Episode 2: LeBron's case for "Greatest Basketball Player Ever"

along in the form of a podcast. However, I do really like these live videos. I really like when I can have questions asked and I can kind of interact directly with you guys. It's a lot more fun for me. Makes it feel a lot more like a basketball conversation instead of just you know, one dude talking endlessly for a long time. But anyway, so today I want to talk about the uh uh m j Lebron debate as of right now, where I feel about what I feel

about that debate as it stands currently. And then I got a lot of attitude from some people for me saying that Jimmy was the eleventh or twelfth best player in the league instead of the tenth and uh I'm

going to defend that um. And last but not least, I just want to thank you all who have supported me during this last couple of months as I've gotten this process started, and I've had so much fun with it, And for all of you who take the time to go rate and review that podcast and subscribe, and for all of you who continue to support me, I just hope you understand how much I appreciate you guys. I Like I said, I've been having so much fun with it and I look forward to see where it goes.

But anyway, with the Lebron MJ thing, it's really this simple. You know, I'm a huge Lebron fan. It's the thing that got me into basketball. I grew up in a basket I grew up in a baseball and football family. I had to have a talk with my dad to convince him to let me quit the high school football

team so that I could pursue basketball. And that was the the you know, the because it was just not a thing in my family growing up, and all my my brothers played football and baseball, and it was really hard for me to get off of that, you know track, to get to what I wanted, and uh, ironically just flicking channels. One day, I came across Lebron playing against the Pistons in two thousand six, and I guess I was a freshman in high school or a sophomore in

high school. And uh, he ended up losing that series, but I was so impressed. I think I think I turned it on in game uh in game six when they took the might have been in Game five when they took the three to lead, and I was just entranced by how well he played. And I became a huge Lebron fan at that phase of my uh my life, and it got me into basketball, and I ended up, you know, getting basketball, ended up paying for my college, and end up being this unbelievable experience. So I'll always

be a Lebron fan for that. But coming into this season, you know, I never thought that he had a legitimate

case for the greatest basketball player ever. And I honestly thought it was kind of a mistake made by a lot of Lebron fans to jump on that train too early, because it shot some of the credibility down and it made it I think it's part of the reason why this debate is so you know, hard to have with people, and why everyone is so entrenched in their opinions, it's because you know, it was like they beat the seventy three win Warriors, and a lot of Lebron fans kind of,

you know, stake their claim that that Lebron was that guy at that point, when I never really thought that at that point he had a legitimate case. And you know, uh, now and after this season, after what he was able to do, I do think that he finally has a case for me personally, I'm still not ready to say that he definitively can take that title. Um that said, I do believe he legitimately has a case. And what I plan to do today is to talk about what

that case looks like and to explain why. You know, uh, if I was having a conversation with somebody and at some point in the future and I was staking that claim, this is what that claim would look like. And you know, for starters, you know, I think it's important to understand that, you know, the NBA relies heavily on individual conversations about individual players and individual legacies, but it is a team

sport at the end of the day. Do you guys think Lebron finally just randomly in became the best player in the league again, or do you think he was the best player in the league in two thousand seventeen and in two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen and probably for most of the last nine or ten years.

It just as that team circumstances surrounding him have shifted, and you know, things have like broke his way and things have not broken his way, and it has resulted in you know, teams winning team championships, and and that a lot of times we overcomplicated instead of simplifying it down to the fact that, yes, this is the sport where an individual has the largest impact, but it is not a sport where an individual is the soul, you know, uh, the sole reason why a team can win or lose,

you know. And there's a I think it starts with the aura of invincibility that surrounds Michael Jordan's you know that he never lost when the reality was that he did not only in the eighties when he was going again against a lot of the guys who are his all time peers, the Larry Birds, the Isaiah Thomass and the Magic Johnson's who dominated while MJ was in the league, but also in the nineties, he lost twice. He lost in nine nine against that Detroit Pistons team in seven games,

and he lost in to the to the Magic. And the reality is is like you can you can draw a line between uh, those losses and and the fact that basketball is a team sport even for those circumstances like the for that Pistons team, the youth on that Chicago roster wasn't ready, Scottie Pippen wasn't ready, and and it took those losses for them to improve to the point where they could peak simultaneously and go on the

run that they did. And you know why they lost to the Magic because they had Horace Grant and Shaquille O'Neil and they had no front court, so they just got bullied and they had no chance, and that's why they lost. And you know, I think a lot of times that doesn't mean that MJ wasn't the best player, you know, and MJ was probably the best player from you know, N nine four, you know, as as Larry Bird kind of throughout his back and faded out of

