You keep throwing in stats as if that's the only way to tell a story.
Let me repeat... Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes of all time, in any sport. And it wasn't just because of statistics, it was because he was also probably the most clutch player of any sport. Again, Jordan hit 50% of his game winners, and several of them were in the playoffs. I believe LeBron has hit less than a third and Kobe even worse. And yes, it is absolutely relevant someone else's point that Jordan was matching up on a regular basis with shutdown defenders like Gary Payton and Byron Russell and Joe Dumars.
This is the part where you conveniently throw out playoff "clutch" statistics on LeBron's part. But in that assessment, you'll also conveniently leave out that it was Wade, not LeBron, that was the go-to guy in late game situations in 2011. And last year, LeBron dominated 3.5 quarters but was very mediocre in games that were close with 5 minutes left and, if I remember correctly, I believe there were 8 chances for game-winning or game-tying shots and LeBron took 1 (which he missed). The rest he passed off to someone else to take. And then this is the part where you say that it shows great court vision for a hall of fame player to pass up the last shot. Sorry, bud, not going to pass if you're comparing him to Jordan. When the game was on the line, Jordan was going to take over. He knew it, the defense knew it, everybody knew it. And he still hit 50% of his game-winners.
The Heat didn't have a particularly tough road to the championship last year, and they faced a finals team in OKC that was horribly unready for the big stage. LeBron with the Heat has played against a crippled West, whereas Jordan beat some pretty intense finals competition and had some big Eastern conference rivals on a yearly basis.
You can't just use statistics to tell a story. Not when you're talking about the best of all time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KC_Connection
From earlier:
Michael Jordan's 1987-1988 season: 31.7 PER, .603 TS%, .537 eFG%, 7.8 TRB%, 27.0 AST%, 3.6 STL%, 2.4 BLK%, 123 ORtg, 101 DRtg, 21.2 WS, .308 WS/48
LeBron James' 2012-2013 season: 31. 4 PER, .637 TS%, .604 eFG%, 13.0 TRB%, 34.1 AST%, 2.3 STL%, 1.8 BLK%, 124 ORtg, 103 DRtg, 12.3 WS (so far), .307 WS/48
Seems like pretty similar dominance to me unless the stats are lying or biased toward one guy (and you'd have to explain to me how that could be).
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