Hoosierfan2017

Man I'm really hoping I can find someone to hook me up with a student ticket. With gameday coming the ticket prices will be too dang high.

I have to actually correct myself. LeBron is 11-9 in elimination games, not 10-9. Anyway, what do you think is a good indicator? The "eye test" isn't a reliable indicator because no two people's eyes will see the same thing. I think that "clutch" means that a player comes up big for his team when they need him the most. There's no time that a team needs a star player more than when they are facing elimination. Elimination games are "do or die", win or go home. We're not talking about 3 or 4 games. Lebron has played in 20 of them. It's plenty big enough to use as a sample size. That's a huge number of elimination games for a player to play in during his career.

It's not just ppg. His numbers in elimination games are better than his career playoffs averages. He elevates his play when he faces elimination. If he was choking then his elimination numbers wouldn't be better than his career averages. His advanced numbers are also elevated. If you don't care about the individual statistics then I can go to winning percentage. He has a higher winning percentage in elimination games than Michael Jordan did. LeBron is 10-9 in elimination games, Jordan was 6-7. This doesn't show that LeBron is more clutch than Jordan, but it does give credence to the argument that he isn't "not clutch". I think we get so hung up on the last 25-30 seconds of a game that we tend to ignore what happened in the first 47.5 minutes.

Oh I completely agree, I think it's flawed thinking too. I wish that he would always have a "screw it, get out of my way" attitude during those situations. I just think his way of thinking is so embedded in him that that's why he does what he does late in games. It frustrates me when I watch it (well except for the times it works lol).

Is PPG not a useful stat? What do you consider to be a useful stat? i didn't bring up ppg to argue that LeBron is the best of all time. I brought it up to show that LeBron isn't the choke artist that some seem to think he is. When his back is against the wall and he's facing elimination he was the highest ppg average in NBA history. In those games he also averages 10.8 rebounds and 7.1 assists. He doesn't come up small when the pressure is on. I'm not arguing that he's more clutch than Jordan. I'm not arguing that he has a better killer instinct than Jordan. I'm arguing that LeBron doesn't lack those characteristics and I'm including these statistics to support my argument.

I'm not trying to argue LeBron > Jordan here like I've done in the past. I get that some have Jordan as the clear #1 and that's fine with me. It's probably not appropriate to compare the two while Lebron's career is still going on. I just think that if you look at the numbers he's a lot more clutch than he's given credit for. I think the reason we see him defer late in games sometimes is because of his basketball mind. He has incredible court vision and playmaking ability, and I think a lot of the time he wants to make the smart basketball decision. Take his pass to Kyle Korver late in game 3 in this past finals. Korver shot 45.3% on catch&shoot 3s at home this season. LeBron shot 35% on pull up jumpers at home this season. The smart basketball play was kicking it to a wide open Kyle Korver, and that's what he did. You could make the argument that the best player should always take that shot, but Lebron's not wired that way. He's wired to make the right play whether or not it involved him shooting.

Idk everyone's definition of killer instinct, but Lebron's ppg average in elimination games is the highest in NBA history. He's at his best with his back against the wall.

It's always been interesting to me that it's usually said that LeBron "chokes" late in games while Kobe is "clutch" and an "assassin" late in games. The numbers tell a different story.

RB for me because it's such an unknown. I think we'll ultimately be fine, but until we see them in action I'm concerned.

No doubt. I think another thing that contributes to his lack of recognition was that the Spurs were considered to be "boring" so people didn't tune in as often as they would with other all-time greats. I just did a quick Google search on Duncan... 15x All-NBA and 15x All-Defensive.. Sheesh.

He's an all-time great imo. Unfortunately lack of recognition seems to be the price you pay when you aren't flashy and you don't really draw any attention to yourself.

This is sort of off topic, but the MVP talk made me curious. To me it seems like the MVP usually goes to the best player on the best team. But, in the past 20 years the MVP won the championship only 6 times. Jordan, Shaq, Duncan, LeBron twice, and Curry. Idk, I just found that interesting lol.

Also Magic's career got cut short so it's harder to judge. Who knows where he would've ended up on the all-time lists had he played 5-6 more years.

LeBron doesn't have 10 more years in him like some of these younger cats do so I wouldn't pick him to start a team going forward either. There's a lot of young talent in the NBA right now and I'm excited to see it develop. Also screw Kevin Durant lol.

Yeah I agree. To me the "5 is better than 3 so Kobe is better" comment by Jordan was just intellectually lazy and I expected better from such a great basketball mind like his. Like you said, between Jordan and LeBron MJ has much more going for him than just the 6 rings in a comparison. With Kobe the 2 extra rings are really all he has on LeBron. I know football isn't quite the same as basketball, but to me the Brady/Manning debate is an example of why you can't just use the rings argument to decide between two great players like MJ did today.

I think the ringz argument is a bad argument, and personally I think LeBron is better than Jordan (as you all know lol), but that's beside the point. With Jordan you can go past the rings and point to a multitude of reasons to argue that he was better than LeBron. You can't do that with Kobe when you compare him to LeBron.

So you would choose the worse player to start your team with then? That doesn't make much sense to me. If you're starting a team in a vacuum you don't get to add Shaq, Phil Jackson, and the massive LA market too.

Your hatred for LeBron really keeps you from being able to give reasoned takes. Do you remember the NBA in the early 2000s? People complained about the referees helping the Lakers just like you complain about the NBA helping LeBron. Do you remember that WCF against Sacramento? It's believed by many that the NBA literally fixed the series so LA would win. Kobe's maturity? You mean assaulting a girl and running off one of the all-time great centers? Kobe demanded a trade in 2007. LeBron has never demanded a trade, he plays out his contract and then reassess things. Sure, he "stuck around" but had he gotten his way he wouldn't have. The tougher conference?

Can he sign somewhere and play right away?

Jordan's just using Kobe as a buffer to try and stop people from comparing him and LeBron. If you compare Kobe and LeBron it really isn't even close.

There's something about 11 that beats 6. Kobe's one of the most overrated players of all time and I really don't understand why some people consider him a top 5-10 player of all time

Minnesota and Notthwestern are on the upswing. Iowa is usually pretty decent and Illinois just got a pretty good new coach. The results were pretty balanced last year, with the West actually being more successful. East - t-2nd, t-5th, t-5th, t-10th, t-10th, t-12th, 14th West - 1st, t-2nd, 4th, t-5th, t-5th, 9th, t-12th.

I just watched some of his highlights too. He has good athleticism, but his game doesn't seem to rely on it which is good. He does a good job of following his shot. There were a few clips of him posting up. Running him at 2 guard and designing plays to get him post touches could create some mismatch advantages.

Crean had a knack for finding lower ranked recruiting gems, but he seemed to always be obsessed with finding the next one and it led to him taking a lot of risks. For every home run he hit he'd have several strikeouts and it was never consistent enough. I wasn't trying to be deceitful by only quoting what I did, and I apologize if it seemed that way. That part specifically just made me chuckle so it was all I included. I digress though before this goes too far off topic. This topic has already been beat to death far too many times lol.

I'm aware of the full quote, and I'm aware of Sheehey's career here too. I just didn't know the story of how he was offered a scholarship and I found it funny because Crean had a history of offering kids almost right after meeting them. I mean, 10 minutes of an open gym was all it took for him to pull the trigger. Sometimes it worked out like it did with Will, but other times not so much.