Richard Jefferson, a former NBA champion and former teammate of LeBron James in his championship season in Cleveland, thinks the Los Angeles Lakers superstar is not getting the respect he deserves for taking his teams to ten NBA Finals.
According to Jefferson, LeBron’s achievement is used against him to point at the fact that he won just four out of those ten Finals. He made a point that Michael Jordan only went to six Finals and that he would have lost to the Lakers had he gone past the Pistons and the Celtics.
“And I’m gonna probably say the most controversial thing and I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t even know if I should say it. Here we go. Does anybody wonder why Jordan went only to six Finals? But think about it. Why did Jordan only go to six Finals? There was a good point,” Jefferson told Zach Harper, Jason Jackson and Sarah Kustok on SiriusXM Radio.
“It’s like if he couldn’t go past the Pistons, he was never going to get past the Lakers. If he couldn’t get past the Celtics, he was never going to get past the Lakers. There was a lot of years where if he would have made it to the Finals, if he would have surpassed the Eastern Conference, he was going to lose to the Lakers.
“I’m not saying that Bron is better than Jordan or Jordan is better than Bron. That’s not the conversation I’m getting at. But when look at Bron’s Finals record we don’t ever talk about Jordan only went to six Finals. Cause how many did Bill Russell go to? Thirteen? Eleven out of thirteen or something like that is crazy.
“And Bron went to ten and we talk about it where it’s like Bron took a team there at 22 years old. He beat my Nets team with me, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter. Two Hall of Famers. Then he went on to beat the Pistons that had three Hall of Famer probably on their team. And then he losses to four Hall of Famers in Tony, Manu, Pop and Tim Duncan.
“But we would use it against him it’s like ‘This guy lost in the Finals.’ But it’s like why did Jordan only go to six? That’s just something that kind of triggered in my head when started thinking about ten Finals.”
