LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

And that in part is the problem. Lebron is seen as making his teammates better. That has been the story since he was 15. That’s what the media pushes habitually. “He’s the best passer in the game” “no one passes like him”, “he makes everyone around him better”. What has he lost his passing ability? Has he lost his ability to make his teammates better? Maybe it’s the media’s fault for making him something he’s actually not.

We can agree on this.

Come on now, you know that’s not even close to being a similar situation. Pau played well with us. He was instrumental in our two championships. We saw him play at an all star / superstar level. His regression came after all of that. It was perplexing to everyone here, I remember. No one knew why he was playing that bad. We already had the evidence to see that Pau could consistently perform at a championship level and that he was having some type of issue within himself. That can’t be said for Kevin Love or these other guys. They are relegated to spot up shooters and have to ride the coattails of Lebron’s greatness instead of being in spots to help the team win regardless of Lebron’s stats.

Yes and no. Of course they should perform when called upon, they are professional basketball players. That’s why they’re paid. We’ve seen them play hard in the playoffs multiple times, but we’ve also seen them play horribly inconsistent. I mean they consistently shrink on the road and have been bad there pretty much all season. How? Why? It’s more to it than ‘they just suck’ Look at the whole picture. All of the Cavs problems point back to the system they run and the coach/coaching staff they have. Everybody saying otherwise gives Lebron a pass and puts absolutely no blame on the coaching staff.

 

I’m talking about the narrative. You’re talking about a body of work for a career. His career stats has nothing to do with the narrative. You play in the league for a long time and you will accumulate stats. I’m saying the evidence for the players shows it to be a false narrative. You’re saying that because he is on the all time list that that proves he in fact does make his teammates better. That’s not a logical argument.

Him being on the career assists list doesn’t prove that he makes his teammates better. The evidence for that would be that everyone who plays with Lebron plays better and does better than they did before joining Lebron.

The narrative also states that any team that he goes to and no matter who is on the roster he will maximize their talent and they will be a better player for it. The results say otherwise.

Yes it was Pau’s fault for his regression. I 100% agree with that. However, the reason I say it’s not the same with the guys on the Cavs is that Pau had all of the pieces in place for him to be successful, because we had seen him be successful using the data we had from the 2 previous seasons. He had Phil, he had the triangle, he had a system that put him in his spots so he could be utilized successfully. He had Kobe that pushed him to be greater than he was. He had everything he needed to succeed, but he still stunk up the joint. The point I’m making is that before you say this Cavs roster is in the same situation as Pau, (meaning they deserve 100% of the blame for their poor play) they have to have the chance to play in a system that allows them to play to their strengths first. At that point if they still suck, then you know what, these guys really really are garbage.

The difference is that the Lakers ran a system that flowed and was successful. It called for a lot of movement, multiple passes, screens, pick and rolls, etc. It was a pretty intricate offense, so you really couldn’t blame Kobe for anything except his own performance woes because it started and ended with Phil and the triangle.

The Lebron system is different in that it is not a system based on player movement, multiple passes and playing off ball (Kobe had a lot of off ball plays in his career because of the triangle). In the Lebron system all plays run through him as the primary ball handler. It is predicated on him bringing the ball up court, deciding what play to make which is either iso or dish, not a lot of flowing motion and movement, passing, and cutting, almost no off ball plays for Lebron, etc. This is the difference. If you say that is not what you see then I simply have to disagree with you because my eyes tell me otherwise.

To be fair though, I have never said this system is a bad system because Lebron is a smart player and it can work and has worked, but I’ve always said ever since we started this discussion that this Cavs team does not fit this system.

But you can literally say that for every team in the NBA. No team has an all star roster from top to bottom. Every team has at least 1 Superstar or Star, 1 All-Star, and a bunch of role players, so I don’t get this. And if you’re talking about the Dwight, Nash, Pau team of 2012 then yeah that team was better than this Cavs team. On paper that team was better than a majority of the NBA at the time. Probably only the Spurs and Heat were comparable. And the Wizards did make the playoffs and almost beat the Craptors, so I’ll give you that but this team running a system that’s not Lebron is not worse than the Pistons or Hornets or Nets or any of the other teams that missed the playoffs.

