Except for boxing and MMA, I am not a fan of any sport. But as big money-making team sports go, I find basketball to be the least boring; I’d never pay to go to a game, but it’s not worse than being punched in the schnozz, which I cannot say for football.
Anywho – twenty-some years back, I was in Chicago visiting a cousin who wanted to cure me of my distaste for basketball. So he took me to a Bulls game, and even my untrained and uninterested eye could note that Michael Jordan was something special. I seem to recall that at one point he grabbed the ball in mid-air, rotated in mid-air, and stuff it into the basket behind him. I’m pretty sure he was just trying to intimidate the other team.
Which brings me to my question. It’s my understanding that LeBron James is the best current player in the NBA. If so, is he better than Jordan was at his prime?
He is probably a better athlete, certainly a more dangerous physical player (he’s taller and bulkier than Jordan), and has a level of versatility that no one, Jordan included, has ever had.
Jordan was still better, though. LeBron might get there, but he’s not there yet.
Jordan’s career is complete and we can say what he accomplished, including six NBA championships, the highest career scoring average in the history of the league, and a reputation for excellence and pathological competitiveness that is arguably unmatched in the NBA if not all of North American team sports. The competitiveness is central to the Jordan legend; if you like mythology you may enjoy that. LeBron is in his prime and has perhaps only found his highest possible gear this season, so in that sense it’s a wait-and-see judgment. And in part it reflects the deference people give to Jordan based on championships, which are sort of regarded as the be-all and end-all when discussing the greatest basketball players, as well as the desire to win at all costs that people have said LeBron doesn’t have.
storyteller0910 is right that LeBron is bigger and stronger. Jordan was the superior scorer, and LeBron gets the better of him in terms of rebounds and assists. So in that sense you can make the argument LeBron is the more well-rounded player. What’s interesting is that if you compare them in terms of player efficiency ratings, their best seasons look awfully similar. This season LeBron may blow that metric out of the water and we’ll see what he does from here on out, but even though they played in different periods you could still say their peaks were broadly comparable.
They compare. I guess the consensus is that people take seriously the question of whether he is, or will be, as good or better than Jordan. This is a pretty hard thing to do in the NBA.
Lebron has been told of his mission by Gandalf, and traveled to that bar where he meets Strider, maybe about the time of the battle with the wights. Most of his story is yet to be written.
Jordan walked into Mordor, slam dunked the One Ring about 6 times, surpassed Gandalf, scored with all the elf-chicks, bought the Shire, found another balrog and dunked over his ass, and has the t-shirt.
When LBJ wins Defensive player of the year and makes 9 all-NBA Defensive teams (First team), then perhaps we can say he’s a more well-rounded player.
And personally, I’m not sold on PER. Any ranking that says LaMarcus Aldridge and Al Jefferson are better players than Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant needs to be taken with alick of salt.
Thank you for putting this in such a Skald the Rhymer-appropriate way.
The interesting thing about it is that I think Jordan’s all-around skills get underrated a bit when people have this discussion. LeBron gets more rebounds and assists, but it’s pretty close, and Jordan scored more in an era when defense was more physical (even if the overall athleticism of the NBA has grown since then.) I agree LeBron probably won’t win any defensive player of the year awards. Jordan was an incredible and relentless defender who could steal the ball like few other guys, and it looks like he was about as effective as LeBron in shot blocking. But there’s something to be said for a guy who can credibly defend anybody from point guards to centers, which LeBron can do. And he’s been first-team all defense the last four seasons. I’d expect him to be on that list a few more times yet.
I know people argue about the value of the stat; I can’t really defend it or argue against it. I will say that I think you’re talking about their PER last season, when Duncan and Kobe were both showing their age - not their overall value. They have both bounced back this year. For what it’s worth, Michael and LeBron are #1 and #2 all time in this statistic. In that order. And none of this is to say I’d take LeBron over Michael because I wouldn’t. But they’re comparable in a lot of ways at this stage and it’s going to be very interesting to see what LeBron does from here, especially over the next three or four or five years of his prime. I don’t think he’ll end up with six championships, but you almost have to expect him to put up several more all-time great seasons.
The other thing about LBJ is that he is a more versatile scorer who can play and defend all five positions. For that reason I feel he has been robbed of the defensive player of the year a few times. He has started developing a post game. Which makes him as close to undefendable as the league has ever seen. He doesn’t have the rings though, but he might. Him and Kyrie in 18 months has me salivating.
As stated, Jordan’s competitiveness is legendary and perhaps only ever approached by Kobe. This is undervalued in sports. This is responsible for 6 championships more so than his skill set and is the reason he is valued like he does (although let’s not ignore Pippen who is probably top 15 all time).
An extreme example is Vince Carter v kobe. Carter is one of the best natural athlete the league has ever seen and the other is top 10 all time, to be conservative (and I hate the lakers)
I don’t know that LeBron is a more versatile scorer than Jordan was. He can definitely post up more easily because he’s larger. And there’s more emphasis on three-point shooting today than there was in the late '80s and '90s- LeBron has become a much better 3-point shooter this season. If Jordan were playing today he’d take more threes and make it a bigger part of his game. In a lot of his peak years he took only two or three per game. In '86-'87 he scored 3,000 points and took less than one three-point attempt per game. LeBron took about 4 per game for years. Now he’s down to about two of them per game but he’s gotten much better at picking his spots.
