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"The Last Dance"

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All so true. Jordan is great, no doubt, maybe even goat, but no one ever acknowledges the fact he had Pippen, top 30 player, way under rated player. Without Jordan he was a 9 Rebs, 5.5 assists, 22 points and 3 steals. He was the greatest wing defender of all time too. Good enough to go to the ECF WITHOUT Jordan. Also Jordan had the GOAT coach.

Never fails to piss me off that no one mentions that Kobe and Jordan have ZERO titles without Phil Jackson. They didn't even make the finals without Jackson, Lebron took a team with Larry fucking Hughes as his Robin to the finals, not Pau, not Shaq, not Pippen, Larry fucking Hughes.

Ans speaking of Pau, shows how good of a coach Jackson really was to be honest, nice depth, but not a lights out Robin in Pau.

100% agree on everything you said. I would imagine if Pippen had a couple more seasons without Jordan and the Bulls added another secondary player to compliment him, they would've at least got out of the East and probably had a punchers chance in the Finals. The fact that he was immediately able to step into the leading role the year after Jordan retired and do that well is pretty damn impressive.

The other thing to add on that I didn't mention in my post: Jordan had complete creative control and approval over this docu-series. Two of his friends produced it. That means what we got in the Last Dance was 100% Jordan painting himself in what he believed to be the best light he possibly could, and the biggest takeaway I get is that he's a gigantic asshole. It's kind of comical.

It would be interesting to know what hit the cutting room floor and what a un-biased cut of this footage would look like.
 
The other thing to add on that I didn't mention in my post: Jordan had complete creative control and approval over this docu-series. Two of his friends produced it. That means what we got in the Last Dance was 100% Jordan painting himself in what he believed to be the best light he possibly could, and the biggest takeaway I get is that he's a gigantic asshole. It's kind of comical.

It would be interesting to know what hit the cutting room floor and what a un-biased cut of this footage would look like.
#ReleaseTheBob_The_CatCut
 
i didnt watch a single second, but any talk about MJ's massive gambling problem?






or the NBA suspending him for 2 years because of it.
 
i didnt watch a single second, but any talk about MJ's massive gambling problem?






or the NBA suspending him for 2 years because of it.

Yes - basically an entire episode. It alluded to the media's interest in the story and the criticism that came along as part of what drove him to retire. But the biggest part was because of his father's murder, with which he had great difficulty coping.
 
Jordan's game wouldn't translate today.
That is an absurd statement. No one could guard Jordan. The only way to slow him down was to literally beat him up and drape your hands all over him. In today's game, you can't touch an offensive player. Jordan would murder everyone with all that space and the hand checking calls.

Jordan would be the best SG in the league if not the best player in the league for a a decade plus if he played today.
 
That is an absurd statement. No one could guard Jordan. The only way to slow him down was to literally beat him up and drape your hands all over him. In today's game, you can't touch an offensive player. Jordan would murder everyone with all that space and the hand checking calls.

Jordan would be the best SG in the league if not the best player in the league for a a decade plus if he played today.
so i think trying to compare across era's is extremely difficult. The all time greats would great players regardless of which era you put them in, but probably wouldnt be AS dominant just because of the difference in fit.

I think this applies to MJ as much as it would be to Lebron playing in the 70s. Some of the real questions would be if Jordan could stetch his game out to the 3 point line to be a regular and efficient 3 point shooter, what about how would he respond when everyone he is going against has increased athleticism, or the fact that Jordan was/is a certified asshole who has a gambling addiction most of which was over looked then- how does he respond to a media that treats him like a villian, finally how does Jordan play if he has no Pippen and is going against today's super teams?

So yes while he woudl still be great, I just dont see him being the best player in the league for a decade great.
 
so i think trying to compare across era's is extremely difficult. The all time greats would great players regardless of which era you put them in, but probably wouldnt be AS dominant just because of the difference in fit.

I think this applies to MJ as much as it would be to Lebron playing in the 70s. Some of the real questions would be if Jordan could stetch his game out to the 3 point line to be a regular and efficient 3 point shooter, what about how would he respond when everyone he is going against has increased athleticism, or the fact that Jordan was/is a certified asshole who has a gambling addiction most of which was over looked then- how does he respond to a media that treats him like a villian, finally how does Jordan play if he has no Pippen and is going against today's super teams?

So yes while he woudl still be great, I just dont see him being the best player in the league for a decade great.
I think MJ would be really similar to Kobe if he played today. Absolutely one of the top players in the league with a few MVPs, but not quite at the level he was during his own time.
 
MJ said something like "He may have been a tyrant. Well that's you, because you never won anything."

Winning a basketball game isn't everything in life. We've all won things that mattered a lot. If I think you're an asshole, it's because you're an asshole.
 
That is an absurd statement. No one could guard Jordan. The only way to slow him down was to literally beat him up and drape your hands all over him. In today's game, you can't touch an offensive player. Jordan would murder everyone with all that space and the hand checking calls.

Jordan would be the best SG in the league if not the best player in the league for a a decade plus if he played today.

