[The Athletic] Harden 33rd Best All-Time... Quitten as 32nd

he has 3 main problems as i see them.

1. longevity. he has 7 really good seasons so far, and this will be 8. and if he doesn't pick it up a little, this will be a shaky 8th. that's not a lot for a top 10 player.

2. he is not great in the playoffs. he's not even particularly in the same conversation with playoff giants like hakeem/shaq/duncan. now if someone wants to put those guys like 5/6/7 and compare curry to someone like bird or kobe, maybe he has more of a shot. but then bird has him beat fairly handily in the regular season and kobe's just got a very good combination of many very good regular seasons and many good playoff runs and accomplishments. curry's best accomplishment, the unanimous mvp, is immediately followed up with his worst moment, the 3-1 finals collapse where he played horribly. not only did he not validate his award, he did that thing where he followed it up with something so bad that the original accomplishment gets used as a weapon against you later (like the patriots going 16-0 and then losing to eli manning).

3. he sabotaged his own legacy by asking durant to join his team. he could have come back in 2017, won the title, made everyone see that 2016 was a fluke as the warriors want to claim, and if he wins that way, he might start getting some top 10 talk (still don't think it would be quite deserved, but it would be close). but he didn't. warriors fans can cry about it all they want and say it was still steph's team, but inviting a guy to your team to help you beat lebron instead of beating lebron with your 2 other hall of fame teammates looks bad. when the new guy slides in and says "you can watch me hold this finals mvp trophy after i win it", it's just damaging to your legacy, no two ways about it. at best, you just get kind of an "incomplete" rating for those seasons since no one takes the rings seriously (and if cp3 doesn't get hurt, who knows what kind of damage that does to steph and kd's legacies), and at worst you got your team taken away from you in your prime. granted, he could probably shoot 20% and get finals mvp if the warriors win this year, but he better have a great playoff run and finals mvp this year if he wants to start getting even a tiny bit of top 10 talk.

 

because jordan basically has the statistical domination of lebron and the nearly impeccable winning resume of russell (even russell lost a series with homecourt advantage, which jordan didn't). this combination, along with being far and away the dominant force on his team for all 6 titles, and along with doing it in the modern era where it's not questioned as much as russell, is hard to ignore.

i agree, lebron has almost certainly passed jordan in total career value at this point (kareem might have an argument over either). but lebron will always have the 2011 finals against him, with jordan never having a moment that low. and it's hard to shake, no matter how many seasons lebron stacks up. also, at least for me (and i don't like jordan), jordan's lack of longevity is somewhat artificial. he wasn't taken down by a blown out achilles or anything. he got to the end of 1998 and there were no more worlds left to conquer. he was mvp, scoring champ, finals mvp and a champion. he finished another 3-peat, he hit a gamewinner in his last game and the bulls seemed to have run their course, his bloodlust quenched, his fans fat and happy and sated from a decade of dominance. and so he rode off with his shield instead of on it, as with so many other athletes.

aren't we essentially punishing him for success? like if the bulls only had 3 rings, don't we think he probably plays in 1999 and 2000 and 2001 and maybe puts up another 2 mvp-caliber/elite seasons? does the fact he had no need to do so really mean we have to pretend he couldn't have?

the problem is mvp's aren't that reliable an indicator (hakeem and shaq having 1) and he ruined the 2nd one with a terrible playoffs. the 2nd is no one is ever going to put rings 2 and 3 up there with rings some other guys have won. even bird, who obviously played on very good teams.

 

Superstar yeah. I felt that way ever since 2012 before the trade to Houston.

The others you can't really project.

 

He's not retiring at the end of the season. He's past his peak but still in his prime. He has a few prime years left.

Disagree about Kobe. He's had some great playoff series, but none of them have been in the finals. The same can be said for Curry.

Sorry, but that's garbage. Lebron teamed with Wade and Bosh, and that hasn't prevented him from becoming a top-3 GOAT. Winning is winning.

 

CP30 — #30 is the Rockets Legend who was ran off Chris Paul

https://theathletic.com/3053078/202...e-an-immediate-positive-impact-for-his-teams/