Comparing MJ And Lebron

[h=1]Why LeBron is and isn't Jordan[/h][h=3]Like Mike: Is LeBron James reaching Michael Jordan's level of greatness?[/h]By Tom Haberstroh | ESPN Insider

LeBron James is right, and he's wrong.
As he tweeted early Wednesday morning, he is not Michael Jordan. There will never be another MJ in the same way that there will never be another Babe Ruth inbaseball or another Muhammad Ali in boxing. Right athlete, right time.
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But LeBron is the Michael Jordan of the information age. By ripping off fantastic season after fantastic season, setting statistical marks and now having scored a staggering 185 points on just 92 field goal attempts over his past six games, James has become the model of efficiency in this data-obsessed world of ours.
He is not just the best player in the game -- he's also the best candidate this generation has to match Jordan's greatness.
So is LJ more MJ or more not MJ? Let's break it down.

[h=3]Why James is Jordan[/h]
[h=3]1. Reverence of his peers[/h]"I think it's just God disguised as Michael Jordan." That's what Larry Bird said after watching Jordan score 63 points on him in a losing effort against the Boston Celtics in the first round of the 1986 playoffs. Jordan's Bulls were swept in that series by the eventual champion Celtics, but the message was clear: Jordan was just on another level.
That's the same message we're hearing these days from James' peers. On Sunday, after watching James' dominance firsthand, Kobe Bryant showered him with praise, calling his play "sensational" and "exceptional." Steve Nash joined the chorus to say James is playing "at a level rarely seen."
But the superhuman-like praise came Tuesday night after he thrashed the Blazers en route to 30 points, 9 assists and 6 rebounds, a record sixth straight game with at least 30 points on more than 60 percent shooting. Nicolas Batum told the Oregonian, "We're just human. He's not." One Portland player professed that he's "never seen anything like him." Another stunned Blazers player claimed that James "was created in a lab."
Dominance followed by accusations of superhuman powers? Yes, this is Jordan domain.

[h=3]2. Reaching uncharted statistical territory[/h]Player efficiency rating (PER) quantifies a player's productivity on a per-minute basis by bottling up all the box score stats into one handy number where the average is a 15 rating. James now possesses a 31.2 PER, up from a rating of 30.7 in his historic 2011-12 season. How impressive is that? If this holds, this would become only the 18th time in NBA history that someone has eclipsed the 30 PER plateau.
As always, Jordan has set the bar in this category. He is the only player with four 30-PER seasons under his belt. Wilt Chamberlain had three. Shaquille O'Neal had three. No one else had more than one. Except for James, of course. If James maintains his current level, he will match Jordan with four seasons north of 30 PER.
[h=4]Top 10 highest PER seasons[/h]


Right now, James is within reach of topping Chamberlain's record of a 31.8 PER that he set in the 1961-62 season and matched in the 1962-63 season. But that was before blocks and steals were recorded in the box score, so it's a bit misleading. Going by just the modern era, Jordan and James share the best mark of 31.7 for their 1987-88 and 2008-09 campaigns, respectively.
Prefer traditional statistics? James is registering 27.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 6.9 assists on 56.5 percent shooting. No one in NBA history has matched that line. If it holds, James would become the first.
Statistically speaking, if James isn't Jordan's equal, he's pretty darn close.

[h=3]3. Late to the title party[/h]It's hard to remember now, but people didn't think Jordan could ever win a title. He was a ball hog. A selfish loser. A me-first gunner who couldn't play a team game. That was Jordan's reputation before he won his first title at 28 years old. Four scoring titles and nothing to show for it before his 1990-91 season. Don't believe people doubted Jordan? Go to your library and give "The Jordan Rules" a good read.
Of course, that turned out to be a bunch of nonsense. And James can relate. As James came up short in two Finals appearances, the signs that read "Witness" were beginning to be replaced with another word: "Ringless." James was 27 years old with three MVPs and zero Larry O'Brien trophies to his name. A shelf full of individual accolades and none of the team hardware. The surrounding doubt had never been greater. Hmm, sounds familiar.
Then we all know what came next: James won MVP, Finals MVP, Olympic gold and an NBA championship in 2012. The key? James evolved. Like Mike. For James, it was a post game. For Jordan, it was a reliable 3-point shot that complemented his relentless driving game.
Dirty little secret: Jordan was a horrible 3-point shooter for much of his career. He shot a putrid 28.2 percent from downtown on 1.2 attempts per game in his first six seasons before winning the title in 1991. In the next seven seasons, which saw him win six titles, Jordan shot 35.6 percent on 2.3 3-point attempts per game. Jordan needed to evolve, and he did. Just like James.

