superchunk said:
Allfreedom99 said:
First I think that Lebron should not be in the picture yet since he has not won a championship. Its evident that he is one of the best B-ball players in the game right now. I think wthin a couple years he will have a championship under his belt. At this point we can begin comparing. In my opinion Michael Jordan is the greatest player as of yet to step foot on the basketball court. He had an incredible athletic ability, and he was simply magic with a basketball. There are other players in history that you could argue as the greatest, however. I still think Jordan is king.
Second, remember that Stats do not always tell everything. There are many factors that can affect a players stats. quality teammates that help you get to the ball and help you get open is one. Another is the type of coaching. I think in the NBA its mostly about player skill, but the coaching does have a factor on the performance of that player. In college and Highschool coaching is even more important to help determine the performance of players.
We also must consider that when comparing stats when there is a decade or more of time between two players you have to consider how sports have evolved. American football is a good example. I would argue that the best American Football team 20 years ago could easily get beat by a mediocre team in the NFL today. This is most noticeable in NFL, but applys to all sports. As time goes on training techniques evolve and get better and more efficient. This causes the athletisism of players to become better. As each year passes in sports it becomes more and more scientific in order to get the best performance possible out of every player. The training and conditioning in the NBA I argue is better today than in the 1990s. I will however point out that Michael Jordan devoted a HUGE amount of time to training. He was different from many other players in the NBA at that time. Jordan worked very very hard, and practiced, practiced, and practiced some more. What helped him to be so good was his complete and utter devoted love for the game. While I do see a love for the game from Lebron, I have not seen it to the level that MJ had. If Lebron had that level of devotion then I think we would be seeing an even better Lebron James.
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If Lebron had the same level of devotion that Jordan had, Caveliers would have at least one trophy and he would never have left to Miami.
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I'm a Cavaliers and Cleveland fan. I actively will root against Lebron James until the day he retires for what he did to the city and fans. He will never achieve Jordan status in my eyes because he didn't have the internal fortitude to continue what he started and make Cleveland the multiple championship winning team that Jordan did.
With that being said, it took Jordan 7 years in the NBA to win his first championship. Jordan was 21 years old when he was drafted. So Jordan didn't win a championship until he was 28 or so and some of his biggest competitors were on their downward spiral (Bird and Johnson). Lebron has been in the NBA 8 years now but looks poised to possibly winning his first championship (I surely hope he never wins one), if he does however he will have won a title before Jordan in a similar amount of time.
I think it's a little overboard to say that if he were more like Jordan, he would have a title. People forget about Jordan and the Bulls struggle to become a great team for almost a decade. That's what makes what Lebron did so much worse and weak.
One title win in Cleveland would be equal to 5 in Miami because it was earned 150% by himself not his trio, or Pat Riley. He was loved in Cleveland and NBA fans while maybe didn't like him, didn't have a total lack of respect for him. The tables have flipped on him after his whole Free agency fiasco. He's now a villain for a lot of fans even outside of Cleveland, who can never touch the legacy of Jordan.
True champions don't leave mid-way through their legacy building somewhere to take an easier path.
