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

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Regular Season APG

04-14' Lebron...... 6.9 APG
15-25' Lebron...... 8.1 APG

85-93' Jordan....... 5.9 APG


Playoffs APG

06-14' Lebron...... 6.4 APG
15-24' Lebron...... 8.1 APG

85-93' Jordan....... 6.6 APG

TLDR: Before the Curry era began in 2015, Lebron averaged about the same or less assists than Jordan at the same stage, but then Lebron's assists benefitted from the higher-scoring Curry era, while MJ's were hurt by the lower-scoring late 90's era.

fidstar,
Thank you for the kind words. It is indeed quite telling that the Bulls only won 2 fewer games in '93-'94 after Jordan retired. MJ was still good of course -- but only worth two wins with the Phil Jackson led Bulls team. Pippen quite easily covered the difference.

Regarding LeBron being a vastly superior playmaker to Jordan, fallguy pointed out something quite important, normalizing to era:

Of course, fallguy did not do the normalization correctly, since he does not understand mathematics. Correcting fallguy's mistakes for the analysis in question:

In the regular season, from 1985 to 1993, Michael Jordan averaged 5.90 assists per game. In the regular season, from 2006 to 2014, LeBron James averaged 6.95 assists per game. Note that the regular season is a better metric for determining a player's true assist rate, because of the much, much greater sample size and a less biased sampling of opponents. E.g. MJ only played one playoff opponent each year in '85, '86, and '87 (because he lost in the first round). A 4, 3, and 3 game sample size, against one single team no less, in those years is not a good representative sample set. Those of you who understand mathematics and statistics probably understand this intuitively.

Also, just for completeness, notice that in the playoffs in those years cited, MJ averaged 6.65 assists per game. LeBron averaged 6.45 assists per game. A difference of 0.2 assists per game, not a difference of 1 assist per game. I will let the reader decide what the motivation was above for leaving off additional significant digits.

Now, to the normalization. From 1985 to 1993, the league average team assists per game was 25.39 assists per game. From 2006 to 2014, the league average assists per game was 21.39. Yes, you read that right: due to differences in pace and other factors the league averaged 18.7% more assists per game in the years cited for when Jordan played. So, as usual, fallguy got the analysis completely backwards.

Correcting for his inability to do math:

LeBron James' assists per game in 2006 to 2014, in the regular season, normalized to Jordan's era from 1985 to 1993 = 8.25 (!!!) assists per game. Doing the same for the playoffs = 7.66 assists per game. A reminder that Jordan was at 5.90 for the regular season, and 6.65 for the playoffs.

This proves, analytically, that LeBron James was a vastly superior playmaker to Michael Jordan. This is consistent with what anyone could tell you intuitively by watching both players play.

This is also proof, and the reason why, prime LeBron James was a much, much more versatile playmaker than Michael Jordan. His playmaking ability allowed him to be successfully integrated into 3 different teams, with 3 different coaches, and 3 different offensive schemes, allowing him to win championships for 3 different cities. Michael Jordan (and Kobe Bryant), were each only capable of winning with Phil Jackson and the triangle. They were handcuffed to one scheme because their non-versatile skill set would not allow them to succeed outside of a system that forced high ball movement. LeBron orchestrated elite ball movement organically through his superior playmaking -- he did not need a system to force it.

Thus, we can conclude that LeBron James is the GOAT due to his playmaking and the versatility that provides across any team, any coach, and any offensive scheme. He did not need Phil Jackson and the triangle to win championships. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant did -- they had precisely zero rings combined between them without Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson (along with Pippen and Shaq, respectively) rescued MJ and Kobe's legacies. LeBron James' playmaking and versality (reminder that he is also the all time leading scorer in NBA history) allowed him to build dynasties (3 rings in 5 years between 2012 and 2016) organically across any team and any scheme, conclusively making him the GOAT.

Merry Christmas!

Since possession-tracking began in 1997, every instance of "the best basketball" required highly-assisted 1st options.. This includes 4 of 4 "dynasties" that mostly won over a material stretch of 5+ years (Jordan , Shaq, Duncan, Curry) and 8 of 8 "dominant champions" that averaged 1 loss per round or less, aka 4 losses max (97' Jordan, 01' Shaq, 02' Shaq, 99' Duncan, 07' Duncan, 17' Durant, 23' Jokic, 24' Tatum).

