My own Rushmore would consist of players from my lifetime. Erving, Jordan, Olajuwan, and James; and Erving’s hair from his ABA days. Just missing the cut would be Magic, Kobe, and Duncan.
James is really interesting, the most polarizing athlete since…Ali? And who would his game most closely resemble, historically speaking? The only player that comes close for me would be Chris Webber - point power forwards I guess.
Nah. Among active NBA players Kobe has him beat easily, and then Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds are two of the biggest assholes in sports in recent decades. Ali wanted everyone’s attention; The Decision debacle aside, LeBron wants people to like him.
I think Magic and Oscar Robertson are the best choices.
Jordan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Dr. J
I think these 4 had the biggest influence on basketball. Dr. J. especially brought basketball play above the rim and defined the modern game.
Despite how different they are, I think he’s still most similar to Jordan. He’s not really a power forward. Webber was very stationary at the high post and they ran their offense off of him from there; he wasn’t taking the defense where he wanted them. Plus, he shot that elbow jumper a million times a game, and picked and popped a lot, so I assume if you looked at data for his shot locations he’d have relatively few around the rim compared to other high-volume scorers, even during the brief period where he was a high-volume scorer. Lebron gets to the rim a ton and shoots (in historical terms) a ton of threes, and doesn’t really mess around in the mid-range, which is good, because the mid-range is a black hole for efficiency, but which really makes him unique. Magic wasn’t an iso scorer. Oscar wasn’t good enough. I’m only saying it that way because I can’t think of an elegant way to say it, but the numbers are misleading.
So really what you’re looking for is a plus-plus-plus finisher around the rim who operates in the post a lot but who plays outside-in to get himself a lot of shot opportunities. Bird, Jordan, Barkley, Lebron, healthy Wade, prime Kobe… I think that’s pretty much the list. When both of their careers have taken their full shapes maybe it’ll be Durant, but if you cross off the guys who aren’t great passers and then the guys who aren’t great defenders, (it is obviously my opinion that) you end up with Jordan and Lebron.
That’s from June 2012. To get an idea of how rapidly LeBron is able to improve specific aspects of his game, check out his 2014 shot chart and compare them. LeBron now takes fewer midrange shots, and the ones he does take are clustered around the left block where he posts up…and he shoots 49% from there. It has been a down year for him shooting the three, though. But part of what makes LeBron so impressive is that he can make himself be great at any aspect of the game. He decided to work on defense, and went from average to world-class. He decided to work on shooting threes, and jumped from about 31% to 40%. Even a bad year, like this one, he’s shooting 37%. He decided to work on his post game, and is now one of the very best, if not the best, post players in the league. He decided to become more efficient, and increased his shooting percentage for an unbelievable seven consecutive seasons, from 47.6% in 2006 to a mind-blowing 57.1% this season.
There’s seemingly nothing he can’t do on the court, if he sets his mind to it.
Jordan is clearly on.
Magic seems to also have reached consensus status.
Russell deserves to be on even if you have era bias. He has more championship rings than fingers.
The last spot seems to be up for grabs. Wilt, Kareem, Bird, Kobe, Duncan, Lebron all have cases. Personally I say Bird, and I think Lebron as of right now has the weakest case but that stands to change.
Would you argue that Washington wouldn’t be able to handle the rigors of the modern presidency? Or that Teddy’s antiquated approach to diplomacy would likely have us mired in nuclear war if he was president now?
Plus Russell won repeatedly against Wilt who punked Kareem who went on to win against Hakeem who played against Shaq, who beat Duncan, who played with Dirk… At the end of the day it’s just a game where you put the ball through one hoop and keep the other guy from putting the ball through another hoop. The game has changed, but not to an insurmountable degree.
The Coach Cal (as much as I loathe him) era Wildcats would give those 4 a run for their money: Wall Bledsoe Randle Davis.
Well, just to provide context to Larry’s passing, Bird was never the primary initiator of the offense. Even in his highest assist year: 1986-7, Dennis Johnson was still the point guard and DJ dished out 7.5 apg to Bird’s 7.6. Ainge was 3rd with 5.6. Compare that with Lebron’s ball dominating style. In 2010, Lebron handed out 8.6 apg, leaving “point guard” Mo Williams with 5.3 apg.
Everyone’s familiar with Lebron’s “passing”. He pounds it at the top of the key. If he sees an entry pass, he makes it. If he doesn’t, he drives. If the drive is there, he slams it home. If it’s not, he kicks it out for an open jumper. It’s very elementary stuff. Bird on the other hand runs the offense, and makes a ton of his passes with his back to the basket which is much harder than passing facing up.
It’s really an entirely different level of passing. Bird’s passes were really ingenious and the way he exploited the angles made the game look almost too easy.
When was the last time you saw Lebron play, 2006?
