Lebron James' and Michael Jordan's NBA Finals Opponents

So I recently looked at something else concerning the Lebron vs Jordan debate.  All of Lebron's Finals opponents had better Postseason Net Efficiency, than the any of Jordan's Finals opponents.  Net Efficiency most likely measures a team's point differential per 100 possessions.  There are a couple of problems with this though.  The first is that the playoffs are only a small sample size of games.  Why not count regular season games as well. Another problem, and a bigger one, is by counting the Finals into the stats you reward Lebron's teams for bad performances, which make their opponents look better.  This is even more of a factor when you look at how short the playoffs are as a whole.

How much of that has to do with the dominant performances of Jordan's teams in the Finals.  I mean while Lebron has won 3 of the 8 Finals he has been in, his teams have actually been outscored in 6 of those Finals.  I decided to take a look at how each their Finals opponents performed in their conference playoffs.  So I looked at the stats for each of their series' leading into the Finals, to come up with an estimate of their point differential per 100 possessions.   ESPN uses a slightly different formula than Basketball-Reference.com, which is the site that I used to come up with my estimates.  My estimates aren't exact, but are close enough to the truth to make a good comparison

Jordan's Opponents
1991 Lakers  +5.24
1992 Blazers   +7.81
1993 Suns  +1.19
1996 Sonics  +3.66
1997 Jazz   +5.71 
1998 Jazz    +7.32

Lebron's Opponents
2007 Spurs  +3.76
2011 Mavericks +8.22
2012 Thunder  +7.37
2013 Spurs +10.91
2014 Spurs +8.52
2015 Warriors +8.55
2016 Warriors +6.47
2017 Warriors +16.36

You can't blame Lebron for the Cavs losing to the Warriors this year.  The 2016-17 Golden State team is truly one of the greatest teams of all time.  In my opinion the best NBA team ever was either them or the 95-96 Bulls.  My data isn't as one sided as ESPN's.  In fact the 92 Blazers, had better a differential per 100 possessions than 3 of the 8 teams that Lebron played in the Finals, while the 98 Jazz beat out 2 of Lebron's Finals opponents.  Still 5 of the teams Lebron played in the Finals had better Net Efficiency in their conference playoffs, than any of the teams Jordan played in the Finals.  In terms of regular season SRS, according to Basketball-Reference, Lebron's oppnents have been better in the Finals than the teams Jordan played in the finals, but the difference is the past 3 Golden State Warriors teams.  The average regular season SRS of Lebron's Finals opponents was 8.20, while it was 6.84 for Jordan's opponents.  Before the 2015 Finals the average SRS of Lebron's opponents, in the Finals, was 6.77,
and Lebron's teams won only 2 of those 5 series.  The idea of Lebron's Finals opponents being so much better than Jordan's is largely based on 2 things.  The last three Golden State teams, and the fact that 5 of those teams won the championship.  It just so happens that they had to beat a team with Lebron on it to win the title.  It was of those paradoxical things.  If your team wins all of the Finals, your opponents look weaker, and if you lose in the Finals, your opponents look better.  I did gain a bit of an appreciation of the 2011 Mavericks, whom I considered to be the worst team either Jordan, or Lebron played in the Finals.  While they were the worst of those 14 teams in the regular season, they had a great run to the title.  A better way to look at things would be to factor in the regular season, and playoff stats of all of these teams, and factor in their strength of schedule, but that would be complicated.  Another thing worth mentioning is that these are team accomplishments.