The LeBron James- 23-24 NBA Playoffs & Off-Season Thread -(NO PERSONAL ATTACKS & BAITING)

[mademan]

I dunno, I think people are severely underrating Murray if they think he's one of the worst recent second options. Imo the only ones definitively better this century are those part of an all-time duo: Shaq/Kobe, Curry/KD, and Lebron/AD. He's clearly been better in the bubble and last year in the playoffs than guys like Middleton, Lowry, Klay, Parker/Duncan (I consider Manu first here), 06 Shaq, etc. For my money, better than Kyrie and Wade. A bad 3 game stretch shouldn't change that, especially when in one of them he still took over in the 4th and hit the game winner!

There's just so much to like about his offense. Great shooter, good passer, and excellent at limiting his turnovers. Obviously the two-man game with Jokic is unstoppable, and he certainly makes life a lot easier for Murray, but Murray is just one of those inelastic, tough-shot-makers. Large percentage off the bounce, usually with a hand in his face, and he still makes them at a great clip in the playoffs. Plus, all the bad tendencies you might see in the regular season (hero ball, dribbling way too much) get reduced in the postseason. Part of it is that Malone plays him a lot with all-bench lineups, but I think he's just one of the ones that know how to flip the switch.

This is just winning bias. Murray has played mediocre for 3 games and theyre up 3-0. He can do that because other guys like Porter Jr and AG can step up and Jokic is literally one of the few guys ive seen that actually makes his teammates better (you hear that phrase a lot but its fat rarer than analysts would have you believe).

Murray is for sure on the lower tier of guys who won as 2nd options and its downright laughable to compare him to 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie. Lebron is just not capable of raising a guards game like Jokic by virtue of him just not being a big. 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie with Jokic would be absolutely impossible to guard in the PnR

[capfan33]

This is such a weird hill to choose to die on. The team with 4 Point Guards in their 8-man playoff rotation with Taurean Prince as the only bench wing is somehow a good enough cast to win a title.

Jesus Christ.

They will go to any length to "TRY" to discredit James at any chance. This guy has failed miserably. One of the worst attempts, imo.

Wait are people actually trying to argue this is a title-level team. Hello, guys????

[AEnigma]

2015-17 postseason Kyrie saw a near identical dropoff without Lebron as postseason Jamal has without Jokic, and their league relative production is functionally identical. Switch their teams and Kyrie would be pilloried for being no substance while Jamal would be praised as one of the all-time elite postseason guys saving Lebron’s legacy.

[Ian Scuffling]

I dunno, I think people are severely underrating Murray if they think he's one of the worst recent second options. Imo the only ones definitively better this century are those part of an all-time duo: Shaq/Kobe, Curry/KD, and Lebron/AD. He's clearly been better in the bubble and last year in the playoffs than guys like Middleton, Lowry, Klay, Parker/Duncan (I consider Manu first here), 06 Shaq, etc. For my money, better than Kyrie and Wade. A bad 3 game stretch shouldn't change that, especially when in one of them he still took over in the 4th and hit the game winner!

There's just so much to like about his offense. Great shooter, good passer, and excellent at limiting his turnovers. Obviously the two-man game with Jokic is unstoppable, and he certainly makes life a lot easier for Murray, but Murray is just one of those inelastic, tough-shot-makers. Large percentage off the bounce, usually with a hand in his face, and he still makes them at a great clip in the playoffs. Plus, all the bad tendencies you might see in the regular season (hero ball, dribbling way too much) get reduced in the postseason. Part of it is that Malone plays him a lot with all-bench lineups, but I think he's just one of the ones that know how to flip the switch.

This is just winning bias. Murray has played mediocre for 3 games and theyre up 3-0. He can do that because other guys like Porter Jr and AG can step up and Jokic is literally one of the few guys ive seen that actually makes his teammates better (you hear that phrase a lot but its fat rarer than analysts would have you believe).