If you’re going to say that I’m wrong, come out and say it. Don’t be snarky. I watch the NBA plenty. Lebron still pounds the hell out of the ball. He’s a much better shooter than 2006, and it seems that he’s gracious enough to let someone else bring the ball past the time line but his game (and his passes) are still predicated on his ball dominance.
Peak Larry Bird ('84-'88) attempted 20.9 field goals and 5.9 free throws per game.
The Miami version of LeBron attempts 18.1 field goals and 7.7 free throws per game.
What makes the former “running the offense” and the latter “ball dominance”?
That’s life in the modern NBA. You can’t back a guy down for 10 seconds, then hit a cutter coming down the lane anymore, because the defense overloads your side of the floor to stop you from doing exactly that, and there’s a five-second rule for backing guys down. LeBron’s passes are the ones he needs to make for his era: finding guys in the weakside corner, finding guys behind the zone or the double-team at the rim, finding the roll man in a pick-and-roll, finding guys spotting up behind him off his pin-downs, and so on. They both found guys who were able to score off their passes 6-7 times per game.
If anything, LeBron’s assist numbers are hurt by the end of the illegal defense rule, because back in Bird’s day, if a guy left his man to double the ball, no one else could switch onto the man he left. Conversely, in LeBron’s era, another guy switches to help the helper, and the guy LeBron passes to moves the ball to the helper’s man, who then shoots. It’s a secondary assist (aka the hockey assist), off a double team and a pass created by LeBron, and it doesn’t count as an assist for the box score.
I have an era bias because, from where I’m sitting, a league where Boston can win their conference 10 seasons in a row and 12 out of 13 seasons, collecting 11 titles, is ipso facto uncompetitive. Even the Bulls didn’t dominate the 90s the way the Celtics dominated the 60s.
OK, but this post (unintentionally, I assume) illustrates the point I’m trying to make about comparing players across eras. Why did LeBron James work on reducing midrange or long range two-pointers and increasing both the number and efficiency of his threes? Because modern analytics and team thinking have determined that the former is among the least efficient things you can do and the latter among the most efficient. So LeBron, to his enormous credit, has worked on evolving as a player to take advantage of this increase in knowledge. But this thinking is very new. Do you really think Larry Bird wouldn’t have done the same, had the NBA culture of the time recognized the inefficiency of the mid-range shot? Magic Johnson? Jordan? Hell, Pete Maravich? (As an aside, I think Maravich might we have been one of the most efficient scorers of all time had he played under modern rules and thinking).
Look, there are really two ways of approaching this “who’s the best” / “Mount Rushmore” conversation. The first is: buy a time machine, take every player who’s ever played at his prime, dump them all into a giant league, and see who’s the best. If your argument that the answer is “Michael Jordan and LeBron James,” you’re right. LeBron would own that league. He’s nearly the same height as Russell was and outweighs him by 25 pounds. He’s better conditioned, faster, stronger, and has the immense advantage of knowing 40 more years’ worth of collective experience about what works and does not work in the NBA. This is an easy answer. But it’s kind of a boring debate because of it. LeBron would be the MVP of that league if Jordan wasn’t; the All-NBA teams would be heavily weighted toward the last ten years and nearly entirely weighted toward the last 25.
But:
I’m more interested in a more nuanced conversation. Take Russell. First of all, he played at a time when they didn’t track offensive or team rebounds (so no REB%) or blocks, so some portion of his objective value isn’t even measurable against his peers. Jimmy Chitwood notes Russell’s offensive shortcomings, but he was playing in an era and on a team where he simply was not expected to dominate offensively… and didn’t need to, in order to win. He was asked to very specific things: overwhelm the opposing offense, dominate the boards, be a steady offensive contributor, pass well, set picks. The concept of “offensive efficiency” as we think of it today wasn’t a consideration. And here’s where the rings factor in, along with all the regular season wins: it - at least from the perspective of Russell himself and everyone he played with - it worked. Russell did the things that were believed to contribute to a winner, and his team won. The fact that we now know there are ways he could have improved his game is only interesting if we’re considering the question above (which, as I said, to me is not an interesting question).
But if I got my time machine and grabbed 15-year-old Russ from 1949 and brought him to 1999 to play against a 15-year-old LeBron in an incredibly advanced early basketball program…
…if I taught him modern ideas about offensive efficiency and what works and what matters…
…if I got him a personal trainer, bulked him up with 15 extra pounds of muscle, and sent him to work with Hakeem Olajuwon once a year on post offense…
…if, in short, I leveled the playing field…
Are you absolutely sure LeBron is still a better player? I’m not. I’m not sure of the opposite, either. I really don’t know. All we have are variously subjective guesses - but those variously subjective guesses are more fun to talk about than the simple reality that the actual 2014 LeBron James would eat the actual 1964 Bill Russell’s lunch.
