Lebron > Jordan?

MJ.
MJ in his prime, one on one, would tie the flopper lebron in knots and dunk in his face.
Yeh, lebron has sick talent. But Jordan was from a different planet.
Jordan made some of the best defenders of all time look absolutely stupid.
Think Plastic Man. Think Teh Glove. Think all of them. MJ ate 'em up.
It's not close. Lebron will have a nice little career, make a sh!tpot of money, and prly win a couple of rings. But he'll never come close to MJ's greatness.
 
MedHawk08 said:
Lebron is bigger and stronger. Compared to Jordan in the first half of his career, Lebron is definitely NOT quicker and probably not any faster and I would need to see proof that he has a higher vertical than Jordan. Since when is athleticism only measured by those things anyway? How about the creative and difficult shots that Jordan was always making? How about his gracefulness in the air? You are basically equating bigger with more athletic and that is a poor argument IMO.
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I did not equate only bigger. I said bigger stronger faster quicker and could jump higher. I did get proved wrong and I admit it on MJ jumping higher, but Lebron can and will chase down ANY player past or present down from behind and swat them.

You also have to put Lebrons size into account. What 6-8/6-9 player do you see that can move as fast and quickly as he can?
 
anyone who thinks lebrons supporting cast is better than jordans was are just haters of the big 3. i guarantee bosh never makes the hall of fame and jordan played with rodman and pippen. 2 hall of famers. and anyone that has paid any attention to the heat this year know the rest of the team is complete trash. haslem didnt play the entire year and mike miller has had wrist problems and been terrible all year along with mike bibby being washed up. joel anthony is their center for gods sake. i think the heat supporting cast speaks more to lebrons greatness. and i dont see how anyone can blame lebron for leaving cleveland for miami he had literally no help. lebron left cleveland and they were the worst team in the league and they were absolutely dreadful. when jordan took his baseball break chicago still made the playoffs!
 
Travisam said:
Agree with Pip. By the time it is said and done Lebron will be the best all around player ever. Lebron now > Kobe's prime and it's not even close. Kobe has never and will never make his teammmates better. Lebron can control a game without scoring. Only Magic, Lebron, Oscar and Bird have been able to do that.
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This is one of the single most idiotic and misguided statements about sports I have ever read.
 
The sheer amount of misinformation in this thread (from every side) is astonishing.

The most important thing to remember in any debate about who the greatest player in NBA history is the era in which Jordan played. Not the NBA era; the sociopolitical era. Because Jordan played the majority of his career in the cable TV, pre-internet era, he was able to accomplish maximum social saturation while his people controlled the majority of the message. Most of the bad stuff about Jordan was kept from the majority of the public, while his positives were accentuated to the largest NBA audience of all time. To that point, objectivity in this argument is nearly impossible. While winning was of supreme importance to Jordan being recognized as the GOAT, had people been Tweeting, Facebooking, blogging, and microfollowing all of his flaws, Jordan's sociopolitical capital would have been diminished to a point where it likely would have affected people's recognition of his greatness on the court (much like what is happening to LeBron now-see comments like "Any chance he had to be the GOAT ended with The Decision"). In a lot of ways, the only athlete comparable to Jordan is Babe Ruth. Ruth, like Jordan, so captured the hearts and minds of Americans that his positive contributions were accentuated and his flaws were glossed over and by 1935, as Ruth's career was ending, the emotional tie for most people was so great that it was nearly impossible to be objective. That is the point Jordan is at now.
 
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Still, it is worth discussing, if one can be objective, who the GOAT is in basketball. There are really two categories at play here. The first category contains those players that are the most physically-able basketball players of all time. The second category contains those players that, upon completion of their careers, were so physically able (even dominant at times) that they transcended their peers for one reason or another (winning championships being the primary reason). No player can truly be evaluated in category two (the GOAT category) until their career has ended. This is the only pure and fair way.

