Lebron vs Jordan using Advanced Stats and Metrics
Jordan vs Lebron, Lebron vs Jordan. It’s the topic you bring up with the guy at the end of the bar on a Thursday when Lakers-Rockets is the only thing on TV. There are no shortage of opinions. This issue in particular is quite polarizing.
Often the Lebron vs Jordan debate is studied and deliberated from emotional viewpoints. Maybe you’ll hear “Jordan was a killer, it didn’t matter that his supporting cast was better because he was the guy at the end of the day”. Or, perhaps, the guy at the end of the bar will claim “Jordan was good and won more championships, but there was no equivalent to the Spurs or Warriors in the 90s”.
As is typical with TheDataJocks, we want to take a statistical approach to the Lebron vs Jordan debate. However, we aren’t going to only look at basic box score statistics like points, rebounds, and assists. These stats don’t always tell the whole story.
Instead, we’re going to approach the Jordan vs Lebron question by looking at how the advanced stats viewed each of the all-time greats.
To receive email updates when new articles are posted, use the subscription form below!
Why Advanced Stats?
What do advanced stats do that traditional stats don’t? The short answer is context. Basic box score stats like points, rebounds, and assists don’t tell the whole story about how good a player is. The point of most advanced statistics is to go a step further and provide the context surrounding the basic box score stats.
For example, a player that scored 20 points against the 2nd stringers is not as impressive as a player that scored 20 against the starters. Advanced NBA stats will transform this raw number – 20 points scored – into a more telling number that captures how well the player played.
The advanced stats are not just an intellectual exercise for math nerds like myself. Some of the biggest NBA pundits including Kevin Pelton and Zach Lowe routinely use advanced statistics in their analyses. If you listen to The Lowe Post often enough, you’ll hear Zach Lowe say that advanced stats help him narrow down his list of candidates for the all-star ballot. It is safe to say that advanced stats are a reasonable barometer for a player’s overall quality.
Lebron vs Jordan using Advanced Stats
We’re going to compare Lebron James vs Michael Jordan using a few different advanced statistics. In each section, we’ll give a quick description of what each stat is meant to represent. Then we’ll see how Jordan and Lebron’s stats stack up against each other. The list of statistics we’ll use is:
- VORP (Value over Replacement Player)
- PER (Player Efficiency Rating)
- Box Plus/Minus
- Win Shares
- Offensive/Defensive Win Shares
- Offensive/Defensive Box Plus/Minus
VORP
The first stat used in comparing Lebron vs Jordan is VORP. One way to measure how good player X is is to compare how well a team does with player X versus how well they would do with an average player.
For example, maybe replacing Lebron James with Kyle Kuzma makes your team 10 points worse. If replacing Michael Jordan with Kyle Kuzma would make your team 8 points worse, that would mean that Lebron was more valuable.
The figure below shows the top 5 all time players in career VORP. In each figure in this article, Lebron’s stats will be in yellow (for the Cavs & Lakers) while Jordan’s stats will be in red (for the Bulls). The rest of the players will be in blue.
In our first advanced stat, Lebron James edges out Michael Jordan. A side note before continuing onwards, Lebron James’ career VORP number is so impressive and so dominant that it actually showed up as an honorable mention in our conversation of the most unbreakable NBA record. His career overall value – derived as a combination of longevity and quality – is outstanding.
After 1 category in the advanced metrics Lebron vs Jordan debate, the standings look like this:
Player | VORP | Total |
|---|---|---|
Lebron | ✔ | 1 |
Jordan |
PER
Our second stat is player efficiency rating. Each action a player takes contributes in some small way to the team’s overall performance. Some actions (like making a shot) contribute in a very positive way. Others (like a turnover) contribute in a negative way.
Player efficiency rating adds together all a player’s actions and attempts to measure how many points a player directly accounted for. For a more in depth read, see our previous article which deep dives on PER.
The top 5 all time in PER are shown below.
Michael Jordan strikes back! However, the top 3 all time in PER are much closer than they are in VORP. Still, a win is a win though.
