There's a scene, one of my favorites, in The Wire, where a gang member goes into a hardware store to buy a nail gun. He asks an older, white sales dude to give him the skinny on the nail guns on display. The sales guy picks up one and says it's the Cadillac of nail guns. He buys it and goes out to the SUV where his compatriot is waiting, where he tells his co-worker that he got the Lexus of nail guns.

Here's the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpvkwBBu6U

They aren't the same meaning though.

The writer's analogy is much more accurate. MJ is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time. To say someone is the MJ in a sport is saying that someone is the best in history for that particular sport. This kid doesn't even have a single gold medal.

Lebron James, on the other hand, was extremely hyped up as a high schooler. Everyone pretty much said he was going to be the next MJ. The potential for LBJ was limitless; same goes for the weightlifter.

Lebron also broke onto the scene as a 16 year old -- high school all american as a sophomore, lots of other media attention and coverage (edit: SI cover was a couple months after 17th birthday apparently).

I don't think story writers typically write the headline but maybe the online version of WSJ is different from the print version...

That is what I suspected was the case, but I'm curious if young people who are familiar with LeBron James but aren't familiar with Michael Jordan.

Also one has to point out, this is an article on the WSJ, whose majority of readership would likely know who Michael Jordan was.