Credit: Anika Frutman

WSPN’s Jayden Taylor & Ravi Kapadia discuss who is the better athlete between Lebron James and Michael Jordan.

In the eternal debate of basketball greatness, two elite athletes, Lebron James and Micheal Jordan, have stepped up to take the title of “the best basketball player of all time.” Both have incredible skill and have left a mark on future generations, but who is really better between the two? Unraveling the long thread of their greatness will show us who really deserves the throne.

Jordan is considered one of the best basketball players of all time. Jordan single handedly carried the Chicago bulls to the NBA finals multiple times, while continuously leaving the jaws of spectators dropped on the floor because of his unique skill set.

Considering Jordan’s early retirement, we had to look at each individual game to really bring out his stats. Jordan played basketball for 15 consecutive years, and in two of those years, he played less than 20 games. Jordan averaged 30.1 points, 5.4 assists and 6.3 rebounds per game in 1072 games. Jordan scored a total of 32,292 points, which is the highest number of points a player has scored in the league.

Lebron James is known as the best basketball player of this generation and has been dominating the league for almost 20 years. He is known for his exquisite plays that leave the fans in the arena speechless. Although he is almost 39 years old, James continues to put up high numbers on the stat sheet. Moving into his 21st season, James has been averaging 27.2 points, 7.3 assists and 7.5 rebounds per game. James currently has around 39,000 points in his NBA career. Although this is perceived as a substantial amount of points, James has played 369 more games than Jordan has, so it is not surprising that James has scored more points.

One of the several factors that determines the greatest player of all time is how “clutch” a player is perceived to be during their career. Clutch means that a player is able to make a shot within five minutes or less of the start of a game. According to the website yardbarker.com, James has only made 19 out of the 107 shots in the clutch situation (17.8%) throughout the regular season in his career. According to playtoday.com, throughout James’s entire career (including playoffs), he has a 29.6% success rate in the clutch. Meanwhile, Jordan had a staggering 50% percent clutch rate in all of his career. Among the greatest players of all time, Jordan has one of the highest clutch percentages.

All of this being said, it is clear to us who should take the throne as the greatest player of all time. As Jordan continues to overlap James in most of the stats, such as scoring, clutch and overall skill it is clear that Jordan is the king of basketball and will remain at the throne for a while. Although James is an exceptional player, Jordan is the better basketball player. As the years come, James’s children perpetually continue to impress the basketball world. Reports believe that if Bryce and Bronny James are already about to surpass James, they could be surpassing Jordan as well. So, in the next 10 to 20 years, we will still see who is worthy of taking Jordan’s spot as the best basketball player of eternity.