The Dirk/Bird comparison has fascinated me for years. Initially born out of him being a tall white dude who could shoot, I was never much fond of the argument... but then the rest of Dirk's career happened and it got to be far, far more interesting than it was in, say, 2001. Dirk turned out to be a staggering, ATG talent who maintained almost identical production in the postseason as a scorer while improving his rebounding. He provided guard-like end-clock value, which is nearly unheard-of for a dude of his size even to this point in league history, and of course he has that iconic run to the title in 2011, his second time leading his squad of decent and well-organized vets to the Finals.
Quotatious wrote:There's also something interesting about Bird's playmaking - his assists to turnovers ratio looks very similar to LeBron's, but his AST% is far lower than LeBron's, it's more like Kobe's. Bird had that ability to make passes leading to easy baskets without having to dominate the ball, which is a valuable skill, but LeBron's career AST% is 10% higher than Larry's, with basically identical TOV%. To put things into perspective - the gap in terms of AST% between Bird and Dirk is just about 1-2% bigger, than the gap between LeBron and Bird (and, Dirk's TOV% is considerably lower than Larry's). Kobe's AST/TOV% ratio is slightly better than Larry's, and I don't think many people would argue Kobe as a better playmaker than Larry...That shows why comparing raw statistical averages across eras is misleading, and why modern players are generally more effective.
This interests me, because AST% is a proportion of total buckets on which a player provided an assist... and there were more buckets per game in Bird's era. Volume of buckets would change that, and of course Bird had other playmakers on the team. Lebron is a PnR spam artist, so their approaches were different. Not sure that the difference in AST% is that meaningful, or at least AS meaningful as the gap implies. Bird's Celtics played at or over 98 possessions per game in all but one season of Bird's career (his last), and Lebron has played OVER 92 possessions per game only since returning to the Cavs in 2015. They're playing at 97.4 this season, which is the fastest at which he's played... but as an astute poster on the Raps board noted in another thread, the pace and style of the other team is dictating things more than the speed of the Cavs.
Now, that said, Lebron has also been improving as a playmaker over the years and he's looking amazing this season in particular. I don't think these numbers totally capture Bird as a playmaker though. I think that you're underselling him by reducing that to "passes leading to easy buckets," particularly when you consider the breadth of set types in which his passing made a difference. Lebron's style is tailor-made for assist generation with shooters in the corners, but it also makes more friction with other ball-dominant guys, which is itself a trade-off, as we've seen. AST% does also fail to account for roster context and style of play, right? It merely tells you a proportion, and proportion is like volume, not necessarily an end in and of itself. That's important to remember.
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