the league. But the truth of the matter is that you know, uh, simplifying it down to just how many championships a player won, is it It does a disservice to both of those players, and the fact that in all of their teammates and all of their coaches over the years, and the impacts that those people had on them winning and losing over the years, and and the truth of the matter is is for about a decade from eight or nine, nine to MJ was the best player in the league, and when he was in a

circumstance where his team was in the top tier of teams in the league with talent, he won. And Lebron exact same thing from nineteen or from two thousand and uh two thousand and eleven or twelve, when he became the best player to now, you know, for nine or ten years he's been the best player in the league, and when things have broken his way, when he's been on a team that has had as much talent as everyone else in the league, he's one and that and

that's the reality of both of their their cases. But before this season, that six to three gap was still too big, in my opinion to have any legitimate conversation surrounding whether or not Lebron deserved to be mentioned in that same breath in my opinion, But what he did this last year, I believe has brought that gap close enough that you can actually start to have an honest conversation about the circumstances surrounding both of those guys, and the fact that the fact that Lebron now has a

legitimate conversation. So, you know, first of all, I want to talk about two things that don't matter to me, things that I don't think are fair elements of the MJ Lebron debate in Lebron's favor, for instance, longevity. A lot of stuff about, oh, Lebron is still dominating the league in his seventeenth season, that's not fair to Michael Jordan's because Michael Jordan played in an arrow where guys

went to college first. And the reality is is that, uh, in all likelihood, UH MJ would have more counting staf AT's and MJ would have more, uh, you know, have that impression of longevity had he gotten into the league when he was eighteen, but he didn't. He started in college, played you know, three seasons there and had to start in his first season in his early twenties, which is just a different career path than what it looks like today, So that I don't think works in in uh in

Lebron's favor. And then I just mentioned it a second ago, but accounting stats, when you throw that longevity argument out the out the window, you have to do the counting stats as well. Like, it just doesn't matter to me that Lebron's gonna end up with more points, rebounds, and assists than Michael Jordan's, because I don't think that's fair to Michael Jordan's in the circumstance that he played with.

If you want to bring up assists from the standpoint of bringing up Lebron's skill set and the fact that his passing ability was far superior to that of Michael Jordan's, absolutely, I just don't think you can do it in the form of counting stats. But what does matter to me and what I think needs to be the cornerstone of Lebron's case for greatest basketball player ever is his winning versatility.

And that's the simple idea that regardless of circumstance and regardless of what she put around him, He's going to find a way to win and he can do it in different ways, and it goes so much further than the thing you've heard a million times over the past couple of weeks or over the past week, which is he has won three championships as the best player on on three different teams. So four championships with three different teams. It goes even further than that. He had two additional

finals runs with two completely different supporting casts. In two thousand seven he went to the finals with Larry Hughes and Eric Snow and Drew Gooden and Zaidrewnielgawskis and Anderson Verigel and those guys. And then in two thousand eighteen, after Kyrie left and they traded, They traded Kyrie, and they traded um Isaiah Thomas, and they traded Jay Crowder,

and they traded all those guys. He carried another team to the finals that was built around George Hill and Rodney Hood and Kevin Love as a as a second star instead of a third star, and a lot more Tristan Thompson, a lot of Larry Nance Jr. He took five completely different supporting casts to the NBA Finals over

a fourteen year stretch. Uh over a fourteen year stretch, and then in addition to that, in two thousand nine he came just two wins Shy and two game winners by UH or a game winner by Richard Lewis from taking another team to the finals. That was built around Moe Williams and Delonte West and j J. Hickson and

and and those guys. So we've seen basically six completely different supporting casts get to either to the finals, to a championship, or two within two wins of the finals, whereas with Michael Jordan's while there was a couple of different, you know, moves on the periphery that were different, he did all of his winning with the same cast of characters,

which was basically Scottie Pippen Phil Jackson. And then in the first three PET it was mainly built around Horrors Grant in the front court, and in the second three PA it was mainly built around Dennis Rodman. Now, I think it's important you can't punish MJ for that necessarily, but it does cast just that little bit of doubt just you can have a conversation about the fact that there is more evidence that lebron can win in different ways, whereas MJ. Just continued to win in the same way.