Jordan is now on the board in the Lebron vs Jordan debate. The scoreboard is as follows:
Player | VORP | PER | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
Lebron | ✔ | 1 | |
Jordan | ✔ | 1 |
Box Plus/Minus
Box Plus/Minus is similar to VORP – its goal is to measure how good a player is relative to their peers/replacement players. While VORP asks how good a player is relative to league average, Box Plus/Minus asks how well a team performs when a certain player is on or off the court.
If a team does better with player X on the court than they do with that player off the court, then that player is a net positive. Measuring the difference between a player’s on court and off court numbers is basic plus/minus. Box plus/minus takes things a step further by considering the quality of opponents and teammates.
The top 5 career marks in box plus/minus are shown below:
Another point for Michael in the Lebron vs Jordan advanced metrics competition. The Lebron vs Jordan scoreboard is now as follows:
Player | VORP | PER | BPM | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Lebron | ✔ | 1 | ||
Jordan | ✔ | ✔ | 2 |
Win shares is yet another measure of the career quality of a basketball player. Win shares takes a slightly different approach. Instead of measuring player quality in ‘how many points’ a player is worth, it measures how many wins a player has accounted for.
The theory is that if a player worth 10 win shares is replaced with a 6 win share player, then the team as a whole should win 4 fewer games over the course of the season. The all time top 5 in win shares is shown in the graphic below.
This brings Lebron back to tied with Michael after 4 stats have been investigated. The Lebron vs Jordan scoreboard is tied at 2-2.
Player | VORP | PER | BPM | WS | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lebron | ✔ | ✔ | 2 | ||
Jordan | ✔ | ✔ | 2 |
Offensive and Defensive Statistics
The three previous metrics we’ve looked at were holistic measures of a player’s performance. We wanted to also include two metrics each specifically designed to measure offensive and defensive quality separately.
Offensive and defensive win shares are meant to estimate the number of wins a player has contributed to his teams’ totals on the offensive and defensive ends of the court, respectively. Offensive and defensive box plus/minus is an analog to box plus/minus split over the offensive and defensive ends of the court.
As it turns out….Jordan and Lebron tie in these four stats too! In offensive win shares, Lebron edges Jordan 176 (and counting) to 150. In defensive win shares, Lebron wins by a score of 77 win shares to 64.
However, in both offensive and defensive box plus/minus Jordan beats Lebron. On the offensive side, Jordan wins 7.17 to 7.01. It is very close and these are the two best all-time marks, but I expect Lebron’s number to decrease a bit before he is done as he tacks some post-prime seasons onto his resume. On the defensive side, Jordan wins 2.05 to 1.76.
Final Lebron vs Jordan Scorecard
Totaling all 8 advanced stats we’ve considered gives us the following final scorecard comparing Lebron vs Jordan.
Player | VORP | PER | BPM | WS | Off / Def WS | Off / Def BPM | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lebron | ✔ | ✔ | ✔✔ | 4 | |||
Jordan | ✔ | ✔ | ✔✔ | 4 |
Unfortunately, looking at these 8 advanced metrics don’t help us settle the Jordan vs Lebron debate. However, this exercise revealed something significant. And, the more you think about it, the Lebron vs Jordan debate boils down to this:
Jordan beats Lebron in the rate stats, Lebron beats Jordan in the counting stats. VORP and WS are both ‘counting stats’ which accrue higher and higher as the years go on. PER and BPM are rate stats which measure quality per minute or game played.
This means that Jordan had a higher peak than Lebron but Lebron was very good for a much longer time. Take their best individual seasons, Jordan will beat Lebron. Take their 10 best seasons and Lebron will beat Jordan.
Perhaps this is one reason the Lebron vs Jordan debate is so difficult to settle. It comes down to what you mean by the best player. Is it how good they were at their best? Is it about longevity? People will understandably have different opinions and, as a result, will come to different conclusions in the Lebron vs Jordan debate. I don’t think we’ll ever settle the argument.
To receive email updates when new articles are posted, use the subscription form below!