In my opinion, category one contains a group of about 30-50 players (including several active players) as of now. In each generation (or decade, if you will), there are 5-10 players that rise to the top. Category two contains 10-15 players and there seems to be a spoken and unspoken hierarchy in this category.

For the sake of time, I'll list only active category one players that have shown enough in their careers that they could become category two players some day. I'll also list the players that I believe are category two players.

Active C1 players that could be C2 guys: Duncan, Shaq, Kobe, LeBron, maybe Dirk, and maybe Dwight Howard will get there (if he goes to the Lakers in free agency next summer and leads them to multiple championships, he could become transcendent). There are other C1 guys, but I don't think they have the ability to rise above the rest of the crop like these guys do or have.

Undoubtedly C2 guys (listed chronologically): Russell, Chamberlain, Kareem, Magic, Bird, Jordan
That's the Big Six. Almost no one will argue with those six. Throw in a few other names, and arguments can be made either way (like, what on earth do we do with George Mikan, Pete Maravich, and Bill Walton?!)
 
Travisam said:
Agree with Pip. By the time it is said and done Lebron will be the best all around player ever. Lebron now > Kobe's prime and it's not even close. Kobe has never and will never make his teammmates better. Lebron can control a game without scoring. Only Magic, Lebron, Oscar and Bird have been able to do that.
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Wrong and it is not even close, Jordan >>>> James in every aspect of the game. James won't be the best player ever ever that much is easy so see...

Jordon made everybody around him better and he would never give up on his teammates like James has done in the past. Biggest difference between the 2 is Jordan wouldn't ever give up and James has done it before.
 
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TChawk said:
Jordon made everybody around him better and he would never give up on his teammates like James has done in the past.
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Jordan once punched a teammate in the face. He ran multiple teammates out of Chicago. He called Will Perdue "Will Vanderbilt" because he wasn't good enough to be named after a Big 10 school. To often pushed his teammates (Kwame Brown, amongst many others) so hard that they were psychologically broken. Jordan was, in many ways, a less than ideal teammate.

Click page 60:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZU...m=2#v=onepage&q=flaming faggot jordan&f=false

A few Jordan quotes:
He's scared. He's got no heart...Nobody told me that. If I had spoken up, he wouldn't have been here.--on BJ Armstrong

They've got no idea what it's all about. The white guys, they work hard, but they don't have the talent. And the rest of them? Who knows what to expect? They're not good for much of anything.

You're an idiot. You've screwed up every play we ever ran. You're too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you.--said to Horace Grant

He can't do anything with the ball. Don't give it to him.--on Will Perdue

You ever hear of a guy, six-eleven maybe and two hundred sixty pounds, a guy big and fat like that and he can't get but two rebounds, if that many, running all over the damn court and he gets two rebounds? Big guy like that and he gets one rebound. Can't even stick his [expletive] into people and get more than that...Big, fat, fat guy. One rebound in three games. Power forward. Maybe they should call it powerless forward.--on Stacey King
 
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talkinhawks said:
I think you are seriously misusing the word "elite". Lebron has two other elite players on his team in Wade and Bosh. He has some other very good NBA talents in guys like Mike Miller, Mike Bibby, Haslem and Chalmers (could end up being a very solid pg for years).

Jordan had Pippen who is considered elite. No one else Jordan played with is at the elite level. BJ was good, but was he any better than Bibby? Kukoc was good but is he any better than Miller? They are pretty equivalent players really.

Jordan never had a big guy nearly as talented, especially on offense, as Bosh. Wade and Pippen could be seen as a wash. Rodman was a great defender and great rebounder, but was not in the same arena offensively as what Bosh is.

Pippen could never be a go to guy in the NBA...he proved that when Jordan was gone. Wade and Bosh were proven go to guys for each of their teams. I just don't see how you can make a comparison between the two when it comes to supporting casts. The Heat have a lot more talent on their roster than the Bulls did.
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Wow, you are clearly showing your lack of basketball knowledge. You claim Bosh and Wade are elite but Rodman and Pippen aren't?

