I think LeBron just reminds everyone of the young guy who has the sense of entitlement and the ego without paying the dues. He calls himself "The King". He tattoos "Chosen 1" on his back. Then when things got too hard in Cleveland he tries to cheat the game with pairing with another Top 5 player and another All Star and "taking his talents to South Beach" rather than working on something like a post up game and carrying his own team. Then he talks casually about winning 7 titles when, as Barkley said, was an insult to all the guys who busted ass their entire careers to win one.
Jordan was cocky, and brash, and supremely talented, but I think everyone appreciated the way he came about as a young player who didn't know how to win early on, took his lumps against the Bad Boy Pistons and just kept at with hard work until he got over the hump. That's why people still idolized him, or at least saw a little bit of themselves, in a guy who was always a Goliath and never a David.