Jordan has higher:
Regular season and playoff PER
Regular season and playoff WS/48
Regular season and playoff BPM
Highest playoff BPM when leading a team to a championship (14.6 in 1991 to 11.0 in 2016)
Highest Playoff PER when leading a team to a championship (32.0 in 1991 to 30.3 in 2012)
-#1 most dominant team of all time (based on win %, strength of schedule, margin of victory, overweight playoffs), 3 of top 6, 4 of top 10 are Jordan-led Bulls teams. LeBron’s highest team is 20th with the Heat:
-Different source using similar methodology: 2 of top 6, 4 of top 12 are Jordan’s. LeBron’s highest is 18th:
-The triangle is built for team success and forced Jordan to reign in his game so the team could do better. Prior to the triangle, in ’88-89 Doug Collins started Jordan at point guard for 24 games. In those games Jordan blew away basically all of Lebrons career averages: ppg 30.4 to 27.1, assists 10.7 to 7.2, rebounds 9.2 to 7.4, steals 2.5 to 1.6. So when the playing field was level and the system was built around both of them, Jordan basically averaged more of everything than LeBron. This is partly because Jordan had more athleticism and energy than Lebron as a basketball player and so was able to contribute more on both ends of the court. (Reference to Point guard stats at 25:47 here: https://youtu.be/PyLcm8Zf_U0
)
***as a side note it was also during this short time at point guard that Jordan set the non-Wilt record for consecutive triple doubles (8) that Russell Westbrook only recently broke. Lebron fans love to talk about triple dubs but if Jordan had kept playing point guard he would’ve dominated Lebron in that stat too.
-A quick visual comparison of their 10 best statistical seasons, with Jordan obviously dominating: (Green indicates a 1st place ranking among the top 9 players of all time in that category) Source: https://youtu.be/6lDZ0g9HoPw
LeBron seems to get a lot of credit because teams fall apart after he leaves but that’s largely a result of the roster and offense being built around him. Jordan’s 90s Bulls played with structure, which limited Jordan but helped the team.
-Put Jordan instead of Lebron on those Miami Heat teams and they go 4 for 4 in championships instead of 2 out of 4. Put coach-killer Lebron on the 90s Bulls and quirky, journeyman-CBA coach Phil Jackson never becomes Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen is forced to become a spot-up shooter, the team underachieves and lebron fans complain he has a “thin bench” and not enough “help”.
This is Phil Jackson on the Dan Patrick show talking about what MJ was better at than Kobe but it 100% applies to MJ vs Lebron too (paraphrased): “Michael could play within the offense and encourage and play with his teammates and then takeover late in games”. At 33, in his 15th season in the league lebron still doesn’t have this figured out. He goes out and tries to do everything right from the start in the 2018 finals, then collapses later in all 4 games, then when asked about if he’s getting tired late in games (because his stats completely fell off in the 3rd and 4th quarters) he claims he’s fine because “I’m averaging a triple double in the finals.” Facepalm
-In game 6 of the 2013 finals with his team facing elimination Lebron played great for the first 7.5 minutes of the 4th quarter, scoring 13 points. Then he flat out chokes.
This is 28 yr old, prime LeBron’s final sequence of possessions starting with 4:30 left in the game and his team’s season on the line:
-misses jumper
-commits offensive foul (turnover)
-Tony Parker hits a critical 3 right in his face
-Fumbles a simple inbounds pass, recovers and dribbles for literally 15 seconds (classic Lebron) before turning the ball over
-his 3rd straight turnover on the next possession
-appears to be spacing off in the huddle while head coach is talking
-badly bricks 3 pointer then Mike Miller gets offensive rebound and throws it back to him for a wide open catch and shoot 3 which he makes
-misses final 3 then Bosh gets offensive rebound and passes to Ray Allen
If people want to call that guy^^^ the Greatest Basketball Player of All Time then be my guest, I’ll take Jordan everyday of the week.