To my eye, LeBron’s a better defender than Jordan was at this point in his career. I think it’s easy to gloss over the fact that the man is 275 friggin’ pounds out there. That is an incredibly important difference in terms of what you can do defensively.
I also think the “all-around” comparison isn’t even close if we’re weighting the different facets of the game equally. LeBron’s a great scorer, Jordan was the best. They’re both great defenders and very good rebounders for their positions. But LeBron is an all-world passer. Jordan was OK. Even allowing for the fact that there’s honestly no comparison in terms of one-on-one scoring, the fact that they were both elite at everything except passing, where LeBron is Bird-caliber elite and Jordan was just another guy, makes it a mismatch.
Not that I think that matters. NBA basketball comes down to one-on-one scoring, eventually. Jordan was off the charts, and literally nobody ever stopped him consistently enough to beat his teams once he hit his stride. That’s the beginning and end of it for me. You couldn’t stop him from putting the damn ball in the basket. LeBron does more things and probably is more “valuable” over the course of a season and will have a more impressive career stat sheet when it’s all said and done, but I’m not sure whether or not it’s reasonable to expect LeBron to shoot 55-60% and score 30 a game while making all those all-around contributions and not dominating the ball every year in the playoffs. He does that in the regular season, which nobody else ever has, really. If he can do that in the postseason, he’s the greatest of all time. If he can’t, then it still comes down to getting 45 when they need him to, which Jordan always did.
When LeBron goes right, he usually drives; when he goes left, he usually shoots a jumper. It has to do with his mechanics and how he loads the ball for release. “So if I have to guard him,” Jordan says, “I’m gonna push him left so nine times out of 10, he’s gonna shoot a jump shot. If he goes right, he’s going to the hole and I can’t stop him. So I ain’t letting him go right.”
The best analogy I can come up with would be that Lebron is Lennox Lewis and MJ is Joe Louis (I may have jumped too far in the way-back machine). Lewis is taller, stronger, and has a longer reach but there’s just something indescribably wrong about saying Lewis is better than Louis and unless I saw the fight in front of me, I won’t believe it. Even then I still probably won’t believe it.
Even though I’ve been able to witness both careers from inception, it’s really hard to say. While Jordan dominated the league like no other, the rest of the league is simply better now. By any objective measurement, such as speed and size, today’s average team and player dominate Joedan’s era. And I think if you drop today’s Lebron into Jordan’s NBA, he would turn Jordan into the 2nd best player, and by a wide margin. I’m just not sure if that’s the right way to compare.
And Lennox Lewis would have made mince meat out of Jou Louis or
Muhammad Ali.
I don’t think you can say this as definitively as you do here. I see no evidence that players today are as a whole any different in terms of size than the players in, say, 92-93. I can’t find any actual data on this point, so I’m open to being convinced, but I don’t think NBA players have changed much in terms of size in the last few years. Speed… well, you probably have a point.
Jordan also played in a rougher NBA, at least to my eye; transplant Lebron to the 92-93 season, and opposing teams would have ways of defending him that aren’t really used any more. Lebron’s a big guy, but so was Charles Oakley. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t adapt - he definitely would. But he wouldn’t cut through the league the way you imagine, and I think he’d still be second to Jordan.
Just a subjective viewpoint, but I have seen LeBron blow more games than I saw Jordan do so, and that’s having seen far moer of Jordan than I have so far of LeBron.
I don’t see that LeBron is a “more versatile” scorer than Michael. Jordan would often post up smaller defenders and could and did score in the post against front court defenders.
Admittedly, leBron pulls 1 more rebound a game than jordan did and deals assists with 1.5 more a game (1.5 being a fairly significant difference). He has picked up his 3-point shooting pct. tremendously this seson yet still leads Jordan by only 9 thousandths of a percentage point.
I’ve probably said this, too, but according to this chart, size hasn’t changed much over the years. There’s been an increase in average weight but size hasn’t fluctuated much. The average player is still around 6’7" - although that’s just an average of the size of all the players and it wouldn’t show if starters have gotten bigger or if bigger guys are getting more minutes than they used to. And of course teams and players often fudge these numbers anyway. I do think speed has increased and there is a higher value placed on guys with very long arms.
There’s no hand checking today, and yes, the game seems less rough.
Agreed, I’d love to see Lebron matched up against the Pistons and the Knicks of the early 90’s. Those were some nasty physical teams.
In the playoffs, it seems like Lebron fades a bit. When the moment for the game winning shot comes, he doesn’t have the confidence Jordan had. Sometimes he doesn’t even want the ball.
I saw someone say up above that Lebron is a better post player than Jordan, due to his size. Jordan was actually a PHENOMENAL post player, he just didn’t need to go to the basket every time. His typical post move ended with a fadeaway jumper that was nearly unstoppable.
