We also need to remember that Magic played with arguably the 2nd best center IMO in Jabbar (I am a Hakeem fan), otherwise his points would be way higher. Also, no offense to Lebron, but I find Magic much more impressive than LBJ has ever been, including the fact that we are talking about someone as big as Magic playing full time point and running against much faster PG's. I don't think LBJ could hold up playing point full time. I will agree however, that LBJ is easily the most impressive physical specimen since Wilt.
There isn't really a lot of evidence to support that he would have averaged 30+ had he needed to - he never did it, or even came close, even after Kareem was gone; you can also argue that playing on a loaded team helped him just as much as it hurt him. It might have given him a small boost, but statistically, Magic, especially when pace-adjusted, doesn't really threaten the all-timers. The guy barely broke 20 ppg. LeBron put up a similar season this year playing with 2 other stars as he did playing with a bunch of nobodies in Cleveland, which is pretty impressive.
Bird also had a sick career avg (24/10/6) and he hit 28/9/8 once. He hit 26/9/8 and 27/10/7 in the 86 and 87 playoffs. I won't get into the pace debate, as rule changes have arguably made it easier for LeBron to dominate now.
Why don't you explain this - it shoudl be very easy statistically to compare these rule changes before and after and control for their effects.
I admit there is no statistical evidence to backup my opinion, just my gut. The game has changed and people's body evolve, so there is really no way to compare the two. Magic was always looking for ways to help his team score and if it happened to be him, so be it. I personally really like Magic, so I am definitely biased to some degree here. What I do firmly believe is that Magic was MUCH MORE skilled than LBJ will ever be.
"skilled" is kind of in the eye of the beholder. I have heard folks say more than once that Connie Hawkins was the most skilled player they ever laid eyes on, but nobody would argue that he was the greatest player to ever play the game. Or even better than Shaq, who wins no awards for skills, unless you count points and rebounds as skills. Regarding the offensive numbers put up, I submit that it's pretty easy to control for pace via possession numbers (which is how PER is generated) - and if you look at the offensive efficiency of the league in 1983 vs. 2012 it's almost the exact same (teams scored the same # of points per possession, they just have far fewer possessions.) As a consequence, I don't thin it's that tough. I'd also aruge that the quallity of player is substantially higher now than it was then simply because the size of the talent pool has increased exponentially since then. The amount of people capable of playing basketball at a high level in 2012, vs. 1983, is way, way higher by virtue of population growth alone, not to mention the expanding global reach of the game and the financial incentive for doing so. On a simple level, think of it like highschool football. A 6A or 5A team would beat the tar out of 2A team, simply because it's easier to find 20 good players from a few thousand individuals than it is from a few hundred.
When you adjust for pace, Lebron actually opted out on less possessions in the 4th quarter of the Finals than it would otherwise appear from simply watching the games.
Where was he in the series vs Dallas? What about game 2 of this series? Has he hit clutch shots? Of course. Does that make him a clutch player? No. For whatever reason he's more likely to defer to wade when the game is on the line. Rewatch the end of game two.
I've realized that if Lebron goes crazy and hits 10 clutch game winners in a row, you guys still won't like him or say he's clutch so what's the point of even arguing about it. Just keep hating and Lebron will keep putting up 40-18-9 when his team is against the ropes.
Let's hope we see a game 7 Saturday night, with tons of pressure then back on the Heat. What is Lebron's record in elimination games? The elastic in the headband seems to get a little tighter, and then it becomes a neckband.
I have no clue what type of data we could look at. I'm sure some exists. But everyone seems to say its easier for wings today because you can't handcheck or be as physical to keep them out the lane. When guys like Dumars say he wouldn't be able to stay in front of folks today, I believe him.
We can listen to back in the dayism - we can also see that teams today score at the same offensive efficiency as teams in the 80s but at a slower pace which leads me to believe that at best its a wash. Ive heard magic make this claim too - so not only was defense muchtougher but teams regularly scored 120 a game....right.
i don't feel like looking at every year again but i think from about '84 to '94 league efficiency stayed fairly constant around 1.08 points per possession. then it embarked on a steady decline, troughed in the first lockout season, and was still quite bad before the rule changes. i believe efficiency briefly got back to 1.08 right after handchecking changed but was hovering in the 1.06 or 1.07 area recently before getting killed by this lockout-shortened season. guys like bird and magic and mj (and hakeem obviously) played during the most efficient era ever. guys like shaq and kobe and duncan got the worst of the last 30 years. the newer crop has had it ok but still not like the 80s guys. yeah i love this one. defense was better but apparently offensive efficiency was so high because offense was even that much better than defense. amazingly, unlike pretty much every athletic endeavor on the planet, nba basketball apparently was on a constant upward trajectory until the 1980s and then peaked and started falling. football players get bigger and faster and stronger, baseball players get stronger and throw harder and hit homers further, world records fall every year in swimming and track and field, but basketball, with it's significantly bigger talent pool than in the 80s and the same training and health advances the other sports have enjoyed, just happened to peak when a lot of the people on tv talking about it were young (and the players on tv talking about it were playing). how coincidental .
pace is the easiest way to influence stats. pace is what brought us chamberlain's 50 ppg season and oscar's triple double season in the same year.
Doesn't matter. It would be easier for guys like MJ to dominate now with these rules that favor offensive players than in his time.
and due to the horrendous field goal percentages back then, i think there were 73 rebounds a game per team back in that season compared to about 43 rebounds per game per team nowadays (and generally in that vicinity for the last 25 or 30 years). that's 70% more rebounds!! give dennis rodman 70% more rebounds and he's up at 30+ in some of those seasons.
