Michael Jordan Persuasive Essay

It’s one of the greatest debates right now in modern time sports. Who is the greatest basketball player ever? Is it His Airness, or is it King James? The debate on whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the greatest basketball player ever is a prevalent topic in sports news daily. Many people believe that LeBron James is the greatest basketball player to be currently playing and also the greatest player to ever have played in the NBA. My theory, however, is that rather than LeBron James, the greatest basketball player to ever have played the game is Michael Jordan. Although I agree with the claim that LeBron James is the best current player in the NBA, I believe that he is nowhere near being considered better than Michael Jordan.

Some readers may challenge my view that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever and was better than LeBron James is today. It is easy to tell just by watching highlights of Michael Jordan

that he was a dominant figure on the court. One of the major reasons that is given by people who support LeBron as the best player ever is that along with him being able to dominate games by himself, he is said to be better at getting his teammates involved and better at making his teammates improve. During an interview in May of 2011 conducted by ESPN, Scottie Pippen, who was a former teammate of Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls and is currently a senior advisor to Chicago Bulls President and COO, said that LeBron may be a better overall player than Michael Jordan. Scottie said, “I may go as far as to say LeBron James may be the greatest player to ever play the game because he is so potent offensively that not only can he score at will but he keeps everybody involved” (Scottie). Scottie, an old teammate of Michael’s that won many championships with him, might be inclined to say something like this because he may be jealous of how Jordan got most of the stardom and publicity during their championship runs. The main reason that Scottie said this is because over their respective careers Michael Jordan averaged only 5.3 assists per game compared to the 6.9 assists that LeBron has averaged so far throughout his career in the NBA. Although Scottie correctly points out that LeBron has been a better distributer of the ball and getting assists throughout his career so far, LeBron has caused a decrease in productivity level of some of his teammates including Dwyane Wade. In both of the first two seasons that LeBron has spent on the Miami Heat playing with Dwyane Wade, ESPN has on record that Dwyane’s scoring averages have decreased in both of those seasons going from “26.6 points per game to 25.5 points per game and then down once again to 22.1 points per game last season” (ESPN). These statistics on ESPN show that LeBron has caused a decrease in productivity in the play of Dwyane Wade rather than improve his play and make him better. Also, despite having a lower assist per game average, Michael Jordan did not have this negative effect on his main teammate, Scottie Pippen. In fact, according to ESPN.com, Scottie Pippen’s stats stayed relatively constant if not better while he was a teammate with Michael Jordan and then dipped once they stopped being teammates when “Scottie’s points per game dropped from 19.1 to 14.5 points per game” thus proving that Michael Jordan made Scottie a better player when they were teammates.
Many people assume that since LeBron James won his first NBA championship at the age of 27 and Michael Jordan won his first championship at the age of 28, LeBron James must be the better player. It is sometimes said that in order to be mentioned as one of the greatest players ever, a player has to have won at least one championship. The next step is seeing how long it took that person to get their championship ring. Although I grant that LeBron James did win his first title at a younger age then Michael Jordan, I still maintain the position that Michael Jordan was the greatest player to ever play the game. Despite the fact that LeBron won his first NBA title at a younger age than Michael Jordan, Michael won his in a fewer number of seasons. This is possible because Michael Jordan attended the University of North Carolina for three years before becoming a professional whereas LeBron James bypassed playing in and attending college and went straight to the NBA. Buzzfeed sports confirm that it took LeBron James a total of nine seasons to acquire his first championship whereas it only took Michael Jordan seven years in the league to receive his first championship (Buzzfeed). This information from buzzfeed proves that it took Michael Jordan fewer years of NBA experience to win a championship than LeBron James.
Many believe that being considered one of if not the best player to ever have played means that the player must be popular worldwide and have off the court success with endorsements. While I agree that LeBron James has had great off the court success with endorsements with Nike, State Farm, as well as other companies, his jersey wasn’t even the highest selling jersey worldwide last year, that honor belonged to current Chicago Bulls player Derrick Rose. “Reigning KIA MVP Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls secured the top spots as the NBA’s Most Popular Jersey and Team Merchandise, respectively, based on sales at the temporary NBA Store on Fifth Avenue and on NBAStore.com from April 2011 to present…LeBron James came in at number 4 on the list of top-sellers” (NBA.com).
I also grant that LeBron has had major success with his shoe line, “The LeBron Collection”. “Despite this, the success that LeBron has had with his Nike shoe deal comes nowhere close to that of Michael Jordan’s shoes” (NBA.com). The Jordan shoes are a part of Nike and have not only been used as shoes designed for basketball but are also popular as common day street shoes that many people wear. Also, LeBron James might not even be the most popular player on his own team. Before LeBron said he was going to, “take my talents to south beach”, south beach was run by Dwyane Wade. In 2006, Wade led the Miami Heat to their first NBA championship in franchise history. Wade also led the recruitment of getting James to join the Miami Heat by ensuring him that if they brought their talents together along with Chris Bosh, they would be guaranteed multiple championships and for the first years after LeBron joined the Heat, it was still referred to as Wade’s team and Wade’s city. Unlike LeBron in this situation, it was very clear who the king of Chicago was and still is, Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player to ever play the game, not only dominated the game on the court, but was one of the best promoters of the game and has increased the popularity of the NBA and basketball overall immensely.
Recently, a new argument has been made that reporters and media are attempting to use to say that LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan.

This argument is made on the fact that LeBron James has recently become the youngest player to score 20,000 points. Although I agree and congratulate LeBron on his great achievement, it does not make him better than Jordan. Despite LeBron reaching 20,000 points at a younger age, Michael Jordan was able to do it in fewer games. This phenomenon is possible because Michael Jordan went to college for three years whereas LeBron decided to go straight to the NBA out of high school. According to a blog done by the Chicago Bulls “It took Michael Jordan 106 less games to score 20,000 points than LeBron James” (Bulls Blog). No credit should be taken away from LeBron James because what he did to become the youngest player to score 20,000 points is phenomenal but it cannot be used as an argument to say that he is a better player than Michael Jordan because Michael Jordan scored 20,000 points faster than

LeBron.
Although I agree that LeBron James is the greatest current basketball player in the NBA and in the world, he shouldn’t yet be considered in the conversation for greatest basketball player of all time. That title solely belongs to His Airness, Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time. Throughout his career, Jordan dominated on the court with his amazing moves, defense, offense, and ability to dominate every game. Along with this, he was able to win six NBA championships, ten scoring titles, fourteen all-star game appearances, and numerous other accolades. While doing this, he was able to revolutionize the way basketball players wore their uniforms (long shorts), and changed the way the game was played with his explosive style of play. I believe that no one will ever have as big of an impact on the NBA and basketball everywhere as Michael Jordan and he will forever go down as the greatest basketball player of all time.

There were multiple changes that I made in this paper. One was I fixed my in text citations as well as adding more to the paper to show more evidence found by sources. Another thing that I did was to add certain appositives throughout the story as well as more details to help to clarify my writing and keep it from being vague at certain points. Also, I added another paragraph towards the end of my paper that helps to support my argument and I think that this paragraph was very useful in supporting my claim. I think that the changes I made help to make my essay much better and make my argument stronger and more credible.