To be considered a better player than Michael Jordan

Just a question.

If durant or harden or god forbid... curry. Wins 6 of the next 8 championship will they be consider as GOAT?

 

Jordan might have been great, but the main reason everybody's still on his jock is because of the context: he was pushed as the sole basketball icon in his era (sure others had sneaker deals, but nothing compared to MJ) with his sneakers, Space Jam, slam dunks, the ads, his go-to tongue move etc. Everything was about MJ, everything!! Even when we won the championships, it was about MJ's retirement and so called baseball career which was a giant fluke. Had they done the same thing for Magic Johnson, Wilt, Shaq, Hakeem, I'm not so sure everybody would consider him the greatest. People are quick to point out Kobe needed Shaq or vice versa. Very few will do the same with MJ, yet when people discuss Pippen as a player, he's this great SF and one of the best.

 

You make it sound like it's MJ's fault for being good looking and marketable all the while being better at basketball than everyone else.

 

No I didn't, then you didn't get my point which is supported by your second statement.

 

i think mj clearly has the best case for the GOAT, and i say that as someone who hated him and rooted against him (i actually rooted for the jazz for some reason in those finals - in retrospect i'm glad utah lost). adjusted for pace and minutes, he has the best stats ever. his regular season PER and WS/48 are the best ever. and his playoff PER and WS/48 are also the best ever. that's pretty hard to do and pretty hard to argue against. and it's not like he wasn't playing good defense on top of those stats. and on top of that, he just always seemed to make the big play. obviously he didn't shoot 100% on game-winners, but good enough and in enough big situations that he is rightly considered among the best players ever in big moments.

and then to me a really big thing is that he never lost a playoff series he should have won. he had homecourt 24 times and won all 24 times. he didn't leave a championship on the shelf. and the only series he ever lost after having a lead in the series was when his 6th seeded bulls won the first game over the #1 seed pistons in the conference finals and then the pistons easily won the series. that's the biggest thing to me. he only overachieved, never underachieved (imo, this is one of the big things to support a high ranking for hakeem - wherever you may put him - which is his lack of really messing up any sort of good playoff run).

mj has the best stats ever, did it while playing in a fairly developed nba (hard to ignore that russell did not when making his case), never failed to win when he should, came up big over and over, and seemed to genuinely intimidate other teams, mostly because they thought he was the GOAT also. could he have won 8 straight without the recharge from retiring? probably not. but he almost certainly would have only lost if the bulls were truly outmatched.


now can anyone pass him? lebron is closest out of the current players but i would say the 2011 finals forever keeps him behind MJ. the other finals are understandable, that was just a choke job. mj doesn't have a finals that bad if he makes 100 of them. lebron's statistical dominance is just short of MJ, his effect on wins/losses is seemingly bigger given that MJ's team won 55 without him and when lebron switches teams, his former team misses the playoffs (and that's putting it mildly in cleveland's case) and his new team makes the finals, and his all-around ability to do so many things might actually be better than jordan's (which was incredible), but he can't suprass jordan. lebron would need a better jumper or at least a more confident jumper (no confidence in his jumper is what caused the 2011 finals) to beat jordan. a strategy like san antonio used in the 2013 finals of just backing off lebron would never work with jordan, even if jordan wasn't the purest shooter ever.

given that anthony davis' stats are such that he could one day break the single-season PER record multiple times, and that he'll have rim protection over MJ, if he wins enough and truly becomes an offensive force (it still feels like he goes with the flow too much on offense and isn't a true "automatic double team who gets everyone wide open shots" offensive player yet) then he could surpass MJ possibly, though i don't view it as likely. durant would need to have an epic next 6 years or so to get into the conversation before he peaks and even if titles probably get overrated in these arguments because people don't feel like taking circumstances into account, durant would need some titles in that stretch.

i would argue lebron is always the biggest story in the nba. he certainly seems to be the focus of nba tv more than anybody else, even this last season. durant might win the mvp or curry might win the all-star popular vote, but the main storyline always seem to be lebron. at least since he went to miami. he may not be jordan in terms of media impact, but when he formed that superteam in miami, nba ratings skyrocketed the following season and have apparently stayed strong enough to get a huge tv deal now. he certainly seems to have lifted the nba that only jordan could eclipse in the last 25 years.

 

Yup - Prime Hakeem for 10+ years would be the best player ever.

 

When ppl say that Jordan is considered GOAT over Lebron because of the Mythology has grown bigger than the player, or just because of older fans nostalgia, you have to understand something.

