These discussions tend to go poorly because people tend to weight career accomplishments vs. prime play.
That being said, I tend to mostly think of how great a player's prime is, provided it is of sufficient length. I tend to think of it as: "You are a GM. You have to pick one of them in their respective primes for one for a season, with players being given a reasonable amount of time to adjust to technology and rules changes."
With that in mind, I still favor Jordan. But Lebron is #2 for me.
I do feel that not enough attention is given to the rule changes allowing more zone-like defenses, and the resulting increase in defensive sophistication since the nineties; instead, it tends to all be about the handcheck and overall greater physicality of nineties ball. Both changes are important, and I don't exactly know how it all comes out when comparing eras. That said, I see no reason to think that greatest perimeter/wing player in NBA history wouldn't do better under rules clearly designed to favor such players; even given the superior all-around athleticism of today's league. I have no doubt Jordan would become a superior 3-point shooter very quickly, and soon a great one. He purposely avoided learning how to take threes as he felt that attempting them diluted his aggressiveness. Jordan could also easily adapt to the modern games ball movement. He could pass with the best of them, and could even have become an all-time great passer if Chicago had decided this was the best use of his talents. Way back in the day, they played MJ as PG for a minute and he basically averaged a triple double iirc. So MJ could definitely be a great hybrid PG/Sg like Harden, etc. And he could still play defense.
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