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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2745926, member: 488"] Couple things to keep in mind: 1. I hardly view former players as authority figures on anything related to today's players. They're trained to think with a critical eye. If they weren't, they wouldn't be who they are. Whether it's Charles Barkley or Paul Pierce, you're going to have to adjust for some level of generational bias. That doesn't mean their observations don't have merit, but a lot of these guys still think the Warriors are a gimmick and Steph Curry is an invention of the three point line and touch fouls. You really have to take them with a grain of salt. If the Warriors had lost, the narrative would have been "KD's soft, Steph's game doesn't translate to the postseason, and the Warriors only won their last two titles because of injury." You can't lose when you're constantly starting from the idea that yesterday was better than today (and they might be right, but it's still a variable that complicates the discussion). Go check what people were saying about Jordan in the 80's. 2. While I admit that LeBron's performance last night was underwhelming, I do think it's possible to overstate the degree to which he "checked out" or "quit." First, his body language is always bad, and while it's something I've criticized him for frequently, it is something that contributes to making the optics of a blowout loss worse than they should be. Golden State shifted more help towards LeBron in games three and four and caused him to give it up. That, coupled with the hand injury that seemed to affect his shooting, forced him to facilitate more than maybe he would have liked. Perhaps, as I have in the past, you can criticize him for always making "the right basketball play" at the expense of "the right play for our team right now," but that doesn't necessarily equate to giving up. Nobody got on Magic when he limited his shot attempts in big games. He still went for 23-8-7 and got to the line 11 times. I have to believe you're better than to cite scoring titles and all-defensive teams as evidence that Jordan was better. Yes, Jordan was a great defensive player, and yes, he was a better scorer than LeBron, but this is still a false appeal to authority. All-defensive teams in the NBA back then were a lot like gold gloves and scoring titles are a lot like RBI totals. LeBron's lack of scoring titles are a direct result of his commitment to playing winning, efficient basketball. And finals record? Please stop. True, if we aren't penalizing him for that record then we shouldn't credit him as much for the consecutive finals trips, but no credible analysis of the two players is ever going to mention the actual records, even in passing. It's really unbelievable how people manage to credit Jordan for playing baseball while slighting LeBron for dragging a hapless team for 100+ games and 40+ minutes every night at the age of 33. [/QUOTE]

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