YouTube of full game: https://youtu.be/H56iR3188P0
(A quick point to end the ridiculous Lebron fan argument of “Kerr and Paxson saved Jordan just like Ray Allen saved Lebron!” Please. Offensive rebounds happen on about 1/7 shot attempts and a Ray Allen 3 is about a 50/50 meaning when LeBron’s final 3 attempt bricked off the rim with 9 seconds left two things were true: 1) his team had a better than 90% chance of being eliminated and 2) the series was completely outside of his control. At no point in any of Jordan’s 6 championship runs was his team anything worse than about a 50/50 to win any series and no series was ever out of his control.)
Shannon Sharpe likes to say the 2014 spurs that crushed LeBron’s heat by a record finals margin had “4 Hall of Famers” which will probably be true but they had exactly ONE all star that year and he was a reserve, Tony Parker. 37 yr old Tim Duncan averaged 29 mins/game and 22 year old kawhi Leonard averaged 13 pts/game. 36 yr old Manu Ginobili wasn’t even a starter. The heat had 3 all stars, two of whom were starters (lebron and wade). That’s seriously embarrassing. 29 yr old prime Lebron set a Finals record for largest average losing margin against a team whose best player was Tony Parker. (Also, the Spurs won their 3 playoff series leading up to the finals 4-3, 4-1, 4-2, so it’s not like they were some incredible juggernaut sweeping everyone they played). This is also in the middle of the period that Nick Wright likes to call “the greatest seven year stretch in the history of the sport.”
The 2016 championship that LeBron himself thinks was so amazing came against a shaky Warriors team that wasn’t the same after Curry sprained his MCL. They got pushed to 7 games in the western conference finals and had to win 3 straight elimination games after getting down 3-1 to an Oklahoma City team they had swept 3-0 in the regular season. Steph’s PER dropped from 31 in the regular season to 22 in the playoffs. Hardly a juggernaut. In spite of that they were still whipping LeBron’s Cavs with Kyrie and Kevin Love 3-1. THEN they lost a starter for each of Cleveland’s final 3 wins. Most overrated “upset” ever. People also forget that Igudola hurt his back early in game 6. So the warriors lost/injured 3 out of their top 4 defenders for at least 1+ game each for games 5,6, and 7. Lebron is one less injury/suspension (Bogut, Steph, Draymond or Igudola take your pick) and one less offensive rebound (Bosh) away from only having 1 championship instead of 3, in a much longer prime. Not even CLOSE to Jordan’s level of dominance.
Also want to put an end to another ridiculous Lebron fan argument:
Jordan’s 10% is because he actually made the playoffs his first two years in the league, unlike Lebron, and got swept by the all time great Celtics teams while playing with a bunch of coke snorting teammates.
Also the Jordan side conveniently says “Pippen” not “all star” like lebrons side. In the years before Pippen was good enough to make the all star team Jordan led the bulls to being arguably the second best team in the league in 1989 when they gave the pistons their only 2 losses of the playoffs while the pistons swept everyone else on their way to the championship. That was Pippen’s 2nd year in the league and he averaged 13 ppg in the playoffs.
Also, neither Kyrie nor Kevin Love actually made the all star team in 2016 despite both of them making it multiple times before and after that year. But no one in their right mind thinks Lebron’s 58% should include playing with those 2 in 2016. Pippen actually didn’t make the all star team in ‘91 or ‘98 but, again, you’d have to be crazy to think he wasn’t at an all star level those years.
