Is Michael Jordan Really the Greatest Of All Time?

I want to start off by saying I am not denying that Michael Jordan is one of the best players to ever play the game and that what he did for the NBA and basketball was incredible in itself. I know that many see him as clearly the best player of all time but I hope that I can provide enough evidence to sway that opinion. So let’s begin: Is MJ really the best?

For many years it has almost been blasphemous to say anyone other than Michael Jordan is the Greatest Basketballer of All Time. Even if you ask non- NBA fans who the greatest is they will always tell you MJ despite them not even watching a game. This is because the media have told us time and time again that he is untouchable and clearly the premier player of the NBA. This myth is wrong and it is unfortunate that MJ is synonymous with being the best player of all time just because that’s what we have been lead to believe.

Michael Jordan had an illustrious career with many awards these include:

6-time NBA Champion

5 MVP awards

10-time scoring champion

3-time steals leader

14-time all star

6-time NBA Finals MVP

1-time NBA Defensive player of the year

11-time All-NBA

9-time All-Defensive

NBA Rookie of the year

And 2 Olympic Gold Medals

 He averaged 37.1 ppg in one season and 35ppg in another with a career average of 30.1 ppg in his career and 33.4 ppg in playoffs. His well known highlights include the dunk from the free throw line, the Flu game and ‘The Shot”. While the numbers, the awards and accolades are all incredible we are talking about being the best player to ever play the game. This ‘award’ isn’t about stats though if it were then the best would be Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson, it’s not about Championships either otherwise Bill Russell would be the Greatest of All Time. To analyse the true GOAT we must take into consideration the era, the impact on their team and the way the public perceive the player based on what the media and NBA tells us.

Impact on team

Michael Jordan entered the NBA in 1984 and won Rookie of the Year. The Bulls however went an abysmal 38-44 and lost 3 games to 1 in the first round of the playoffs. He is supposed to be the GOAT yet couldn’t even manage a winning record in his opening season? It’s not like he didn’t have help either he had Woolridge who averaged 22.9 PPG and 5.6 RPG and Quinten Daily averaging 16 PPG.

 In his second year Michael was injured for the majority and the team went 30-52 he did however play in the playoffs and had a game where he scored 63 and the Bulls were still swept in the first round.

His third year despite his 37 PPG average they STILL had a losing record 40-42 (5^th in the Central Division) and again were swept in the first round of the playoffs! Interestingly he only averaged 4.6 assists this year and yet no one labels him a ‘ball hog’.

He was 1-9 in the playoffs until Pippen arrived. 1987 was when Scottie came to the party and in that year the Bulls improved to a 50-32 record (2^nd in the Division) and lost in the Semis.

Surely though when Michael retired the Bulls took a big hit right?

 In 1992-93 they had a 57-25 record and won the championship then MJ retired for the first time. If you lose the Greatest Player of All Time you would assume you’d at least drop 15 games and probably not make the playoffs. But surprisingly the Bulls’ record only dropped 2 games to 55-27 and they lost in seven games in the Semi finals. Only a 2 game drop off after losing the supposed GOAT how do other stars stack up in this category?
Bill Russell:  When he retired the Celtics went from 48-34 to 34-48

Wilt Chamberlain: When he retired the Lakers went from 60-22 to 47-35

Oscar Robertson: The Bucks went from 59-23 to 38-44

Larry Bird: When Larry was injured and only played 6 games the Celtics went from 57-25 to 42-40

Magic Johnson: The Lakers went from 58-24 to 43-39

Take a closer look at this season without MJ, you would assume that Pippen and Grant would’ve had a worse shooting percentage, as the defenses would now focus on them lets look at the stats.
92/93 With MJ
Pippen: 18.6 PPG 47.3 FG%
Grant: 13.2 PPG 50.8 FG%

93/94 Without MJ

Pippen: 22 PPG 49.1 FG%

Grant: 15.1 PPG 52.4%

Furthermore the 9 players who played both these seasons collectively improved their FG% from 48.2% to 48.6%. This is unusual because you would assume with all the double teams MJ demands that he would be able to find open players for great looks!

