Cleveland Cavaliers: What LeBron James must do to pass Michael Jordan

LeBron James must do two of three things to pass Michael Jordan and become the greatest NBA player of all time.

With a new NBA season undoubtedly comes the next round of the “Michael Jordan or LeBron James?” debates.

The consensus, for now, probably favors MJ. Unless you are a Cleveland Cavaliers loyalist, unwavering Miami Heat fanatic or Nick Wright, your allegiance probably falls with Michael.

But with each passing season, James closes the gap. He continues his climb of the all-time scoring chart while notching NBA Finals appearance after NBA Finals appearance. And somehow, someway, his offensive game mirrors fine wine by improving with age.

But until this point, there hasn’t been a definitive, objective clarification of what James has to do to pass “His Airness.” Some will say “Michael is the game’s greatest winner” or others will say “LeBron is the best all-around player.” Both possibly true. Both possibly false.

So, let’s lay down the qualifications. What you are about to read is the not debatable guide to what James needs to do to pass Michael.

Admittedly, my opinion of what makes one basketball player better than another is no better than yours. Honestly, it’s probably worse. But I ask to suspend your skepticism for the next 800 words and save your criticism for the comment section.

To start we must lay down, in the most simplistic terms possible, what made MJ so great. It wasn’t just the six NBA titles, five MVPs, 10 scoring titles and countless highlight reels.

Jordan’s overall impact on basketball is immeasurable. He turned NBA players into marketable gems, gauging gigantic shoe deals, contracts with sports drinks and the like. He’s the godfather of massive endorsement deals, creating a map for future players as they crafted individualized brands.

Often imitated, never duplicated, the “Jordan Brand” is still a shoe icon. But between the lines, MJ teamed with Scotte Pippen to introduce a stylistic contrast to big man dogmatism. NBA writer Ethan Sherwood Strauss once accurately said the pair proved that you can play small, athletic and win games, a blueprint followed by the league today.

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When it comes to overall impact, James rivals Jordan. No, LeBron doesn’t have Michael’s shoe empire and overall endorsement power. But he bolstered the NBA’s social media clout with his online antics and follow-ability. Case in point, a recent LeBron tweet was the most liked ever by a professional athlete.

Schematically, LeBron ushered in a wave of combo forwards, creating an NBA where 3s become 4s and the 4s become 5s. Like Michael, he made the NBA smaller and faster.

It would take an entire thesis to properly compare the overarching impact of MJ and LeBron on basketball. But for now we’ll leave it at that.

OK, here is where we become particular. For James to become “the greatest player of all time” he needs to do two of the following three things; finish with better, overall career numbers than Michael, be a better in-game player than Michael or win more titles than Michael.

When we think of greatness, we often first think of who had the best numbers or simply who did the most while in the NBA. There’s also the pickup game test, or “who, if you have one game to win with your life on the line, would you pick?” And of course, we always think about the greatest champion when comparing the elite basketball players.

James is on track to slaughter some of Jordan’s career numbers. In part because he’ll play much longer, but also in part because he is really good.

He’s already passed Jordan in assists, with 7,461. That’s 12th all time. Jordan finished with “just” 5,633. James has more rebounds, nearly as many blocks, a better field goal percentage (by about three percentage points) and nearly triple the number of 3-pointers as MJ — all this in 11 fewer regular season games.

Michael was a notoriously underrated defender, evident by this stat: James, heralded for his ball hawking skills, would have to play seven more seasons, averaging 110 steals a year to catch Michael in that category. James will likely catch Michael on the all-time scoring list by the end of the 2018-19 season.

Barring catastrophic injury, LeBron will finish with better total career numbers than Michael. Thus, by our simple barometer, he had a more productive career than Jordan. Checkmark one of three goes to LeBron.

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But Jordan was the better in-game player, at least by the following margins. Michael’s Player Efficiency Rating was the highest of all time, at 27.91. LeBron’s is currently second at 27.61. Michael’s win share per 48 minutes also sets the bar at .2505. LeBron’s is close at .2389. But LeBron has the highest Value Over Replacement Player total of all time. MJ’s is second.

As far as I know, basketball’s earliest titans never wrote a rubric for comparing greatness. Moses (Malone) never came down from his mountain, stone template in hand with the NBA gods’ qualifications for “greatest of all time.” The closest thing we have to an NBA bible is probably Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball, and even his ranking of all-time greats is more subjective than objective.

With that in mind, maybe the three most comprehensive stats measuring a player’s in-game value are PER, win shares per 48 minutes and VORP. As of now, Jordan takes two of those three. Jordan takes the greatest in-game player category.

So LeBron will likely have higher career totals. Jordan probably ends up with better in-game stats. The means the tie-breaking category is titles. Obviously, MJ has the edge as fans (and Jason Segal) have pointed out.

So, by our subjectively objective measurements, James needs to continue posting stellar numbers for another year or so and pass Michael in most major, statistical categories. That will likely happen.

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Then he’ll need to either overtake MJ’s position as the all-time leader in PER, win shares per 48 minutes or win more titles. That will be more of a challenge.