I've been accused of lying but

[Charlie Sheen]

Magic and the showtime Lakers will never be a good comparison to Lebron because they had something Lebron never did... long term championship roster continuity.

Outside of Miami he never had the organizational structure Jordan had with PJax and the bulls.

[PejaTheSerbSnip]

Pleased to see these ignored. Will take it as an admission of defeat. For posterity:

Another clever tactic: just omit #2 options when we know Pippen outplayed Worthy, LOL:

Pippen - 21/9/7/2/1 on 53% TS, at worst the third best player in the series

Worthy - 19/3/2 on 50% TS, missed a game

Yeah, no vested interest in starting from the third options.

Again, I’ll ask the time-honoured question: where, specifically, have I erred?

Moving on, you failed to acknowledge Grant and Paxson’s great play in those finals:

Grant - 15/8/2/2 on 65% TS
Paxson - 14/2/3 on 67% TS

Compares pretty nicely with Divac and Perkins:

Divac - 19/9/2/2 on 61% TS
Perkins - 17/8/1 on 51% TS

…not seeing this big talent deficit. At all.



These are just labels that you choose to reify. They carry no inherent value. How did all of these players actually play in the series’ that are under examination? How do they fit with their #1’s? All of these are more germane to the question of who had the better supporting cast.




Scott in the ‘91 finals: 5/2/2 on 40% TS in 35 mpg.



This was Campbell’s rookie year, and he notched 7 minutes a contest in the regular season. He only suited up in 3 of the 5 games, blossomed some three years later and was never the defensive presence or glue guy that Grant was.

We might as well say a 40 year old Parish was unfair help for Jordan in ‘97. After all, his minutes per game was higher than rookie Campbell’s.

Rookie Pippen came off the bench for the Bulls too, must’ve been due to them having an embarrassment of riches

This is one of your more embarrassing comparisons. Please keep going.



All addressed. How did all of these players perform? Why was Pippen omitted?



The ‘93 Suns were likely the closest, and had a better offensive supporting cast. That’s as far as I’ll go. At very worst, Jordan had a better supporting cast in 4 or 5 of his 6 finals, and more than enough to win in all 6 given his GOAThood.



Yet you never make this same defence of Harper, who went from 22 ppg on a crappy team to 7-8 on a good one, just as Ainge saw a large decrease in volume when hopping from a 23 win perennially losing Kings team to a finals contender?

Why is that? I wonder.

Ainge was, at that point, a decent 6th man. He is not a star on another team.



They had a good and balanced roster. Regardless, the Bulls had a sizeable edge in the #2 and #3 slots. Some of these players (like Williams) made their last all-star games years before ‘92, while Duckworth was essentially an all-star in name only, who regressed after ‘91 and averaged 11 points on 10 shots a game.

Try again.



What I said was that they likely had the more potent offensive supporting cast. That’s the best steelman I can muster up.




‘fraid not.


Kemp-Schrempf-Hawkins-Perkins-McMillan-Askew

and

Pippen-Rodman-Kukoc-Harper-Kerr-Longley

Are comparable rotations. More than enough for the GOAT to get by with.




TIL it was unclear that LeBron faced a chasmal talent deficit in, among others:

- 2007
- 2014 (oldest, worst rebounding team in the league).
- 2015 (both Love and Irving were out).
- 2017 (as clear a finals defensive mismatch as you’ll get).
- 2018 (ditto, and now with a historic offensive gap to boot).

/

Very predictably, you flew past my point: any player comes off worse when you pit a weakness of theirs with another players strength.

Whether it’s LeBron’s off-ball ability being compared to Jordan’s, or Jordan’s rebounding being compared to Rodman’s, or Kobe’s long-range shooting compared to Curry’s…it’s an incredibly insidious way of framing comparisons. That you can cherry-pick a specific time Jordan did a subset of a thing better than Rodman (Per 100 rebounding #’s in the ‘97 playoffs: Rodman 16.8, Jordan 10.5) doesn’t obscure this.

Keep trying.



And Pippen outpaced Jordan 20 out of 24 times in the non-scoring statistical categories during their 6 finals together.

There is more to basketball than shooting.



LeBron led the Cavs in all 5 major statistical categories in the ‘16 finals, against a 73 win team.



While being pivotal to their success in ‘96, utterly putting the clamps on Mourning in ‘97 (something very heavily attested to, and something you’ve consistently ignored), and frustrating Malone across two finals series.

To be a broken record: more to basketball than scoring. We will explore this further.

Additionally, you do not apply this same standard of ****-retentive nitpickyness to Jordan’s opponents, and never will.

You flatly listed a bunch of Pistons players in ‘91, when they played poorly.

You listed Scott in the ‘91 finals, who put up 5 points on 30% shooting in 35 minutes per game.

Or how about Hornacek?

12 ppg on 51% TS in the ‘97 finals, 11 ppg on 50% TS in the ‘98 finals.

Did the Jazz push the series close in-spite of the poor play of their third best player?

How about Stockton, who averaged 10 points a game in the ‘98 finals.

Literally no one on the Jazz cleared 11 points a game in the ‘98 finals.

Uniform standards to be applied? No way, no how.