Chris435 wrote:would anyone here vault Magic's 87 season above Lebron's past year?
Yup. In fact if I'm totally honest, my clear choice of LeBron over '91 Magic is in part because I know it's not quite peak Magic.
So here's the thing:
LeBron in '09 was more valuable to the Cavs than I think Magic ever was to a Laker team. He was also more valuable than Jordan was to a Bull team, so put that in perspective. Very, very few players have ever had arguably 40 wins of impact.
However, I don't think it's enough to just go by who had the most impact in their biggest impact year to ask who the better player was. As we've seen with LeBron in Miami, even this year, he's amazing, but the team isn't going to fall apart without him. That doesn't make him a worse player, and it doesn't make Magic or Mike worse players that they weren't in LeBron-in-Cleveland scenarios.
Additionally, there's the factor of what ElGee's been calling "portability". For LeBron to have that kind of an impact, he needs to be doing all the heavy lifting himself, which means that if he has a teammate who could do more, there's going to be a lot of redundancy. Magic on the other hand, is a lot more flexible player with a game optimally suited to scale with the talent around him.
As a result of this, I take Magic's offense over LeBron's offense generally without much hesitation, and the debate then becomes whether LeBron's edge elsewhere makes up for that. If that seems to make it an easy argument for LeBron, be careful, even though LeBron is an excellent defensive player, his defensive impact is nowhere near his offensive impact. Both sides of the court are not equal here.
For point of reference, Engelmann has a 6-year RAPM analysis from '05-'11. I'll say up front that there are pros and cons to doing a 6-year study. Pro: Reduction in basketball randomness is great. Con: Players change. So keep that in mind, especially with LeBron here. It's not the same player the whole time. Anyway, here's the leaderboard:
1. LeBron 9.6
2. Nash 9.2
3. Wade 8.2
4. Nowitzki 7.9
5. Garnett 7.8
(I'll add in that Kobe was 6th at 7.4 simply because I know people would be curious about that)
I think this is quite telling first because it has LeBron at #1, and has him at #1 despite the fact that it starts when he's a teenage and ends with him in Miami (where his impact was less) - peak LeBron in this span would rate higher.
However, it's also interesting to see that Nash rates almost as highly as LeBron despite major turnover on his roster and aging and, of course, the fact that LeBron is a MUCH better defensive player than him. LeBron actually ranks 5th in the league in defense (where Nash is nowhere near the leaderboard), but that only warrants a defensive rating of 2.8.
It would not be unimaginable at all in my book then for Magic's offense to make up for the defense edge of LeBron then given that I rate him above Nash.
