LeBron is the GREATEST OF ALL TIME

stan the corgi wrote:

Bill Russell has 11 rings. End of debate.

Different eras. Play 1 round of playoffs and you’re in the finals! With 3 7 game series, there are more chances to get injured, have bad games, pad your stats, etc..

Basing an argument only on rings is flawed logic...

LeBron has 4...so, by the logic of rings, you're telling me that the following players are as good as LeBron:

Tony Parker

Horace Grant

John Salley

Will Purdue

Robert Parish

Kurt Rambis

Frank Saul

(note this is only a partial list)

This also mean Robert Horry is a better player than LeBron because Horry has 7 rings.

Steve Kerr, Ron Harper and Derek Fisher are better than LeBron too, as they have 5 rings.

See the flaw in the logic basing things solely on number of rings?

Arthritis wrote:

Good lord it's like talking to a wall.

A wall that presented better stats.

zipper wrote:

face the facts

Dude is an amazing player, horrible GM and absolutely not a leader. How many followed him on the boycott?

Doesn't compare. The game was more physical back then. This year's "Championship" is fake due to the shortened season, no teams having to travel, etc. It's all entertainment.

You can't say he was ring-chasing. Miami was far from a super-team. Dwayne Wade is good but Chris Bosh is extremely over-rated. Only reason he went there was because other teams were building super-teams (Boston and others).

Then he went back to Cleveland who was really crappy and carried them to a championship. He literally went to a worse team.

Then he went to the Lakers who didn't even make the playoffs the year before, and they didn't even make the playoffs Lebron's first year there. Again, he went to a worse team and carried them to a championship.

He would not have had 4 championships with Cleveland. Their front office FAILED to give him decent teammates. Really embarassing.

1L8A4H4 wrote:

Uh, Jordan was far and away the biggest reason those teams were favored...it's not like the Bulls won any titles without him, you know? Pippen was fantastic obviously but the Bulls' rosters weren't anything special aside from those 2.

The Bulls won 55 games the year Jordan left to play minor league baseball. They were the 3 seed. That's still a very good team.

Here is Lebron's impact:

Last year with Cavs: 61 wins, made conference semifinals

After leaving Cavs: 19 wins

Year before he joined the Heat: Heat won 47 games, made 1st round

First year with the Heat: 58-win team, made Finals

Last year with Heat: 54 wins, made Finals

After leaving Heat: 37 wins

Year before he re-joined the Cavs: 33-win team

First year back with Cavs: 53 wins, made Finals

Last year with Cavs: 50 wins, made Finals

After leaving Cavs: 19 wins

The trend gets broken with the Lakers since it took two seasons to turn a 35-win team into NBA champions, but you still get the point.

Now he did have help when he changed teams - Bosh, Love, and AD were added when he went someplace new. But certainly a few of these major changes were just him - like when he left the Cavs the first time, or when he left the Heat. Those teams were still intact, yet they folded without him. The Bulls obviously got worse without Jordan, but you can see that they were still a very strong team without him.

stan the corgi wrote:

Doesn't compare. The game was more physical back then. This year's "Championship" is fake due to the shortened season, no teams having to travel, etc. It's all entertainment.

This is such a weak take. LeBron James is the epitome of physical.

Lebron James had taken so much HGH has has two sets of eyebrow ridges.

law and order SVU wrote:

stan the corgi wrote:

Doesn't compare. The game was more physical back then. This year's "Championship" is fake due to the shortened season, no teams having to travel, etc. It's all entertainment.

This is such a weak take. LeBron James is the epitome of physical.

Basically if you don't think LeBron is the GOAT you're an idiot holding onto the past

You can argue that the reason they did poorly after he left is because he gutted the team. With a salary cap in place in this era its difficult to replace the best player and leader. Look what the Lakers gave up for AD. If Lebron or AD were to get hurt or leave now of course they would stink.

If you were faced with playing one single game do or die and you had one more player to pick, there are a couple guys that you would pick over Lebron. So not the GOAT in my opinion.