Murray is for sure on the lower tier of guys who won as 2nd options and its downright laughable to compare him to 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie. Lebron is just not capable of raising a guards game like Jokic by virtue of him just not being a big. 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie with Jokic would be absolutely impossible to guard in the PnR

The bolded is a little much. Of course Lebron has raised guards play in the past. Unless, you're strictly speaking about now, in which case, I still think he is, just not to the extent of a Jokic. A huge reason for that is he has no guard on this team that is anywhere near as good as Murray, or KCP, even if you think Murray isn't that great. Sad thing about the KCP thing is they did play together. And won a championship, together. Until the team got Pelinka'd.

[mademan]

I dunno, I think people are severely underrating Murray if they think he's one of the worst recent second options. Imo the only ones definitively better this century are those part of an all-time duo: Shaq/Kobe, Curry/KD, and Lebron/AD. He's clearly been better in the bubble and last year in the playoffs than guys like Middleton, Lowry, Klay, Parker/Duncan (I consider Manu first here), 06 Shaq, etc. For my money, better than Kyrie and Wade. A bad 3 game stretch shouldn't change that, especially when in one of them he still took over in the 4th and hit the game winner!

There's just so much to like about his offense. Great shooter, good passer, and excellent at limiting his turnovers. Obviously the two-man game with Jokic is unstoppable, and he certainly makes life a lot easier for Murray, but Murray is just one of those inelastic, tough-shot-makers. Large percentage off the bounce, usually with a hand in his face, and he still makes them at a great clip in the playoffs. Plus, all the bad tendencies you might see in the regular season (hero ball, dribbling way too much) get reduced in the postseason. Part of it is that Malone plays him a lot with all-bench lineups, but I think he's just one of the ones that know how to flip the switch.

This is just winning bias. Murray has played mediocre for 3 games and theyre up 3-0. He can do that because other guys like Porter Jr and AG can step up and Jokic is literally one of the few guys ive seen that actually makes his teammates better (you hear that phrase a lot but its fat rarer than analysts would have you believe).

Murray is for sure on the lower tier of guys who won as 2nd options and its downright laughable to compare him to 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie. Lebron is just not capable of raising a guards game like Jokic by virtue of him just not being a big. 2012 Wade or 2016 Kyrie with Jokic would be absolutely impossible to guard in the PnR

The bolded is a little much. Of course Lebron has raised guards play in the past. Unless, you're strictly speaking about now, in which case, I still think he is, just not to the extent of a Jokic. A huge reason for that is he has no guard on this team that is anywhere near as good as Murray, or KCP, even if you think Murray isn't that great. Sad thing about the KCP thing is they did play together. And won a championship, together. Until the team got Pelinka'd.

Its the truth. Lebron plays offensively (mostly) like a guard, and its rare that guards are able to raise each others games. Lebron won 3 titles with Wade/Kyrie, but it was clear that it was more just an incredible amalgamation of talent and not really guys playing off of each other. I do wish we couldve seen prime Lebron play with a real roll big. Best we got was (depressingly) Varajeo

[Peregrine01]

Fun fact, Jokic’s drop in postseason true shooting without Jamal is twice as large as Jamal’s drop without Jokic.

Also fun fact: most of that sample size without Murray came when Jokic was playing on clearly outmatched rosters against teams that later went to the Finals.

Anyway, this topic has gotten completely off-tangent. I'm probably on this forum too much as it is.

[lessthanjake]

2015-17 postseason Kyrie saw a near identical dropoff without Lebron as postseason Jamal has without Jokic, and their league relative production is functionally identical. Switch their teams and Kyrie would be pilloried for being no substance while Jamal would be praised as one of the all-time elite postseason guys saving Lebron’s legacy.

