LeBron James’ NBA Finals opponents have been better than Michael Jordan’s opponents.
With the dominance LeBron James has displayed over the past 14 seasons, it appears that James is on his way to passing Michael Jordan for the prestigious title of the greatest basketball player of all-time.
However lifelong Jordan fans have been hesitant to admit the greatness of James and resort to the same, tired arguments as to why in their mind Jordan will always be the greatest of all time.
One of those arguments that is heard often is the fact that Jordan faced better competition during his career than James.
So let’s take a look at the competition each player faced when the stakes were highest and see if Jordan’s supporters have a legitimate argument.
Jordan reached six NBA Finals during his career and, as we all know, was victorious in all six of his trips to the finals. However, the competition Jordan saw in the NBA Finals was not as good as many make it out to be.
Out of the five teams Jordan faced (the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers, Phoenix Suns, Seattle SuperSonics and Utah Jazz), four of the teams never won a championship. The Lakers team that Jordan faced had Magic Johnson, a five-time NBA champion, but it was missing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a six-time NBA champion.
To that point, while those teams had one or two extremely talented players, none of them had incredibly talented rosters. Between the five teams Jordan encountered, there were a total of seven Hall of Famers on them and not much else.
The Lakers had Magic and James Worthy. The Blazers had Clyde Drexler. The Phoenix Suns had Charles Barkley. The SuperSonics had Gary Payton. The Jazz had John Stockton and Karl Malone.
Hoops Habit
Beating seven Hall of Famers is a tough accomplishment to measure up to, until you look at who LeBron has gone against and taken down in the finals.
Though LeBron only holds three championships, the teams he’s defeated in the Finals, are collectively are better than what Jordan went up against when he won his six rings.
Each team James beat in the Finals (the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors) had a minimum of two players that will likely end up in the Hall of Fame when their career is over.
The Thunder had Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden (Basketball-Reference gives Harden a 92.3 percent chance to make the Hall of Fame). The Spurs had Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli. Kawhi Leonard has a great chance to make the Hall of Fame as well. The Warriors had Stephen Curry and what could be to more Hall of Famers in Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. Even if that Warriors team ended up with one Hall of Famer, they went 73-9 in the season that James defeated them in the Finals.
Honestly, the 73-win Warriors team that James overcame last year was far better than any team Jordan got past in the Finals. In fact, usually it was Jordan’s team who was the top dog in the NBA and beat up on the team with the inferior record. For James, he’s entered the majority of his NBA Finals appearances as the underdog.
In his first Finals appearance, and his last three Finals appearances, James’ opponents had a better regular season record. Jordan’s opponents only had a better regular season record once (the Phoenix Suns).
Even when you look at the Conference Finals, James has done something Jordan didn’t come close to accomplishing.
In 2007, LeBron single-handedly defeated a great Detroit Pistons team on his way to leading the Cavs to the NBA Finals. He was 22-years-old and in his fourth NBA season.
When Jordan was 22-years-old, he was out with a broken foot. The next year, in his third season, he got swept by the Boston Celtics in the first round. In his fourth season, Jordan lost to the Detroit Pistons in five games as the Bulls were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Jordan’s Bulls would get past teams such as the Knicks with Hall of Fame center Patrick Ewing, and the Pacers with Hall of Fame guard Reggie Miller on a consistent basis. Yet outside of each team having one Hall of Fame player, their respective rosters were not built with the specific purpose of defeating the best player in the league, as the teams James faces are.
As an aside, it’s not talked about enough how Jordan never was victorious in any playoff series against the legendary Larry Bird-led Celtics teams of the 1980’s. The Bulls, in a way, got lucky that the Celtics team that dominated the East for an entire decade eventually got old and they could take over where Boston left off.
So while another point we hear nowadays is that the Eastern Conference is weak, and that’s why LeBron is getting to the Finals every year, Jordan appears to be rewarded because his playoff series went six or seven games as he battled with average and aged teams to get out of the East.
LeBron, on the other hand, gets scrutinized because he sweeps teams left and right.
He should be receiving praise for running roughshod over his opponents in the East but instead his accomplishment of dominating an entire conference is discredited by his haters and by Jordan fans.
James’ path is apparently “too easy” but Jordan’s wasn’t despite James playing better competition. James is also playing in an era where the defense may not be as physical but the offense is much more explosive.
In that ever-so-easy Eastern Conference, James has made it to at least the second round of the playoffs in all 12 trips and the conference finals in eight out of 12 of those appearances. Jordan, on the other hand. was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in on three occasions, including two sweeps at the hands of the Boston Celtics.
In sum, with all the information at the disposal of NBA fans now, it should be quite obvious that the argument that Jordan faced better competition than LeBron is simply not true. In fact, the legend of Jordan is folklore. While Jordan accomplished spectacular things and was as spectacular a player, the idea that Jordan was just some world-beater basketball player who never lost while playing better basketball teams than the ones that exist in the NBA today is a fairy tale.
By the time it’s all said and done, James will have faced more Hall of Fame players in the NBA Finals than Jordan, which is when the stakes are highest and legacies are truly on the line. But Jordan went six for six in the finals so he’ll always be better, right?
With every passing game and spectacular performance, the gap between Jordan and LeBron appears to be getting smaller. If James is successful and getting past the Warriors super “super team” this year in the Finals, it may be time to declare the king of Akron, the “king of kings” in the NBA.
Related Story: LeBron James is the Michael Jordan of our generation
What do you think about the level of competition LeBron James faced compared to Michael Jordan? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or Twitter @KJG_NBA.