Since highly-assisted skillsets produce the best basketball, the best highly-assisted players are superior to the best low-assisted players (ball-dominators)... The first ball-dominators in my rankings show up at #11 (MJ, Kobe, Curry, Bird, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, Duncan, Jokic, Magic, Lebron, Oscar).

Aside from Jokic, there's never been a high APG 1st option win a title.. Lebron peaked at only 7.6 as 1st option in the 16' Playoffs, while MJ exceeded this with 8.4 in the 91' Playoffs.. So MJ is 1 for 1 when averaging 8+ assists on a playoff run, while Lebron is 1 for 6.. The only time he won was as the 2nd option in 2020 with 8.8 assists.

So high APG from the 1st option is suboptimal and there's math behind it... Aside from Jokic, 1st options with high APG are ball-dominant, so they have a large volume of unassisted buckets that reduce teammates' assists and cause low average ranking in team assists... Essentially, 1st options with high APG get assists at the expense of teammates' assists, thereby causing low average rank in team assists (low-assist teams).

Since 1st options don't win titles with high APG, and since 1st options like Lebron or Luka get assists by reducing teammates' assists, they're inferior playmakers then guys who weren't ball-dominant like Bird or Jordan - these guys got nearly the same assists while increasing teammates' assists and allowing a high-assist team.. Their superior passing style didn't dominate the ball and impose spot-up roles or lower teammates' assists, so they had better player development, chemistry, strategic capacity/coaching and great teams.. It's night and day compared to the imposition of spot-up roles, zero player development, reduction of teammates' assists, bad chemistry, and perennial losing of ball-dominators.

Accordingly, high levels of APG is meaningless for 1st options and has a negative correlation with titles.. 4-7 APG from the 1st option has historically won nearly all the titles, even for Lebron... Btw, Jordan's ability to get assists without dominating the ball in 1991 yielded the most dominant champion ever (better metrics than the 17' Warriors) - we already know that highly-assisted 1st options produced all the dominant champions in recorded history that averaged 1 loss per round or less (4 losses max).

Ultimately, scoring is the only thing that the best players on a team must be good at, while everything else is a secondary category that can be done by role players... But even when we compare the secondary categories between Jordan and Lebron, we see that Jordan was the better offensive rebounder, defender, stealer, shot-blocker and also passer because his assists didn't come at the expense of teammates' assists like Lebron's skillset.. TLDR: a 1st option only needs to be capable of 5-7 APG, since that's optimal for winning titles, while high APG and ball-dominance from the 1st option virtually never won - essentially, the comparison of APG is unecessary between two 1st options that are both good passers (capability for 6+ APG).

Lebron mostly loses with all-star teammates, Finals teams, top seeds, multiple all-star teammates and preseason favorites, while MJ was undefeated in all these scenarios (except 1 loss with an all-star in 1990 and 95' if you count the baseball year).

So there's no comparison - one guy mostly lost when he got help and the other guy mostly won.

* 1 for 4 with Love
* 1 for 6 with AD
* 2 for 4 with Wade (goat choke & record loss)

^^^^ Any bum can mostly lose everywhere they go, and anyone that thinks this is the goat standard needs to see the doctor.

The triangle didn't use low-assisted players like Lebron, Lillard or Luka, so the goat off-guards were required to win in the toughest offense ever.

My arguments are mathematically-based, while yours are poppycock based on your wishful delusions..,. Low-assisted players like Luka and Lebron cannot run the Warriors system or the 90's Bulls and most ball movement systems because these systems don't use low-assisted skillsets (ball-dominators)... But carry on ignoring this mathematical fact and keep getting destroyed in this debate.

Lebron has a reputation for bad ball movement and low-assist teams, so he gets beat BY ball movement like the Nuggets, Spurs, Warriors, and Mavs...

Lebron is 3 for 11 against the Nuggets, Spurs, Warriors and Mavs, so there's never been a player lose to ball movement more than Lebron - he's ball movement's b*tch, and it's because he can't run a ball movement offense himself.

Meanwhile, his team was out-assisted in every playoff loss for the last 10 years.

So you're just a delusional liar that lost this debate really really badly.

