If Lebron stayed with Cavs and never won a title

[nurseryc]

Had Lebron not left to play with Heat and as the great player he was with Cavs still continued to fall short of a title would this effect his ranking today?

[te887848]

He'd be rated far lower than he is now due to no titles, which is why it was a smart move to join Miami at the time. It was also smart for him to abandon ship now and join a team on the rise when the decline in Miami is in full swing.

[Joao Saraiva]

For most people yes. If he kept performing at the level of 09, 10, 12, 13, and 14 he would still look like an all time great for me. At some point rings count but they're not the thing that makes me move players a lot in my rankings.

[Exodus]

For most people yes. If he kept performing at the level of 09, 10, 12, 13, and 14 he would still look like an all time great for me. At some point rings count but they're not the thing that makes me move players a lot in my rankings.

So, are you basing this on putting up gaudy statistics. I don't think any of Lebron teammates in his history of playing ball had career years as a temmate. I think he needs to learn how to work within the team aspect of maximizing his teammates strengths barring 3 point shooting, which his teammates seem to excel. Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe knew how to set up their best players. They knew how to get the best out of their 2nd option. If Lebron 2nd best option is a spot up 3 point shooter, then that might be the best bet to maximize his teammates to the fullest. If Lebron can't win a ring, with a Kevin Love and Irving and being touted as one of the greats ever, don't you think his ranking should fall?

[Volcano]

For most people yes. If he kept performing at the level of 09, 10, 12, 13, and 14 he would still look like an all time great for me. At some point rings count but they're not the thing that makes me move players a lot in my rankings.

So, are you basing this on putting up gaudy statistics. I don't think any of Lebron teammates in his history of playing ball had career years as a temmate. I think he needs to learn how to work within the team aspect of maximizing his teammates strengths barring 3 point shooting, which his teammates seem to excel. Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe knew how to set up their best players. They knew how to get the best out of their 2nd option. If Lebron 2nd best option is a spot up 3 point shooter, then that might be the best bet to maximize his teammates to the fullest. If Lebron can't win a ring, with a Kevin Love and Irving and being touted as one of the greats ever, don't you think his ranking should fall?

[Basketballefan]

He would've been in the Malone/Barkley category if he won no rings. Somebody is bound to say "depends if he played the same" or whatever but majority of bball fans would have trouble placing him top 10 if he had no titles. You don't get to be crowned with no rings, that's not how sports work.

[Colbinii]

For most people yes. If he kept performing at the level of 09, 10, 12, 13, and 14 he would still look like an all time great for me. At some point rings count but they're not the thing that makes me move players a lot in my rankings.

So, are you basing this on putting up gaudy statistics. I don't think any of Lebron teammates in his history of playing ball had career years as a temmate. I think he needs to learn how to work within the team aspect of maximizing his teammates strengths barring 3 point shooting, which his teammates seem to excel. Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe knew how to set up their best players. They knew how to get the best out of their 2nd option. If Lebron 2nd best option is a spot up 3 point shooter, then that might be the best bet to maximize his teammates to the fullest. If Lebron can't win a ring, with a Kevin Love and Irving and being touted as one of the greats ever, don't you think his ranking should fall?

Does it matter how teammates do when the team excels? Isn't that the major point, how the TEAM does, not how his teammates do?

LeBron led teams to greatness that Wade and Bosh could only dream of leading.

You may think LeBron needs his teammates to put up better numbers, but doing so at the cost of the team being worse is foolish, and completely illogical.

[Exodus]

Well if you want to hold Lebron to that standard of being one of the greats ever, then I think we should hold him to that standard to win a championship with Love and Irving on in the starting line up. They will probably have Ray Allen on the roster, with Mike MIler and the other Cav role players, they will have plenty of talent. I think it's imperative that this team wins a ring to secure Lebron's legacy as a winner. You put a prime Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe and even Wade, I think they would deliver a ring with that kind of talent surrounding them. So to answer the OP question, his rank should go down if he doesn't win a ring , and it should.

[Doctor MJ]

Had Lebron not left to play with Heat and as the great player he was with Cavs still continued to fall short of a title would this effect his ranking today?

There are many contingencies here so it's tough to say, but I'll speak for myself and what I learned about the Cavs after he left:

His supporting cast was less talented than I would have thought possible, and I was among the cooler heads at the time.

Implicit in the criticism of LeBron for not winning a title is that we expect our absolute top tier talents to be good enough to make that happen based on general norms of what they can bring, and how the baseline of talent is in the NBA.

While I recognize that in actuality a supporting cast can really be too weak to let that happen, there's a difference between the hypothetical recognition and seeing that LeBron's cast was of that sort, and I'll be the first to admit it wasn't so clear to me. I never mistook Mo Williams for a great talent, but damned if he didn't look like he was doing just what was needed next to LeBron a lot of the time.

