IMHO they are stars, but could understand anyone arguing against them, no biggie, highly subjective. I think there are 3 or 4 tiers of dynasties 1. 1 ship or 2 ships but not repeat 2. B2b ships, mini dynasties 3. 5 ships or 1 Threepeat 4. What the Bulls did Celts and Lakeshow, I would put them below Chicago as they were FA magnets, had a golden spoon. The Michael 2x retiring and comeback were special. No other star player did that. MJ was even a decent baseballer.
I know Bill Walton had Mo Lucas, but wasn't he more of a Buck Williams/Charles Oakley type of dirty blue collar all star ROLE player? The high ppg a result of the era and cleaning off the glass etc. He's called "the enforcer" as well..
LeBron has 3x rings with 3x FMVP's and went to 8 straight NBA Finals without a single NBA caliber teammate. #GOAT
Kukoc was for sure third star on bulls. Kukoc was third scoring star. For kukoc to hit them three's in game 7 of the 1998 east finals against the pacers was huge. The kukoc three or four three pointers in that game 7 was nails in coffin.
funny i had almost this same conversation with someone, but about curry and the 2015 warriors. my argument then as now, is that i tend to view legacy arguments different than a conversation about legitimacy. and i feel "one-star champs" is a legacy argument in favor of that singular star. of course you're right that the raptors were legitimate. same as the 2015 warriors. the game were played, they won 4 rounds, they are the champs. but if i'm having a "where does curry rank all-time?" conversation, i'm definitely not leaving out that his only non-durant championship happened with 2 of the best players on the other finals team injured. you think barkley wouldn't like to face jordan without pippen and grant? same as putting kawhi in the "one-star champ" category. because he almost certainly doesn't do it without huge injury breaks (thus my claim they weren't the "rightful" champions, which i suppose sounds like i was saying they weren't legitimate, maybe a different word would work). dirk, duncan, and hakeem all did their work against opponents with their best players. i think they belong on this list. kawhi got here by a legitimate, but ultimately lucky route.
ultimately that's why i said they wouldn't count, just that kobe didn't really become kobe until the following year so it's not as obvious as it seems. in the WCF, he had games of 12, 13, 17, and 18. even ignoring the injury of game 2 in the finals, he had game 1 with 14 points and game 5 with 8 points. his PER for the playoffs was only 19.3 and TS% was 51.7%. only one 30 point game after the first round, but enough 25+ point games that you can't say shaq was the only star. also, never realized that those lakers were actually #1 in defense that year and only #5 in offense. makes their collapse to #21 in defense the following year even more amazing in terms of how little they cared in the regular season.
Fair enough with regards to all-time, but to me all this luck and injury talk in general is just silly. Last year's Raptors were the champions, no matter how you slice it. Curry was there, Klay was there, Draymond was there...we don't know how players and teams would've performed. Do the Warriors go to Klay more even with a potential injury? Do they keep feeding him, force it which leads to mistakes and turnovers or does Klay turn cold or stay hot? Does Kawhi or Siakam turn it up under pressure? People always want to act like IF this player is not injured, then they win as if there's a straight correlation. There's so many variables. Kawhi was not lucky in any shape or form, he was injured himself! Injuries are part of the game, even champions deal with injured players.
If he had won a ship with the old Cavs against Duncan, he would have been. Goat is definitely a term used too much nowadays. MJ's and KB's mentality is rarefied air, once in 40, 50 years. The obsession with getting better and this instinct to dole out vengeance, I do not see it in everyone. LBJ is a hard worker, the best talent, just not as clutch or mentally tough as Jordan or even KB24, the less talented Jordan clone. Jordan lost his dad, came back from baseball of all sports, and won another 3 peat with older Scottie declining and starting to sulk. Lb just doesn't have the gear to do a 3 peat yet. Should have improved his shooting earlier. He is also a bad part time GM other than the Allstar team.
Don't forget LeBron brought back the Cavs in the 2018 ecf from being down 2 games and a 2-0 deficit in the series. LeBron scored over 40 a bunch of times in that 2018 east finals series.
i just don't see how people still say this in terms of kobe vs lebron. lebron has gotten better basically his whole career. if he didn't how would he still be doing what he does today with his athleticism clearly no where near its peak? lebron single-handedly drug a team to the finals as a 22 year old, going through the pistons with a 25-points-in-a-row performance for the ages. the guy had a 45 point game 7 duel with pierce against boston the next year. he had arguably the greatest individual playoffs ever in 2009. he tore boston and chicago apart in 2011. then came basically the only blemish on his career, the 2011 finals. since then? 7 straight years of jordan-level playoff performances. buzzer beaters, epic games, big plays everywhere. smashing franchises year and year like jordan used to do (ironically doing it to jordan's old franchise). having probably the greatest playoff series anyone has ever had in the 2016 finals. there's no clutchness/improvement/toughness measure that even remotely has kobe above lebron. i mean i guess he could be mentally tougher off the court or have a stronger willingness to take a last second shot, but since the only thing that matters is whether the ball goes in the basket, it doesn't really matter. big games, big shots, big series, it all favors lebron. he had the gear for 8 straight finals appearances but not a 3 peat? i don't get this narrative either. while i actually think david griffin did all of the work, if we want to put it all on lebron, wasn't the gm of the cavs pretty good? if the warriors didn't pop out of nowhere, they very well may have won 3 straight titles and if durant didn't sign with them, they might have won 2. is morey a bad gm for not beating the durant warriors? year one of lebron they might have won the title if not for injuries in the finals. year 2 they actually beat a 73 win team. year 3 they basically swept the east, had the best playoff offense ever, and then lost to a team basically no one had a chance against. year 4 was submarined by kyrie wanting out and role players naturally aging. and i suppose if he's the gm of the lakers, then they've got the best record in the west by year 2.