And you know, and I think it's important understand that because you hear a lot of people say that. You hear a lot of people say things like, you know, well Lebron just always cuts and runs and goes to another roster, or you know, every time Lebron found his himself in a disadvantageous situation, he would just shuffle the deck again and leave and go somewhere else. And the truth of the matter is is, yes, he did do that,

but he did that out of necessity. And it's a necessity that did not exist for Michael Jordan's when Michael Jordan was in Chicago, as as he was getting to that point, you know, six or seven years into the league where he was starting to get frustrated as he was losing, Scottie Pippen peaked and became, you know, one of the best players in the league. And it allowed Michael Jordan to spend the entire second portion of his prime alongside one of the best players in the league.

You know, I say, I've been saying this all season as it pertains to Anthony Davis, Michael Jordan playing with Scottie Pippen for the entire back end of his prime, basically for ten years. That was that would be very similar to Lebron spending his entire prime with Anthony Davis instead of getting Anthony Davis when he's thirty five years old already. Now, is Anthony Davis a better player than Scotti Pippen, Absolutely, But in the hierarchy of the league

he was not. Like the league was so much deeper at the top now that it seems like, you know, Scottie Pippen isn't that great, But in the nineties, Scotty Pippen was that great. He was a first team All NBA guy. He was. He ranged over the course of that ten year stretch from somewhere around the you know, six or seventh best player in the league to the second or third best player in the league. The guy damn Near won an m VP. The guy damn near

made it to the finals without Michael Jordan. Scottie Pippen to the to the nineties was what Anthony Davis is to this era, which is not the best player in the league but right up there and on any given season could go on a run where he was like the best players in the league and So that's why Michael Jordan never shuffled a deck or went to another team, or asked out or demanded trades from teammates or things along those lines. That's why he didn't have to do that.

And it's funny because, for whatever reason, that reputation follows Lebron around, but it never has followed Kobe around. And you know, you look at those three guys. You've got, uh, Michael Jordan, Lebron, and Kobe. You've got Michael Jordan's who consistently in the for the large part of his career, was on one of the best teams in the league

and never felt the need to leave. And then you've got Kobe, who very much felt the need to leave and demanded a trade and it ended up leading to his second stretch of championship contention there from two thousand h ten. And then you've got Lebron where that trade

never happened and so he had to leave. So I've got the guy who never needed to leave, I've got the guy who wanted to and by threatening leaving caused his front office to finally be aggressive and make the necessary moves to bring in the winning piece, which was Pau Gasol, and then I've got Lebron, who, after seven years of dealing with Moe Williams and Delante West and Larry Hughes and Eric Snow, was like, I gotta do this myself, and you know, and then Dwyane Wade was

supposed to be his Pippen and then he broke down. So if if Dwyane Wade stayed at that level the way that Scottie Pippen did for Michael, Lebron never would have left. He would have stayed in Miami. He left out of necessity. And so while it's not fair to blame Michael Jordan's for not winning in multiple circumstances, it's also not fair to blame Lebron for leaving in looking for those circumstances because he did it out of necessity.

But at the end of the day, if if if your definition for what greatest basketball player ever is you know what can I win with? Then I think Lebron has a better case for number one, simply because of the fact that if I'm starting from scratch, and I'm picking four random players out of a hat to be the starters, and I'm picking another ten random players out of a hat, to be the supporting cast, and I'm picking another random name out of the hat to be

the coach. There is more evidence that those random names will succeed alongside Lebron James, then there is evidence that they will succeed alongside any other player that that he can be compared to long term or UH in terms of the top players in NBA history. And so that is the number one case for Lebron being the greatest player ever. It's just that winning versatility, the idea of regardless of who you put next to him, He's going

to find a way to win. And then secondly, the other big thing that I would build my Lebron case around is just that the mental consistency, in the mental toughness.

I have never seen a player in my lifetime in any sport UH that has the ability to dig deep and find some sort of motivation to do it again, even when the carrot at the end of the tunnel may not be realistic, like what he did in two thousand eighteen with that Cavalier team sitting there like knowing he can't win the title and knowing it would be so easy to pack your bags and just be like this isn't the time, this isn't the run, and just doing it anyway, like what he did against Indiana and

Boston and Toronto and that playoff run with that group of guys, just being like, you know what, the deck is stacked against me. I probably have zero percent chance of getting this done, but I'm gonna go all the way anyway, and I'll go get my ass kicked by Golden State. But it's just his that that that type of mental wiring that he has is not something that existed for m J. And the reality is is for MJ, like when he got exhausted, he just left, and he got to leave for two years, and then when he

got exhausted again, he left again. So you know, and I think you've seen that with just about every other group of players in NBA history, Like look at the Lakers in two thousand eleven and two thousand twelve. It's like those guys just got tired and then you know, and and a lot of it had to do with health and Kobe's knees started to have some issues there in two thousand and eleven. But you know the reality is, with all of these other players that you compare Lebron too.

