People who say lebron can guard all positions make me laugh. Could you imagine lebron holding down a prime shaq? Or a prime hakeem? Or a prime ewing? As far as i remember only a few guys guarded every position imaginable. Dennis rodman is one of them, and he stood prolly 6 ft 7. Sorry but i think lebron could only guard every position except center
Sure, teams were worse on defense and weren't allowed to play zone, and 3 point shooting was an afterthought, BUT DEFENSE BACK THEN WAS TOUGHER BECAUSE I SAID SO! Shut up. Really, just shut up.
It also helps if you watched Bird play before his back started giving him fits. Many here only know him from NBAtv classic games, a real pity. While Bird certainly wasn't the physical specimen James is today, he had incredible skills, and something James can't touch. The ability to elevate his game in a moment of time beyond what seemed possible, with a mental toughness James doesn't possess. The mind of an assassin, that "ruthless beauty" rimrocker said so well. We've had many discussions about Bird here over the years. He was a player you absolutely loved to watch, and unless you were a Celtics fan, or didn't care about a particular team, Bird was equally hated for what he'd do to your team when it mattered. My 5 starters? Magic Jordan Bird Duncan Dream James as 6th man. I considered putting Elvin Hayes at the 4, but his best years were in the '70's, and I didn't want to have people "dismiss" his accomplishments like some have tried to do with Chamberlain. Malone would be a consideration if one were objective, but I'm not putting that ******* on any list I make, so Duncan wasn't difficult.
This is such a pile of crap. You're basically making up an imaginary "clutchnessitude" factor to compensate for the gulf between them. It can't be verified and the extent you can even test for these types of things empirically - I can safely say that LeBron comes out ahead considering that he basically owns all of the playoff records for efficiency & other advanced metrics over a sustained run - if you're of the "titles are the only hting that matters" school - this is about as good as it gets. Bird, meanwhile, isn't close, again. But anyway let's look at Larry Bird's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs in his peak season (85) Points/36 - 26.1 23.0 Rebounds/36 9.6 8.0 TS% - 59 53 PER 26.5 20.9 That's the mental toughness to elevate? Clutchnessitude? Hello? BTW - this is eerliy similar to the mid-century era of boxing, regarding the the similar way that newspaper writers used to talk about black fighters and white fighters. Whie (Italian or Irish) fighters were almost always characterized as having superior mental toughness clutchnessitude - hence they should attack the black fighters body, which would showcase their weakness. Bird's always going to have partisans due to race, but no need to reinforce it with incredibly lazy nostalgic odes like this.
I hate to irritate SamFisher....but count me among the people who think that Larry Bird would get in LeBron's head. I normally think the "intangibles" and "leadership" credit that almost all white players get in team sports is a load of caca (esp NFL QB's)....but this is a perfect storm of one guy being strong where the other guy is weak. I think if LeBron got a couple dunks by flying by Bird early it would nullify that and his superior physical gifts would allow him to roll. But if LeBron struggles early and Larry Legend hits a couple 3 pointers...doubt creeps in. Disclaimer: I hate both LeBron and Bird.
Er, I'm not really sure what you mean by "dismissing", because picking Hayes to me is really, really odd. If I had to pick a PF that's not Duncan and Malone, I'd argue in favor of KG, Dirk, and Barkley in that order.
The LeBron is mentally weak trope is one of the most laughably hater-ish ones in all of sports. There's really no evidence for it, least of all right now, and the evidence against it is ovewhelming - but it just IS cause it's true. Meanwhile Bird getting handled by Paul Pressey in Junior Bridgeman in 83 never happened. That would be the equivlaent of LeBron getting crushed by Jeff Foster.
People claim the defense is faster and harder now because of the zone? Puhlease..... if the zone was legal during the detroit bad boys era they would have murdered every team they faced on the floor. Back in those days there was no need to play the zone because a defender could lock you in with a hand. And oh, the dream team 1 crushed every other team they faced. And yep, almost all of those teams played zone.
...er I watched the climactic game of the Mavericks series....and LeBron going out of his way to avoid having to shoot sorta seemed like a thing...maybe my eyes deceived me and LeBron was dominating the game with his mental toughness. He did better this year...but there were some games where he disappeared.
His lack of aggression and passiveness in the finals this year and in 2011 are definitely evidence of him being mentally weak. How strong that evidence is is up for debate but people aren't questioning his mental toughness for no reason.
Actually, there was evidence for it at one point, but he squashed that two years ago and hasn't looked back. He grew up and realized he needed to be the guy to dominate and has the hardware to prove it.
He was doing this in Cleveland too of course. 29 out of the last 30 points against the Pistons in the 4th period and overtime in pivotal playoff game. In the Mike Brown "Everybody stand around and watch LeBron" offense, where the entire universe, including the Pistons - a pretty decent defensive outfit at the time - knew he was going to shoot . Guess he was just mentally weak at the time - had he not been so, he'd have scored 40 of the last 30 points.
I meant exactly what I said. You honestly think picking Hayes would be "really, really odd?" He was the first pick of his draft, Rookie 1st Team (Hayes didn't win Rookie of the Year, Wes Unseld did... my bad!), led the San Diego Rockets to their first playoff appearance, in the second year of their existence, played in the All Star game (the first of 12 appearances), and during his rookie year, averaged 28.4 points, and 17.1 rebounds. Oh, and he won a championship with Baltimore in 1978. I know you had a point. What was it again? ;-)- I'm disappointed, Sam. You're holding back. I can tell! You really shouldn't do that, you know, because I value your opinion, and I'd hate to think I'm missing anything. Surely there are more stats and things to quote in order to support the obvious fact that you must have missed seeing Bird play. I won't hold that against you, though. :-D-
Yeah, the reason the dream team dominated was obviously zone defense not the fact that most countries had no basketball infrastructure. And it's not the zone. It's the hybrid that is better than playing purely man defense. I give up though. People aren't gonna accept that defensive schemes have evolved.