All the special pleading regarding Lebron is tiresome. If you are the best you don't have to constantly proclaim it. MJ never proclaimed he was the best or better than players from other eras.

And the eras are different. Betweem 1999 and 2002 the NBA removed virtually all physical contact from the game. Hand checking and checking of every type disappeared, no one impeded the cutters and players could now drive unimpeded to the basket. Shot blockers were removed from the basket. It just became a very soft game., almost unwatchable Does not matter if you might have been able to handle it. The difficulty and the physical toll was much greater. You went from Finals games scores in the 70s and 80s to layup drills in the 120s.

Plus free agency was different. It was much harder to build loaded, multi allstars teams. In his careeer Lebron went to Miami to play with two established allstars, went back to Cleveland after the had brought in Irving and Love, then after a losing season in Miami gets AD, which would be like Shaq or Hakeem switching teams to play with Jordan. And frankly the league stinks right now. I mean, the Heat?

So call Lebron the top player of his era, if not the most coddled. But on every measure Jordam was just better in a harder league.

Arguing that Lebron has benefited for better teams than Jordan is laughable and makes me question any take you would have.

aztec the moron wrote:

You can't say he was ring-chasing. Miami was far from a super-team. Dwayne Wade is good but Chris Bosh is extremely over-rated. Only reason he went there was because other teams were building super-teams (Boston and others).

Then he went back to Cleveland who was really crappy and carried them to a championship. He literally went to a worse team.

Then he went to the Lakers who didn't even make the playoffs the year before, and they didn't even make the playoffs Lebron's first year there. Again, he went to a worse team and carried them to a championship.

He would not have had 4 championships with Cleveland. Their front office FAILED to give him decent teammates. Really embarassing.

You act like some of his supporting cast in Miami, Cleveland and LA are just trash.

He left Cleveland the first time because he had crap around him and they didn't commit to "his plan" and get "his players". I can't fault him for jumping to the Heat and joining his good friend D-Wade and recruiting Bosh..but to say Bosh was over-rated and D-Wade was simply good is simply not true at all

Bosh, at that time, was coming off a 24 ppg, 10 rpg campaign and had shown himself to be a 22/10 guy up to that point in his career. You act like Chris Bosh was crap. Same with Wade. The guy lead the league in scoring 2 years before LeBron, and was averaging like 26 points, 5 rebs and 7 assists in his career before LeBron arrived. Those are elite level numbers in the NBA.

When he went back to Cleveland, he had a (looking back at it) arguably over-rated Kyrie and Kevin Love, in addition to the supporting cast. At the time, Kyrie was putting up numbers not far from what D-Wade was putting up in his pre-LeBron days in Miami. Kevin Love was a BEAST in Minneapolis before joining that Cavs team. Easy a 22 ppg and a 13 rpg type player.

This year, he won the championship only AFTER they acquired AD. I would argue this is probably his most impressive championship, albeit in a shortened/Covid-19 scenario. It was really only those 2 players as legit big time players. They acquired a few other role players, but largely it was AD and LeBron who carried them all year.

All in all, a fair assessment though. This years Lakers team was probably the worst, talent wise of all them, followed by the Cavs championship and then the Heat ones.

MJ played in a tougher era. He was like 6’5” and 215 and got brutalized in the paint by the Pistons. With today’s rules he would have 8 championships. LeBron is like 6’9” and 260 and no one can lay a finger on him. If he was more clutch he would have more rings. He choked in 2011. This was also the easiest draw imaginable as Durant is still out and Bucks choked etc. Bron is best player today but can never surpass Jordan.

Jordan never had allstar teams custom made for him. The Bulls were better but they were not bringing in Barkley, Malone or Shaq every year. The Bulls also faced better teams. Point is the league is weak now and being able to bring in two allstars or habdpicked top five players everytime you move is a massive advantage.

MJ produced some of the highest ratings of all time. Lebron, the absolute lowest.

As entertainers, MJ is clearly the best.