There were just there was just an eventual mental exhaustion that would set in that would cause them to fall apart.

And if you like, you look at the Celtics and Lakers in the eighties, like there are a couple of random seasons in there for both of those guys, for Larry and for Magic where they would just lose and like the second or third round for some reason, and you'd be like, wait, like why in the world, you know, why in the world is Portland's beating l a you know, you know, like Magic Johnson's the best player on the

floor by a mile. And it's that mental exhaustion. It's the simple fact that over time, it's one thing to win, it's another thing to win again and again and again

and again without ever relenting. And if you look at Lebron's entire career, it's pretty much just last year with the injury and the injuries, injuries to all of his role players, where you can say he kind of packed it in, but even then he tried, like he came back from that growing injury with you know, Alonzo being out and with Brandon Brandon Ingram being injury prone all season, and even after brandon Ingram went down and he just tried to do it, and then of course it ended

up not being enough because that team was garbage after all the injuries happened. But he gave it. He had Lebron's mental energy. Lebron's mental reservoir is completely different than any player UH in the history of the NBA. And so if I'm so insummation, like I said, from from the from the start, I personally am not ready to, you know, profoundly claim that Lebron is the best player ever.

But I think now after this season, he finally has a legitimate case, and that legitimate case is built on his his UH winning versatility, the ability to win regardless of circumstances. He has taken five different supporting casts to the finals and six different supporting casts, two within two wins of the finals. He he has shown that he can win under any circumstance. And then secondly, his mental consistency.

His mental consistency, his motor his his reservoir of motivation is unparalleled in the history of basketball in my opinion, and so the ability for him to eventually have a profound case is built on that longevity. Like I said, earlier. You cannot use longevity as a case for lab On now because what he just did, he's thirty five and MJ did this at age thirty five. But you know what MJ didn't do is this at thirty six, in

this at thirty seven, and this at thirty eight. So that third case that Lebron can make, beyond the winning versatility and beyond that mental consistency, is he can make the longevity case. Now the year everything going up to year seventeen didn't it was worthless, It didn't count in terms of the longevity debate because MJ did that too. But now, in this late stage of his career, Lebron has a chance to add another significant element to his

case in that longevity. See, I'm I, you know I I like I said, I think that this debate can get super uninteresting with how entrenched everybody is. That I do like having the nuanced conversation with people who are honestly willing to do it honestly, And that's why I'm excited to have Tommy on later this week. He's going to take the MJ side of this, and him and I will have some fun with that. Just to give you guys some extra content here in the NBA's summer um.

But yeah, like that's that's just where I stand right now at the summer of the you know, the winter the off season of after Lebron has won his fourth title. So the last thing I want to talk about today is, uh, this Jimmy Butler thing. I caught a lot of flak from people when I said that Jimmy Butler wasn't a top ten player, but it was something that you know, there's two important things that I want to get out here,

just to defend myself. First of all, Uh, it bought this is I used to have this problem with Steph fans when I'd be like, I get just my astitude for saying that Steph is the second or third best player in the league or the fourth best player in the league, as if that's some giant insult when the league is so damn talented. Now that the guys at the top and the the guys at the top of the league are the names you're looking at, it's the most it's the most. Uh, it's the most talented top

of the league we've seen since the nineteen eighties. When you go to the nineteen eighties, and you've got you know, Barkley at the top of his game, and Bird at the top of his game, and Magic at the top of his game and MJ at the top of his game that like, and it goes on and on. In

the eighties, that's literally what it's like. Now I've got Lebron, I've got Kauai, I've got Steph I've got you know, uh, Janice, and I've got Kevin Durant and like and and now I've got Anthony Davis, who's in that group of guys like that, the list of talent at the top of the league is unlike it has ever been since the nineteen eighties. And so from that standpoint, it goes all the way down into that deep you know, ten to

fifteen range. And for me to say, you know, Jimmy Butler is the eleventh or twelfth best player ever or excuse me, and this era is not an insult to him because like I said, uh, like I said when I originally made the point, we're comparing him to Damian Lillard, a guy who averaged thirty damn points a game this year and just dragged his team to the playoffs on

his back. When they were injured out the wazoo. It's like this guy, this guy is in a tier where he's even in that you know, tend to five team range. He is competing against Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum, who just dropped twenty six points a game in a playoff run for a team that made the Eastern Conference finals and was the best defender on the floor and a

lot of the games that he played. And and uh, Joe l Embiid, who's like the best, like the best center we've seen since you know, uh, since Dwight was in his prime. And and we have you know, Paul George, who I mean, obviously we've roasted him, but he was an m VP candidate last year, and and CP three was second team All NBA this year and dragged a team that was supposed to miss the playoffs and into

a seven game slug fest with the Houston Rockets. So the point is is, like me saying that Jimmy Butler is not a top ten player is not me, you know, shooting on the guy after having an amazing playoff run. That's me just trying to have an honest conversation about the NBA's proverbial horse race, and I'm looking at these guys and Okay, I've got nine for sure names that I cannot put Jimmy above. And then I'm talking about whether or not he's better than Dame or better than Tatum.