LeBron joined a team that featured a 1st team All NBA guy in Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh who wasn't selected on any All NBA team.

Jordan's 72 win Bulls team featured Pippen who the year before was 1st Team All NBA and 1st Team All Defense and Dennis Rodman, who despite not being elite according to your standards, was 3rd Team All NBA and 1st Team All Defense. So Jordan joined with two other top 15 guys, yet that's not elite talent? Come on man.

LeBron has also played with Mario Chalmers, Carlos Arroyo and a washed up Mike Bibby starting at point. Jordan played with Ron Harper who averaged 20.1 ppg the year before joining the Bulls. Mike Miller at his peak and Kukoc might be comparable but Miller has been hurt all season and has been terrible while trying to play through the injuries. Kukoc was an extremely underrated player on that 72 win team, he was actually 6th in the entire NBA in offensive win shares per 48 mins.
 
Mac50702 said:
Lebron may not be the better player, but HE IS THE better athlete. He is bigger, stronger, faster, jumps higher, quicker. What else do you need to know?
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Lebron is not the better athlete. Jordan was not as big or strong. Jordan WAS faster, Jordan WAS quicker, Jordan COULD jump higher, Jordan HAD more stamina.

In his prime Jordan would beat Lebron in the 100, 200, 400, 800, 1 mile, 2 mile, high jump, long jump.

People want to talk about Lebron being better at defense??!? Through 8 seasons Jordan averaged more steals AND blocks per game than Lebron and Jordan already had 2 Titles through 8 seasons.
 
thejumper5 said:
Jordan once punched a teammate in the face. He ran multiple teammates out of Chicago. He called Will Perdue "Will Vanderbilt" because he wasn't good enough to be named after a Big 10 school. To often pushed his teammates (Kwame Brown, amongst many others) so hard that they were psychologically broken. Jordan was, in many ways, a less than ideal teammate.

Click page 60:
When Nothing Else Matters: Michael ... - Google Books

A few Jordan quotes:
He's scared. He's got no heart...Nobody told me that. If I had spoken up, he wouldn't have been here.--on BJ Armstrong

They've got no idea what it's all about. The white guys, they work hard, but they don't have the talent. And the rest of them? Who knows what to expect? They're not good for much of anything.

You're an idiot. You've screwed up every play we ever ran. You're too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you.--said to Horace Grant

He can't do anything with the ball. Don't give it to him.--on Will Perdue

You ever hear of a guy, six-eleven maybe and two hundred sixty pounds, a guy big and fat like that and he can't get but two rebounds, if that many, running all over the damn court and he gets two rebounds? Big guy like that and he gets one rebound. Can't even stick his [expletive] into people and get more than that...Big, fat, fat guy. One rebound in three games. Power forward. Maybe they should call it powerless forward.--on Stacey King
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OK, tehjumper, we get that you don't Like Mike.
But pls point out where MJ was incorrect in any of the quotes you cited? Seriously, was he wrong about any of those guys?
I'll answer for you: no, he was not.
Don't bag on MJ because of his fierce will to win and unwillingness to accept mediocrity and weakness in his teammates.
All those guys about whom MJ had harsh but accurate opinions? They all have multiple rings.
 
briankaldenberg said:
Lebron is not the better athlete. Jordan was not as big or strong. Jordan WAS faster, Jordan WAS quicker, Jordan COULD jump higher, Jordan HAD more stamina.

In his prime Jordan would beat Lebron in the 100, 200, 400, 800, 1 mile, 2 mile, high jump, long jump.
People want to talk about Lebron being better at defense??!? Through 8 seasons Jordan averaged more steals AND blocks per game than Lebron and Jordan already had 2 Titles through 8 seasons.
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Link?
 
Did Jordan ever quit on his team? Never followed the NBA enough back then to know. I know Lebron did...I watched it. Worse thing you can do in sports in my opinion. For that reason, I'll never be able put him up in that company no matter his stats and no matter how many rings he wins.
 
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