By Michael Samaha, sports columnist
Who is the greatest of all-time – the elusive GOAT? It’s a question as old as time, especially in the world of sports. Who’s the greatest boxer ever? Best quarterback? Best left-handed pitcher? But the question plaguing today’s fans is: “who is the greatest basketball player ever?” It’s a ridiculously broad question with a huge number of factors, but I’ll give you a quick rundown of my current position in an attempt to reveal the unbiased truth of the argument.
The debate today revolves around the world’s current undisputed best player: LeBron James, and the man he’s trying to dethrone: Michael Jordan.
James has been the most over-criticized athlete in the history of sports, for reasons that completely escape me. LeBron is constantly compared to Michael. If LeBron makes a mistake, you’ll hear this for the next 24 hours: “Well, MJ wouldn’t have made that mistake.” Many basketball fans romanticize the idea of MJ and forget his flaws, but that’s because in the biggest moments, the ones that fans will remember forever, Michael usually delivered.
Just to be clear: in no way do I think LeBron James is overrated. I think he is one of the best talents we have ever seen in all of sports, but that doesn’t mean we have to try to compare him to Michael Jordan. Here’s why I believe the argument is illegitimate.
Let’s look at these guys’ overall careers. Keep these things in mind:
-LeBron has played 11 seasons, beginning at age 19.
-Michael played 15 seasons, beginning at age 21.
-Michael took off what was essentially two seasons in the middle of his prime and also tried to play two seasons after he retired again.
-Michael could have won many more MVP awards, but voters were just sick of giving it to him.
Here are the important comparisons pertaining to accolades. You’ll see that they heavily favor Jordan so far:
-Championships and Finals MVPs: MJ, 6 to 2
-Finals Series Lost: MJ’s 0 to LBJ’s 3
-Regular Season MVPs: MJ, 6 to 5
-Scoring Leader: MJ, 10 to 1
-LeBron fans like to try to use advanced statistics to argue for him, but when you take the key stats in the most important games – the NBA Finals – they still slightly lean towards Michael:
-Points Per Game: MJ, 33.6 to 24.3
-Shooting Percentage: MJ, 48.1 percent to 46.3 percent
-Rebounds Per Game: LBJ, 7.8 to 6.0
-Assists Per Game: LBJ, 6.4 to 6.0
Michael was clearly the better scorer. He took more shots (six more per game), made a higher percentage of those shots and outscored LeBron by more than nine points per game. LeBron is the better rebounder; I’m not going to even try to argue that.
There is an interesting discussion to be had when it comes to each player’s passing, however. It is well-documented that LeBron is the better passer and sees the floor better, but in the Finals, Michael is not that far behind. Furthermore, Michael wasn’t the primary ball-handler for his team in five of six of the Finals (in his first Finals series he was the primary ball-handler and averaged 11.4 assists per game). Both can be considered two of the NBA’s greatest defenders, and both have their own strengths there. MJ forced more turnovers, and LeBron can guard more positions due to his size.
What people forget about MJ are those years before he won his first title. He had to go through some hard times in the playoffs, and better teams like the Celtics and Pistons repeatedly knocked him out. But once Michael got a little help and reached the Finals, he never turned back, and he dominated like nobody before him could. Twice, he won three titles in a row: ’91-’93 and ’96-’98. And in the two years between them, he wasn’t even playing basketball.
LeBron has some work to do before reaching Jordan. We still can’t forget about his failures. His first stint with the Cavaliers was hard to watch, especially the 2007 Finals. His biggest failure, however, will always be the 2011 Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, where he may as well have been on the bench in the fourth quarters of the six-game series. That will forever hurt his legacy. LeBron has since won two titles and also lost in the most recent Finals, emphatically, against the Spurs.
Let’s have this conversation again in five years when LeBron is past his prime. At that point, we can look back to both careers and romanticize both guys. At this point though, if I’m picking one guy to win a game where my life is on the line, I’m taking Michael, no hesitation.
The more we talk about LeBron’s greatness in contrast with Michael’s, the more harm is done to his legacy. In most basketball fans’ minds, it’s no competition, and those people try harder to put him down than to celebrate his talent. So ESPN, if you’re reading this, I beg you: please stop comparing. Let’s wait until it’s all said and done, then we can look back on two full careers and decide who was better. For now, let’s appreciate the greatness we see from LeBron James and not look for the flaws in his game – it’s just not fair.