2018 might have been his best work ever. that roster had no business winning the east. they got outscored by indy by something like 40 points, which is a record for a team that won a series. he seemed to perfectly match his best games with the games the cavs could actually win in that series. he hit 2 buzzer beaters in the playoffs. he seemingly destroyed the whole raptors franchise (crazy turnaround for them the next year). he beat the much more talented celtics in 7 games. then put up something like a 51/9/9 in game 1 of the finals before JR forgot the score and lebron punched a wall and broke his hand for games 2/3/4. one of the great what if's is if JR sees lebron open at the top of the 3 point line at the end of game 1? does anyone think lebron doesn't make it? now, all it would have done is turned 4-0 into 4-1 because the cavs had no chance, but it was still an almost perfect individual playoff run.
You can't blame Jr Smith. J.r. Smith hit 8 threes in east conference finals breaking Cavs franchise record in 2015! Scottie pippen could have heaved up a three pointer at the top of the key in game 6 of the 1998 bulls pacers east conference finals. Instead Jordan missed a baseline jumper before tripping over the defense,Travis best scored layup and two free throws in last 30 seconds of the game!
I'd say 2016 was when LeBron redeemed himself in term of his place in history. His Cavs had no business beating the historic GSW team. Their best bench players were 35-year old Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert. True, the Draymond suspension gave them life after falling behind 1-3. But they still came back and won Game 6 and Game 7 against a full strength Warriors team. I had always felt that "The Decision" tarnished his legacy forever. The 2016 Finals was a redemption he needed to get back to the GOAT conversation. Durant's joining the Warriors was at least as bad as LeBron's Miami jump. And I don't see him redeeming himself in Brooklyn in the foreseeable future. Basically, the Superfriends phenomenon in contemporary NBA dilutes the legacy watch. There have always been dynasties. But those teams in older eras were not formed by players collusion. At least in appearance those superstars were not seen as intentionally choosing easier paths to glory.
2016 finals is definitely lebron's crowning achievement. probably the greatest series by anyone ever. and it's still crazy they somehow won. dahntay jones played minutes in a close finals game! but i think 2018 was more of a magnum opus of all that lebron had learned throughout his career. from game management to psychologically owning an entire franchise. he had a team that literally required him to be at peak form for huge minutes of every game to have a chance at winning. and he did it for 3 series + 1 game (didn't matter after that) as perfectly as possible at age 33. averaged 34/9/9. pre-broken hand, he had the 2nd best PER in a playoff run ever (to himself in '09), and he was doing it on minutes that people just don't play any more in an nba where defense is more draining than ever. again, that pacers series was like 2 indy blowouts and 5 close games and lebron was huge in 4 of them to barely win each game. toronto was a sweep, but only because lebron just ripped their hearts out. and then the celtics were a team with tons of guys to throw at lebron and he somehow played huge minutes for 7 more games and won game 7 on the road. just for context, he had 6 games with a game score over 38. he only had 6 other 38+ playoff games in the last 10 playoffs. in fact, there have only been 28 of those in the whole nba in 10 years (sam presti's favorite trio are the only players with more than 1 such game) and 6 were by one guy in one playoff run.
I got no problem at all with you saying Lebron should be better or has all the tools to be better than KB, he was even more versatile than Kobe when coming out of high school. Lebron is very likable, I am not from Cleveland, so I didn't really care about the 'Decision', I was always an aficionado of great players and their abilities even if they didn't play on my fave team.... I always thought he was physically built like a better Pippen, I watched him early on in Ohio, however, I had some shet to do from 2011-2013 so I wasn't really focusing myself on Lebron and his growth. I only said that Kobe's mentality is second to none, criticizing others, pushing others. Lebron is a nicer guy, at least he doesn't mock others, his teammates. IMO Kobe was an exact clone of MJ minus his intellect, some athleticism (MJ had more hangtime in the air), skills, vision and being a slightly better teammate, much better leader. Needless to say MJ was one or two tiers above virtually anyone. IMO Kobe missed the facilitator and efficiency train and chucked too much. RIP. And Lebron did break up the Heatles too soon.....it was all narrative for him, like he is part of Westworld.
That Kyrie Irving three on Curry and game winner is up there close to Jordan. Jordan doesn't get out of 1998 east coast finals without them three's in game 7 from kukoc. Just to beat Celtics in 2018, LeBron had to drop forty a couple of times in east coast finals. I think it was game 2 where LeBron dropped 40+, they lost, and Cavs were still stuck in 0-2 series deficit!
more 38+ game score fun. seems to be a good cut-off point. only 87 playoff games since they started game score in 1984. lebron x16 jordan x11 hakeem x5 barkley x5 no one else with even 4. the fact that not a single hakeem game from 1995 is on the list shows you how difficult they are. only once has there been two 38's in the same game, and they were on the same team. hakeem and sleepy floyd. larry bird only 1. sleepy floyd with 2. apparently efficiency matters a lot, and is why there are so few games, because only 2 of the 87 have a player under 50%. strangely, both were against the rockets and both were in losses. kevin johnson in game 7 (he had 2 that series) and westbrook in a 51 point game in 2017. of course westbrook would not only be 1 of 2 games under 50%, but he would even be under 40%. i don't think they are paced adjusted so kind of screws the late 90's/early 2000's crew (only 14 in a 10 year span).
