Since then he's won 4 NBA championships, opened a school in his hometown, and become arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
LeBron is definitely the best of his era but he's not touching Jordan in terms of greatest player of all time, even if he does pull off two more championships. During the 90s, Jordan was as close to a demi-god in the sports world as you could get.
I agree that Jordan was an amazing player, and I think he narrowly tops Lebron as the best of all time, but I also think Jordan benefited from a very precise moment in NBA history: the league's media reach became truly global and the established media was still pretty much the only source of information about NBA players. No TMZ, no random phone videos from clubs, no social media. It was the perfect setup to convince a huge number of people that this dude was a demi-god. If Jordan played today, I think he'd face way more scrutiny of the gambler/"apolitical"/bully parts of his personality, and while he'd probably win plenty of MVPs, I don't think he'd achieve the same iconic status.
* https://twitter.com/getnickwright/status/1316013808469463041
It's insane how much hype he had at a young age and how he's delivered again and again. The only players with similar [amount delivered] * [hype] values are peyton manning and tim duncan, but lebron's is way bigger.
Also worth mentioning in his accolades: brought a championship to his hometown, has never had any PR disasters (except for "the decision"), has many charities (scholarships, gives out bikes, etc), and elevated his friends and family to make them successful as well. He's basically done everything right.
And I say this as a long time celtics fan and lebron hater.
Lebron likely won't win as many rings as Jordan and Tiger won't win as many majors as Jack.