 How about when he came out of retirement late in the following season? The Bulls actually slipped 8 games and again lost in the Semis.

What about the start of their careers how did the other greats fare in comparison to Michael?

Larry Bird entered the league in 1979 in that year Boston improved from a 29-53 record to a 61-21 record. That’s a 32-win difference in only his rookie year and a turn around from last in the Atlantic division to first. They lost in the Eastern Conference Finals that year and won the Championship in his second year!

Kareem Abdul Jabbar improved Milwaukee from 27-55 to 56-26 in his rookie year and won the championship in his third!

Oscar Robertson improved Sacramento Kings from 19-56 to 33-46 in his first year

Wilt in his first full season with the 76ers improved them from a 40 win team to a 55 win team and won the title with them in the next season

In Wilt’s rookie year with what was then known as the Philadelphia Warriors the team improved from 35-37 to 49-26 and he averaged 37.6 PPG and 27 RPG in only his rookie season.

Magic Johnson improved the Lakers from 47-35 to 60-22 and won the title in his rookie year.

Clearly Michael did NOT have the biggest impact on his team even when on the Wizards for his final 2 seasons they did not make the postseason.

The ERA

"We could not have won 70 games playing against 1980's teams."

-Dennis Rodman, starting power forward for the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls

Michael had his success in the 90’s winning all his six rings in this decade. In this era the league

expanded added 6 more teams over 8 years, which meant stars were scattered all over the place and not playing together. The only competition for MJ was really Julius Erving, Clyde Drexler and Dominique Wilkins. They were the best guards at this time and none of them were real rivals like Magic and Larry. In the 80’s you needed 3-4 Hall of fame players to compete, in the 90’s the Bulls had 2 Hall of Famers and Dennis Rodman, who was already a Defensive Player of the Year and a 2 time NBA champion, in a time where most other teams had one HOF player if they were lucky. Other eras had more concentrated talent in each team.

‘There’s nothing comparable to that quality (of the 80’s) competition at the top for these Chicago Bulls’ – an NBA commentator at the time

Compare that to who Kobe Bryant has had to face and beaten in their prime: Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Paul Pierce, Kevin Durant, Vince Carter, Manu Ginobili, Ray Allen not to mention he has had to defend Deron Williams, CP3, Russell Westbrook, Rajon Rondo and more who were way more athletic and better than most of the guards in MJ’s time.

In the 60’s there was Wilt, Oscar, Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, Jerry West all superstars that competed against each other.  There were also less teams meaning they had more concentrated talent in each team during this era.
Kareem had to go up against players like McHale, Olajuwon, Barkley, Robert Parish, Patrick Ewing.

The teams in the 90s were all spread out whereas in other eras the teams have been stacked with multiple stars going against each other.

Michael Jordan was also a terrible 3-point shooter. Most people don’t know that in the 1994-95 season the NBA made the 3-point line closer. These are the 3-point FG% numbers for MJ before this season:
84-85: 17.3%

85-86: 16.7%

86-87: 18.2%

87-88: 13.2%

88-89: 27.6%

89-90: 37.6%

90-91: 31.2%

91-92: 27%

92-93: 35.2%

 The NBA didn’t change it back until the 97-98 season in which MJ shot 23.8% from 3-point range.

 

The 80s were the toughest in era in the NBA

"I think our best teams could handle them, we had Kareem in the middle, he always made the difference for us."

Earvin "Magic" Johnson on whether or not his Lakers of the mid to late 1980's could defeat the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

The Media

“The media now has anointed Michael Jordan the greatest of all time. Is he greatest of all time? No, I don’t think he is.” –Oscar Robertson

 

Is perception greater than the reality? 

