And when Jordan stepped aside, he merely passed the mantle to a legend in the making. Since 2003, LeBron James has emerged as the best player in the league — a player so good he might be better than Jordan.

To some that might sound like heresy, but this season the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar became the youngest player in NBA history to surpass 27,000 points and just the 10th player to ever reach that milestone. Just as Jordan was worth a mind-blowing 344 wins over his career, James is worth 372.5 and counting. Shaquille O’Neal (240) and Kobe Bryant (233) pale in comparison. Among active players, the next closest is Chris Paul with 205.1 career WAR. And even if two-time reigning MVP Steph Curry or Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook continued at their current pace — without considering any decline in performance (read: highly unlikely) — they’d only reach 250, 210 and 235 career WAR by the time they completed their 13th season in the league, where LeBron is currently.

James is also the first player in NBA history to surpass 27,000 points, 7,000 rebounds, and 7,000 assists (not counting the postseason) — no other forward has ever had that many career assists. The closest is Jordan’s former teammate Scottie Pippen, but he will be at least 1,000 assists behind James by the time this season is over.

Speaking of teammates, Jordan had more help in his career than James ever did. He and Pippen were both named by the NBA as two of the 50 greatest players in league history in 1997 and they were also selected when Sports Illustrated updated the list in 2016 (Pippen was No. 23, Jordan was No. 1).

(One quick aside: that player who was better than Jordan during his final season in the NBA with the Wizards? The Duke player everyone hates, Christian Laettner.)

It wasn’t until James got to Miami that he had any teammate of note (Dwyane Wade ranked No. 25 on the updated list, James ranked No. 5). And no disrespect to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, but they aren’t as good as the tandem of Pippen and Dennis Rodman under Phil Jackson’s tutelage. The average gap between Jordan and the next best player on his team during a championship run is 7.5 WAR. For James that average gap is almost three times as high (19.3 WAR).

For most people, the debate will always come down to championships. For James to indisputably be considered better than Jordan, he’ll need to surpass Jordan’s six rings in eight seasons, both threepeats, broken up only by his decision to try to play another sport. For most, the conversation ends right there. That’s fair, but James has as many championships as Jordan did at 31 years old (three) with four more appearances in the NBA finals (seven total). And when facing elimination in the playoffs, James gets the slight edge in points (32.9 to 31.3) and rebounds (10.8 to 7.9) and barely trails Jordan in assists (6.9 to 7.0) per game.