I disagree.
You couldn't touch Jordan back in the day. Illegal defense made him all that great. Hand Checking was not applied to him, and hand checking in general is overstated and overrated.

If you teleport Jordan to the NBA today, and he plays the same way, meaning he shoots t he same amount of shots from the same areas that he used to operate, he would struggle to run a good, efficient offense on what ever team he would be on. Jordan shot over .300 FGA percentage from 10-16 and 16>3pt for his career. Derozan is at .200 for his career for comparison. That's an insane amount for any era, let alone in an era that thrives on spacing and 3pt shots.
For as much as Jordan handled the ball, you would also expect his assist numbers to be way higher. If you account for pace adjustments which was higher by significant margin for most of the 2000s and if we compare to Lebron who played at a snail pace for the majority of his prime, you would expect his numbers to rival or best the top ball handlers in the league.

Even his rebounding numbers are very mediocre adjusted to pace and how overwhelming physically he was as a 2 guard compared to the stiffs that played in his day.

In my honest opinion, Jordan was deemed a living god during his playing time because the League was suffering badly. NBA game did not get high ratings, and Stern figured out that fans needed someone to root for on an individual level, who was tiers above the rest to draw attention, and Jordan matched every criteria. Jordan pound for pound was not tiers above other superstars in the league. HE w as the best, but he also got favorable treatment, officiating and somehow from fucking scratch the Bulls managed to surround him with Top tier talent for nearly a decade in a watered down league. Somehow, for some reason the NBA 3pt line got shorter to make him that much better once the competition caught up.

I think people don't realize how great players are today nowadays. Giannis would absolutely wreck the 80's/90's. Lebron too. You know how unstoppable prime Lebron would look playing against illegal defense? Crazy to think about.
For as much as Jordan dominated that era, I would have also expected much better highlights on "The Last Dance", tbh.
 
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Not trying to turn this into a Bron vs MJ thread, but since @Sir'Dom Pointer mentioned pace...

I was curious last week and created these tables showing the league-wide pace and offensive rating numbers throughout each of their respective careers.

Screen Shot 2020-05-21 at 5.02.58 PM.png
 
I disagree.

In my honest opinion, Jordan was deemed a living god during his playing time because the League was suffering badly. NBA game did not get high ratings, and Stern figured out that fans needed someone to root for on an individual level, who was tiers above the rest to draw attention, and Jordan matched every criteria. Jordan pound for pound was not tiers above other superstars in the league. HE w as the best, but he also got favorable treatment, officiating and somehow from fucking scratch the Bulls managed to surround him with Top tier talent for nearly a decade in a watered down league. Somehow, for some reason the NBA 3pt line got shorter to make him that much better once the competition caught up.

This was something I never even paid attention to until I was searching this morning.

The three point line was moved up from '94-'95 through the '96-'97 season. Looking at Jordan's numbers over his career, this paints a pretty stark picture on how poor of a 3-pt shooter he was and how his game would suffer in the modern era if he wasn't surrounded by elite shooters or become a legitimate threat from three, which he was never able to do beyond those couple seasons.

In the 12 seasons where the line wasn't shortened, the highest he ever shot was 37.6%, only over 30% three times, and over 35% twice.

His best full season shooting the three was, unsurprisingly, the '96-'97 season with a shorter line when he shot 42.7% on 3.6 3PA per game. The following season when the line moved back (the "Last Dance") he shot 23.8% on 1.5 attempts.

I don't think modern defenses would necessarily be able to shut him down, but Jordan wouldn't have the same athletic advantage today and teams could force him to shoot threes until he proved he could hit the shot with any consistency. LeBron was able to mitigate this early in his career to a degree because of his elite passing ability, but his offense really took off once his outside shot was no longer a liability.

I know people want to make the comparison to Kobe in the modern era, but the league didn't really start changing on the whole until Kobe was well past his prime.

Not trying to turn this into a comparison thing, but I think it further illustrates a point when people like to talk about LeBron not being able to compete in the 90's. Quickly looking back through Jordan's time in the league, LeBron would've finished in the top 30 many years in terms of 3 point percentage over that stretch, sometimes hitting the top 20 and even finishing ahead of people like Reggie Miller.
 
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Semi-OT but not really, since he had a significant role in the series and the overall saga:


He is old enough where the risks start to increase quite a bit; best wishes...
 
During Jordan's last few years he was getting very favorable calls from the refs. Hand checking may have been legal but in his second go-round it wasn't really legal for him. Also, no fucking way hand-checking does anything against Lebron, he's too strong. Really the change in illegal defense rules is a lot more important than hand checking.

With that said, Jordan would have been a great player in today's NBA as well, no question. Super scoring off-guard. He would have improved his three point shooting to some kind of passable level even if not great, he was too competitive not to. It's just his "superman, unbeatable" reputation that seems wrong to me. He got that rep during a time when NBA competition was FAR worse than it is now and worse even than the 80s. Things have changed a lot in 20-25 years, that's an eternity in the NBA.
 

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