MJ in his prime or Kobe?

They were using hard doubles on him off the ball....

No one is saying there wasn't illegal defense, you said he didn't have to face zones...which he clearly did, hard doubles off the ball that turned into triples when he had the ball from a team that was running 3 HoF'ers....and 2 of the best defenders in nba history.

Heck there were even times they would quint-team him, lol

 

They would call it early in the game, but by the time it came to crunch time, Detroit were falling back into basically a full zone because the refs aren't calling it with 2 mins left.

Illegal defense was to the nba then, what carries are today, something that has to be stupidly obvious to get called.

 

I actually saw plenty of that. Epic fail on your analysis skills. And as far as the bigs staying in the paint, that kinda makes it HARDER to attack the basket if a big dude is always camped down there. Plenty of defenders were able to stay above or right around the free throw line to basically zone Jordan and deny penetration.

3 seconds was rarely called in the league and as the poster highlighted, you were given plenty of leeway in how close you had to be to your man before it was called illegial defense.

Try again.

 

MJ, derrr

 

I'd say Jordan in his prime, with his million dollar hands and crazy athleticism...skill wise it's debatable

 

MJ was better his last year for the bulls, than Kobe his entire career.

MJ continued to peak.