Everyone correctly said that Lebron needed more help when he lost with sub-par casts from 06-10', so Jordan is the same way and just needed more help in 89' when he nearly beat the Bad Boys with nothing...

The media simply invented the idea that a 33/8/8 player didn't need more help and simply needed Phil - it's lunacy..

Phil is just lucky to have the goat set the goat blueprint with 6 chips and then inspire a copycat to win 5 more.. He's just lucky that he lucked upon the goat off-guards, as required for the triangle that didn't use low-assisted players or point guard roles (no Lebron's, Luka's or Harden's).

22 years confirms that Lebron isn't capable of a 3-peat, dynasty, 70 wins or 6 chips with any lineup or coach, which makes him objectively inferior to MJ.
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Anthony Davis vs Prime Pippen

15-25' AD............... 27.3 PER... 6.3 BPM... 0.215 WS/48... 25.8 ppg.. 11.0 rpg.. 2.8 apg.. 1.3 spg.. 2.3 bpg
90-98' PIPPEN....... 20.6 PER... 5.5 BPM... 0.173 WS/48... 19.6 ppg.... 7.2 rpg.. 5.9 apg.. 2.3 spg.. 1.0 bpg

AD carried the Lakers over Jokic to make the Finals, while Wade, Kyrie and Love made the Finals without Lebron...

So Lebron had sidekicks that made the Finals without him and outplayed league MVP's, while Pippen never made the Finals without MJ and was never expected to compete with MVP's like Barkley or Malone, let alone outplay them.

Only Lebron had the unprecedented help of having a sidekick outplay the current MVP, or hand-picking 6 straight preseason favorites from 11' to 16'... This unprecedented advantage required another unprecedented advantage to stop it (KD's Warriors) and set a horrible trend towards less competitiveness that has ruined the league.

More irrefutable evidence put forward. It's also weird that FG didn't include MJ's years from 1995 to 1998. You know the years MJ's assists fell of a cliff.

Also, imagine what LeBron would have done in the 80s/90s (widely regarded as the "easy" years). I mean Magic won 5 Championships in 9 years, and he's just a poor man's LeBron. LeBron probably wins 7 or 8 given a team as talented as the teams MJ had.

He doesn't need to retire either because he looks after his body unlike MJ.

MJ couldn’t handle the mental grind and that was part of the reason he retired in 1993.

SGA, Luka, Lebron, Westbrook, Harden, and other low-assisted 1st options require franchise players at 2nd and 3rd option to win.. This is true unless you think Luka, SGA or whoever is better than prime Lebron, since that's the best he could do.

And regardless of cast, all low-assisted 1st options will mostly lose because they've never been 1st option for dynasties that mostly won for a material stretch - 4 of 4 dynasties required highly-assisted 1st options, and also 8 of 8 dominant champions with an average of 1 loss per round or less (since possession-tracking began in 97').

Btw, what's the over/under on how long it will take for Lebron to need another break for "personal" reasons and more pills??...The NBA's fraud to manufacture his career is indeed quite robust and layered.. And yet Lebron's career can never reach MJ's caliber of individual or team dominance, on either end of the floor... It's quite amusing to follow his futile efforts though.

Wade and Kobe were mentally fatigued after failed 3-peat attempts in 11' and 14', but they still trudged forward... Surely the goat competitor MJ would've done the same if he lost to Barkley in 93', but we'll never know because the stupid media has never asked MJ what he would've done if he lost...

This sort of demonstrates how guaranteed MJ was in his prime - there was never any real picture of Jordan losing in anyone's mind, including Jordan's... So one one thought to ask the GOAT that question, and the only reason I thought of it was due to engaging in this fake debate.. I never considered it before either... the GOAT three-peated and felt sufficiently invincible to quit at his apex and go hit .202 in AA after not picking up a glove since around 13 years old..

Btw, MJ three-peated again with Pippen averaging 17.6 on 41% for the entire 96-98' Playoffs, including the worst shooting splits that anyone ever had in 96' & 98' Playoffs.. This is simply the goat achievement in basketball, and it wasn't really prime MJ (85-93'), who was alien-like (the guy that went to go play baseball).