The NBA under David Stern excelled financially and the number of viewers dramatically increased. Mainly because of the intelligent marketing put behind Michael Jordan. He created so much revenue for the NBA and for Nike. Two years after he signed with Nike, they recorded $1 billion dollars in profit. We’ve heard terms such as ‘Be Like Mike’ on the Gatorde commercial raking them a lot of publicity and money or ‘His Airness’ this is because at this time the NBA only promoted one player during this time, there was never anything like this in any sports the amount of attention just given to a single player and you could tell on the court that other players were starting to get sick of it.

‘You couldn’t win any points if you said something bad about him’ –Andrea Kremer Chicago Bureau

The movie Space Jam made 450 million because MJ was in it. He brought in 10 billion dollars worth of revenue for the NBA- as long as he was making money the media were going to keep hyping him up.

‘When it comes to Michael Jordan we were in some sought of national denial, everybody made money through Michael Jordan’ –Media Personality

They changed the rules to help MJ win and changed the whistles to make sure that if he wasn’t going to win he would still win.  Even now he still makes money off the Jordan brand, so the media keep pushing him and now we are left to cling to a manufactured image.

"They are trying to sell today's game, not the game from the 1960's, 70's or 80's."

-Wilt Chamberlain on the NBA in 1996

No other player has been so heavily marketed.

“ESPN began distributing sports programming outside the United States in 1983” (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2011). Before this most games were only shown locally not even nationally. So Michael Jordan would have been one of the first players the world had seen on screen actually play.  He was the

headline during this period so everyone got a glimpse of him. Jordan became the first player to have his face on a Wheaties box, the Brand went to Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Gatorade and McDonald’s. It’s simply a case of the media telling us what we want as consumers. We see Jordan as this enigma because his career coincided with the boom of consumerism and television expansion. Imagine if Kareem, Magic, Wilt or Oscar Robertson were televised worldwide or if they had this much media exposure, everyone would be preaching that they were the Greatest Of All Time. The media has a lot of power and in this instance it was used to enhance revenue by hyping up Michael Jordan.

Not to mention that the NBA changed the rules so Jordan could seem even better than what he was such as the shortened 3 point line, hand checking rules and new rules regarding illegal defenses.

"If Michael was here right now, I would say to him: When you are so great that the league tries to change the rules in an attempt to stop you then you can claim you are the best ever.  Every rule change I have seen during your career has been meant to enhance your game." 

-Wilt Chamberlain

Extra Specific Examples

In 1991 Magic Johnson destroyed Michael Jordan in Game 1 of the Finals.

In Games 2-5 Pippen guarded him instead and the Bulls won the series keeping Magic pretty quiet.

Kobe scored 55 on him in 2003.

Game 5 1988 playoffs Eastern Conference Semis

 MJ scored 2 points in the 4^th quarter and his team gets eliminated- but you never hear about this do you?

Game 5 1989

Jordan scores 18 points, only 1 point in the fourth, Detroit take the lead and eventually the series.

After the struggling years for Jordan where he couldn’t beat the Bad Boy Pistons there were many rule changes making it harder to play physical- basically helping Jordan to win and earn more money for the league.

The Reggie Miller and MJ fight proved the biased culture towards MJ. Reggie was thrown out yet MJ threw a punch yet not only wasn’t ejected he wasn’t even given a foul! The Pacers coach showed some emotion and then was given a technical. Incredible.

1993 ECF Bulls vs Knicks
One of the most fixed series in the NBA, down 2 games to zero the refs came to the rescue, calling phantom foul after phantom foul.

“They knew who they were marketing for the business…. You look back and look at the teams who can make the money for the league. Michael Jordan or Patrick Ewing? No question it was Michael Jordan …he got more calls’ –Charles Oakley

1998 season

Interestingly MJ was 35 this season and lost some athleticism. He had his worse FG% year at 46.5 % so how then does he attempt more free throws than he has since 1989 (10 years) when he was much younger and could get to the rim way easier? Because the refs gave him a lot of calls to help him out. In the first round of the playoffs he was clearly struggling but with a little help from his friends the Nets’ best defenders were in early foul trouble and MJ made 23 free throws in this game. He scored 39 points and 23 of these were free throws.

