How Michael Jordan and LeBron James Stack Up on the NBA’s Biggest Stage

Michael Jordan vs Lebron James

The Michael Jordan vs LeBron James debate has heated up even more in the past few years, and with good reason. After winning two straight NBA titles, James has already made a solid case for himself as one of the most dominant players in the history of the NBA.

So why is Jordan still considered the greatest of all time? Most would cite his ability to elevate his game when it matters most. I was curious to see whether that was true or not, so I compared MJ and Lebron’s performances in the NBA Finals using two statistics pioneered by ESPN’s John Hollinger: Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Game Score. Both statistics claim to give a holistic assessment of a player’s contributions during a game.

The results: It isn’t even close. At least not yet. Looking at the chart below you can see that MJ absolutely dominates LeBron in both PER and Game Score.

These stats show that Jordan is indeed the better performer on the biggest stage. The drawbacks of this analysis stem from critiques of the PER itself: 1) the PER rewards inefficient shooting, and 2) the PER does not factor in defense nearly enough. Of the two, only the defensive portion can help LeBron’s case (Jordan shoots more efficiently in the Finals).

I do think you can make the case that LeBron is a more versatile defender, but the gap here is too big to ignore. The distance between the two may be less than shown, but Michael Jordan, to date, has been unquestionably superior when it matters most — the NBA Finals.

Spreadsheet with calculations found here: MJ vs LeBron NBA Finals

DISCLAIMER — The Linear Weights Method composed by Bleacher Report was used to compute Player Efficiency Rating.

Statistics taken from basketball-reference.com.

Originally published at jordanjettblog.wordpress.com on December 19, 2013.