties... Otoh, Lebron's abnormally-low assisted rates and lowering of teammates assists (imposing spot-up roles) represents a weaker brand of ball that underachieves favored rosters, such as losing 7 times with the preseason favorite.. The common thread in Lebron's playoff losses for the last 10 years is deficits in team assists, and normally massive deficits.

tldr: Lebron's own assists are partially-offset by him lowering teammates' assists, so the team cannot be a high assist team.. Otoh, MJ increased teammates' assists, which allowed a high assist team when coupled with his own healthy assist levels.

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2008 JAMISON............ #14 for MVP........ 2x all-star
2008 PAU...................... nothing.............. 1x all-star

2005 ZYDRUNAS.......... 2x all-star
2008 PAU...................... 1x all-star


* Jamison has 20k points and outplayed Lebron HU in 07' 1st Round with 32/10 on 48% compared to 28/8 on 43% for Lebron.

THREAD CLIFFS (why Kobe > Lebron)

Kobe produced higher team ceilings/dynasties and won with less, such as a sidekick that was worse than Jamison, Bosh or Love... He produced better teams and won with less because his expert jumpshooting skill produced better ball movement and chemistry than Lebron's ball-dominance and imposition of spot-up roles... Kobe's game produced high ball movement teams that compare to the 90's Bulls and also the recent Spurs, Warriors, and Nuggets juggernauts that beat Lebron's ball-dominant teams.

Kobe also out-performed Lebron against the exact same opponents, such as the 08' Celtics, 10' Celtics, 11' Mavs, or 07/08' Spurs, and also dominated the Spurs in 01', 02', 03' or 08', while Lebron was worst-ever in 07' and 14'.

Sorry, I got it mixed up with the other series he shot 35% in against Portland when he was 23. It's hard to filter through so many poor series.

So what your saying is that playing next to the greatest scorer of all time, you're assists go up, and when you're playing with one of the greatest passes of all time your assists go down.

So weird.

And then you do **** like include the tale end of Grant's career when he wasn't playing as many minutes. If you only take the next 3 years of Grant's career he averages the 2.5 assists per game (same as you have with MJ).

Then you leave off players like Harper who averaged 4.8 assists in the 4 seasons before joining the Bulls, but only 2.5 assists when playing with the Bulls, then 3.1 assists per game in the 3 seasons after MJ retired.

And you constantly bring up this comparison that somehow Jamison > Pau. Then you forget to mention ages at this time. Pau was 27 and entering his prime, while Jamison was 32. To put it in comparison, Jamison was a zero time all star at 27.

Then there is ZYDRUNAS. Who was somehow an all star when he averaged 17 ppg on 44% (as a center - lol!). He led the mightly Cavs to a huge 17 wins that year. That has more to do with the lol East than anything else.

Here's the voting.

There was one good center in the East that year in Wallace. I mean Brad Miller made the all star team averaging 13/8. Mutumbo received more votes than Zydrunas and he averaged like 6/5.

Then you say that Jamison outplayed LeBron. What, because he scored more points? lol LeBron averaged 28/9/8, while Jamison averaged 32/10/1. Jamison took 6 more shots a game in that series. No ranking would have Jamison over LeBron in that series. And that's not even taking into account the Cavs won in a sweep.

Yeah gotta stop the Pau Gasol slander.

Dude was the 2nd best player on 2 title teams.

Put some reselect to his name and don't compare him to ****ing A Jamison.

This is a really good post. Seems that fallguy gets his narratives by simply cherry picking data and being really bad at math. I wonder if he actually played basketball or even graduated college? It had to be a struggle with his math and logic skills.

Man I should proof read my posts...

Imagine being a NBA Executive.

"Do you want to get LeBron for the team?"

"No way! Kyrie will average 0.5 assists less per game!".

No because if a player averages 35 points but all those points are unassisted, then teammates' assists would go down, not up.

So the key factor is how assisted the player's points are.... High scorers that are low-assisted have a high volume of unassisted buckets that leave teammates standing around in spot-up roles, thereby lowering their assists.

Once again, no.

Many teammates of Magic, Nash and Stockton saw their assists increase...

Accordingly, playing alongside great passers like Bird or MJ, and even ball-dominators like Nash, Stockton, or Magic does NOT reduce most teammates' assists...

The only position or skillset that decreases most teammates' assists are high-scoring point guards/point forwards, aka "ball-dominators" such as Luka, Lebron, Harden, etc... These high-scoring ball-dominators decreases everyone's assists because they're the only skillset with a high volume of unassisted buckets that leave teammates standing around in spot-up roles, thereby lowering their assists.. This is all statistical fact.. Players with abnormally-low assisted rates lower teammates' assists.

So your counter to Lebron cratering everyone's assists is that there's one case where Grant stayed at 2.5 without MJ (didn't even increase)?

Seems like I made the point pretty well then.

I left off the exception, who wasn't really an exception because he was an injury-riddled SHELL when he arrived in Chicago, and then proceeded to average 2.5 assists before MJ returned, which jumped up to 3+ alongside MJ from 96-98'.

On Lebron's side, the exception was Delonte.... 😆🙂... It's quite interesting that Delonte had a special shine to him and was elevated alongside Lebron for some weird reason - he's the only exception - he's the only starting guard that had higher assists alongside Lebron - it's like... a miracle or something.. What do you think could be behind this phenomena??
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Lebron and Kyrie barely won 50 games for 3 straight years together - that's horrific and ridiculous underachievement, even without considering that Love was there too - 3 franchise players on 1 team, so it was a Dream Team, yet they were barely a 50-win team.

