Why is he considered the best ever?

Is there really need a discussion? Hand down the best ever.
At age 38 score 51 pts with ease n at age 40 posted up fantasy stats like 43 10 3 4.
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First off bc he won 6 chips in 10 years and he was outa year and a half, he changed the game when the NBA was at its peak. Olajuwon maybe better butMJ, was well MJ, if hewasin the west maybe things are different, and dream doesn't face the sonics illegal d yr after yr...buti regress the east was top heavy, so he had an easy run usually until the conf. Finals, he also never never played in a game 7 I believe that he almost did but that Indy series went6 when Reggie went ballistic!! But ya study up, and just understand that skill wise he was the greatest at his position, and shot the ball with such great % that some current C would love to have.


Oh change that sig up bc we didn't get..."him"

 

I don't know about that.

Hakeem - 2 DPOY, 5 first team all-defense
Jordan - 1 DPOY, 9 first team all-defense

I'd say it's debatable. Of course we know that a big man has more impact on a team's defense. However, I'd say it's easier to build a good enough defensive team to win a title around an elite offensive player than it is to find an elite offensive player once you have a strong enough defense. To me this is why Jordan has so many rings. The Hakeem from '92-95 would definitely have had more rings. He was a different player then.

 

Perhaps part of it is that most on here never saw Wilt or Oscar or Bill Russell play.

By position, Jordan is superior to everyone who has played that position...but looking at all types of players, I don't know how you determine who is the best to ever play the game....but if Wilt or Oscar or Bill aren't in the conversation, then its probably incomplete.

 

Do you think there are any bigs from the modern era (and we'll apply that term liberally and say 1975-) that could contend with Hakeem as greatest defensive big ever? Mutombo and Zo weren't nearly as quick (though Deke was bigger and Zo was stronger), Ben Wallace wasn't as good in any facet except defensive rebounding, the only guy who really stacks up is David Robinson IMO. If you want to extend the argument to PFs, Duncan didn't have the quickness or athleticism and Garnett didn't guard the rim particularly well.

I can think of a number of guys who could stack up with Jordan in terms of perimeter D. Prime Artest, Gary Payton, of course Pippen. Didn't catch Sidney Moncrief, Michael Cooper, or Alvin Robertson's prime, but apparently they were aces defensively. Rodman could cover 3 positions well, one position exceptionally, and was dominant on the defensive glass, which is a pretty integral part of defense.

It's worth nothing in the context of this argument that Kobe has more all-defensive 1st team selections than Dream.

 

I grew up on 80's-90's NBA. Jordan was ridiculous to see in action, and I made a point to watch the Bulls as well as the Rockets.

But, I don't believe you can truly pick an individual GOAT in a team sport. You can't directly compare guards vs centers; their roles on the court are completely different.

For my money, my #1 pick when building an all-time team is Wilt, and Wilt was waaaaaay before my time.

 

What?? Russel's Celtics consisted mostly of HOF'ers. Wilt's teams, by and large, consisted of Wilt and four other guys. Wilt didn't win a second championship until 1972 when he he was playing with Elgin Baylor and Jerry West.

 

How do you define stack up with Jordan? Artest never had Jordan's quickness on defense, Artest was/is a solid perimeter defender because he bullies guys around and just physically drains them. Payton was fantastic against point guards.. but he was weak, Jordan was very strong for the 1,2, and 3 position in the 80's-90's. Pippen might be the only perimeter defender to have the enitre combination of defensive skills that Jordan had. You're also ignoring that Jordan was an innnssaannely good help/weak side defender which none of those mentioned to my knowledge were really that talented at.

Compared to other guards no one was in Jordan's league in terms of defense. The only player of the last 20 years I can think of that can do everything Jordan could on the perimeter is Lebron.

At the end of the day the only thing a fan is gonna see is the hardware, and Kobe has it... he has a lot of it.

 

Russell made them look like HoF.

Russell's defenses were so far ahead of other teams it was crazy. They won with average offense.

 

i don't really think so. if hakeem isn't the best defender ever, then he's second after bill russell. his combination of blocks and steals are so far ahead of everyone else (i realize they weren't kept track of for a long time) it's unbelievable. and while jordan may have earned his 1st teams, he also didn't really have to. much like kobe has made the 1st team practically every year as long as he showed up just because he was popular and on a popular team (leading to a ridiculous 9 selections), jordan wasn't going to not make the 1st team whether anyone may have actually edged him out at sg that particular year. on the other hand, hakeem wasn't a media darling and the rockets weren't a great team so he pretty much had to tear it up to get recognized. case in point, the 1988-89 season. that year hakeem became the only player to ever record 200 blocks and 200 steals in a season. and for good measure, he led the league in rebounding. so he ran away with DPOY, right? nope, that went to rodman on the high profile pistons. alright, but he still made 1st team, right? nope, mark eaton slightly edged him in BPG and made it even though he was way behind in steals (2.6 to 0.5 and rebounds 13.5 to 10.3). ok, so hakeem at least got a 2nd team out of his historic season, right? nope, ewing got it. his slight edge in blocks (3.5 to 3.4) managed to outweigh hakeem's advantage in steals (2.6 to 1.5) and huge advantage in rebounds (13.5 to 9.3!). a ridiculous slight to hakeem's all-defensive team totals.

and for even more of an advantage, jordan was a guard while hakeem was a center, meaning he had 2 spots to make it whereas hakeem had 1. kind of like duncan made the all-nba 1st team almost every year, even when a different PF won the mvp because they just gave duncan the other forward spot. so in terms of a hakeem/jordan defense argument, i can't put a ton on how many 1st teams each made when jordan was pretty much locked into the team and hakeem had to claw his way on there.

