Scottie Pippen said Jordan can score 100 points in a game in today's NBA

Couldn't disagree more with the Kobe part. Kobe was more "explosive" because he would abandon the offense and just hog the ball. Jordan almost always still ran his game through the offensive system. That is the fundamental difference. Jordan worked with the team while Kobe will go AWOL from time to time when his ego takes over. Jordan still did, and most players do, from time to time but Kobe does or at least did must more frequently. I forget who wrote it but I read an analysis of the best clutch shooters a month or two ago. It turns out Kobe isn't nearly as great as we thought. He's got the right attitude but his unwillingness to pass makes it easy on the defense. I think Kobe had 1 assist in crap ton of last second opportunities while all the other greats had far more. They would pass when the defense left someone wide open.

 

This is false. If you'd been comparing Jordan to the athletes (or lack thereof) of the 50s and 60s, and to a lesser extent the 70s and early 80s, your point would be absolutely valid. But you are quite incorrect making that argument with regard to the the late 80s and 90s.

While I'll concede the the NBA athlete is on average a bit more athletic today,the starting wings that Michael Jordan was facing night after night (Dominique Wilkins, Clyde Drexler, Joe Dumars, Latrell Sprewell, Julius Erving, James Worthy, Sidney Moncrief, Reggie Lewis, Allan Houston, Reggie Miller, Mitch Richmond, Stacey Augmon, Gerald Wilkins, Eddie Jones, Glen Rice, John Starks, Dennis Johnson, Ron Harper, Bernard King, Byron Scott, Alvin Robertson, Nick Anderson, Dan Majerle etc.) compare quite favorably athletically to today's starting wings. And the idea that Barkley was the only one who came close athletically is utterly laughable.

 

This sentence is akin to Lloyd Christmas looking at a framed photo of a newspaper following the moon landing and exclaiming, "We landed on the moon!" Essentially, you've compressed every critique of Kobe Bryant from the pro-MJ crowd into a childlike little rant. I understand you want to be taken seriously, but if you can't be bothered to actually use numbers, at least take the time to Google the ESPN stat troll that wrote the article you reference (Henry Abbott). It's this mentality that explains the fact that Kobe Bryant has but one regular season MVP trophy; he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. The textbook example of this is the first round of the 2006 playoffs. In game 6, Kobe had 50 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists, shooting nearly 60 percent. Some acknowledged this as a virtuoso performance despite the loss (which would have been avoided if Kwame Brown could snare a rebound), but of course, the narrative that the major sports media outlets went with was 'Is Kobe shooting too much?' Of course, in the next game, when he tried to get his teammates involved by shooting less, it was argued that he quit.

Sorry if I'm derailing the topic a bit, but I hate when you get MJ fanboys involved in such discussions. It's one thing to argue that Jordan is better than Kobe, which is perfectly fair. It's quite another to simultaneously rip Kobe and praise Jordan by claiming such stark contrasts in their tendencies when in fact Kobe is in many ways a carbon copy of Jordan. So yeah, I'm done ranting now.

 

LOL to the suggestion Jordan got all his shots "in the flow of the offense."

Lot of selective memory when it comes to his Airness.

 

Jordan got more scoring help from the officials than Wilt could ever hope to get. It's a little easier to score when defenders aren't allowed to, you know, guard you. I don't believe Russell was called for a foul every time he got within 18 inches of Wilt.

Kind of forgotten that, haven't we?

 

and you have forgotten how the Pistons and Knicks played back then

 

They beat up on a lot of people. So what? Neither they nor anyone else was allowed to get near Jordan. Not without the obligatory foul call, anyway.

Beginning in the 1980s, the NBA became a superstar league where the superstars were protected. Jordan wasn't the only one, just the most egregious example.

On Memorial Day 1997, in the Eastern Conference finals against the Heat, Rodman set a screen for Jordan, who tried to go around the screen and tripped over Rodman's leg.
"TWEET!" Foul . . . on Voshon Lenard (who was standing 5 feet away). And two more points for MJ! Yaaaaay!

In the early days, rules were changed to PREVENT (or at least try to) a dominant player from dominating. That's why goaltending rules changed and the 3-second rule was implemented and lanes were widened and you could no longer inbound a ball over the backboard --- all because of Mikan and Wilt.

 

A lot of those guys are not the athletic freak that Jordan was or close to it. A lot of the ones that were never played defense.

No where do I say Barkley was the only one. I said some guys. That is plural. I merely used Barkley as a case of a guy who could stay with Jordan for a few years but not forever. If you don't think that is true then you know nothing of Barkley's early days nor how they became friends in the first place.

 

Yeah, listen to the Ball State 2009 grad, he knows whereof he speaks on what Michael Jordan faced in 1987. ... Personally, I can't really recall a time Jordan and Barkley were in direct competition on the court, as Barkley was basically a power forward (Dan Majerle had the bulk of the Jordan assignment in the 1993 finals), but I guess you had to be part of the pre-K set to truly understand it.

(Seriously, Stoney, that is a mighty fine list of wing players who went against Jordan. Damn the NBA was fun back then.)

 

Not to mention the Heat, Pacers and plenty of others. By the end of the 90s most of the League had copied the Pistons/Knicks and incorporated some thug ball into their own defenses.

I don't care if Jordan was getting a little star treatment from the refs, it does not even begin to account for the overwhelming difference between the game of the late 90s and early 60s. The NBA world Jordan conquered featured defenses so much more physical and sophisticated, and defenders so absurdly much bigger, stronger and faster, that it barely even looks like the same game as the one Wilt was dominating in 1962.

By the end of the 90s the leaguewide scoring average had fallen to 91 ppg, conversely in the early 60s it was nearly 120 ppg and teams were forking up an utterly insane number of shots per game. And, if you've ever watched footage from that era, it becomes clear in a hurry that scoring difference sure as hell wasn't because of superior offensive skills. The game and players were simply primitive compared to the modern era, defenses were comically soft and porous, and every team was running and gunning as if there was 10 second shot clock. Just a completely different game.

 

When did Barkley ever guard Jordan? Actually I would say it's you who knows nothing of those early days.