If a GM could choose between Bird and Lebron (to pair with Kyrie), they better choose Bird or they'll barely win 50 games and need to get lucky to barely win 1 chip.

Curry won 70 with Klay, while Lebron wins 50 win the guy that destroyed Curry???... Curry won 70 as the only franchise player on the team, while Lebron wins 50 with 3 franchise players??... Again, Lebron fits horribly and underachieves with literally everyone - he never produced a great team and there are zero examples of his team-ups meeting expectation... He mostly loses, regardless of cast.

Jamison was averaging 22/9 right before joining Lebron, and then he cratered to 15/8 alongside Lebron... Jamison also averaged 20 ppg as 3rd option in 2007, so he was fully-capable of getting 20 as 2nd option alongside Lebron... Unfortunately, bron-ball simply killed his game just like Love or Bosh - it was very similar.

The only reason the Cavs beat the Wizards so easily is because Lebron stole Arenas' sidekick - look it up - Hughes was a budding star alongside Arenas, so Lebron swooped him up and then beat Arenas with his own sidekick.

We've been over this....

The all-star duo of Lebron/Zydrunas waited 3 years to develop a favored high seed before entering the 06' or 07' Playoffs, where they faced Arenas' low seed and depleted team (since bron stole his sidekick).. So the Cavs were heavily favored and the series was a foregone conclusion. But I guess you must not have watched.
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So if Lebron was good enough to win with Jamison and Mo, then you would consider them to be as good as Pau?

^^^^ that isn't always a high bar.

So he's Andrew Wiggins x 2 ???

You'd be amazed the stuff that great players can turn into champions.

To be fair Pau's probably more in the Kobe 3-peat class when he played 2nd star behind Shaq.

I don’t think Jamison starts for a lot of current nba teams.

I think Pau Gasol makes the starting line up on every team.

Jamison from my memory was empty stats while Pau playing winning basketball from Memphis to the Lakers.

Since fallguy’s assists argument has been proven conclusively wrong with facts and data by multiple people, are there any other arguments for Kobe > LeBron?

There's no "argument"... You're the only one that doesn't accept the statistical reality of Lebron reducing teammates' assists.

Everyone else concedes this basic fact, such as Fidstar-poker - he concedes that Lebron lowers everyone's assists, but he says it's fine because ALL ball-dominators and super-high assist guys do that.. However, fans like Fidstar might think it's fine for ball-dominators to lower everyone's assists, but this is exactly what makes them inferior to other skillsets that don't have this issue.. Lower assists from teammates prevents the team from having high team assists and employing the ball movement brand used by every dynasty or dominant champion that the NBA ever had.. Skillsets that produce this caliber of elite chemistry and teams are superior to skillsets that can't..

History shows that high-scoring ball-dominators (who lower everyone's assists) cannot produce dominant champions or "great" teams that mostly win over a material stretch of time, such as 5 years.. Otoh, other skillsets that don't reduce teammates' assists produce all the dynasties, such as jumpshooters (Curry, MJ, Kobe), or big men (Duncan, Kareem, Russell) - all the dynasties... So history backs up what I'm saying, not what you're saying.

Btw, Fidstar is actually wrong when he says that every ball-dominator lowers teammates' assists because Magic/Nash/Stockton didn't lower most teammates' assists - it's only high-scoring ball-dominators that lower everyone's assists (Luka, Lebron, Harden, etc).. This is because high-scoring ball-dominators are the only guys with a bunch of unassisted buckets that leave teammates standing around in spot-up roles, thereby lowering their capacity to get assists.
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Post #22627 is a great example of how I explained a simple concept to Fidstar, yet he will respond with the same debunked misunderstanding of the game later on.

In this case, Fidstar claimed that all high-scorers increase teammates' assists, which is FACTUALLY INCORRECT, since a scorer that scores on their own without being assisted by teammates (low assisted rate) will provide less capacity to assist, thereby LOWERING everyone's assists..

Fidstar also claimed that high-assist players lower everyone's assists - once again, this factually incorrect because low-scoring point guards like Magic or Nash increase many teammates' assists - it's only the high-scoring point guards and their high volume of unassisted buckets that leave teammates standing around in spot-up roles, thereby lowering their assist capacity.

yet fidstar will ignore the correction I made and not care that he doesn't understand the game properly.. He'll continue to say my claims are wrong, even though he's the one that doesn't understand basic tenets of the game.

And that's what I don't understand - why not improve your knowledge about the game? Why not get better? Imagine if you did that in poker - i.e. a great poker coach corrects some of your thinking towards the game and you simply ignore it and continue playing your way... This is what you guys are doing with basketball, but wouldn't it be better to understand the game on a higher level, so you have better prognostications???... I can assure you that being a good prognosticator allows you to enjoy the game at a superior level than being a dumbass about the game.

Fallguy,
I don’t understand why you keep repeating the same thing over and over again, after it’s been proven wrong with facts and data by multiple people? Can you please present a new and different argument?

Not even the chip in 2000 because Kobe set the all-time record for clutch-points on that playoff run and Finals - Pau was never the closer.

Furthermore, Kobe and Shaq were equal-scoring partners for the 01' and 02' chips, while Pau didn't even scrape 19 ppg in either Finals (18.6) and therefore forced Kobe to defeat max defensive attention (carry the scoring load on the championship level).

So there's no comparison.. Kobe averaged 33 and dominated the 01' Spurs, so Pau isn't comparable to this caliber,