Lou Williams won his second-straight Sixth Man of the Year award and third overall as a member of the Los Angeles Clippers this season. As one of the last active NBA players to make the leap straight from high school to the league, Williams concluded his 14th year in the NBA by averaging 20 points and five assists per game. He came into the Association in 2005 as a teammate of Allen Iverson and watched the game evolve over the last decade-plus. From that perspective, Williams believes that superstars like LeBron James would be even more dominant in previous eras than they are now.
As a guest on The No Chill Podcast with Gilbert Arenas, Williams expressed his opinion that today’s stars are far more advanced than those in the ’70’s, ’80’s and ’90’s. Specifically, Williams thinks that LeBron would win 15 championships in a row if a basketball time machine was able to drop him back into the 1975 season in his prime.
Responding to recent criticisms from Dennis Rodman about today’s players not measuring up to the superstars who came before them, Williams suggested that LeBron would have been even more dominant than he is today if he played in the past.
“Every 10 years the game changes,” Williams told Arenas during the podcast. “I always have these debates with my friends, I was like ‘can you imagine dropping LeBron in ’75?’ I was like, ‘bro he’d win 15 championships in a row.'”
If you did drop LeBron in the 1970’s, he’d be competing with NBA MVPs who were primarily centers like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and Moses Malone. I’m not sure James would’ve won 15 titles, but his up-tempo style of play combined with his speed and strength would have certainly helped him win his fair share. No disrespect intended to those Hall of Famers and icons who paved the way–LeBron is just different.
