]I'm very much aware of Jordan winning 3, retiring and winning 3 more and most of this has nothing to do with any of my points. And while I wouldn't argue that Cleveland did nothing, they clearly mad bad move after bad move. Allowing Carlos Boozer to hit free agency (I know this was an odd situation, but it could've been avoided), poor trades and poor draft picks every year. Did he have any player comparable to Scottie Pippen in Cleveland? What about James Worthy, Kevin McHale, Joe Dumars? Cleveland mad the finals purely because a weak eastern conference.
The retirement has everything to do with your points if your arguing that the only reason Jordan is really considered is because of things like scoring and a weak league. He retired, came back and won three more. There is nothing which Lebron can do to match that feat unless he does it himself. In fact, the year Jordan retired, he averaged 42 in the finals. Again, in order to make more Jordans, the hand-check rule was done away with the very next year. 2 of the 3 fundamental changes to offense to cater to guard play were done because Jordan retired and so was the third, a couple years later.
And again, you argument about Cleveland is utterly irrelevant. The argument is about the Eastern conference at the time, not what the Eastern conference was like in the era of Jordan, which housed guys like Ewing and Oakley, Miller, Smits, and Jackson, Wilkins and so on. Again, Allen Iverson and Dwight Howard took their teams to the finals in that Eastern conference and neither of them had a guy like Pippen. They had just as bad teams as Lebron did. Howard is not even close to the player Lebron is, and Lebron chocked against them. And again, whether the Cavs let Boozer, who can't play a lick of defense BTW, hit free agency isn't anyway a defense of the point. The Cavs were a 40 plus win team the year Lebron went to the finals. The very next year they hit 50 and his last two years they were a 60 win team. Theey won the Eastern conference and were the best team by record going into the playoffs. That is improvement. But they lost in the Eastern conference playoffs against teams that had worse records. They didn't lose in the Finals, but the East.
he averaged 27.1 ppg this season and 27.5 in the playoffs. knock him for not upping his game if you want, but don't say his numbers drop. Only thing down is assists.
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I said AVERAGE throughout his career. Lebron's regular season scoring is around 30 a game and he drops in the playoffs. And last year in the finals, he was held three times under 18. I think Jordan has 4 games in his playoff career of less than 20 and they were early in his career. One time he had 18, following the 49 and 63 point performance. Jordan's numbers just rise.
Pistons weren't at their peak in 91' in large part thanks to not having Rick Mahorn and other role players like Lambieer and Aguire not being nearly as good. Some of this was offset by the improvement in Rodman, but not all. That Seattle team didn't stand a chance, they had a lot of good players, but they didn't have any great players imo. Payton had yet to peak, in 96' and Kemp was not much better than Blake Griffen is now. Now, none of these or the other teams were cake walks, but outside of Utah, I don't think any of them would be championship teams now.
LOL, Rodman was a HoF. And Lambieer and Aguire and Detroit were still battering Jordan, even if we accept your argument. They were still collapsing the lane, still had Isaih and Dumars and so on. They won two straight finals making constant improvement in their records. Jordan and Pippen (most under-rated player and greatest tandem ever) beat them plain and square. You can't even compare the two era's. It's ridiculous. As far as Payton, I don't seriously know what league you were watching. 1996 was Gary Payton's peak in terms of overall performance. He had 231 steals. In fact, it was Payton that Karl shifted to Jordan in game 3, which made Jordan put up his lowest numbers ever in the finals, averaging around 26-27. That was also the finals his father was murdered so that also played into it. Payton that year had his best shooting percentage ever and one of his upper scoring games. That team was stacked. And please don't compare Griffith to Kemp, especially defensively. And Schremph was a three time all-star and phenomenal.
I honestly don't know what you're saying. How can you count the times anyone averaged 45 points per game? Do you mean 45 point performances? Either way, Lebron is not the scorer that Jordan was. You'll never hear me say other wise.
45 PPT performances in the playoffs. He has 20 more than Lebron. You can factor in assists leading to scores and ignore Jordan's assists in those games, (every assist leads to two or three points) and Jordan beats him out by a long shot in these numbers on strength of points alone.
I'll have to look it up later, but across the league I don't think teams score as much as they did in the 80s, when the game was more about the fast break
Scoring has gone down, but check this. As I said, this year the league averaged 21 three pointers per game. In 1986, the numbers were around three. When Jordan hit 49 and 63 against the Celtics, he didn't shoot a single three pointer. When Jordan retired his second time, the numbers went to upper 9s. That is a difference on average of 11 points per game. From this point, you can easily gather that the game has shifted to a perimeter-oriented one and spacing. Jordan working with that much space would be on a different planet. The idea that it was simply about fast breaks is simply not sustained by the fact that the FTA when Jordan retired was at least over 4 more attempts per game, causing a slow down in pace as well. On free throws alone you more then 50% account for the difference in points. Jordan for example, in his 63 point game went to the line 18 times. The players had to attack the rim more. Assists were also higher then. The fundamental and mid-range shot were just better then. Basketball fundamentals are at all-time lows.