And right now I would say that Damian Lillard is so far superior as an offensive player that I just cannot put Jimmy above him because of my personal ideologies and the way that I evaluate offensive talent or talent in the playoffs. And then the same thing goes for Jayson Tatum. And again, I made this point like seventeen times over the last two weeks, and I'll make it one last time. Jimmy Butler was a twenty point per game guy for the last six seasons in Chicago, in Minnesota,

in Philly, and in Miami. In the playoffs, he was a twenty point of game guy in Minnesota, in Chicago, in Philly, and in Miami. In this Miami playoff run, he was a twenty point of game guy the entire

playoff run. And then the Lakers really really really really really really really let their foot off the gas in two games in Game three of this series and in Game five of this series, and they let a guy who is the eleventh or twelveth best player in the league play one on one basketball all night long, and they let a guy who is the tenth or the eleventh and twelve best player in the league face zero help defense and uh Anthony Davis and foul trouble, just

floating around the perimeter and just really garbage efforts from the Lakers that led to him having a forty point triple double and a thirty five point triple double. And

again that's Jimmy. Butler deserves all the credit for what he did in this playoff run, and he absolutely deserves to be acknowledged as you know, a player who was better than we all thought he was, because coming into this playoff run, we probably all had Jimmy in that seventeen, eighteen to twenty range, so we were giving him his

props by moving him up the list. But if I'm having an honest conversation about who the ten best players in the league are, I just I can't in good faith take a twenty point a game guy who's a good not great playoff defender and who's good not great at anything in playoff basketball and put him over Damian Lillard, who legitimately, uh that gets trapped on every single pick and roll and doubled all over the court because teams are terrified of him having the ball, and you know

what guys like in this the last thing I'll say, Dame has had some playoff failures in his life, make no mistake, but Jimmy Butler won three playoff series total in his entire career coming into this playoff run in the Eastern Conference, literally playing against the same guys that everybody has completely denigrated for the sake of trashing Lebron for the last decade. Jimmy Butler has been in that same conference and has been a twenty point of game

guy for the last six years. And his won three playoff series total in his entire career, and one of them was back in the day when Derrick Ross was on the team and he was you know, uh not the same guy. So the reality is is like if I put Damian Lillard on this Miami Heat team and and gave him that Eric Spoelstra coaching staf of and the band's elite defensive versatility, and Andrea Guadala and Jake Crowder and elite shooters like Duncan Robinson and Tyler Harrow.

Guess what, guys, Dame's going to the finals, and he probably gives Lebron a better run for his money because they're not gonna It's just I just think that we've gotten a little bit out of a little bit crazy on this Jimmy Butler thing because of a couple of games that were incredible. But we have two games of that type of evidence, and I've got six entire years, including this year, including every other playoff game in this

playoff run, where Jimmy was a different guy. And so yeah, I just I think a lot of people are overthinking this and getting a little bit too caught up in the moment. And if i'm if, I'm talking about who you know, which I take very seriously because I'm a die hard NBA nerd. I take NBA rankings very seriously. In my opinion, Dame and maybe even Tatum have a better case as better basketball players right now than Jimmy

Butler does. And I'll stand by that um at least for this summer, until I see something a little bit more consistent from Jimmy moving forward. All right, So that's all I have for today. UM, Like I said, later this week, I'm gonna have Tommy come on and we're going to uh talk m J Lebron. I also am going to finish my top ten list and go one

through nine uh and UH. The format I'll do for that is, I'll work my way up from nine to one, and each player that I get to, I will explain why that player is better than the player underneath him. Uh and then I'll take some questions. At the end of that one, you guys can explain why you disagree. But yeah, so thanks again for for all of you for listening. Like I said, if you go to my Twitter feed, my pinned tweet has the link to the

Apple podcast that I finally have created. All of you who rate, review and subscribe, I sincerely appreciate you, guys, and until later this week, I guess