It is sad how even young NBA fans today who barely have seen a Michael game automatically believe he is the best because the media makes it seem that way.

“We protected him more than I’d like to admit’ –Media personality

It’s just not true. The perception is that he is a perfect character and saint-like well we’ve seen the fight with Reggie how about what he said to Cartwright after a bad night:
“Look, if you ever do anything like that again, you will never play basketball again because I will break both of your legs."

In practice Perdue placed a hard screen on MJ, well Michael didn’t like that and punched him in the face! He also punched Steve Kerr in the face as well. Seems like a perfect role model doesn’t he.

Without Pippen Jordan went 1-9 in playoffs

Without Jordan Pippen went 11-15 and made the West Conference Finals. He was older and out of prime too.

Here are some more interesting comparisons
Kareem without Magic (10 seasons)

Championships: 1 MVPs: 5 NBA Finals: 2 Best record in NBA: 3

Bill Russell without Bob Cousy (6 seasons)

Championships: 5 MVPs: 1 NBA Finals: 5 Best record: 2

MJ without Pippen (5 seasons)

Championships: 0 MVPs: 0 NBA Finals: 0 Best record: 0

First 3 years comparison

Kareem:

Championships: 1 MVPs: 2 NBA Finals: 1 Best Record: 1 Playoff record: 23-12 Losing records: 0 Scoring titles: 2

MJ:

Championships: 0 MVPs: 0 NBA Finals: 0 Best Record: 0 Playoff record: 1-9 Losing records: 3 Scoring titles: 1

My Greatest of All Time List

1.    Kareem Abdul Jabbar

6 Championships, 6 MVPs. Played at an elite level for 20 years, which is an extremely hard thing to do. Kareem made the defense worry, he was incredible especially with what he did for Milwaukee. He has 2 scoring titles, 1 rebound title and 4-time block leader. He averaged 24,6 PPG and 11.2 RPG over a 20 year career with his best season averaging 34.8 PPG and 16.6 RPG. His career numbers are lower because his production obviously declined as he neared the age of 40.

2.    Wilt Chamberlain
He could easily be number 1. There has not been a player that has dominated like Wilt did. He had a better vertical than MJ and Lebron, an elite track athlete and could reportedly bench more than Shaq. The 60s were a more physical era than when MJ played and superstars weren’t given the benefit of the whistle and the rules were changed to prevent Wilt from dominating so much but they didn’t work! He was an incredible athlete; over his 14-year career he average 45.8 minutes played per game! No center was able to run with him, in this time the games were like track meets, quick paced and a lot of scoring. He averaged 50.4 PPG in 1961-62 with 25.7 rebounds, has seven scoring titles, 11 rebounding titles and lead the league in assists one year (MJ has never done this and he is a guard!) He was a part of the famous Laker team that won 33 games in a row and went up against Kareem in the 70s. He has 119 50+ point games to MJ’s 29, he has the most points in a game (100) and rebounds in a game (55). He has 6 of the 9 70+ point games in the NBA (MJ has zero). A 4x MVP and 2x Champion. Oh and he has the only 20-20-20 game EVER.

‘In terms of greatness MJ has to take a backseat to The Stilt’ -Kareem

3.    Michael Jordan

            You can’t deny MJ’s greatness although the media helped enhance a lot of it. He was incredible and did change the NBA for the better. But he was not as valuable to his team as the other greats were. Michael was a great defensive player but it has been blown out of proportion, he did get owned a couple of times by Magic and other stars, and against Kobe. He played 15 seasons most of them in a weak era under expansion and the rules were changed to help him win whereas Kareem played 20 at a high level and Kobe has already played 17 and continuing to dominate. Why do we never hear of Michael’s short comings as I explained previously yet stars of today are put in the firing line: Kobe’s rape case, Lebron quitting on Cleveland and having a flopping reputation. Yet MJ is made out to be some sort of saint that can do no wrong.