There’s basically no such thing as “postseason Jamal without Jokic.” He has played a grand total of 358 playoff minutes without Jokic (and Jokic has only 338 playoff minutes without Jamal). That’s essentially nothing to base any point off of. And those minutes for Jamal are likely generally disproportionately not when the opponents’ best rim protector is on the court (since teams usually try to sync their best big-man defender with Jokic as much as they can), while those Murray “off” minutes for Jokic are disproportionately in years where the supporting cast was substantially worse (even beyond Murray being out). Of course, if you use a larger sample—i.e. regular season data for the years since Murray joined the league—you’d find that Jokic’s regular season TS% is essentially exactly the same with or without Murray (64.0 TS% vs. 63.7%), while Murray’s is meaningfully lower without Jokic (56.7% vs. 53.8%).

[AEnigma]

I understand it must be very disappointing when postseason realities fail to adhere to regular season narratives or expectations, but if they did not, the Nuggets would not have a title. You should be more grateful for that discrepancy.

[lessthanjake]

This is such a weird hill to choose to die on. The team with 4 Point Guards in their 8-man playoff rotation with Taurean Prince as the only bench wing is somehow a good enough cast to win a title.

Jesus Christ.

They will go to any length to "TRY" to discredit James at any chance. This guy has failed miserably. One of the worst attempts, imo.

Wait are people actually trying to argue this is a title-level team. Hello, guys????

I think the post in question *may* be referring to me— though I’m not sure. So, to the extent it’s referring to me, no, I didn’t say it was a title-level team. What I actually said is that the Lakers are a really talented team that is capable of being dangerous in the postseason, and that the Nuggets are not wildly more talented, but that the Nuggets are a team that are better than the sum of their parts while the Lakers are not. I then explained a lot of reasons I think the Nuggets are better than the sum of their parts. Ultimately, obviously the Lakers are a dangerous playoff team, since a very similar team was able to make the WCF last year while being less healthy than they are now. They are a team that is clearly capable of making a deep playoff run. But if they are highly unlikely to get over the hurdle to beat a team like the Nuggets, then saying they’re a title contender would be taking it too far. They’d need a lot of luck to be an actual title contender (i.e. injuries to major players on a few of the very top teams that they’d be unlikely to otherwise beat).

One related thing I’d add by the way is that there’s a difference between a team that is a true title contender and a team that isn’t quite there but has the talent to be dangerous to the title contenders. Title contenders are ones we think actually have a decent shot of getting through all four rounds. A dangerous team is good enough to potentially be capable of winning a series against a title contender, but where we’d say their overall chances of actually getting through with a victory in all four rounds is ultimately quite low. To me, the Lakers fall into the latter category, and could only get into the former category if the Red Sea was parted by injuries and upsets.

[lessthanjake]

I understand it must be very disappointing when postseason realities fail to adhere to regular season narratives or expectations, but if they did not, the Nuggets would not have a title. You should be more grateful for that discrepancy.

Or maybe trying to base your perception of “postseason realities” on stats from like 300-minute subsamples is silly—especially when those very-small-sample-size stats obviously don’t adhere to what anyone can actually see when watching the games (i.e. that Jokic’s presence makes things a lot easier for Murray).

More generally, Murray was excellent in the last postseason. He played at a level that significantly exceeded his regular season level. And that certainly helped the Nuggets win the title last year—though it should be noted that they won each round easily enough that there probably was room for the team to have won even without Murray elevating very much. He’s also been great in the playoffs in the past. Maybe he’s a perpetual playoff riser, or maybe it’s just been random noise. As I’ve said many times, we don’t know yet, and will get a better sense of that as his career goes on. What we do know right now is that the Nuggets are up 3-0 on the Lakers in this series while Murray has not at all elevated above his regular season level (in fact, quite the opposite).

[AEnigma]

I understand it must be very disappointing when postseason realities fail to adhere to regular season narratives or expectations, but if they did not, the Nuggets would not have a title. You should be more grateful for that discrepancy.

Or maybe trying to base your perception of “postseason realities” on stats from like 300-minute subsamples is silly—especially when those very-small-sample-size stats obviously don’t adhere to what anyone can actually see when watching the games (i.e. that Jokic’s presence makes things a lot easier for Murray).

