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The case for LeBron James over Michael Jordan in NBA’s GOAT debate
James was selected to the All-NBA team for the 21st consecutive season. Kareem made his last at 38, Chamberlain at 35, Jordan and Bryant at 34, Russell at 33.
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“I come down to the age, explosiveness, expectations … but it also took me a long time to come to it. Because once you say that somebody is the best to ever do it, you really can’t take it back,” Cleveland sports broadcaster Ken Carman told Sporting News. “If I say, ‘All right, LeBron is the best ever’, I can't just decide two years later, ‘Oh, you know what? Michael’s really the best.’ Because then it seems like you’re flip-flopping too much.
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“I was a holdout, because I wanted to make sure when I said it. Like, some day we’re going to have real arguments about (Patrick) Mahomes or (Tom) Brady, and I’ll be a holdout for Brady. So I held out.”
Now, though, Carman has seen what too many are missing.
It’s LeBron James.
“Yes”.
Arguing who's the NBA's GOAT - specifically, arguing Jordan vs. LeBron - is one of sports fans' greatest debates. Sporting News looks at the case for each, along with their place in NBA lore and culture.
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If you want to get to the core of the argument for LeBron James as the greatest player in the history of basketball, there may be no better place to start than with an exploration of the worst team in memory to reach the NBA Finals.
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The 2006-07 Cleveland Cavaliers did not produce the poorest record for a Finals team in the league’s history. There are several that were just a smidge over .500, and three that had losing marks. The only reason, though, these Cavs managed to finish 18 games over .500 and win three playoff series is James was in their lineup.
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The rotation “King James” carried into a playoff wins over the Wizards, Nets and Pistons had only one other player who ever appeared in an NBA All-Star Game, no one else who scored 11,000 career points, no one else who averaged 15 points in the regular season, no one else who averaged 5 assists, no one else who lasted long enough in the league to reach 1,000 career games.
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They needed LeBron so badly he scored the final 25 Cavs points of a Game 5 victory against the Pistons, a staggering performance that carried them to a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference finals series that would be closed out one game later. He averaged 45 minutes in those playoffs, along with 25.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 8 assists.
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“The first team he took to the Finals was not a good basketball team,” Cavs legend Austin Carr, who has been a member of their broadcast team for three decades, told Sporting News. “He was very good at just moving the chess pieces.
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“You could always see that. I did some of his high school games, and he had the ability to figure out who belongs where and how to make it work.”
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If we’re being honest, none of those other 2007 Cavs belonged in the NBA Finals. Guard Eric Snow had been an elite defender in his prime but was in his penultimate season and played just 24 minutes a game. Zydrunas Ilgauskas was 31, good only for 27 minutes on average, and his scoring dropped more than 3 points a game from the year before.
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Anderson Varejao would become an All-Defense pick eventually, but at this point was a part-time player. The closest thing Cleveland had to a secondary star was Larry Hughes, a top-10 pick nine years earlier who averaged 14.9 points and 3.7 assists. None of those guys is going to be traveling to Springfield unless visiting the Naismith Hall of Fame as a tourist.
Or, maybe they’ll attend as guests at LeBron’s induction ceremony.
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(If he ever stops playing.)
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They can stand on the stage as evidence of LeBron’s staggering greatness, which continues to be underestimated by all who mistakenly believe anyone, ever, has played this sport at a higher level than James.
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You think “6” is the only number in all of mathematics? Please. Let’s start at the beginning and work our way to the top: three Ohio state championships at Akron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High. Three Olympic gold medals. If we’re limiting this discussion to the NBA, there have been 41 playoff series victories, 184 playoff games won, 292 playoff games entered – all records. In 18 years of playoff games, he has averaged 28.4 points, 9 rebounds, 7.2 assists, 49.6 percent shooting and 41 minutes per game.
He has been selected 21 times to the All-Star Game, been voted All-NBA 21 times and the league MVP four times. His 42,184 points are the most any player has scored, and his 59,041 minutes are the most anyone has played.
His 11,584 assists rank fourth in league history, and he’s in the top 25 in rebounds. His teams reached the NBA Finals 10 times. And they won four NBA titles.​
JORDAN VS. LEBRON: Key stats you need to know
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More astounding than all of this, perhaps, is how unappreciated James is in his own time. When the Beatles were changing the world with Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and, my goodness, Abbey Road, at least the young people saw and felt and celebrated their too-short journey.
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Yeah, there were parents throughout America shouting about how all this was noise and Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey were so much better, but those who knew, knew. And they were legion.
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There appear to be so few who comprehend what they’re seeing with James. He just completed a season in which he played the majority at age 40, and he averaged 24.4 points, 8.2 assists, 7.8 rebounds and 51.3 percent shooting. That’s No. 13 in scoring, No. 6 in assists, No. 22 in rebounding and, among players who averaged at least 15 points, No. 12 in field goal accuracy. By this age, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was down to 14.6 points a game. Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson and Jerry West all were retired by then, most for several years.​
