Both became professionals in their sports with unbelievable hype. Both became the best at their sports during their primes. Neither are finished, but so far… Who has done better? Discuss.
Tiger Woods by a mile. He only needs four more wins to become the all-time leader in PGA Tour wins (he’s ahead of Jack Nicklaus already.) He doesn’t have the most majors, but he’s second and well ahead of the third place guy. He’s also got seven or eight productive years left, assuming he recovers from his injuries and surgeries.
LeBron James, on the other hand seems unlikely to end his career as the all-time best in any major statistical category. He’s miles behind guys like Kareem and Malone and Jordan in points scored, and he’s only got two championships. He’s 100 win shares behind Kareem in his career and you can make a good case that his production is already dropping.
Tiger, but that isn’t any slight on LeBron, who I already consider to be one of the best 10 players in the history of basketball.
Yeah, Tiger really was in a class all his own. About six months after turning pro, he won the Masters by 12 shots, still the all time record. That’s like winning the final game of the NBA Championship by 40 points.
And I don’t know if you can call it hype when he won the US Amateur three times in a row before turning pro, which would be like winning the Heisman three straight years. Nobody else has done that — not even Bobby Jones, who competed as an amateur ten years longer than Tiger did, and is generally considered the best amateur ever.
At his peak, he was considered not only the best player in the world by far, but the best in each aspect of the game — driving, irons, short game, and putting. In a game where only a handful of players win more than once every couple of years, he won 20 out of 38 PGA events over a two-year period. And they were the toughest events on the schedule.
If his injuries keep him from returning to form, he’ll still be considered the best ever by many fans, and no worse than the second best by almost everyone.
People forget how dominant Woods was before his fall from grace. He’s past his prime, but is still a top golfer.
This.
I’d be… let’s say interested… to hear that good case.
2013-2014 was a down year by LeBron’s standards, but 2012-2013 was his best year since 2008. He’s had well over 10 win shares for every season since his second; he’s only 29, so if he manages six more seasons at 14 WS per (until he’s 35, not just possible but likely barring injury), it’ll put him well past MJ and in range of Malone, Wilt, and Kareem.
Unless he gets injured or decides to take up hockey or something, he’ll have more assists than any other non-point guard in history by the time he’s 31 years old. Stockton’s out of reach, I think, but 8 more seasons at 400 assists per will put him at sixth all time on that list - at power forward half the time.
He’s only 15,000 points behind Kareem, and he’s scored fewer than 2000 only once - at that rate, he’d be approaching the record by the time he’s 36 years old. Even allowing for age, the points record is absolutely within reach if at some point he decides that it’s important to him. He’s going to blow past Jordan, in any case.
He’ll likely get his third ring this year. Assuming he does the smart thing and abandons Miami for a better situation after next season, there’s no reason to expect that more are not in the offing. Put it all together, and I think his current trajectory has his career ending with LeBron James the consensus choice for second-best player of all time.
Which means he’s behind Tiger Woods, obviously, but it’s closer than this thread has acknowledged so far.
I get that. What I meant was the anticipation of their pro careers. Both were well written about before turning pro.
I won’t actually vote, but I tend to think we’re overlooking Tiger because he hasn’t done as much the last few years while LeBron has continued to improve.
This goes to the difference between individual and team sports. Few fans would cast their vote for best ever based on any individual statistical category, and one of LeBron’s strengths is his versatility. And of course he’s miles behind guys like Jordan and Kareem. He won’t be 30 until the end of this year and they played into their 40s. He’ll gradually decline a few years from now, but he’s got some prime territory left and should still be a very strong player into the early 2020s.
I heard somebody (Larry Brown, I think, but have no cite handy) say that IHO, Lebron has surpassed Larry Bird as the best small forward in NBA history.
Tiger Woods lived up to the hype better. LeBron is great, no question, but reasonable people could make a list of the 5 greatest NBA players ever and leave LeBron off it. Tiger, on the other hand, is no lower than 2nd on anyone’s list. Even before Tiger turned pro, people like Jack Nicklaus saw him and said, “This kid is going to be THE best ever.” And he was.