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[h=3]Why James isn't Jordan[/h]
[h=3]1. James is currently a mix between Steve Nash and Shaquille O'Neal[/h]Passing has always distinguished James from Jordan. After all, James has averaged 6.9 assists per game in his career, a rate that Jordan topped only once (in 1988-89). So if James is not Jordan, then he's Magic Johnson, right? That's the common rebuttal, but that comparison falls short, too. Yes, James plays like an oversized point guard like Magic, but Magic averaged more than 20 points in just four of his 13 seasons in the NBA. James' 27.6 points per game average ranks third all time.
Moreover, if we really want to do James justice, we should compare him to his contemporaries. In this sense, he feels more like a freak Nash-Shaq hybrid. No one has ever combined physical dominance with technical mastery quite like James. To illustrate, there are only two players in the past 20 years to shoot at least 56 percent on at least 18 attempts per game. Their names: LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal.
But then get this: Nash and Jose Calderon are the only two players this season who can match James in assists per game (6.9) and 3-point percentage (42 percent). Believe it or not, James has evolved into one of the top spot-up shooters in the league; his eye-popping 56.8 percent shooting on spot-ups ranks him first among 155 players with at least 90 attempts, according to SynergySports. Instead of comparing James to Jordan or Johnson, it's probably more accurate to say this edition of James is a freak composite of the greatest shooting point guard of all time (Nash) and the most physically overwhelming player the game has ever seen (Shaq).

[h=3]2. James guards five positions[/h]During the playoffs last season, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra dubbed James "1-through-5" for his ability to guard all five positions on the floor. That's just not something that Jordan, who was one of the best wing defenders in history, can compete with.
And that's not a knock on Jordan. After all, there's only so much a 6-foot-6 body can do against a 7-footer. But James has fully embraced his Karl Malone size at 6-8 and 260 pounds. Some nights he's guarding Ty Lawson and other nights he's guarding Dwight Howard (although sometimes a lamp post could guard the latter these days).
It's hard to quantify James' versatility, and it's even more impossible to appraise that versatility on the defensive end of the floor. We just don't have the tools to capture James' quickness and size defensively. But if you're wondering how the Heat defense suffocates opponents while having only one player over 6-8 on the floor pretty much at all times, it's because of "1-through-5."

[h=3]3. James hasn't retired yet[/h]The most common barb thrown at James in the eternal Jordan Debate is James' measly ring count. James has only one title, Jordan has six titles. Case closed. End of story.
This comparison should strike you as incredibly shortsighted. As mentioned before, Jordan hadn't even won a title by James' age of 28 and now he's considered the greatest winner ever to step foot on the playing field. Ironically, Jordan is Exhibit A why it's far too early to wrap a bow around James' legacy.
Aligning Jordan's career accomplishments to James' career accomplishments is like comparing The Beatles to the Rolling Stones, but only if we used the Rolling Stones' body of work until 1970. People cite Jordan's upper hand in championship count, but they conveniently ignore the fact that James is superior to Jordan in every meaningful counting stat at this point in their basketball lives at 28 (titles, Finals appearances, points, assists and rebounds all point to James). Whether we like it or not, the biggest difference between James and Jordan is that the latter is retired and the former appears to be just getting started.

I've said for 4 years lj is better then mj. I know I'm still in the minority, but the minority is growing

MJ did it against far superior talent......NBA has been falling down hill for years in regards to talent and how the game is played. James could never do what he does today back then and Jordan would do so much more today then he did back then

Don't get me wrong Lebron is great, but he just doesn't do it for me. I remember when mike was on, I wanted to watch. I just don't get the same feeling with Lebron . I kind of feel that way with Kobe.

laughable.

you could argue lbj 'skill set' might be better than mj, but will never be a better player.