Please quote where anyone even implied Jokic did not make things easier for Murray.

I have seen it far more strongly suggested that Jokic does not benefit from Murray in turn, which I would expect people interested in the games would see is patently not the case, but yet again, those acknowledgements always get in the way of these pesky agendas.

[lessthanjake]

I understand it must be very disappointing when postseason realities fail to adhere to regular season narratives or expectations, but if they did not, the Nuggets would not have a title. You should be more grateful for that discrepancy.

Or maybe trying to base your perception of “postseason realities” on stats from like 300-minute subsamples is silly—especially when those very-small-sample-size stats obviously don’t adhere to what anyone can actually see when watching the games (i.e. that Jokic’s presence makes things a lot easier for Murray).

Please quote where anyone even implied Jokic did not make things easier for Murray.

I have seen it far more strongly suggested that Jokic does not benefit from Murray in turn, which I would expect people interested in the games would see is patently not the case, but yet again, those acknowledgements always get in the way of these pesky agendas.

You said the following:

“ Fun fact, Jokic’s drop in postseason true shooting without Jamal is twice as large as Jamal’s drop without Jokic.”

The suggestion is of course that Murray makes things easier for Jokic more than vice versa. I don’t think that’s consistent with what people can see watching the games. It’s also not consistent with large-sample data. And I don’t think looking at stats from 300-minute subsamples is at all convincing on this, especially to try to prove a point that isn’t consistent with large-sample data or with the eye test.

However, if your point is less a comparative point but instead just merely to say that Murray’s presence does make things easier for Jokic (and, more importantly, for the team as a whole when Jokic is on the floor), then I think that’s obviously true. The Nuggets are a lot better with Murray than without him—unsurprising, since he’s their 2nd best player! And it is naturally harder to stop Jokic when he can run a two-man game with an actually good player. The two-man game with Will Barton obviously was much easier to limit than the two-man game with Jamal Murray! To a large extent, the NBA is about forcing defenses to pick their poison, and if the Nuggets didn’t have Murray then teams would far more often have some pretty non-deadly poisons they could pick. But that doesn’t say a whole lot about exactly how good Murray is, because he’d make things easier for Jokic and the Nuggets even if he were at the low-end of peoples’ estimations (after all, no one is saying Murray’s just a mediocre player!).

[AEnigma]

So not anything that actually applies to what I asked, but damn, very strange of me to have posted that randomly. I see how that could create a very confusing implication, what with there being no possible prior context as to why I may be posting that type of measure.

[lessthanjake]

So not anything that actually applies to what I asked, but damn, very strange of me to have posted that randomly. I see how that could create a very confusing implication, what with there being no possible prior context as to why I may be posting that type of measure.

What in the world are you talking about? The context was that, while people were discussing Murray’s TS%, someone suggested that Jokic makes things a lot easier for Murray, and then you immediately made a post that stated what I quoted and nothing more. Obviously, with that context, it is highly relevant to respond with data and arguments relating to the fact that you were relying on tiny-sample data and that larger-sample data and the eye test tells us that, yes Jokic does actually make things a lot easier for Murray in terms of scoring efficiency (and that vice versa isn’t supported to the same degree by larger-sample data or the eye test).

[Heej]

I was actually hoping for a 4-1 Nuggets series win because I want LeBron to leave. Hopefully they have a fluke shooting night in game 4 and then get blown out in Denver. Jeannie isn’t firing Ham.

LeBron and AD as a package deal to another team would be interesting. Personally wouldn't mind them teaming up in Golden State. LeBron put the Curry debate to rest last season for good. Swap out Dray and Klay for Bron and AD, let AD get the FMVPs and they're good to go

This would be a dream for me. I grew up in the Bay Area so it was always crazy rooting for the Cavs when all my friends were Warrior fans but it was so damn fun.

At that time, Bron and Curry clearly didn’t like each other but you can tell now they not only respect each other, but seem to be friends and Bron and Dray are super close so I could see it happening. Idk the logistics of it all and what would have to happen but I think the players would all be down to do it.