And this was the trap the Cav organization was in too by the way. When the overall team with LeBron was as good as it was, you feel like you've got something nearly perfect coming together and you don't want to mess it up.

LeBron leaving showed that's not what was happening. There was a good fit around LeBron - he couldn't win well over 60 games with poor fit and poor talent - but this was a supporting cast in the truest sense, utterly incapable of standing on its own without its keystone.

So basically:

LeBron leaving Cleveland to me made absolutely clear that what LeBron had been doing in Cleveland was among the most jawdropping carry-on-your-back performances in history and assuaged any doubts about whether he should have been winning titles there. (He shouldn't have been)

As for the rest of the world, it's more complicated because people bring in emotional baggage (traitor! quitter!), but in the end those so literal minded as to count rings got to count rings in Miami, and if they are honest they probably think higher of him as a result.

[nonjokegetter]

Casual fans would've cared, but it probably wouldn't have actually changed how well he played basketball, so it shouldn't have mattered.

[Okada]

He'd have been at the pinnacle of the great player, no rings category by far, I think. He'd still place as top 10 in a lot of people's lists but he'd have probably had the highest number of detractors of anyone in that range. I put a lot of stock in rings but it'd be a bit silly to count him out of the top 10 assuming his play was pretty much the same, in my opinion.

[JimmyTD3]

Players are judged on titles, of course it would've made a difference

[Dr Pepper]

Outside of the statsheet and ring count, can we agree that the "college experience" LeBron learned from Pat Riley and the Heat was huge in his development? He seemed to have stopped dancing on the sidelines and shooting FT's left handed anyway. More years of Dan Gilbert/Mike Brown or whoever you replace Mike Brown with seems like it wouldn't help LeBron.

Ring-less LeBron was already in the 10-20 spots on realgm and other lists. He would likely stay around that range with the other ringless phenomenons.

No rings means LeBron either lost to another team in the underwhelming East, or got stomped by the West which probably doesn't help his legacy either. I wonder what that Wade/Bosh Heat team would have looked like without LeBron's influence on veterans specifically picking up Mike Miller and Ray Allen.

[Joao Saraiva]

For most people yes. If he kept performing at the level of 09, 10, 12, 13, and 14 he would still look like an all time great for me. At some point rings count but they're not the thing that makes me move players a lot in my rankings.

So, are you basing this on putting up gaudy statistics. I don't think any of Lebron teammates in his history of playing ball had career years as a temmate. I think he needs to learn how to work within the team aspect of maximizing his teammates strengths barring 3 point shooting, which his teammates seem to excel. Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe knew how to set up their best players. They knew how to get the best out of their 2nd option. If Lebron 2nd best option is a spot up 3 point shooter, then that might be the best bet to maximize his teammates to the fullest. If Lebron can't win a ring, with a Kevin Love and Irving and being touted as one of the greats ever, don't you think his ranking should fall?

Do you remember JJ Hickson labeled as a future all-star? I do.

Do you remember Mo Williams as an all-star? What happened after LeBron left? Couldn't even make the Cavs win 25% of their games, got traded to the Clippers to be the 5th option on the team and it went all the way down...

If this are not career years...

Your opinion is based only on Wade. Wade is old, and LeBron made him better. You'll see proof of that this year. The only teammate that might have more impact is Chris Bosh, but that's more because of the role Spo put him in and not because of LeBron or something like that.

About LeBron, it's not about stats. He really impacts the game.

If LeBron doesn't win with Irving and Love... it depends on how LeBron plays. I can't fault him for losing against the Spurs for example, he was the only Heat playing at great level. Imagine that LeBron has a great ECF and they lose against Chicago because Love is scoring 15PPG and 38%ts and Irving is turning the ball at really high numbers. That's not on LeBron. So I'll say it again: it all depends on how LeBron performs, not on what team results he'll get. If the Cavs win it all, Love is the finals MVP and Irving the best player trough the playoffs, will LeBron rise like a crazy man in your rankings?

[Joao Saraiva]

He would've been in the Malone/Barkley category if he won no rings. Somebody is bound to say "depends if he played the same" or whatever but majority of bball fans would have trouble placing him top 10 if he had no titles. You don't get to be crowned with no rings, that's not how sports work.

By 2009/2010 I already saw LeBron ahead of Malone or Barkley. Despite the fact that Malone and Barkley were great players, they never peaked at the level of LeBron. And I have to remind you that Barkley peaked really high.

[G35]

Had Lebron not left to play with Heat and as the great player he was with Cavs still continued to fall short of a title would this effect his ranking today?

There is a movement to try and devalue rings now. Similar to the movement to devalue volume scoring, blocks, steals.

