People who claim Jordan was a better defender than Lebron unveil their lack of knowledge about the sport. The most important attribute defensively is height. If Lebron can effectively guard four positions and Jordan can only do so for two, Lebron is the more effective defender in a team game.
Lebron James is an entire 2 inches taller than Michael Jordan, so there's not really that much of an advantage there
James is a frontcourt player by definition, and plays roaming off-ball defense racking up weakside blocks by helping off of a lesser player
Jordan played in the era where zone defense was illegal, and had to lock down an attacker one-on-one, and was absolutely elite at doing so
A lot of people give modern players guff over the lack of handchecking in the game, but the trade off is they made zone D legal and now guys have to deal with guys like Lebron streaking in to help while they drive
They are both fantastic defensively, and I think both were actually helped by the rules of their era in doing so, but Jordan actually won a DPOY award and was 1st team all defense 9 times compared to James' 5 appearances; Jordan gets the edge
And yes Jordan scored slightly more at a less efficient rate.
He actually scored a lot more on a per game basis at only a marginally less efficient rate
Jordan had 8 seasons scoring 30+ P/G, including 7 in a row, Lebron has 2 seasons ever
Jordan .496FG% 22.9 shots .569TS%
James .504FG% 19.6 shots .586TS%
So on more than 3 more shots a game Jordan's shooting percentage is less than 1% lower than James'
James' TS% (if you like fancy stats) is less than 2% higher than Jordan's, but he also took almost 3 more 3-point shots a game
Their efficiency numbers are nearly identical, but Jordan scored more by a healthy amount even if you include his Washington years
As for the bolded, hahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhaha.
Laugh if you'd like, but Basketball, more than any other major team sport, is the game where the efforts of a single player can will a team to victory
Bill Russell was not the biggest, strongest, most imposing, or certainly not the most offensively skilled center of his era, but he just won
He matched up against guys like Chamberlain, Petit, and Thurmond and all he did was win 11 championships in the span of 13 years and was the head coach for the last 2 wins
That era was built for a guy like Wilt Chamberlain to dominate and run roughshod over the league, but he never could because there was a guy in Boston who cared so much more about doing whatever it took to make his team better than about making himself look good that he never had the chance to do so
Lebron James is the Wilt of his era, a physical demi-god stats monster who has a losing record in the most important games despite consistently playing on stacked rosters
Bill Russell was not a more talented or skilled athlete than either Chamberlain or James, but he was the better basketball player because he cared to be
