The problem is most of sports media (guys who never played against MJ or Lebron) opt for the statistics like it’s the law cause it’s googleable
Their arguments are the most basic and surface level when the game is more complex. Ive never heard anyone mention about volume, variety or the ways both Lebron and MJ score or things like shot selection or level of difficulty.
Stats should be used to confirm or refute whatever someone is saying, not be the basis of the thing being said so I agree with you there. The whole point of stats and advanced stats was to provide hard data for whatever people were seeing or claimed to see. Idk about you but I've seen "difficulty of shots" used plenty of times in favor of Kobe or AI on here when it's really a negative if they're taking difficult shots and missing them.
That’s why I’ve seen many teams/players shut Lebron down or take away/expose aspects of his offensive game and he couldn’t adapt. Meanwhile I’ve never seen that happen with Jordan or Kobe Iverson, Tmac or even other players unless they’re just having an off shooting night
It's happened plenty of times to those guys? They play differently than Bron but it doesn't mean they've never been exposed. And for the most part they adapted, and that includes LeBron. For all of these guys, it's not about locking them down but slowing them down or at least making it harder for them to do what you normally do. If you haven't seen it then I don't know what to tell you.
Detroit played MJ physically almost to the point of illegality. It worked for a couple years, then Jordan bulked up a little more, didn't take that shyt anymore, Pip and Grant took steps, and the Bulls were able to finally beat the Pistons.
Teams like Detroit and Houston funneled Kobe to bad spots. Kobe's flaw was that he'd more often than not keep shooting and shoot LA out of the game. Sometimes it didn't work, they just tried to play the odds. Shane Battier himself says he couldn't shut Kobe down but he could try to make him shoot bad shots.
Try to make AI go left or do more with his left hand, make him a jump shooter, put a longer defender on him if you can. Again since AI's a great player sometimes no matter what you do he's gonna cook, but those are the best ways to expose flaws in his offensive game.
T-Mac was different in the sense that he would fare better than AI or LeBron if you made him more of a jump shooter, but playing him physically could throw him off.
Make Bron a jump shooter if you can, worked a lot better earlier on in his career because he wasn't as good as he is now (unless it was just one of those games). Don't double him and all that. Hardly the only all-time great player to have these weaknesses. To say he couldn't adapt is untrue. The difference between 2008 or 2011 Bron and 2013 or 2018 Bron is like the difference between 1987 Jordan and 1993 or 1996 Jordan. The same things that used to work don't work that well anymore.
