LeBron James was touted as the Next Great Hope for basketball, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at age 17, and his high school games were televised on ESPN.
Since then he's won 4 NBA championships, opened a school in his hometown, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
> and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
LeBron is definitely the best of his era but he's not touching Jordan in terms of greatest player of all time, even if he does pull off two more championships. During the 90s, Jordan was as close to a demi-god in the sports world as you could get.
I agree that Jordan was an amazing player, and I think he narrowly tops Lebron as the best of all time, but I also think Jordan benefited from a very precise moment in NBA history: the league's media reach became truly global and the established media was still pretty much the only source of information about NBA players. No TMZ, no random phone videos from clubs, no social media. It was the perfect setup to convince a huge number of people that this dude was a demi-god. If Jordan played today, I think he'd face way more scrutiny of the gambler/"apolitical"/bully parts of his personality, and while he'd probably win plenty of MVPs, I don't think he'd achieve the same iconic status.
On the flip side Lebron benefits from dramatic rule changes in how physical the NBA isn't today. Both in his stats and longevity.
All you have to do is go on YouTube and watch the fights from the 1980s. And of course everyone is familiar with how Jordan was brutalized in the 1987-1993 era, playing teams like the Knicks and Pistons. Today's NBA is soft, fragile, weak, and little more than a three point shooting exercise. It's mediocre basketball. Do a comparison on steal figures now vs then; during his prime it was normal for Jordan to have 2.8 to 3.2 steals per game in a season, today the NBA leader will be closer to 2 to 2.2 per game.
Now you can barely sneeze on the offensive player with the ball or it's a foul. Combined with 3-point chucking and zero defense, it fully explains why scores are so comically high now versus the 1990s and so many players average over 20-25 points per game. It's the equivalent to the NFL becoming soft, watering down passing defense, so they can run up scores and turn the league into a 90% passing game so they can pump up ratings for the $$$ (same fraud MLB pulled jacking up homerun figures).
I've had this argument before, and this is very off-topic, but that seems to be the nature of sports arguments :).
I agree that the NBA was far more physical in Jordan's era and that LeBron has never had to go through that. But the style of play cuts both ways! The biggest difference, I think, is that zone defense was illegal for (almost) Jordan's whole career. This allowed Jordan to showcase his isolation scoring, and I think Jordan was clearly the best isolation scorer ever.
This argument is more or less convincing depending on how you factor in the greater physicality (e.g. handchecking). My hypothesis is that LeBron would have been extremely hard to guard alone even with the relaxed rules. IIRC, Miami Lebron weighed 260+ and was still faster than most wings; Jordan topped out around 220 in the 2nd 3-peat. The available evidence suggests that LeBron is pretty hard to hurt -- unless you think all NBA players have somehow become more injury-prone, his almost spotless injury record relative to his peers is remarkable.
We seem to have different aesthetic preferences for basketball. I think late 90s basketball is ugly as hell! But I'll argue that the cross-era comparisons are not that easy, and both players are hard to extricate from the style of their eras anyway.
I think another factor is that LeBron has a history of flopping and complaining about non-calls. People imagine that LeBron in the 90s and see him getting crushed. But of course perhaps he flops because it is sadly part of that game today and had he joined in the late 80s he probably would have played differently.
You can't compare the two. Look at each as individuals. They have each changed the game of basketball in their own way. There will never be a single "GOAT". Every generation builds on what the generation prior created. Dr. J -> MJ -> Lebron. All dominate players in their own era that made everyone around them, and after, better players.
Could You please elaborate on how LBJ changed the game? I think, currently Curry did with his shooting skills, and somewhat Harden too - tho I hate the step-back threes due to it should be called travelling at least one out of three times. LBJ: great skill-set, great athlete but changing the game?
I think many, like myself, will concede this point. Harden is a genius at "hacking" basketball. I don't really complain that what Harden does is traveling as much as the traveling rule needs updating so that it is.
If you go to YouTube and type in “FIBA gather step”, you’ll see a video released by the rules body showing legal 0 steps, the rule is being used exactly as intended, to the point where they want people to know it’s explicitly legal.
What you don’t notice is that the gather step is used for many more movements other than a euro step, but the euro step also has a change of direction and change of acceleration that combine to make the movement look illegal to someone who doesn’t understand the rules.
changed the game by jumping teams to play with other superstars so that he could win. Definitely started the big three era until the warriors dynasty ended. Back to big twos and it's so much more interesting when 6-8 teams can win.
He exceeds Jordan in nearly all individual metrics:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-lebron-james...
Would I bet on Jordan or Lebron in 7 game playoff series (both players having the same teams)? Jordan.
But overall I would draft Lebron as a franchise player.
You don't want to draft Lebron, he has zero loyalty to a team. You wouldn't be able to keep him after your first rebuild phase, which would be inevitable at some point. Maybe you'd get four or five years out of a freshly drafted Lebron before he bolted to one of the elite media markets that was better positioned to get him rings.
It's a lot easier to have loyalty to Chicago than Cleveland. MJ and Kobe would have done the same if they were drafted to a small market team (in fact Kobe made sure he wasn't drafted to a small market).
Lebron put in a long shift and went back to give them a title.
I scrolled down the thread wondering if someone would mention him and if nobody did I was going to.
It's insane how much hype he had at a young age and how he's delivered again and again. The only players with similar [amount delivered] * [hype] values are peyton manning and tim duncan, but lebron's is way bigger.
Also worth mentioning in his accolades: brought a championship to his hometown, has never had any PR disasters (except for "the decision"), has many charities (scholarships, gives out bikes, etc), and elevated his friends and family to make them successful as well. He's basically done everything right.
And I say this as a long time celtics fan and lebron hater.
I agree, but I do think its more nuanced. Both LeBron & Tiger Woods are examples of sportsman living up to the early hype but ultimately falling short of eclipsing some records people thought they could.
Lebron likely won't win as many rings as Jordan and Tiger won't win as many majors as Jack.
Since then he's won 4 NBA championships, opened a school in his hometown, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.