So Lebron had 2 all star caliber teammates for all 3 of his championships. Jordan had 1 all star caliber teammate for all 6 of his championships. (And as much as Lebron fans like to hype up Dennis Rodman, who was a great rebounder, he was 34 years old and 4 years removed from his last all star appearance by the time he joined the bulls. Also in the year before he joined the bulls he averaged 7.1 pts and 16.8 rebounds. In the year before he joined the cavs Kevin Love averaged 26.1 pts and 12.5 rebounds. Can I interest anyone in trading 4 rebounds for 19 pts?) Lebron also had 2 all star caliber teammates 3 other years and didn’t win the championship (2011, 2014, 2017) and 1 all star caliber teammate 1 other year 2018 and didn’t win it (swept in the finals). Jordan never in his career played with 2 all star caliber teammates and the only other year where Jordan had even 1 all star caliber teammate was 1990 when he lost to the eventual champ pistons in 7 games with his all star caliber teammate scoring 2 pts in game 7 on 1-10 shooting due to a migraine that he almost certainly wouldn’t have had if not for all the bullshit cheap shots of the “bad boy” pistons. If not for that migraine Jordan might very well be a perfect 7-7 in championship seasons when playing with 1 other all star. And considering they literally knocked Pippen out of the decisive game 6 in 1989 with a clearly intentional elbow from douchebag bill lambeer in the first few minutes of the game, my personal opinion is that if the NBA hadn’t allowed the pistons to play dirty the Bulls would’ve won the championship in both ‘89 and ‘90. 5 straight titles. 8 total championships for Jordan not even counting the 2 early retirements.
Lebrons only real advantage is longevity, but even in spite of a shorter prime Jordan still had
-10 scoring titles (lebron 1)
-3 steals titles (lebron 0)
-1 DPOY (lebron 0)
-9 defensive first teams (lebron 6)
-tougher playoff competition (ave wins 52 vs 49 for LeBron’s opponents)
Lebron is a great player and will accumulate a lot of stats with his longevity (and maybe even more championships) but Jordan was absolutely playing at a higher level and it’s not even all that close.
Other points:
Jordan’s awareness of and ability to do whatever the team needed is well summarized in his quote from the 1991 season: “my role as a leader on this team is as a utility man, to step in and plug in any holes wherever we’re lacking something.” This just shows a much higher understanding of the game than LeBron’s “I’m averaging a triple double in the finals.” Jordan was basically better at everything (shown especially well in the one year he played point guard) than Lebron but molded his game into what was needed to win championships. He knew he would be judged largely on championships. 5 second quote at 9:16 here: https://youtu.be/T-Y-B2yFL_g
Nick wright claims lebron has Jordan “trumped in everything (per game) except for points.” Wwwhat? Jordan had 2.5 steals/game vs 1.6 for lebron. And they both averaged .8 blocks/game, but of course if you throw out Jordan’s 2 old man years with the wizards he has lebron beat in that too, .9 vs .8. At the very least blocks is a wash and Jordan obviously wins steals, making the claim that lebron has Jordan “trumped” in everything per game except for points obviously not true.
Also Lebron averaged 3.5 turnovers/game to Jordan’s 2.8 and of course Jordan leads in all the major per game advanced stats (PER, WS/48, BPM)
Jordan is one migraine (Pippen in game 7 vs the pistons) and two unnecessarily early retirements away from maybe having 10 straight championships. That didn’t happen, but we are closer to living in a world where Jordan has 10 straight and lebron has 1 title than we are to one where lebron has even 4 or 5 titles to Jordan’s 6.
Lebron has had every offense built around him for his whole career, while Jordan had to scale back his game to play in Tex Winters/Phil Jackson’s triangle. Jackson has said he ran the triangle to help the other players on the bulls, not Jordan. This is backed up by Jordan’s scoring dropping from 37 and 35 ppg in his last two years before the triangle to 33 and 32 his first two years in it.
The other disadvantage of lebron is he needs to be surrounded by shooters to be effective and put up his offensive numbers, but unfortunately shooters generally aren’t the best athletes and defenders. This leads to weaker overall teams and partly explains why so many of Jordan’s bulls teams were so incredibly dominant while none of LeBron’s teams (even when he played with multiple all stars) were really historically great. And LeBron’s lack of dominance in Miami is even more damning considering he joined Wade and gained Bosh in free agency, who ranked 2nd and 4th respectively in PER the year before. So LeBron’s 2011 Miami team had the previous year’s #1, 2 and 4 players in the NBA according to PER and not only were they not historically great but they still didn’t even win the championship. Wow. They needed to add yet another hall of famer in Ray Allen before they could win the next year. For reference, the 1993 #1, 2 and 4 players in PER were Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley. Can anyone imagine a team with Jordan, Barkley and Olajuwon NOT winning the championship? Lolololol. There’s just no way Lebron is even close to Jordan as a basketball player.