It would be a shame to not see Bron and Curry together at least once when the fit is so perfect.

Yeah I think especially now in their careers most NBA fans are pretty hyper-aware that the last generation is beginning to get eclipsed by young talents, so most people would love to see the Old Man Trio suit up for one last run together.

It's sad that I wonder if Steph-Wiggins-Lebron-KD-AD would still be enough to beat the Nuggets 5 in crunch time. There's still no answer for that PnR and they'd still get killed on the glass

[donnieme]

viewtopic.php?p=93167324#p93167324

The Lakers still haven’t recovered from that horrible 2021 off-season. Slammed their title window shut.

It’s amazing in two off-seasons after a title they trade Kuzma, KCP, Caruso, Green, Beverley, Harrell, Gasol, Howard for Westbrook, Carmelo, Russell, Hachimurra, Monk, Drummond, etc.

Lonnie Walker who was coming off terrible seasons in SA despite the athleticism.

The corpse of Avery Bradley.

And they fire Vogel to top it off. They deserve this embarrassment. Terrible moves. It’s like they accidentally built a title contender in the first place, or maybe they thought scouting wasn’t what a contender does, it’s what a rebuilding team does - and figured they should sign as many recognizable names as possible. No matter how washed up.

I don’t pity them.

Ugh Oh Lord that trade ruined everything. Now ownership won't even listen to the valid ones like Ham being terrible.

[zimpy27]

LeBron to OKC is what I'm hoping.

He needs to be on a team with guys that can execute plays.

[Colbinii]

LeBron to OKC is what I'm hoping.

He needs to be on a team with guys that can execute plays.

Yeah--highly unlikely, but definitely a "That makes sense for both sides".

I just don't see LeBron leaving LA. When LeBron came to LA in 2019, he came in part because he wanted to move his family and life outside of basketball to the Meca of what he wanted for them and himself--producing and entrepreneurship for LeBron and excellent basketball developmental paths for his kids.

Focusing on the potential moves LA could do, pushing the needle for a Trae Young makes when looking at LA holistically and a player who helps both LeBron and AD offensively to immense degrees. LeBron finally gets his "Karl Malone" arc, this time as a P&R Roll Man who can pick and pop from 3 AND pass/create out of the short roll like no player ever before.

Another route [and perhaps more realistic] is simply re-tooling the role players and salaries around LeBron/AD. Dorian Finney-Smith or Grant Williams are interesting wing upgrades which the team desperately needs.

[tsherkin]

I think it's delightful that Lebron is 39 and people still think he's good enough that he should be able to beat a team like the defending-champ Nuggets. He isn't 29, he can't just go HAM anymore and even back in his heyday, that didn't work unless his teammates also came through. They have not in this series, although AD has played reasonably well. LA is poorly coached, doesn't have a lot from the bench with the injuries and just hasn't been getting enough. And DLo was atrocious in Game 3, among others. And, of course, there is the fact that Denver is just very good.

It's cool to see Lebron in the playoffs, individually playing pretty well and that people still have expectations of him. They're unrealistic and he's still playing quite well, but yeah. It's neat to see him so effective at this stage of his career.

[Heej]

Think the most frustrating thing here is that he still has enough in the tank to be a #2 guy that’s borderline 1B but just can’t get a team around him that isn’t dog water these last few years.

Current Bron isnt a 1b i mean Ad is the 1a and Bron 1b and look at them........Bron has to be solid 2nd option at this point to win a ring unless he takes a massive paycut somewhere lol not happening. But theres only a couple players whod be clear number 1 option over him. Jokic, Embiid, Giannis, Luka, maybe Sga?

LeBron and AD are outscoring Jokic and Murray. It's not like they're getting straight up outclassed as a duo. The Nuggets have 2 other guys regularly putting up near 20pt games while the Lakers have guys struggling to score 10 consistently. It is what it is. You need depth more than ever now this league is f***ing loaded to the gills with talent now.