It's not the ring itself that provides value. The ring is the result of the players production/impact/leadership/talent/ability etc etc.......

[trex_8063]

As with so many things, the devil's in the details (how did he play? how well did his team do? What is the context of the level of success his teams did achieve (i.e. how good was his supporting cast? how did they perform when it mattered most? injuries, other bad luck? etc).

That being said, generally (assuming his individual performance is basically the same) I would say it's going to affect things as follows:
There are those who are going to place a fairly high significance on titles/ring-count, sometimes regardless of context. For those, never winning a title is going to be a pretty big dock to his all-time legacy (perhaps in the range of docking his ultimate ATL ranking by 10-12 places).

For the most of the rest, no titles probably still affects their ranking of him more than they would like to admit. At the very least he's going to lose a few "toss-up" comparisons as a result. With this crowd, it might cost him 1-3 places or so on the ATL rank.

So overall (by consensus, I mean), it might cost him something in the 4-8 places on an ATL......which ultimately (by career end) means he's probably still a top 10 player (but almost assuredly not a top 5).

[DWadeno3]

I don't like this notion of a player suddenly being better than another just because he won a championship. Winning a title is always a team effort and never comes down to one or even just two players dominating. The media has driven this narrative for years, but if LeBron had kept on producing the way he did in a Heat uniform and failed to win a title then how could you view him as less of a player? Those are the same people who are now hugging on his nuts for winning a couple of titles and are calling our championship teams trash outside of LeBron. Neither side is true.

The San Antonio Spurs have just proven that it's not always the biggest stars or the largest amount of individual talent that wins. We had the likes of Patty Mills, Boris Diaw and Tiago Splitter kill us, not because they are insanely good basketball players, but because they were part of a working system and doing what was asked of them.

Kawhi Leonard is a big time basketball player, I'm a fan of the kid, but these sudden comparisons that came up between him and the likes of a Durant or Melo are laughable just because he won a Finals MVP.

So my view on him personally wouldn't change much.

[PaulieWal]

Those are the same people who are now hugging on his nuts for winning a couple of titles and are calling our championship teams trash outside of LeBron.

The reality is that those teams struggled because of injuries to Wade/Bosh but the team overall still came through for him in the biggest of games and provided just the amount of support he needed. It wasn't ideal but Wade especially in the 12 run was a good 2nd option. Those Cavs teams were built around him for the RS but in the playoffs couldn't provide him the support needed when he struggled himself.

I know some people are really down on Wade now but in 12 he averaged 22/5/5 in the Finals, helped Miami close out Indiana in the second half of the series. In 13 he struggled more but was okay in the Finals. When Miami needed him the most in game 4 he was arguably the best or the second best player on the court. There was no one on those Cavs teams who could do that for him and even great players need games where their teammates are better than them.

It's all about having perspective. Those title teams struggled more than they should have but that's because of injuries and the rest of the cast (outside of the Big 3) certainly had their moments to help LeBron.

[DWadeno3]

Those are the same people who are now hugging on his nuts for winning a couple of titles and are calling our championship teams trash outside of LeBron.

The reality is that those teams struggled because of injuries to Wade/Bosh but the team overall still came through for him in the biggest of games and provided just the amount of support he needed. It wasn't ideal but Wade especially in the 12 run was a good 2nd option. Those Cavs teams were built around him for the RS but in the playoffs couldn't provide him the support needed when he struggled himself.

I know some people are really down on Wade now but in 12 he averaged 22/5/5 in the Finals, helped Miami close out Indiana in the second half of the series. In 13 he struggled more but was okay in the Finals. When Miami needed him the most in game 4 he was arguably the best or the second best player on the court. There was no one on those Cavs teams who could do that for him and even great players need games where their teammates are better than them.

It's all about having perspective. Those title teams struggled more than they should have but that's because of injuries and the rest of cast certainly had their moments to help LeBron.

It's not just about the Big Three on those title teams either. It's about other players stepping up at the right time and about us playing good basketball. You have a guy like Shane Battier who doesn't have the big stats, but who barely ever commits mistakes on the court. You have Chris Andersen who can change the dynamic of a game with his energetic style of play that is especially disruptive on the defensive end. You have players like Chalmers and Cole who, on their good days, can pull nice triggers offensively, even providing the Big Three with easy buckets. All this isn't even part of the stats.

Either way, these titles were far from LeBron's titles, just like the Cavs' shortcomings were far from LeBron's shortcomings. You have teams in Miami that have learned to play a very good brand of basketball and plenty of players who have bought into it and always different guys to step up to the challenge.

Take the 2011 Finals for example. Had we had a Ray Allen on our bench then, the title would've been ours. Even with LeBron and Bosh performing below their standards, we just needed several reliable role players to get that one.