Michael Jordan vs LeBron James: The 15-Year Comparison That Could End The GOAT Debate

#7 Degree of Difficulty/Level of Competition

Chicago Bulls vs. New York Knicks

The Eastern Conference, which has been historically weak for several years now, has seen LeBron James emerge as the champion for each of the past 8 seasons. But this begs the question: how many series was he supposed to win out of the 24 that he won?

The answer is All 24.

Yes, James was favored by at least half the critics on various sports networks to win every one of these series. The one series in the past 10 years for which LeBron really beat better opponents were in the 2016 Finals, which is the greatest comeback in Finals history.

In 13 years of playing in the Eastern Conference Playoffs, LeBron has only beaten 13 teams with 50 wins or more during the regular season. The Conference has been historically bad ever since Jordan's retirement, allowing him an easy path to the Finals every year - even this year, it looked like he would have a tough time getting past the Celtics, but they lost Kyrie Irving for the playoffs with 3 weeks left in the season.

It's a part of the reason why he has many more Finals appearances than Jordan, who played in the Eastern Conference during a time when the Celtics were putting together a dynasty of their own. The New York Knicks had drafted Patrick Ewing and surrounded him with a bunch of scrappy guys who could tough it up against great teams. The Bad Boy Pistons were at their peak and conjured up a bunch of Jordan Rules to eliminate his impact from the game.

Jordan had to wade through 20 50-win playoff teams during his 13 seasons in the playoffs. There is no doubt that he was up against the tougher competition during his years. In fact, the '86 and the '87 Celtics are often ranked by experts as a top-3 team of all time - pretty much like the Golden State Warriors in the past 2 years. This is why his playoff losses came earlier in the playoffs - most of the good teams were in his Conference, and he had little to no scoring help.

Edge: Michael Jordan