Tiger came on like gangbusters INSTANTLY. Within a year of his turning pro, everybody agreed “This is the greatest player I’ve ever seen.”
As great as LeBron has been and will continue to be, his opponents fully believe they can contain him and beat him (ask the Mavericks). When Tiger was at his peak, his opponents knew they had NO chance if he was anywhere close to peak form.
Again, that’s an individual vs. team sport thing.
astorian:
As golf has no defensive component, the above is really not an apples-to-apples comparison.
Okay, keep it simpler: Would every NBA beat writer agree that LeBron is one of the two best players ever?
No.
Would every golf writer rate Tiger #1 or #2 of all time.
Yes.
I don’t know anything about golf, but I guarantee you that plenty of writers would rate Tiger Woods below #2 all-time, because that’s what writers do. Anyway, LeBron’s 31. The real comparison would be where people would put him seven years from now, at which time I imagine he’ll be in pretty much the exact same place in history as Woods.
He’s 29. But yes, the relevant point is that he’s much earlier in his career than Tiger is. Tiger hasn’t won a major in six years and is dealing with another significant injury. I know he got the #1 ranking back, but I think everybody would agree he’s well past his peak. He may break the record for wins - the major championship record gets less likely every year, doesn’t it? - but he’s more in the statistic-accumulating stage than the dominating stage. LeBron’s not there yet. Before this season he’d won four MVPs in five years and you can expect him to contend for a few more of those. We’re two or three seasons away from saying he’s no longer in his prime, and even then he’ll still be very good.
There’s hardly any discussion about Tiger not being the best golfer ever, Lebron is up there but he is still not Jordan.
He’s not much earlier in his career than Tiger, he’s just younger. Statistically, basketball players see a big decline in production after the age of thirty, and almost all are done with their careers by 35. Golfers can remain productive well into their 40’s. Jack Nicklaus won a major at age 46. Sam Snead won his last tournament at age 52.
People somehow forget that Tiger Woods won five tournaments just last year out of sixteen played while still missing substantial time with injuries. He was the PGA player of the year.
You’re now comparing great players to average ones. That doesn’t work. Most of the all-time greats played well past 35: Kareem retired at 42, Jordan was 40, Wilt was 37, Shaq was 39, Duncan is 38 and still going, Bird was closing in on 37. There are a few who quit around 35 - Robertson and Russell, for example - but those are the exceptions, and that’s further back in NBA history. There don’t seem to be many cases of great players quitting at 35 these days, perhaps because of modern salaries and treatments. Kobe Bryant is almost 36 and is held together by duct tape and stem cells and wants to play for two more years. Barring a catastrophic injury there’s no way LeBron will quit by 35. Like I said, he’ll probably hang it up in the early 2020s.
Those are exceptional cases, are they not? I don’t read a lot about golf, but around the time of Tiger’s big scandal and injuries I remember reading a little bit about how even great golfers see their productivity decline in their mid-30s. Just looking at a chart, Nicklaus won 14 of his major championships by age 35, and he went six years between his 17th and his 18th.
I did mention this. He’s still really good and can be the best in the world for stretches. We’ve taken that for granted some. But I don’t think anyone believes he’s as good as he was in the mid-2000s. By the same token, LeBron may not be the best player in the NBA three years from now, but he should still be very good.
The guys I mentioned are exceptional cases, but they’re his peers. They are 1,2,and 3 in career wins.
Basketball is a different game. Most of the guys with great longevity are big guys, not elite athletes like LeBron. They relied on being bigger than everyone else and some specialized skills. Jordan is the only guy comparable to Lebron of those you mentioned, but he being a small forward didn’t take the beating that LeBron takes every night. Bird might be similar, but he was 35 when his career ended and he only played in half the games his final year.
Nicklaus won nine tournaments after he turned 38 (Tiger is 38) and Sam Snead won 33 (!)