No one acknowledges how bad Lebron is for averaging 2 to 5 less APG than Magic, Luka or Stockton despite dominating the ball as much or more than anyone in history and having the most turnovers ever.

It's math - other low-assisted players average more APG (CP3, Luka, Trae, etc), while highly-assisted players average nearly as much with a fraction of the turnovers (Bird, Jordan).. So Lebron's playmaking is overrated according to the math.

And Jordan averaged more APG as the 1st option on a title run than Lebron ever did (8.4 to 7.6), but comparing the APG of 2 good passers is meaningless since 9 APG or more from 1st options has never won a title!!.. It's because high scoring and high assists requires too much ball-dominance that achieves assists at the expense of teammates' assists and imposing spot-up roles... Consequently, 4-7 APG from the 1st option has won nearly all the titles historically, even for Lebron... TLDR: Lebron's tiny assist edge via losing ball-dominance doesn't begin to offset Jordan's massive edge in the most important category - scoring.

We were comparing the first 9 years of their respective playoff careers because it becomes the Curry era after that for Lebron, which inflated everyone's assists... Otoh, it was the lower-scoring late 90's for Jordan, so these polar opposite changes in era distort their APG thereafter, and it isn't the peak part of their playoff career anyway.

The 80's Lakers didn't have preseason favorite status for 6 straight years like Lebron's teams from 11-16' and also 21', so Lebron is the only guy with the best cast in the league every year, yet he won less titles.

So you guys are just deluding yourself - you need to go back through the dozens of catastrophic losses each year to realize how much of a loser he is.. Lebron mostly loses with all-star teammates, Finals teams, top seeds, multiple all-star teammates and preseason favorites, while MJ was undefeated in all these scenarios (except 1 loss with an all-star in 1990 and 95' if you count the baseball year).

So there's no comparison - one guy mostly lost when he got help and the other guy mostly won.

You chose those years to suit your own purposes (as always). And Matt ripped that argument apart so bad that you may be shitting from a new hole.

Anyway feel free to include to up to 2018, so that covers MJ's career as a Bull. As you can see from below the assists are still way down and only start going up after that*. Lower than average number of assists for the 90s in fact.

* You do know we can check your blatant lies. 2014 and 2015 had EXACTLY the same number of assists per game. Gee, I wonder why FG chose 2014 as the last season for LeBron, when the assists per game for the league didn't change at all...

Not the favourites thing again. Remember when you embarrassed yourself not knowing how odds worked when you raised that last time. You think after that embarrassment you'd never bring it up again.

Wow, Just going through the assists..

80s (last column)...

2015-24

Maybe we should be selective about MJ's years for the easy game format when everything was an assist.

Ranked in order for most assists. First season LeBron was in was 13th on the list. MJ got to play in a season better than that 6 times.

And that was 2023 when we are passed LeBron's prime.

Best season for LeBron's prime was 23rd on the list. MJ had 9 seasons above that.

They must have been just giving assists out for free back in the day.

They actually were almost giving out assists for free back in the day. There were corrupt scorekeepers (often home-cooking your own team's players). That's why John Stockton has a ridiculously inflated assist #. If you're interested there's some YT vids on the topic.

So Jordan's 80s assists numbers are in no way factual or representative of what they really were.

No one acknowledges how bad Lebron is for averaging 2 to 5 less APG than Magic, Luka or Stockton despite dominating the ball as much or more than anyone in history and having the most turnovers ever.

It's math - other low-assisted players average more APG (CP3, Luka, Trae, etc), while highly-assisted players average nearly as much with a fraction of the turnovers (Bird, Jordan).. So Lebron's playmaking is overrated according to the math.

And Jordan averaged more APG as the 1st option on a title run than Lebron ever did (8.4 to 7.6), but comparing the APG of 2 good passers is meaningless since 9 APG or more from 1st options has never won a title!!.. It's because high scoring coupled with high assists requires too much ball-dominance and therefore achieves assists at the expense of teammates' assists (imposing spot-up roles)... Consequently, 4-7 APG from the 1st option has won nearly all the titles historically, even for Lebron... TLDR: Lebron's tiny assist edge via losing ball-dominance doesn't begin to offset Jordan's massive edge in the most important category - scoring.