You can't ignore that Jordan has 6 rings and 6 finals mvps in 13 seasons with the Bulls. But lets just say lets ignore his rings and finals mvp....lets just do stat comparison


If we look at there peak years (age 22 to 29), there regular season stats per 100 possesions (to eliminate the influence of pace) show other than 3P%, Defensive Reb, Assist and TS%....Jordan has Lebron beat in ALL other statical categories

Jordan
From To FG% 3P% FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PTS PER TS% WS/48
1986 1993 0.516 0.308 0.846 2.1 6 7.7 3.6 1.4 3.8 42.6 30.4 0.588 0.283
Lebron
From To FG% 3P% FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PTS PER TS% WS/48
2007 2014 0.513 0.345 0.748 1.7 8.5 9.6 2.3 1.1 4.5 38.2 29.3 0.598 0.273




If we look at there peak years (age 22 to 29), for the POST SEASON per 100 possesions (to eliminate the influence of pace)...its not even close. Other than Defensive Rebound and 0.1 more assist..ALL other stats belong to Jordan.

Jordan
From To FG% 3P% FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PTS PER TS% WS/48
1986 1993 0.503 0.36 0.835 2 6.5 8.4 2.9 1.2 4.2 44.3 29.8 0.581 0.261

Lebron
From To FG% 3P% FT% ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV PTS PER TS% 3PAr
2007 2014 0.483 0.333 0.756 1.9 9.1 8.5 2.3 1.2 4.3 36.2 28.1 0.58 0.221


To top that all off....Jordan's accolades.

He has a record 10 scoring titles
only 2 players to win DPOY while winning the scoring title in same season
lead the league in steals 3 times compared to Lebron 0 times
and many more

I can't see how you could put Lebron higher than Jordan

 

Calm down Steve, it's all in the past now.

 

First step quickness is the most important attribute

 

If Harden does, then yes.

If Durant or Curry, nah man...still Harden.

 

Who cares

 

Ok listen



Ok lets be real according to the nba rules. Michael bJordan is the best of all time. But what do you say about kobe,lebron? I played their key points in the new rules area. As for Hakeem I say he's the 2nd greatest player of all time. I do like him better than any player ever though......

 

Errr.... Jonny Blaze wannabe?

 

this.

jordan was the cash cow of that era for the Nike and the NBA. he really did give basketball and Nike a boost in sales.

personally i dont put too much emphasis on rings. they're a big factor, but i dont think it warrants an automatic label of GOAT. just as i would not say 100 points in a game makes wilt the GOAT.

i think MJ may have been the most dominant player to take over a game by himself. but i dont think you could say he is the most well rounded player, and that is something i value more then a shooter.

if im going to build a team, id do it with a player like magic, hakeem, duncan, or lebron etc. guys who have a well rounded game i think have a bigger impact on a team as a whole and let other players shine.

thats how i personally judge a player. i know thats not what most people say though...

 

There is no clear formula.

The main stats with Jordan personally. Over 30 points per game in every playoff run, 6-0 in the NBA finals where he was Finals MVP for all of them and that he avoided a game 7 in all the Championship runs while retiring in the middle of it.

 

Both Russell and Magic had major flaws in their games.

Bill pretty much sucked offensively.
Magic was, at best, average defensively.

Jordan's only flaw was 3PT, but that doesn't mean much when you can score everywhere else on the court.

Skill-wise, Hakeem could be argued as GOAT. He did the most, with less, as any player in history.

 

Jordan has a career DRTG of 103, Magic 104. That stat indicates that neither was a legendary defender.

Hakeem though, has a career DRTG of 98, very impressive.

Other career DRTGs for HOF big men:
Shaq 101
Mourning 100
Howard 99
Mutombo 99
Sabonis 97
Duncan 96
Robinson 96

 

Russell didn't really need to play offense when the Celtics had Tommy Heinsoln, Bob Cousey, Frank Ramsey, Bill Sharmon, John Havlicek, and KC Jones. He was the defensive anchor on a team that won 11 championships in the 13 years he played. He still scored between 15-20 PPG on those teams and you could probably argue he would have put up bigger offensive numbers if he didn't have to share the stats on that end with so many hall of famers. Of course he may not have won 11 championships too.