4.    Kobe Bryant

Kobe will surpass MJ when it is all said and done take away the media hype off of MJ and they are basically the same player except Kobe is a better 3 point shooter. I have never seen someone take over games like he does. He doesn’t just score the game winner or game tier, he scores the last 4 big shots of a game and he makes the impossible shot seem possible. Look no further than the game this season vs Toronto. He hit 3 ridiculous threes and won them the game or against Portland in his early days. There are numerous occasions where Kobe has just grabbed the game by the throat and won it. He had an 81-point game, a 62 point game in three quarters and averaged over 40ppg in back to back months the only other player to do that was Wilt (MJ has never averaged over 40ppg in a month). He is also a great lockdown defender and takes the opponents best player in the final quarter or against Boston he took Rondo for most of the series and he usually wins these matchups. Unfortunately he spent most of his prime with Smush Parker, Kwame Brown and Luke Walton for starters. If he had of left at this time I feel he would’ve won way more championships but the fact that he didn’t shows his tenacity and adds an interesting aspect to his legacy. He has been able to put up incredible numbers even in his 17^th season in the league. No one has produced like him at this time in his career not even Kareem.
Common misconceptions:
Kobe is a ball hog: Kobe averaged 2.5 more assists per game at this point in his career than MJ did

Kobe has worse stats than MJ: Kobe wasn’t a starter in his first two seasons so his career averages are brought down

Kobe was carried by Shaq: If you actually believe this your kidding yourself, check our Kobe Shaq article.

Kobe only has one MVP: He deserved a lot more; he was robbed a few times in 06 and 07

Kobe has missed the most shots out of anyone in the league: In his prime he had to play alongside the players I mentioned before. Who do you want shooting Kobe or Smush?

5.    Magic Johnson

We’ve talked enough about Magic he had an incredible influence on the Lakers and deserves every accolade he gets. 5X Champion 3X MVP. Played in probably the hardest era of basketball.

6.    Larry Bird

Close to Magic.  3X Champion 3X MVP see earlier for his incredible impact on the Celtics.

7.    Oscar Robertson

Oscar Robertson is one of the most well rounded players ever. In only his first season he averaged 30.5 PPG 9.7 RPG and 9.7 APG. He averaged a triple double over his first five seasons combined! Not to mention he was two inches shorter than MJ. The only reason Oscar doesn’t have more rings is because his teams always lost to Chamberlain or Bill Russel’s teams. He also got stuck playing with small market teams and had little help until he paired up with Kareem and won a ring. If he was in the 90’s or had a better team he would have won more than MJ. He also made players around him better unlike Jordan and lead the league in assists 6 times. Wayne Embry was an all star 5 times out of 6 years that they played together and Embry is a 6 foot 8 undersized center. If we are picking the Greatest Players based on talent and skill Big O would be ahead of MJ.
Side note: For Lebron to be even considered in the discussion he would have to surpass Big O and I don’t see that happening. People say Lebron is better than MJ because of his better all around game yet why don’t they talk at all about Oscar when his game was the most complete ever? I’ll tell you why it’s another case of the media doing its job for revenue!

8.    Bill Russell

11 championships and clearly one of the best rebounders/ shot blockers ever. Why do I put Big O ahead of him even though they were in the same era? Well Big O was always on poor teams except for Milwaukee with Kareem where he won a ring. Big O was chosen 9 times for All-NBA first team compared to Russell’s 3 and was a much better scorer than Bill. The Celtics team Bill had was stacked.

The Big O is the best all-around player the NBA has ever seen.

Who is the Greatest Of All Time?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Wilt Chamberlain

Michael Jordan

Kobe Bryant

Magic Johnson

Larry Bird

Bill Russell

Oscar Robertson

create a poll

References:

http://www.angelfire.com/ks2/airjudden/better.htm

http://airjudden2.tripod.com/jordan/better.htm

http://pw1.netcom.com/~bjalas/basketball/bulls/duhbulls.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M-KCulzJqg

http://www.aussiehoopla.com/why-michael-jordan-is-not-the-greatest/


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