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Originally Posted by RainMaker

Wade was coming off his two best seasons ever. He was the 2nd best player in the league in 2009-2010. He tailed off the last season (and the playoffs in the 3rd), but he was most certainly in his prime when Lebron joined that team. And as much as I love Pippen, Wade was a better player at that point than Scottie ever was.

That means nothing relative to how he went on to play. He played like half the games and sat out of back-to-backs in the 2nd season. More importantly, he dropped from 9th to 29th in RAPM even though he was selectively only playing in games where he was well-rested. That's at best a fringe all-star player after year 1, compared to Pippen who was basically last year's version of Kawhi but better at passing.

I'd take the Bulls 4 through 6 over the Heat but the Bulls weren't exactly rolling with a great supporting cast either. Scott Burrell, Dickey Simpkins, Luc Longley, and Bill Wennington were in the rotation on those later Championship teams.

Luc Longley was an above-average center for that day (one thing 90s nostalgists forget is that that all these Hall of Fame big guys were going against massive stiffs more often than not). Steve Kerr is another guy who teams today would be all over if they saw a player with his stats.

Chris Bosh was the best offensive big man in the game when he signed with the Heat. Horace was a solid player but not in the same stratosphere as Bosh was who will be in the Hall of Fame shortly.

You underrate Grant relative to Bosh in the same way you underrate Pippen relative to Wade. Both players were substantially better defenders (and I don't say that lightly because Bosh was a borderline all-defense team member), and Grant is a deserving Hall of Famer too. He rated as a top 10-20 player when he left the Bulls for the Magic as well, so it's not like MJ was just propping him up. There is talent in things like playing good defense and rebounding, and as such the players were equally talented when they played with Jordan/James. Jordan wasn't drafting and signing these guys, so again it doesn't make sense to knock James because he had to take matters into his own hands and leave teams that were doing a poor job of building around him (and still winning huge amounts of games and a couple of titles despite that).

Here's Bosh's rank in RAPM/RPM by year, starting with the year before he joined the Heat: 9th, 14th, 21st, 56th, 44th. Then of course the following season the Heat missed the playoffs even though they signed an above-average SF in Luol Deng to replace LeBron (Bosh was 121st in RAPM then). Bosh's heart issue cutting his career short overshadowed that he had been substantially on the decline as well.

Those Spurs teams are great and I'd put them slightly above those Jazz teams. I just think people underestimate how good those Jazz teams were. They were clobbering teams in a really good conference.

I think people underestimate that the teams the Bulls played against in the Finals were constructed to be good teams and not "to beat MJ/the Bulls." You had guys like Dan Majerle and Jeff Hornacek trying to guard Jordan. The only teams in the past 6 years to beat LeBron have an all-defense wing (or two, or three), a smart team defense behind them, and are stacked enough that the all-star caliber guy guarding LeBron can afford to be the 3rd or 4th option on offense. Other than that, it's generally been a beatdown, and even when the Heat/Cavs have lost, it would be hard to look at their opponent's postseason run and conclude there was another team or two that would have beaten LeBron in the Finals had the Spurs/Warriors suffered some major injuries. This is coming from someone who thinks that the 8-seed Mavs team that lost to the Spurs in '14 could have swapped places with the East's 8 seed and made it to the conference Finals: even if that's the case, LeBron's team was not in any great danger of losing. I also don't hold it against LeBron when teams like Boston are scared of mortgaging their future because they (correctly) deduce that adding an All-Star to a 50-win team would still have them coming up short.

That Magic team is still better than any team Lebron has faced in the East since that Celtics team close to 10 years ago. It's not his fault but the East has been a complete joke for about a decade now.

This gets convoluted with LeBron having been so good for 10+ years that it's almost impossible to surround him with players so bad that his team doesn't get the 1st or 2nd seed. As a result, he plays bad teams in the first round: you would have to be deluding yourself to think that the championship Bulls teams were playing anyone any good in the first round either. Other than that, you're taking the fact that Jordan didn't have as many other ways to affect the game when his shot wasn't falling (he was still a great passer and rebounder for his position but not LeBron by any means, and he couldn't slide over and guard an opposing big man who was giving the Bulls trouble) and as a result, the Bulls would occasionally lose games in the Eastern Conference playoffs and holding that against LeBron. The 50+ win teams LeBron has swept through in recent years are no better or worse than the average 90s Pacers or Knicks team: the only difference is that you were young enough to look up to Patrick Ewing or Reggie Miller but don't feel the same way about Kyle Lowry or Paul George.

Anyway if LeBron retired before game 2 or suffers a career-ending injury, I'd have to say Jordan had the better career (LeBron would definitely lose major points from me for quitting in the middle of a series) but since LeBron is still going strong by all accounts, a few more MVP-caliber seasons of him dragging a team that would miss the playoffs without him into the Finals would be enough to give him a sizable edge.