Maybe so, but it always seems like Magic made clutch defensive plays when it counted in the playoffs. There are so many moments where the game is on the line and Magic comes up with a clutch steal or block. Plus, there were a couple years early in his career where he led the league in steals. Magic, like MJ, actually was a pretty terrible 3 point shooter, but again, you see so many moments where he knocked them down to win games. I'd say Magic and Larry were superior to Michael in terms of making their teammates better. For the longest time, the knock on Michael is that he would never win a title because he was a ball hog and didn't make his teammates better like Magic and Larry. I think that was always sort of the case. The Bulls just got better teammates to surround Michael with to solve that problem.

Jordan wasn't that great of a rebounder and also, as I said above, I'm not sure he was that great at making his teammates better.

I would argue Wilt Chamberlain did more with less and also Allen Iverson.

If you eliminate guys pre 1980s because the game was so different before Magic and Larry came into the league, I would argue the only 7 players that can be in the GOAT discussion are Magic (5 titles), Larry (3 titles), Michael (6 titles), Kobe (5 titles), Shaq (4 titles), Duncan (5 titles) and Lebron (2 titles and counting). Big men sort of have their own category because, lets face it, they are not as marketable because most average humans are not near 7 feet tall. So eliminating Shaq and Duncan, it really is down to Magic, Larry, Michael, Kobe, and Lebron. The two guys that Michael surpassed as GOAT and the two guys that are on Michael's tail post retirement. If Lebron finishes his career with only 2 titles, that eliminates him from GOAT as well. In which case we may as well eliminate Larry with only 3 titles. So I would say the equivalent of Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle in basketball are Magic, Michael, and Kobe. Have to give Wilt the title of the Babe since he put up numbers that are Greek mythology like and nobody I know ever saw them play.

 

No just no. Kobe is NOT 1 of the top 3 off all time. You use very specific (strange) criteria to dismiss people. Big man are not in the GOAT discussion because they are not as marketable?? Who cares, you can be dominant and . on top of that you eliminate Bird since he only has 3 titles, but you do not eliminate Kobe since he only has 2 final MVPs.

I think you can make a case for a lot of people. It depends on what criteria you use. Do you look at personal dominance, scoring making teammates better, team succes? It is difficult to


I am one who thinks you should compair how dominant they were compaired to the competition during their age. Since ofcourse someone who plays now is tronger faster etc than someone who played in the 60's since there is a lot of better knowledge on training, nutrition (and also drugs). Also team succes when the best player on the team is also important to me, since this is a team game.

When you look at the 2 oldies.
Chamberlain:
2 Championships
4 MVP's
His stats are unbelievable, but he did not win as much af you would want for him to be GOAT

Russel:
11 Championships
5 MVPs
Funny fact RUssel had 3 years were he was MVP but not in tha ll nba first team. His stats are not impressive. But 11 championships in 13 years (while making the finals in one of the 2 of years, and losing the finals because of injury of Russel) and his team not even making the play offs the year after he retires.

For Me Russel might not have the stats, but since Basketball is about winning and nobody comes close to how much he won (while being the best player on his team). So I think you really can make the case for Russel.

With the more modern players you can make a case for many players
Abdul Jabber
Bird
Magic
Jordan
Duncan
Shaq
Dream

 

Jordan, like Lebron, overcame much criticism. Nothing was handed to Jordan. It wasn't right time right place. He claimed and controlled his status through play and marketing. A player today could do the same thing. There is even more opportunity to blow up your visibility off the court, for better or for worse. But it starts with winning 7 titles and how you do it on the court. While winning titles the player has to build their brand. And not let that brand be torn down ( be friendly with the media ).

Harden has a good brand with the Beard and all, he's won the street and the league, he's a good guy with a little edge, but his style of play is not yet epic to the public. He's not really a high flyer so he will need a ton of clutch shots and 4th quarters to overtake Jordan as GOAT. I do agree with Stephen A that Harden's one weakness is that he is a little sensitive, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's an image thing and it means he wants to control it. A hard thing to do. But that's part of overtaking Jordan. You have to win the crowd.

The one thing Jordan never had was the super model lifestyle. This is where a player could gain some legit ground on him from a marketing standpoint.

This is doable.

From a precedent standpoint there is baseball, and nobody has really overtaken Ruth for 100 years now, which is amazing. In Football, Jim Brown remains king, but Brown had to overtake some legends to get there, so been almost what 50 years now. In Soccer, Pele overcame some GOAT's, and I do think he can be taken with a world class performer today, but it has been almost 50 years. In basketball, Jordan is still the man after 20 years. In Golf, Tiger overtook Nicklaus and remains king. In Tennis it seems to happen every 10 years with Federer now King.