I'll start by saying that I think Lebron resembles Bird more than Magic in style of play. I understand your point about running the point -- and it's valid, as Bird rarely ever brought the ball up -- but I still think Lebron is more like Bird in the way he works out of the post both to create shots and also to distribute. One thing all three of them have in common, and that differentiates them from Jordan, is their innate passing gene. But to answer your question: I'm going to take Lebron. This is an excellent question, and I thought really hard about going with Magic, and I'm even going to reserve the right to change my mind and go with Magic, but for now I'm going with Lebron. The reason I thought about going with Magic is that I just can't imagine that guy, in his prime, being in a losing team. i really think you could put him with four mediocre players, and they'd still be a playoff team. It's not just his passing that gets other involved and makes them better, but it's just his winning attitude and enthusiasm. And I can't believe I just wrote that, and it looks really lame as I look back on it, but i don't know how else to articulate it. He just had a certain 'it' factor that infectious among his teammates. I can't imagine that his teammates didn't love playing alongside him. But then the evidence tends to suggest that Lebron is his equal in the department of making a team better. The Cavs won 17 games the year before they drafted Lebron. They won 35 the next, and Lebron was a teenager. The year before he went to the Heat, the Cavs won 61 games. The year after he left, they won 19. The guy unquestionably adds a focking shitload of wins to any team he joins. Also, Lebron is unquestionably a better defensive player than both Bird and Magic. And so if there was a tie, that would be the tiebreaker. I'm going Lebron. I was thinking about this yesterday.....if I were starting a team, I think I'd take Lebron over Jordan. I'm just not convinced that Jordan, as great as he was, made his teams THAT much better than they would have otherwise been. Case in point: in 1993, the Bulls won 59 games. Jordan then retires to play baseball, and the next year the Bulls won 57 games. They were worse without him, but they weren't *that* much worse. And at the end of the day, the only real way to judge individual players in a team game is by how much better they make their team. Now I'm not saying stats are unimportant. Of course they're important -- they're the only means we have for looking at players objectively. But they have to be a means to an end. If you're judging an individual player, look at their stats, sure. But does so as a tool to help answer the ultimate question of how much better they made their team. And I think the evidence suggests that Lebron provides more wins to the teams he's on than did Jordan. ETA: I misread your question. I thought you just wanted me to choose one guy. It should be apparent from the above, though, that I'd go Magic and Lebron.
Name the best player LeBron played with in Cleveland. Then, count the number of rings Jordan won before Pippen, Ho Grant, Et Al showed up. That gets you on the right track.
Guys like Mario Chalmers aren't half as good as, for example, Ron Harper. The Bulls were deeper and more athletic overall. Pippen in his prime was far better than the broken down Wade we see today.
hat, Lebron James arguments are a lot like climate change ones. They are going to work themselves out over time. If James leaves the Heat he is still going to be collecting hardware, and that is something Jordan never did (win multiple places).
You have to be more precise with that question. The Cavs were never the '97 Bulls, but the Cavs never had Pippe adn Kukoc and Rodman. The question about how many of those wins can be assigned to the player. If you take Jordan and replace with him the average shooting guard in the league, how much worse are the Bulls? Versus, if you take Lebron and replace him with the average shooting forward, how much worse are the Cavs. And we have evidence to suggest that the dropoff after you lose Lebron is WAY greater than after you lose Jordan.
That is pretty convincing evidence to me, now that you mention it. I don't think there is a large gulf between the players, though.
I'd take Michael Jordan over Lebron, and it's not even debateable in my mind. I'm ok with my bias - but the two are clearly distinguishable to me, in my mind.