OT: Game 1 of the NBA Finals Cleveland @ Warriors Open Thread
I think you mean it was Lebron vs 9 tonight.
and bait the dude into getting into a scuffle.
The rest of the Warriors are like wtf are you doing Draymond
Also, today's players have access to better PEDs.
But they are playing against other players from today with the same access. To insinuate that PED's may be LBJ's secret sauce is weak, and to pretend like he does it in a vacuum is even worse.
is that MJ never won a ring without the benefit of at least two other All-Stars. He had to have that all-star power forward (first Horace Grant for the first 3 titles, then Dennis Rodman for the next trilogy) to make it work. 1994-5 season where he came back, he was playing lights out but they got hammered by the Magic in the playoffs because they couldn't cope with Shaq in the frontcourt-- he couldn't overcome that even with Pippen.
I just don't think MJ could have racked up all the finals trips LBJ has made happen. Not seeing it.
The difference in my eyes between Jordan and Lebron is Jordan always demanded the best and got the best from his teammates. Lebron has a penchant for throwing his teammates under the bus when things don't go right.
Lebron will go out there and try to do it all himself while Jordan knew what buttons to push and hold everyone accountable.
That shit JR Smith pulled tonight, I don't think happens on a Jordan team.
So, no chance that Jordan made them better that they might have been without him? No chance he didn't know how to bring his teammates best potential out in them?
Say what?
Are you trying to imply that Lebron doesn't make his teammates better? Are you watching the same games that most everyone else is? Without Lebron, this is a 20-25 win team, at best, and he has them in the Finals. Jordan never carried a team of this quality past the first round of the playoffs much less to the Finals and this is the second of crap teams that Lebron has done this with.
Like all great players, guys around Jordan played better with him on the court. But if he truly was such an amazing motivator of inferior talent, his earlier teams would have fared better against teams like the Celtics and Pistons in the east. Instead, it wasn't until his 6th season in the league, at age 27, that his team made the finals, mostly by watching the teams ahead of him in the East get old and break down. And then in the Finals against the Lakers, he got an aging core that quickly fell apart as Magic retired and guys like Worthy were entering the end of their careers.
Jordan is a great player, one of the top 2-3 in the history of the game. But there is an amazing about of ret-conning about how great an era he played in (it wasn't) and how fantastic he was at turning shit into gold (he wasn't). He had a good team that was built to fill the power void left by aging powers, and they did a great job at it.
Totally agree. Jordan fawning is dumb.
When Jordan "retired" the Bulls dropped from 57 wins to 55.
When Lebron left Cleveland the Cavs dropped from 61 wins to 19 and went from best record in the league to second worst. If you want I suppose you can blame it on the loss of Ilguaskas.
when he went to play baseball and after he retired?
No, they didn't win championships. But they weren't a lottery team while Jordan was playing baseball and they were about 35 games better than Lebron-less Cleveland. 35 games in an 82-game season is a lot.
The second time Jordan retired and Pippen and Rodman left too (not to mention replacing Jackson with Tim Floyd) they were bad. But still not as bad as Cleveland.
How else would you compare supporting casts? We're blessed with a pretty clean experiment because both stars left their teams while still in their prime, and then returned. Chicago went on making the playoffs and winning 50 games; Cleveland plummeted to the bottom of the league. It doesn't seem that hard to me to figure out which group was better.
That second Spurs series was one of the weirdest I've ever seen. LeBron played really well all things considered but nobody else on his team could do a damn thing consistently. It was insa.e
Jordan threw guys under the bus all the time. He apparently threw bad passes to Cartwright in practice and games to make him look bad, and was notorious for berating players in practice to the point that they got into fights with him. And as someone who watched him get beaten quite a few times by the Pistons before he finally broke through, he absolutely side-eyed guys on his team and yelled at them during timeouts.
There are differences between Jordan and LeBron, and maybe "being an asshole to your teammates" is one of them, but they absolutely care about winning to the same degree.
I hated the decision, and was anti lebron for his whole time in Miami, but the dude is a saint.
Have you ever been the best on a bad team? Good but can't win because of inferior talent. Its hard not to be consumed with frustration. I have no idea how he didnt throw a punch at JR.
He needs to leave 'the Land' ASAP. Everyone says Houston, I think Philly would be a better fit. I imagine they have the cash.
Lebron can stay and we'll send his teammates to Houston.
Smith can maybe find work at the Space Center.
Philly is intriguing, but they have spacing issues and they already have a ball-distributor who is tall. Not to say that Lebron would turn it down, but a lineup of their best players would be Simmons-Embiid-Lebron plus two other guys. Lebron and Embiid can shoot 3s but they're not exactly lights-out. And that team grew as Simmons learned to be the guy creating with the ball in his hands, not exactly a good mix with Lebron.
Similar problem in Houston--Harden has to have the ball a lot.
The place that would scare the rest of the league, to me? New Orleans. Not a great destination city, but imagine him and Davis playing together. That would be awesome.
It'd be weird if he left the East, though.
They have an all-time-great point guard and Harden who wants to play iso for 48 minutes. What would Lebron do? There's only one ball and I can't imagine Lebron standing around on the perimeter watching Harden dribble.
In fairness, doesn't Paul leave if Lebron comes? Like, isn't that necessary given cap space?
I think Houston would be insane to give Paul a max deal. But that's me.
...but supposedly it's Paul who's trying to recruit Lebron.
I can see those two together--that'd be a great pairing. But not with Harden too.
That's the one trade they made without even consulting him, and he was pissed.