One reason Jordan was able to play at such a high level on both ends was his tremendous energy. The stories about him on the dream team are especially telling. Staying up late gambling, getting up early to golf, then still running circles around other legends at practice everyday. Some pundits mistakenly give lebron the eye test because he’s so big and strong but they don’t notice the constant energy Jordan brought at such an incredibly high level to his team.
Another mistake some people seem to make is comparing Jordan and LeBron’s quickness. It’s somewhat difficult because they both changed throughout their careers but Jordan at his quickest was unquestionably much quicker than lebron. Even in an era of hand checking Jordan was blowing by defenders and dunking on centers. Lebron has been much more likely to get a step and dunk on his own man by elevating on him, not because he’s so quick.
It’s also worthwhile to note that Dean Smith timed Jordan at 4.38 in the 40 yd dash in college and Jordan’s vertical is tied for highest ever measured for an nba player at 48 inches. Lebron claims to have run a 4.6 and apparently had a 40 inch vertical. (Google search shows claims from 2008 that Lebron ran a 4.4 with no reference to when, where or who timed him and Lebron himself claims he only ran a 4.6 in 2013. Why would he claim to run a 4.6 when he’d supposedly been previously timed at 4.4? Also if you just watch the film it’s clear Jordan was undoubtedly quicker. And more fluid. And better moves.)
A 3rd ranking system (ELO) for best teams of all time with Jordan’s bulls occupying 4 of the top 10 spots, zero lebron teams: https://www.sportscasting.com/nba/the-7-best-nba-teams-of-all-time-2/ Interestingly, this ranking includes the ’97-98 Bulls rather than the ’90-91 meaning that of Jordan’s 6 championship teams, 5 are considered historically great (top ten/twelve of all time) by at least one (or more) ranking system. Still not a single team higher than 18th for Lebron in spite of combining forces with the #2 and #4 PER players in the league (Wade and Bosh) in Miami and two other all stars in their prime in Kyrie and Kevin Love in Cleveland.
So one player scored significantly more points per game, more steals, higher per game advanced stats, better intangibles AND won twice as many championships in a shorter career. The other player got slightly more rebounds and assists and accumulated more total stats thanks largely to longevity and having offenses built around him. The first player also led his teams to significantly higher levels of dominance than the second player.
Another statistic that backs up Jordan’s higher value to his team is the underrated importance of steals. Jordan averaged 2.5 per game for his career (and led the league in steals a record 3 times) vs 1.6 for Lebron. 538 article talking about the hidden value and relative irreplaceability of steals: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-value-of-the-nba-steal/amp/
More on PER:
Jordan has the highest career PER in NBA history even when counting his old man years with the wizards. However it’s also worth pointing out that it was clearly easier for guards/wings to achieve high PERs in Lebron’s era. The chart of highest career PERs has a fairly equal number of players from Jordan and Lebrons eras but almost all of Lebrons contemporaries played his position or similar whereas almost all of Jordan’s contemporaries that ranked high in PER were post players because 1) the rules/reffing/physicality/hand checking favored posts in Jordan’s era and 2) analytics helped perimeter players to be more efficient with better shot attempts (mostly more 3 pointers) in Lebrons era.