Does that make sense?
Lebron’s insistence to run point. Durant takes a boatload of shots but Westbrook ultimately is still the guy deciding who gets the ball when. Kudos to Lebron for dipping his toe into the post the past 2 seasons and his efficiency has skyrocketed. However, it’s not a regular occurrence and imo the first two years of the Heatles was wasted in not letting Wade takeover primary playmaking duties.
I think Lebron is very effective at what he does. Regardless of illegal defense rules, dribble-kick and pick-and-roll plays have been staples of Basketball on all levels. However, I know that at least 3 teams post-illegal-defense have run offenses that eschewed those particular plays. LA’s triangle, San Antonio’s cutter-heavy offense, and the Wizards ran a variant of the Princeton with Arenas/Jamison/Butler.
I’m just pointing out (largely) stylistic differences but I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that Larry’s passing abilities aren’t being given its due if you only look at the raw numbers.
MJ and the Bulls have 6 conference championships and 6 rings.
Magic’s lakers won their conference 8 of 10 times and won 5 titles.
Bird won 5 conference championships and 3 titles in the same span.
San Antonio has won 5 conference titles and 4 championships under Duncan.
Kobe has won 7 conference championships and 5 rings since 1999 with the Lakers.
It just looks like good players win a bunch. Boston might be inflated a little, but just how much benefit of the doubt you afford them is up to you. I wouldn’t completely discount the era though.
I’m not being snarky; your level of dismissiveness suggested that maybe you had reasons not to follow his career too closely. There’s not a lot of argument to be had over it; it’s just not what happens in the Heat offense. Lebron as a hulking Stephon Marbury playing drive and kick and making “elementary” passes as opposed to the sophisticated back-down game of Larry Bird is not a comparison I’d expect somebody who’s watched the Heat to try to draw.
For what it’s worth, I understand this. I’m not saying Lebron’s career is more worthy because Lebron is more efficient from an analytics perspective compared to Russell or considering what would happen if they played against each other; I’m looking at where Lebron is compared to the competition and where Russell was compared to his competition. I’m saying Lebron, in context, considering that nutrition and computers and intensive training programs and all that made it inevitable that Lebron and everyone he plays against would be objectively miles ahead of the guys from Russell’s generation, is a much more impressive commodity in the 2014 NBA than Russell was when he played. Lebron is way better than all the other guys in today’s NBA who also would have thrashed the league in the 60s, after all. It’s not like I’m telling you JR Smith deserves to be on Mt. Rushmore over Russell.
The fact that the Celtics could win with Russell doing what he did, and not doing what he did plus other things, is not a condemnation of Russell, but neither does it make the things he couldn’t do irrelevant.
Odd that you characterize it as something he insists on, as opposed to the logical thing for his coaches to have him do, when he’s an elite ball-handler, passer, and decision maker. Bird, for all his talents, wasn’t on LeBron’s level as a ball-handler.
They won the East in the first year, and won the title in the second, so they weren’t particularly wasted.
Wait, you think Wade should have been the Heat’s playmaker? The guy who’s inferior to LeBron at literally every aspect of basketball? You’re going to have to explain that one.
Sure, (though none of them run those anymore), but that doesn’t mean LeBron was asked to make the same passes Bird was, or that Bird was asked to make the same passes LeBron does. Both are elite passers, and it’s easy to overrate aesthetics (though LeBron has plenty of gorgeous passes in his highlight reel), when what matters is getting the ball to a guy who can score or, or quickly find another player who can.
Bird is either the best or second-best passing forward of all time. LeBron is the other guy in that conversation.
I just wrote it to praise LeBron, not as a statement that other guys from other eras could have matched LeBron’s ability to change his game. Maybe they could and maybe they couldn’t, but LeBron did, and deserves credit.
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
Why did LeBron James work on reducing midrange or long range two-pointers and increasing both the number and efficiency of his threes? Because modern analytics and team thinking have determined that the former is among the least efficient things you can do and the latter among the most efficient. So LeBron, to his enormous credit, has worked on evolving as a player to take advantage of this increase in knowledge. But this thinking is very new. Do you really think Larry Bird wouldn’t have done the same, had the NBA culture of the time recognized the inefficiency of the mid-range shot? Magic Johnson? Jordan? Hell, Pete Maravich? (As an aside, I think Maravich might we have been one of the most efficient scorers of all time had he played under modern rules and thinking).
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Maybe, maybe not. I’m pretty certain every single NBA player is getting bascially similar information on how they should be playing from an efficiency standpoint, and some have been able to adapt to it (LeBron) and others have not (Josh Smith).
And that’s just the offense…NBA defense has changed even more over the years.
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
Look, there are really two ways of approaching this “who’s the best” / “Mount Rushmore” conversation. The first is: buy a time machine, take every player who’s ever played at his prime, dump them all into a giant league, and see who’s the best.