I simply showed how many years Jordan's career APG in the playoffs led Lebron's, and it turns out that he led Lebron for the first 9 years until 2015, and then Lebron's career average overtakes Jordan's after their 10th run.

So there's no cherry-pick - I simply informed everyone how long Jordan led Lebron in playoff APG, and it was 9 years.

So you're just mad that I'm proving statistically that Lebron is an overrated playmaker.

Nonsense .. We don't know what Lebron's numbers would be in prior eras, but we know what they were in this era and they increased along with the league in the late 2010's - this accounts for his APG increasing over Jordan's starting after their 10th playoff runs - for Lebron, this was when the Curry era began.

Okay, let's look at their careers - Lebron averaged less assists than MJ thru the 2014 playoffs or half their chips, and then wasn't required to be a good defender for the 2nd half of his chips (no all-defense in his 30's).. So Lebron's chips required less passing, defense, and of course the biggest categories of scoring and clutch.

The data shows that once players started to have a lot of unassisted buckets, team assists started to decline - this is intuitive - the rise of high-scoring, low-assisted players (ball-dominators) killed team assists, due to the higher volume of unassisted buckets.

Once again, this is mathematical fact because the decline in team assists is 100% correlated with the rise in low-assisted 1st options (ball-dominators)... The data posted earlier showed that high scorers of 25+ ppg with low assisted rates of under 40% (ball-dominators) produce low average ranking in team assists, and this type of low-assisted 1st option didn't begin to exist until the 2000's... (data here).

Previous eras didn't use today's spread-floor beginner format and ball-dominant approach that gets assists mostly for 1 guy.. The level of ball movement and team assists were higher due to a 5-man approach instead of today's unassisted scorers.. This history of higher team assists in prior eras that you've introduced will serve as the macro version of my argument for Jordan over Lebron (more ball movement due to less ball-dominance).

Once again, just a privilege to watch LeBron and Steph go at it last night.

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Team Assists Per 100 Possessions (league average)

1980...... 24.9
1981...... 24.9
1982...... 24.8
1983...... 25.0
1984...... 25.6
1985...... 25.6
1986...... 25.3
1987...... 25.6
1988...... 25.7
1989...... 25.2
1990...... 25.1
1991...... 25.1
1992...... 25.1
1993...... 25.4
1994...... 25.5
1995...... 24.9
1996...... 24.5
1997...... 24.3
1998...... 24.2
1999...... 23.1 <-------- below 24 for first time as low-assisted 1st options enter NBA (high-scoring ball-dominators) like AI, Hill, Lebron & many more)
2000...... 23.9
2001...... 23.7
2002...... 24.0
2003...... 23.4
2004...... 23.5
2005...... 23.2
2006...... 22.6
2007...... 22.9
2008...... 23.4
2009...... 22.7
2010...... 22.8
2011...... 23.2
2012...... 22.8
2013...... 23.9
2014...... 23.2
2015...... 23.3
2016...... 23.1
2017...... 23.3
2018...... 23.7
2019...... 24.4 <-------- returns to 24 for first time after Lebron's prime is over and entire league has copied Warriors' high-assist style
2020...... 24.1
2021...... 24.9
2022...... 24.9
2023...... 25.3
2024...... 26.9
2025...... 26.2

You could also say that it dropped below 25 for the first time in 1995, which is when Iverson, Hill, Penny and the first higher-scoring ball-handlers entered the league... By 1999 there were more, so it dropped below 24, and then onwards down to a trough of 22 during Lebron's prime - then it returned to 24+ after Lebron's prime in 19' (or 25+ from 22' onwards) as the league copied Curry's high team assist style.

This buddy-ball in the regular season means nothing... Lebron can't make the Finals in the West (non-manufactured conference) and gets swept or 1st Round loss without AD carrying the team over guys like Jokic - this isn't Kobe-caliber, let alone GOAT caliber - Kobe won with a sidekick that was worse than AD, Bosh, Love and maybe even Jamison - Pau was only a 1x all-star when he joined Kobe, while Jamison was 14th for MVP and 2x all-star that outplayed Lebron in the 07' 1st Round.. Lebron's ball-dominance and weaker teammate fits/chemistry simply requires more help

I always wonder what is in the posts that get deleted. Being how bad the ones are that make it, I'm horrified to think of the ones that get deleted...