jordan's more athletic than kobe. if kobe can do what he does, i don't see how it would affect jordan at all.
young MJ would still dominate today. He wouldnt be able to stop Lebron from bullet training his way to the basket but nobody would be able to contain MJ. Guy was an athletic freak with the drive to kill ppl on the court. He by no means 'got by on his athleticism'. The league has gotten softer. Players like Blake Griffin and DRose seem to be turning it back around. I hate Lebron and Dwade but they are those type of players who could have made it exciting again (for everybody not just Miami). Not mentioning Kobe because he is one of the last of a great era of basketball. not this Superfriends crap.
This is so true. I have big enough hands to palm any basketball. I am 5'10 and I can tell you I have done almost every highlight MJ did excluding the dunks in referee'd and pickup games.
This has probably been discussed before, and I know the "what if" game is generally frowned upon... but oh well, let's go back to 1984: If we drafted Jordan and the Bulls took Dream, what would've happened? For the sake of discussion, I'm holding all other things constant... I think it's actually safe to say that Dream would've won more rings (>2) and Jordan would've won less (<6)... if any *ducks for cover* Dream on the Bulls paired with Pippen and Grant would've been a force through the 90s and perhaps dominated the league. As to how many championships that would've resulted in is hard to say. Hakeem's career didn't have the same longevity of Jordan's, but I think that in this scenario, Dream could win a comparable amount of rings as Jordan did. Jordan on the Rockets I think would've been disappointing ala LeBron on the Cavs. The Rockets would be a perennial contender in the 90s solely due to Jordan and Jordan alone, but I'm not sure whether he could carry the team to a championship by himself like Dream did in '94. Maybe after so many years of frustration he would take his talents to Portland and play alongside Drexler!! Sorry, I had to. I wonder if maybe he and Sampson would be a lethal combination in the '80s, but I was too young to really get a good feel of the league in that decade. Anyone else with an opinion?
I've never considered putting someone's quote in my signature. But I'm seriously thinking of doing that now
What I find strange though is that you see almost no midrange shot and no 3 pointers at all in this video. Shows you that while MJ is still the best of all time, he was never a complete basketball player.
How could you argue that the league got more athletic? Barkley, Hakeem, Wilt and young Shaq were all freak products of the past with ridiculous combination of skills and athletic abilities that you don't see today. Heck, Dr. J, Clyde Drexler, Wilkins, Kemp are just a few names that pop up when it came to freak athletes. To say the league has gotten more athletic is false.
For every Barkley, Hakeem, Wilkins you list, I can counter with freak athletes like Lebron, Dwight Howard, and Derick Rose. On the whole, the league is more athletic. That's just a product of superior athletic training these days versus 20+ years ago.
Lol you must be 10 I don't understand how you can jump to that conclusion by watching a 3 min clip. Umm u know Kobe and his midrange fade away? Jordan basically invented that and Kobe admitted he modeled his shot and game after Jordan.
There are also no free throws. How can he be the greatest ever if he never got to the free throw line?
My whole point is that in so many people keep saying efficiency efficiency efficiency. Kmart is so efficient. Blah Blah Blah. If he was so efficient why has he never LED a team to the playoffs? Efficiency is great, but that should be a metric not the only metric.
if you look at pure athletics sports like track & fields, the improvement isn't that much over the last 20 years. for example, best 100m sprint time improved 4 tenths. let's say derrick rose or john wall is 4 tenths faster than iverson over 100m, what kind of advantage does that translate to on a basketball court? Marginal, i think.
Jordan was a great mid range shooter.... he was not a good 3 point shooter, although he hit some big ones in the clutch.
huh? If you want to group them like that, then I would say Barkley, Hakeem, Wilkins >>>>>>>> LeBron, Howard, Rose as far as being athletic freaks.... LeBron is one of the greatest athletic freaks ever.... but Barkley was an amazing freak, there i no one like him playing today.... Wilkens was more explosive and strong then any swing player today, and Howard isn't even close to the athlete Hakeem was... not even close. Howard isn't even as good an athlete as Shaq or DRobinson.
i would say the dunk contest is a pretty good barometer of athleticism. and the dunks that win now are far, far better than the dunks that were winning 20 years ago. really even just 10 years ago. rider and kobe were winning with simple between the legs dunks in the late 90's. that might get you an 7 or an 8 today. in the 80's there were plenty of crappy dunks mixed in with those mj/nique highlights. now that's not to say that some of those guys couldn't have done some modern dunks if they thought of them, but on the whole the difficulty level has just gone way up. and it's not so much just the freaks. any era can have some amazing top-level guys like a barkley or jordan or drob. but the depth of athleticism is far higher today. you could seemingly find several guys on every team (except the rockets) that could compete in a dunk contest of yesteryear. there are just so many lengthy athletes around these days in the league.
