Rob Parker rips Draymond Green's reasons for saying LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan
Draymond Green recently went on a long, uninterrupted spiel about LeBron James as the greatest player ever over Michael Jordan in one of his podcasts. Green claimed that MJ never played against the Golden State Warriors, who he called the greatest team assembled.
Now, Rob Parker on “The Odd Couple” podcast, had this to say about Green’s argument:
“A lot of it is to stroke his own ego and his teammates’ ego. Michael never went up against the best team because he was on it! … You can talk about LeBron being a different type of player, a hybrid, it’s 10x easier to score, you can’t play defense against anybody.
"The game was altered, the game has been altered, that’s something that you have to put in and be honest about.”
(4:35 mark)
Draymond Green’s logic for using the Warriors as the greatest team ever is somewhat flawed based on his own arguments. He previously declared via a tweet that it’s “very dumb to compare one era to the next.”
He then shoots his foot by claiming the Warriors are the greatest team assembled over Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls of the ‘90s.
Question… When they be comparing Era’s are they taking into consideration the drastic differences In style of play? Regardless of the answer, it’s very dumb to compare one era to the next era.
Rob Parker then used Draymond Green’s tweet back in July as a basis to call out the former Defensive Player of the Year winner’s assertion. The game has changed, something which the Warriors forward conveniently overlooked and disregarded in his passionate push to name LeBron James as the GOAT.
Michael Jordan’s Bulls played under different rules in the ‘90s than what the league has seen over the last several years. One big change was what constituted fouls between those two eras. Back then, the game was more physical and more punishing, with plenty of leeways given to the defender.
The NBA decided to speed up the game and make it more entertaining by making life difficult for defenses to contain superstars. It got so bad that the league decided not to call “unnatural basketball movements” as fouls last season.
Steph Curry and several of the league’s stars struggled to adjust to the new rules. One has to wonder how it would have turned out if players had strictly followed the same rules applied in the ‘90s in today’s NBA.
Michael Jordan quitting at his peak is an argument against his GOAT status, according to Draymond Green
Another argument Draymond Green used to debunk Michael Jordan as the GOAT was his retirement back in 1993. MJ quit basketball following the untimely murder of his father and played baseball. Jordan had a one-year stint with the Chicago White Sox in 1994.
LeBron James, on the other hand, went to eight straight NBA Finals from 2011-2018. What “LBJ” did was spectacular, but he also had several humiliating losses that counter Draymond Green’s GOAT assertion for James.
Despite a star-studded crew made up of James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, the Miami Heat went down 4-2 to the Dallas Mavericks. It was one of the biggest upsets in NBA history. In Game 4 of that series, James scored eight points on 3-11 shooting, resembling Draymond Green's Finals numbers.
In 2014, LeBron James’ “Heatles” were crushed in the series against the San Antonio Spurs. Miami, who had barely won in the previous year against San Antonio, had no answer to the Spurs’ “Beautiful Game.”
“King James” owns a 4-6 record in the NBA Finals, the third worst in league history.
Michael Jordan quit during his athletic prime but never lost in the NBA Finals. He never even reached a Game 7 on his way to six championships.
For Rob Parker, Green’s arguments seem more like fawning over the current LA Lakers superstar than factual analysis.