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Originally Posted by bunkmoreland
I guess I am somewhere in the middle on this. I definitely think LeBron's reaching the Finals 6 years in a row should be something that works in his favor, even at 2-4.
I'm absolutely willing to put him up there with the greats. That said, I still would not rank him above Jordan. But it's not a blowout.
It's so difficult to compare players from different eras.
Unlike some fans or players, I tend to think that over time the league and its players simply get better due to things like kids starting to shoot hoops earlier, better training technology, better understanding of analytics. So if you give me player A vs. player B who played 15-20 years later, I'll always take player B as the better player in the sense of matching them up on the court during their primes (which is an impossible experiment of course). I think LeBron in his prime is a better player than Jordan in his prime. But you can't really compare players this way because 1) To be fair to LeBron, he goes up against tougher competition in today's NBA than Jordan did; and 2) To be fair to Jordan, you can't blame him for not proving himself against players that didn't take the court until 20 years later.
All you can do is be the best of your era. And they have both done that.
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When I think of ranking all-time greats, I think of two main criteria, and they're almost antithetical to each other- the extent to which the player dominated his own era, and which player could dominate ANY era. Another way of putting the second part would be- if I can pick any player from any era to build a team around today, who would be? I tend to rank the second category a little higher than the first- which is why someone like Bill Russell probably wouldn't make my top 10. Nobody will ever top 11 titles in 13 years, so Russell has to be in the discussion of all-time greats, but I think if he played today, he might be an all-star, but I doubt much else.
There's no way to know for sure obviously, but I think if Jordan played the game today he'd be just dominant. He was just that good. He might have to adjust his style in a less iso-based league, but I think that Bulls team would still win multiple championships today and he'd still put up monsterous numbers.
No way to prove that of course. What I do know is that Lebron could retire today and he'd easily be top 10 all-time, and winning
only two championships out of six sure as hell doesn't put him much lower as far as I'm concerned.