it may not be fair to guards, but i don't think you can not take this factor into account. big men simply have a bigger impact defensively. and hakeem was as good as it got for big men defensively. so it seems hard to argue jordan could equal him here, no matter how good he may have been.

this is probably true.

definitely? for one thing, even with better offense, hakeem's D those 4 years (except the first) wasn't completely at the level of his earlier career. he kind of slowly traded off D for O in those years as his explosion started to go away. so even saying he was a better player, it certainly wasn't by a huge margin.

and having said all that, even if we say hakeem was much better, what year were we going to win a title that we didn't? hell, the 2 years we did win were by the skin of our teeth, involving a total of 8 elimination games. before those years, the most games the rockets ever won was 52, which was only good for the 6th seed and a 1st round exit. even the '86 finals team was only a 51 win team that had to upset a 60+ win lakers team and then ran into one of the best teams of all time in the finals. every other team won in the low- to mid-40's. hakeem scoring 3-4 more points per game with an extra assist wasn't going to be the difference in meek 1st round exits and winning it all. i didn't check every year, but you could have actually doubled hakeem's Win Shares in any year before 1992, which would far surpass his career high, and added those wins to our win total and we still wouldn't have had the best record in the league in those years.

 

And Hakeem made Kenny Smith an All Star. I'm sure you're not comparing the likes of Cousy, Havlicek, Jones, et al to Kenny Smith.

I'm not taking anything away from Bill Russell. He was the constant of those great Celtics teams. I'm only pointing out that johnstark's assertion that 'Russell won more because Wilt only cared about stats' is patently absurd. Russell played on a great team throughout his career, Wilt didn't, and as a result, Russell won more. A lot more.

 

That was true when he was with the Rockets and now the Lakers, but did you watch much of Artest when he was with the Pacers? In addition to his physicality, he had ridiculous lateral quickness for a player of any size, freakishly so for a guy who was 6'6", 250lbs. And he had some of the quickest hands I've ever seen.

Payton was actually probably at his best against SGs. He was skinny, but he was surprisingly strong (and once George Karl actually let him defend Jordan in games 4-6 of the 96 Finals, he gave MJ fits). The Glove was no joke man.

One of the reasons he was able to play that role was because Pippen was checking the opposing team's best perimeter scorer.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I've seen guards who I felt, in isolation situations, were every bit the defender that Jordan was, and didn't have the luxury of roaming on D because they had a defensive stud like Pippen taking pressure off them. As for LeBron, I think he's a bit overrated with the whole "ability to defend 1-through-5" narrative. The reason he can check 5s is because the center position stinks right now. He wouldn't have guarded Alonzo Mourning, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and certainly not Shaq if he played in the 90s. Dennis Rodman was every bit as versatile.

 

He's one of the few players I've watched who could really "impose his will" on the game.. a lot of guys say that but they don't back it up consistently.. Jordan did it pretty much on a regular basis... Dream was another guy who dominated in the same way... when I first started watching Jordan play, I thought he was a ball hog and took too many shots.. I felt that way probably, mainly, in part because I was a Rockets fan.. but after watching him play for so long I grew to respect his game and how special he was on the court.. after he (finally) retired I was sad because I, and (future) fans, would be missing out on watching one of the best player of the game...
... and now we got Lebron

 

Kenny smith was a never an all star and I don't think anyone would confuse him with one. He hit his threes and could dribble the ball up the court.

 

LOL this is MJ getting MJ treatment though. His opponents want him to score like that. That Wizard team he played for was rubbish (which is why he suited up again), the only other decent player was Stackhouse IIRC. So if his opponents defended him seriously there was no way MJ could have put up those points, Kobe and Lebron couldn't put up those type of points on nightly basis, you think MJ at 38 is better than Kobe or Lebron in their prime?

Personally I don't think MJ is the GOAT, I think he's the best wing player to ever play the game, but because he's not a big man he'll always be worse than the C greats IMHO. Guys like Jabbar and Hakeem, those are the true HOFs IMHO, because big men anchor the D and rebound the ball in addition to scoring, and in general they impact the court more than any wing player.

The problem with him though is he built the whole Nike Jumpman image thing, so its hard for the 80's generation to separate the man from the myth. More than his skills, the real reason he won 6 rings in 8 years is because he made 7M a year for most of his career, at a time when there wasn't any salary cap structure in the NBA. That's partly why I hate the guy, he's so hypocritical. He said he never wanted to join up with Magic, he wanted to beat him, but then he played around with Rodman and Pippen and Kerr and all those other great talent because he only made 7M in salary. What if Lebron/Wade/Bosh all made 7M a year only? They'd have enough money left over to throw at other talent in the NBA.

 

Has this been brought up?

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Dumb post. Sounds like a Jordan hater.

Most of this post is full of bull****.

 

MJ is 6/6 in NBA Championships, but we separates him from other elite players is his presence. MJ would make baskets that you don't think could be made then he'll talk smack to you, or show forceful faces at you. He is the king of trash talking, I think MJ beat Gary Payton with his mouth. If you outplay Jordan, he'll won't forget and will determine to outplay you harder. I believe he has scored 10+ points a game in every Bulls games. Steve Kerr and John Paxson, both players were average until the NBA Finals. He is like Tiger when he was in his prime. I think MJ probaly compares himself to Kobe, except Kobe is more selfish and too girly (crying for losing).

 

The way Michael Jordan is made him the best. Not just his incredible game but his demeanor