NBA career PER leaders:
5/6 of the highest active players on the list are perimeter players (not including lebron) while only 1/6 of Jordan’s highest ranked contemporaries was a perimeter player (Magic). Shaq, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Hakeem and Karl Malone were all posts. If Jordan had played in Lebron’s era he would almost certainly have a higher career PER and if Lebron had played in Jordan’s era he would almost certainly have had a lower career PER. Yet Jordan’s is STILL higher, even including 2 old man years with the wizards. Jordan was 100% the better player. And better intangibles. And accomplished more. #GOAT
Another angle on the usefulness/over emphasis on stats with an exaggerated example to make the point: Imagine 2 players, Player A and Player B. Both average exactly 30 pts and 10 assists per game on exactly the same shooting percentages and attempts. Player A starts each of his team’s possessions with the ball and dribbles incessantly until he can create a scoring opportunity. When he can’t he passes the ball off to his less talented teammates later in the shot clock. Player B plays within his team’s offense and helps his less talented teammates to get their own shots earlier in the possession, then when the shot clock gets low he takes the ball and bails his team out with a quick move to the basket for either his own shot or assist. Player A is Lebron, Player B is Jordan. Both average exactly the same stats on the exact same number of attempts but who is more valuable to his team? Who is the better player? This also helps explain why none of Lebron’s teams have ever been nearly as dominant as Jordan’s teams.
One final piece of Lebron fan propaganda to debunk:
“Jordan: 3 straight 1st round playoff exits first 3 years in the league”
Lebron: missed playoffs completely first 2 years in the league
So what? I heard they both lost games in high school and junior high too. GOAT is mostly about who was better at their peak and somewhat about total accomplishments in their primes.
Next point: if we’re going to cherry pick finals appearances to compare how about these two:
Jordan 1993
41.0 ppg 8.3 RB 6.5 AS 1.7 ST
Lebron 2011
17.8 Ppg 7.2 RB 6.8. AS 1.7 ST
Cherry picking individual finals games is even more fun:
Jordan 1992: drops 46 pts on 23 shots in a pivotal game 5 win
Lebron 2013: drops 18 pts on 16 shots in a game 1 loss
More ridiculousness when referring to a young MJ with a crap team around him:
”Never beat birds Celtics.”
Ok,
Lebron: Never beat Shaq’s Lakers
Hey he was in the league at the same time, it’s no less ridiculous than the Bird Celtics comparison (which is to say, they’re both completely ridiculous. Lebron has lost to and gotten swept by the best team in the league multiple times even when he was in his prime and had multiple all star teammates. Trying to score points by saying young Jordan lost to an all-time great team with zero all stars and half the squad high on coke just shows how desperate the Lebron fans are. It also speaks to their delusions about how much 1 person can do eg: “Lebron beat the best team in history with zero all star teammates!” We’ve already addressed how he had 2 clear all star caliber teammates as well as the highest payroll in the league and even then Golden state was still kicking his ass until they succumbed to suspension and injuries.)
And we’ve also already addressed the pistons fairly clearly but I’ll just add that they double teamed Jordan pretty regularly. No idea why anyone would bother mentioning the Lakers as Jordan rolled over them in 5 games in ‘91, not that it even matters. (Another mostly meaningless aside that Lebron fans like to bring up but I’ll refute it for the record: Magic Johnson was ABSOLUTELY still in his prime in ‘91. He finished 2nd in MVP (to Jordan of course) and had won BACK TO BACK MVPS the previous 2 years ‘89 and ‘90). The Lakers no longer had Kareem and other players on the team got injured during the series but Jordan’s Bulls were so much better than them it didn’t really matter and isn’t all that relevant anyway.
Another comparison:
“Jordan: got “clamped” for “only” 23 points on 6-19 shooting by defensive player of the year Gary Payton in a game 4 loss while already up 3-0 in the series”
Lebron: got “clamped” for 8 (yes, 8) points on 3-11 shooting by 5 foot 10 inch parking lot attendant JJ Barea in a game 4 loss, making the series 2-2.
“Jordan stats against 65 win teams in the finals are not available.”
Ok, how about this?
LeBron’s teams have generally underachieved relative to Jordan’s because he’s not as skilled of a scorer and needs the offense to be centered around him to be effective. Jordan was so good the bulls could run a regular offense to get everyone else shots and he could just add 30 pts to the total every night within the normal flow of the game. He was way, way better at picking his spots than Lebron and his teams’ dominance year after year basically proves it.
Jordan vs. Lebron 