I’d say the media is more in favor of Lebron than against. And they are more against his teammates. Both premises you have been defending. Maybe it’s coincidental, but I don’t think so. I find it hard to believe that it doesn’t effect your bias in some small way.

I know I’m biased and I know subconsciously the media has helped in my bias, even if it has had the opposite effect of what they try to portray, I believe they had a hand in my bias.

But I will somewhat agree on this. The players definitely need to demand more of themselves, but this isn’t the 80s and 90s. We have to realize that this is a new era. A very different soft and friendly era. I think players are physically better now, but what the old school players had on today was their mentality. They may not have been as good as these guys today, but they were gonna play their heart out. They would die before they took plays and games off. We can’t expect these new school players in this new era of basketball to have the mindset of the old school. So while I agree that they should hold themselves to a higher standard, no one is doing, Lebron included.

 

I don't even know what's going on in here.

 

Ohhhh. All I saw was last two pages were sports article responses.

 

The raptors choked and he played jv teams the rest of the games. Lebron is an all time great and played great. But lets get serious here. He didn't beat ONE great team. He is supposed to be beating these teams.

You lost me at Love is a high quality role player.

 

Its the EAST. The freakin pacers had a chance to make it this far. He def maximized his teams talent and carried a subpar team to beat other subpar playoff teams.

 

He's averaging 13.9 pts,10 reb .346 from 3 and .388 overall these playoffs. No other stat worthy of mention.
Averages 63.5 games per season career and 59.5 games the last 2 years average. Notice he's currently out. Again. At some point you have to factor these things in to a player's value. For playoff stats, that's an upper tier role player in my mind (just for the rebounds) and he is paid like a star.

Upper tier role player is what you are just below a star. Like a 6th man. Being 2nd on the team and LBJ feeding him, upper tier role player is a compliment for these playoff stats. Not a star imo. Maybe if he stayed healthy and played consistent in the playoffs instead of the occasional good games. He's a 3rd 4th guy at best, lower on some teams.

 

Are you kidding? Of all the vomit that has been spewed, it's fairly obvious that @sirronstuff is driving the said bus, so he ain't getting off it.

 

I’d say my work here is done

 

Now that I can agree with. Excellent point!

 

And now here I come playing devil's advocate (which I mean in the literal sense according to probably half of y'all here).

@TIME After the trade, the Cavs literally either had a game every other day or a batch of 2 games in 3 nights after the allstar break. Literally no time to practice and incorporate JC and that new crew.

Then incorporate Lue taking a leave of absence in March till just before the postseason.

Then consider JC's efg% went from .499 on the Lakers to .533 on the Cavs...

Then consider Love and Ky's efg% went up when they all united in '14 compared to what those dudes were shooting before.

Then consider Love and Ky joined Bron in offensive rating in the top 15 of players that played at least 30mins per game while they all played together, but fell well below that before '14.

Then consider how Bosh's and Wade's offensive ratings also shot up into the top 10 when they joined forces with Bron in '10. In fact, Bron since his 5th season in the league has been in the top 10 of players with at least 30mins per in offensive standing, with his various teammates joining him in the top 20 throughout the years.

Then consider that whatever system that is being run, he's led his team to 8 straight Finals. If the system wasn't working, then the onus is on him to adjust...but if it's working in the East, then f*** it, go on then till it's broke.

Consider all that and maybe Bron (outside of some outliers) does make his guys better...he literally has proven that he can fast track an organization to title contention and can win hardware if his guys are healthy.

P.s. I'll try to post actual numbers when I get Time, but you're just going to have to take this devil's advocate's word for it...I wouldn't lie.



All that being said, there is no one measurable that definitively correlates to making teammates better. But you can look at various advanced metrics and consider outliers (ie injuries, coaching changes) to see how efficient a player is on offense when they play with other stars.

 

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon...