Again, your Jordan worship results in a completely delusional recollection of the actual facts. Michael Jordan walked away from his team and his fans because of a loss of desire to play basketball. He knew there were lots of people who wanted nothing more than to be in the crowd and see Michael live once. And he didn’t care. Because he no longer had a desire to play basketball.

It’s nice to pretend he showed up every game. It’s lovely to give Jordan credit for shaping Pippen by leaving him to fend for himself for a couple seasons. And it’s absolutely adorable to live in a fantasy world in which Jordan took entire seasons off because he wasn’t being challenged. I honestly admire someone who can be so delusional as to keep a straight face arguing that someone is the greatest player of all time — specifically based on the argument that he never took off and always showed up to every game — but he was just too good to actually show up to any games for years at a time.

I wonder: what exactly changed in 1996? Did the NBA suddenly drastically improve so as to offer a suitable challenge worth Jordan’s time? Or are you maybe completely pulling narratives out of thin air in a desperate attempt to support your ridiculous “Jordan showed up to every game” argument?

If you’re going to have such selective memory of and make such laughable excuses for Jordan’s lack of desire to play the game that you’re insisting he had an unwavering desire to play — all the time — I suppose it’s not surprising that you would suggest LeBron hasn’t faced and overcome rivals of his own.

Remember when the MVP voters trolled us all and gave Derrick Rose the trophy in 2011? Remember how Rose’s career has gone since the 2011 ECF? I’ll give you a hint: it had nothing to do with LeBron being the best defender at his position. (You see, Rose doesn’t play LeBron’s position.) It had to do with LeBron being the best defender period. The man went from eviscerating Rose in the 2011 playoffs to locking down Durant in 2012. It’s nice to be able to guard a single position, though. (The fact that LeBron never won DPOY is even more pathetic than the 2011 MVP vote.)

Again, let’s just recall that this is a thread in which you argued for LeBron never having a chance to catch Jordan because Jordan never took games off. And when confronted with the obvious response that Jordan actually took entire seasons off, you decided that taking games off is actually a testament to his legacy because it just shows how he was so great he couldn’t even be challenged.

The only way Jordan changed the way I view Clyde Drexler’s career was by helping Clyde win an NBA title thanks to Jordan’s lack of desire to play basketball.

And I wasn’t trying to say that LeBron was the best player of 2009. Sorry I wasn’t more clear: LeBron was the greatest player of all time in 2009. And he’s certainly added to that legacy since.