Michael Jordan Told Teammates Privately Clyde Drexler Was Just as Good As Him but...

I don’t know. Jordan was a great defender. But I see no way he could guard LeBron. I could see LeBron guarding Jordan though.

if I had to pick someone to have the ball at the end of games. Easily it’s Jordan.

I watched Jordan throughout his prime. Amazing player. Once in a lifetime skills. But he was abusing guys like Craig Ehlo. I think someone like Khawi Leonard would give him fits.

 

LeBron vs. Jordan, Snyder Cut.

 

Maybe that's because Lebron left via free agency to form a super team, tarnishing the image of the sport. Good grief that's a shitty argument. One other championship paired him with a top 5 talent. Take away Davis and Wade and how great does he look? And in another post you give all credit to Jackson while citing his overall tenure, but how would Jackson look without Shaq, Kobe, Gasol, Pippen, and Jordan? WTF?

 

How great would anyone look without anyone else? My take-away is, and always has been, that championships are a team achievement, related to the overall team talent, and a bad way to evaluate individual players, even the very best ones.

IMO, if Jordan had been drafted by the Sacramento Kings (well, they would have been the Kansas City Kings in 1984), he'd probably have zero championships (absent him switching teams once unrestricted free agency began). That wouldn't mean he was any less of a player.

 

The Bulls didn't have a good culture before Jordan arrived. There's no reason to believe, other than idle speculation, that he wouldn't have similarly turned around a franchise like the Kings. Winners get it won.

 

Wilt also dominated pro ball when he was still a kid.

https://www.bardown.com/under-a-fak...pro-basketball-when-he-was-16-and-17-1.757398

 

He would have done exactly that.

 

Yeah, that's much too simplistic a philosophy. It's not just "culture" he needed, it was talent. Jordan didn't have GM powers in Chicago and wouldn't have had them in Sacramento (and he's proven to be a pretty poor talent-evaluator anyway). Jordan wouldn't have won anything without a great team around him and nothing suggests that the Kings, if they had lucked into Jordan, would have started making the great moves that Chicago did.

 

Did Chicago make shrewd front office moves or did Jordan push his teammates to exceed levels they would have otherwise achieved? Outside Pippen/Grant or Pippen/Rodman/Kukoc, those teams were mostly scrubs that managed to contribute at a high level. Pippen was a major late bloomer, and Horace was so much better than his twin brother, I'm not sure a strong case can be made for credit being owed to the front office.

 

I think this Jordan deification, that he deserves the credit for himself, his teammates, his coaches, everything, is tremendously silly and far, far more speculative than "Jordan wouldn't have won titles on a team with no other talent." Pippen, Grant, Rodman and Kukoc deserve credit for their own abilities, Jordan deserves credit for his own ability. The Chicago front office deserves credit for putting another Hall of Famer around Jordan for all of Jordan's championship window and yet another Hall of Famer around him for the second half of his championship window, plus other good players who assisted in winning, and in identifying a great head coach long before he was known (and Phil Jackson deserves credit for being a great head coach). There were a lot of important people who led to the Chicago dynasty, just as there have been for every other championship team and dynasty.

The idea that Jordan was a god that controlled the universe and needed nothing in order to succeed but his own magical powers is one of the weirdest narratives I run across among some NBA fans. He didn't need a good front office, he didn't need great teammates, he didn't need a great coach, he created all of those things himself in Chicago through his indomitable will and winning powers and he would have done so anywhere, any time, completely immune from the effects situation and context. I think that's probably not true--Jordan is either 1A or 1B among basketball players ever, and I think that's where it ends.

 

You sure took that to an extreme, without really addressing the cause and effect aspect of who was the driving force vs what the outcome of everyone's contribution was. Also, you've got a long history of bristling at any narrative that sells Pippen short.

 

There was no logical cause and effect provided to discuss. You just said "Have you considered that Jordan made everyone else and he could have done that anywhere?"

"Horace Grant was better than his brother, so clearly Jordan effect" isn't really evidence. Scottie Pippen really wasn't a "late bloomer"--his basketball development was pretty typical--using PER as a quick proxy, he went from 13 PER to 15 PER to 16.5 PER to 20.5 PER. That's a pretty standard progression for a star. If you mean from before he entered the NBA, it's worth noting that he was the fifth pick in the draft, so he was hardly a little-known nobody that somehow magically manifested talent when he encountered the Jordan aura.

You'll have to point me to some examples of my "bristling," because I'm not remembering this long history. I loved Pippen as a player, but I also loved watching Jordan play. My favorite (non-Blazers) to watch over the years have been Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Gary Payton, Penny Hardaway, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James and, lately, Steph Curry. So if you're saying that bias is the issue here, that's probably not the case. I even noted earlier in this thread (before we got into this debate) that I preferred watching Jordan to James.

I've just never really cottoned onto athlete worship. In the NBA, Jordan tends to accrue the most mysticism and brand loyalty, but there's always been a very dedicated Kobe cult too. When it comes to the devoted of such players, it's almost like an integral part of their identity that the player be seen as not merely great and successful and a winner, but always destined to be one of the greatest winners ever, regardless of circumstance.