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

Thread Cliffs

High-scoring, low-assisted 1st options like Lebron or Westbrook crater all teammates' assists, which causes low average ranking in team assists.. This trash brand of ball is why low-assisted 1st options never produced the best brand of ball (dynasties or dominant champions)... Since they're incapable of being 1st option for the best basketball, the best low-assisted players (ball-dominators) are inferior to the best highly-assisted players (bigs or jumpshooters), who were 1st option for 12 of 12 instances of the best basketball... Full rankings - MJ, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Kobe, Bird, Duncan, Shaq, Curry, Jokic, Magic, Lebron, Oscar.

But not after incorporating how much Lebron lowers all his teammates' assists.

The personal assist stats that you posted are offset by the reduction of all teammates' assists, therefore producing low assist teams (low average ranking).. The reduction of teammates' assists is why all low-assisted 1st options like Lebron, Westbrook and company produce lower assist teams on average.

This is intuitive because if Lebron, Westbrook and other low-assisted 1st options added more assists to a team like you claim, then they would have higher assist teams instead of having lower assist teams!!!.. Again, their low-assist teams are due to reducing everyone's assists, as the linked data above proves.. It's mathematical fact that when the leading scorer obtains FT's, FGA's and handles each possession in a ball-dominant, unassisted fashion (low-assisted rate), it reduces teammates' opportunity to assist or have the ball in a capacity outside of a spot-up role.

Since 1997, there were 96 times that a player averaged 25+ with below 40% assisted rate, and they averaged 18th in team assists, while producing a top 5 assist team 5 of 96 times (5%).. Otoh, players that averaged 25+ with above 50% assisted rate averaged 10th in assists and produced a top 5 assist team 36 of 87 times (41%).

I've gone back through the thread and it appears that most people like Carnivore, Fidstar, Matt, AllBlackDan, and others think Jordan is the GOAT over Lebron, so the real argument is Kobe, Curry and Jokic over Lebron, since they won multiple chips with far less help (kobe, curry), or simply dominate much more and won a chip with less (jokic).

Before joining Lebron and Kobe:

2014 KEVIN LOVE...................... 2x All-NBA.... 0.245 WS/48.... 26.9 PER
2007 PAU GASOL'...................... 0x All-NBA.... 0.155 WS/48.... 24.1 PER

All-time rankings

PER

4. AD
24. Wade
33. Kyrie
51. Pau
64. Love
72. Bosh
143. Pippen
N/A Murray (outside 250)
N/A Klay (outside 250)


WS/48

16. AD
68. Pau
72. Love
75. Kyrie
79. Wade
86. Bosh
141. Pippen
N/A Murray (outside 250)
N/A Klay (outside 250)


True Shooting

51. AD
80. Kyrie
111. Klay
125. Love
124. Bosh
163. Pau
172. Murray
239. Wade
N/A Pippen (outside 250)


PPG

27. AD
43. Wade
31. Kyrie
92. Klay
95. Bosh
129. Jamison
165. Murray
195. Pau
224. Love
240. Pippen


APG

83. Kyrie
98. Wade
112. Pippen
139. Mo
172. Murray

Murray, Klay and Pippen are easily the worst compared to Wade, AD, Kyrie, Love and Bosh.

Lebron's abnormal ball-dominance, bad fits, horrible chemistry, low-assist teams, and coaching carousal (uncoachable) has resulted in the most underachievement ever, such as losing the most ever with preseason favorites and Finals teams, or bevies of losses with all-star teammates, homecourt, and 1 or 2 seeds.

Otoh, the GOAT never lost in any of these scenarios, except 2 losses with all-stars in the baseball year and "migraine" year.

Curry easily better than Kobe.
Kobe still has Joker covered, but Joker at least 80% to be better than Kobe in 5 years. i.e. Joker only being held back by number of seasons.
LeBron obviously better than all of them.

Actually reviewing the numbers Joker already has Kobe covered.

Based on what though?

There's never been a player that had 6 straight preseason favorites or a sidekick outplay the league MVP... So you're lauding one series with this unprecedented help against a 73-win team???.. He also wet the bed for the first 4 games to need Game 7 and a teammate bailout just like the 13' Finals... Do you have anything else because that doesn't strike me as impressive.. Again, the media's ruse was pretending that Lebron's unprecedented help weren't something that needed to be overcome with another unprecedented advantage (KD's).

And how could he play 5 positions with the most bad fits ever and assisted rates that only point guards have??... And "bigger faster stronger" - so is Shaq, Drob and others (aka bad argument and probably false)... There's also the "carry any team to through East" but only after putting top 3 players in East on 1 team, or playing in SUCH a weak East that a 22 on 35% player could win it (and 6 TO's).

So do you have any other arguments outside of the ones I mentioned above (don't bother repeating them) or dumb longevity?... Because if you don't have any new arguments that I didn't mention above, you're wrong... Really wrong.. And unlike me where my arguments go unrefuted, I just refuted a lot of yours and I'm saying that I'm open to new arguments or aspects I missed.. if you have any.

Btw, he was a perennial loser with every cast AFTER he got "help" in 2011 because his high volume of unassisted buckets and abnormally-low assisted rates in the frontcourt lowered everyone's assists and increased their assisted rate (imposes spot-up roles), and therefore produced a slew of bad fits, coaching changes, and underachieving rosters (the most losses ever with preseason favorites or Finals teams).. Furthermore, no one expected when Lebron first entered the league that he would give up on a 62-win league favorite after Year 7 and team up with opponents thereafter - that's the definition of failing expectations.

Because he's better.

The only one with an argument of being better is Jordan and maybe Kareem.

And Kareem is only relative to his era.

