I love the notion that reffing is why Jordan put up the numbers he did. Doesn't anyone remember the rampant "hand-checking" (blatant clutching and grabbing) that defenders were allowed to do? Jordan got calls because he was insanely athletic and talented enough to put himself into positions to force refs to blow their whistles. With someone generating that many calls, sure, their were a lot of bad calls in his favor. But no one cares to remember how many more bad "no-calls" there were when Jordan would score DESPITE being mugged on the perimeter. Remember, employing overly physical play and thus continuing to raise the bar on what was considered a foul is a widely acknowledged strategy to LIMIT Jordan's numbers. The players in the next generation weren't good enough to be effective facing the same type of defense, so the league actually explicitly changed the ruled to place more restrictions on perimeter mugging. Just think of the numbers Jordan would have produced had he been facing today's non-handchecking defenses.
Additionally, the argument that he didn't have competition is utterly illogical and circular. Had there been no Jordan, we would have been debating Malone, Barkley, Hakeem, Ewing, and Clyde as best players of the generation. Jordan destroyed all of them. So it seems like Jordan didn't have high competition because he beat his competition? So if Jordan had lost a few more series, he'd be a better player, because then he would have faced better competition, right? You can't say that he faced bad competition because his competition never won titles...he was the reason they never won any titles! He's the reason they all look like weak competition, because he was so good!