…
Does that make sense?
[/QUOTE]
What other way did you have in mind? You didn’t say, exactly, but given the context, I assume you mean judging players by their peers. That’s fine by me…if I sit down to pick the four most complete players for their era, I come up with Jordan, James, and Chamberlain as locks, and a fairly open fourth spot I’m going to give to Duncan because he’s my favorite player of all time, and as deserving as anyone else.
The problems with just counting rings are legion. Teams win championships, not individuals. His team winning a title is evidence that a given player on it adds value, but to what extent? How much did the '86 Celtics owe to Bird, versus McHale, or Johnson, or the Boston Garden crowd, or KC Jones? I have no idea.
Also, most of Russell’s rings came in a league with 9 teams, no salary cap, and only one team, the Celtics, were doing anything like modern conditioning, or scouting, allowing them to fleece other teams repeatedly in trades. They also got a substantial first-mover advantage from playing more black players than the other teams. How much of the Celtic dominance came from the players’ talent, and how much from the franchise itself? Again, we can’t really know.
LeBron’s rings came in a league with 30 teams, and a salary cap, and in general a much more competitive environment. What he does works, but can’t realistically be expected to produce 11 rings. Maybe Tim Duncan’s 4 rings are more impressive in context than Russell’s 11. Hard to say.
OK, sell me Duncan over Kareem (or as equally deserving, I suppose). Assume you don’t have to convince me Duncan’s on the all-time all-defensive team.
Basically, degree of difficulty. Duncan played in an era that was much more hostile to big men (rebounding is harder, posting up is harder, just being big counts for less as players get more athletic), played better defense in a much more complex system, and was able to transform himself from a back-to-the basket post-up force to a facing, pick-and-roll (and later, pick-and-pop) machine as the rules, his coach’s system, and his physical abilities shifted. Kareem shot that same damn skyhook for decades.
Both their teams were highly successful, so that’s a wash, though again Duncan faced a higher degree of difficulty.
Then there are the personal things: like I said, Duncan’s my favorite player, so right off, I’m biased; Duncan’s stuck with one small-market franchise, while Kareem asked for a trade from his small-market franchise, and I hate the Lakers.
ETA: I also feel Duncan did better against his primary rivals than Kareem did against his.
George Mikan because he was the first and Jordan because he was the best. The other two are subject to negotiation and discussion, but I’m leaning toward Russell and Abdul-Jabbar.
Well from what I’ve seen of the Heat’s “positionless” basketball, it’s Lebron getting the ball up top, looking for cuts. If nothing presents itself, he makes a move - either ISO or by a pick. Depending on how they play him, Lebron makes a pass or scores a bucket. Occasionally he doesn’t have the ball, and occasionally he gets an assist while out on transition but for the vast majority of his touches, it does resemble a hulked out Stephon Marbury. But again, if I’m wrong, please… elucidate.
Comparative advantage vs absolute advantage. Lebron certainly has the absolute advantage over Wade. I won’t dispute that. However, if you pick Lebron as your ball handler, you’re marginalizing Wade’s abilities and Wade makes for a worse off-ball player than Lebron. I think a pick and roll would work better with Wade as the guard and lebron as the pick man. I think Lebron is better off finishing oops than throwing it. I think Lebron posting up, or making cuts is better than Wade posting up and making cuts.
I won’t dispute that either. Lebron has unbelievable handles and as far as guys who are 6’8 250lbs+ goes, nobody else comes close. I just don’t think he’s able to do what Bird was able to do, specifically with regard with being able to make passes without acting like a point guard. It’s a very hard thing to do.
Look, all I was trying to say originally is that even though Bird is only 36th on the career assists list, his passing is understated. My gripes about Lebron’s play probably borderlines the nitpicky but when you’re trying to get your face put on Mt. Rushmore, nits are all there’s left to pick.
It’s nothing any more complicated than just that I have watched the Heat and I genuinely have not seen that action a lot, and certainly not the vast majority of the time. Here’s the stretch of game six of last year’s Finals, which I picked because 1. it’s available and 2. because if ever Lebron was dominating the ball, it was during the fourth quarter of those Finals.
By my count, two of those possessions fit the mold you described, where Lebron’s at a standstill dribble. On all of the rest, he’s either not the primary ballhandler, he’s catching on the move, or he’s posting. I watched the first quarter of game seven (linked in the sidebar of that video) and the same formula seems to hold true - Lebron catches on the wing and throws the ball away / catches on a basket cut / catches on the wing and reverses the ball / catches on the break and selfposts / catches at the top and waits for Miller to come off of a screen / plays weakside on the block / plays weakside corner / plays weakside corner / posts Diaw, etc. In about 40 minutes of watching I just don’t see a lot of the action you’re talking about.