Everyone of your arguments has been successfully refuted.

Everyone other than you in this thread agrees with that statement.

Jokic has 3 MVP's and a 2nd place finish. He'll most likely add to one of those totals this year. If he has 4 MVP's he's left Kobe far behind in the dust and is entering the discussion with the real GOATs. If he gets a 2nd finals MVP also he's legit in that discussion for sure. IMO.

Yeah, he's got Kobe covered. Some players aren't lucky enough to have someone carry them like Kobe had with Shaq and Pau.

Kobe with one MVP and one second is pretty hilariously bad for someone that some people try to push for a Top 10 GOAT finish.

I mean the year he finished 2nd actually sounds better than it was. When you finish this far back, why even count it?

Also lol at finishing 7th in Win Shares.

Because he has that clutch gene!

As in, he's not afraid of the moment. I mean he misses all those shots, but he's not afraid!

They're probably the same people who think Bruce Lee is the greatest MMA fighter of all time.

Anyone skimming this thread would confirm the logic is sound because the assumptions have been rigorously challenged, such as the criteria for a "dynasty" and "dominant champion"... This means the premise that ball-dominators were never 1st option for a dynasty or dominant champion is a viable.

You guys wanted to include runs with 5 losses, so you could say Lebron produced the best basketball in 16' - so you're agreeing with the premise and want to include Lebron in it.

Unfortunately, we concluded that an average of 1 loss per around was logical (4 losses max), and we've been discussing the topic in this context ever since - of course this logical conclusion eliminated Lebron's 16' run, which officially lost you the debate (for the hundredth time because this was far from the 1st time you guys were cornered).

Again, anyone skimming the thread can see this clear victory by me and all Jordan fans (goat fans).

The discussion and due diligence itt actually made me move him down to #5.

i.e. MJ, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Kobe, Bird, Duncan, Shaq, Curry, Jokic, Magic, Lebron, Oscar.

^^ based on the premise that since ball-dominators can't produce the best basketball as 1st option (dynasty or dominant champion), they're inferior to the best of other skillsets that can (jumpshooters & bigs)..

this allows anyone to legitimately put ball-dominators like Lebron outside the top 10 if they don't like him, and this is true even if you take Kobe out of the top 10 (make him a ball-dominator too).

fallguy,
So, even if your premise that ball-dominators are always bad (which, to be clear, isn’t necessarily true. It depends on the system. Some of the best offenses of all time had a ball-dominant player.), that does not make this make sense:

There are other players on the court besides the “1st option” (there you go again changing the words. Why does it go back and forth between 1st option and leading scorer depending on what you are trying to argue?). Those other skills are inportant. For example, passing and playmaking, to set the scoring options up in optimal situations.

And then you have BILL RUSSELL ranked number 2, who was never, ever the first option on any of his teams.

And you still have Kobe over Shaq, when Shaq was the first option and far and away the best player on that 3-peat Lakers team.

Your position makes literally no logical sense and it is completely internally inconsistent to anyone who thinks about it for 30 seconds.

The obvious answer is that there are other important skills to basketball besides highly assisted first option scoring, which allows other players such as Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and hell, even Kobe Bryant (he was not the first option with Shaq) to be good too.

And it is the cumulative effects of all those skills, combined with an elite coach and elite scheme to put it all together, that creates the best teams, leading to dominant playoff runs and dynasties.

But you don’t want to admit that last part because you are certifiably mental lmfao. If you want to start making logical sense though, you could start arguing that. Just an FYI.

Oh oh I know, what if assisted fg% is a measure of a player’s ROLE in an offense (and not his intrinsic ability to catch a pass and score a basket), and a high assisted fg% for a volume scorer is generally correlated with an offense with multiple good scoring options (that know how to move the ball between themselves), an elite scheme to incorporate everyone in a balanced attack, and an elite coach that knows how to implement the scheme? You know like Phil Jackson, Popp, and Kerr, the 3 coaches that have led dynasties since assisted fg% started to be recorded.

That makes sense I can’t believe no one has thought of that before.

Here's the link to the page where everyone argued in this thread about the proper definition for a dynasty or dominant champion (the best basketball), since I claimed that ball-dominators had never been 1st option for either.. I was proven correct once we settled on the intuitive criteria of averaging 1 loss per round or less (4 losses max), which eliminated Lebron's 16' run.

The thread clearly shows that when we tried to explain why ball-dominators were 0 for 12 in producing the best basketball, the statistic that measures how often a player ISN'T ball-dominant (assisted rate) was the catalyst.. The only skillset with career assisted rates below 40% are ball-dominators (0 for 12), while jumpshooters and bigs are over 40%, and actually over 48% for 12 of 12 dominant champions or dynasties (the best basketball).

Assisted fg rate actually measures the role of a player within an offensive scheme, not their offensive skill set. For example, Steve Nash, in his two MVP seasons where he led some of the greatest NBA offenses that have ever existed, had an assisted fg% around 20 to 23%. But he is also one of the greatest shooters in NBA history. He was clearly capable of catching a pass and scoring. But he better served his offense as a ball dominant point guard.

Thus assisted fg% is measuring scheme and role within a scheme. This proves it is scheme and coach with multiple good scoring options that can lead to dominant playoff runs and dynasties. Not the arbitrary assisted fg% number of 40%.

Also Bill Russell is good despite not being a highly assisted volume scorer, as your ranking indicates. Proving that there is more to basketball than being a highly assisted volume scorer lmfao is this real.

fallguy,
Why don’t you just say “I no like LeBron therefore he no top 10” rather than spending years developing this assisted fg% framework to say the same thing? That would, ironically, make you appear less dumb.