5 year plus-minus of various all-time nba peaks(Feat. Shaq, Lebron, Jordan, Robinson and Curry)

[tone wone]

Gameplans matter. Warriors were fine with Lebron doing everything. They didn't double him and get the ball out of his hands to make the others beat them, which allowed him to rack up a lot of stats. Whereas the cavs were doubling steph all the time, on and off the ball. Just so that he couldn't shoot forcing the others to beat them. So yea the supposed superteam was forced to have the others beat them but couldn't. While Lebron's team was forced to have Lebron beat them because they were scared of everyone else.

This is insane. The Warriors were the most talented defensive team in the league. They didn't "send doubles" to any star. The didnt have to. They had an army of switchable 6'7-6'9 players who could switch off and flatten out any teams offense. This allowed them to stay home on shooters while sending help in paint when needed. Its the foundation of why they were so damn hard to play against.

If they cloned themselves and played a 7-game series they wouldn't double Steph "all the time" either.

They would absolutely double steph all the time as well. You realize the celtics tried not to double steph and analysts were killing the celtics saying you can't play steph this way. The celtics also have an army of switchable high level defenders.

But playing drop and staying out of rotations actually worked for Boston. Golden States halfcourt offense wasn't particularly good....it was transition where they killed the C's.

[Onus]

This is insane. The Warriors were the most talented defensive team in the league. They didn't "send doubles" to any star. The didnt have to. They had an army of switchable 6'7-6'9 players who could switch off and flatten out any teams offense. This allowed them to stay home on shooters while sending help in paint when needed. Its the foundation of why they were so damn hard to play against.

If they cloned themselves and played a 7-game series they wouldn't double Steph "all the time" either.

They would absolutely double steph all the time as well. You realize the celtics tried not to double steph and analysts were killing the celtics saying you can't play steph this way. The celtics also have an army of switchable high level defenders.

But playing drop and staying out of rotations actually worked for Boston. Golden States halfcourt offense wasn't particularly good....it was transition where they killed the C's.

Do you have updated stats? And how many transition points did we get?

[Djoker]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Relying on playoff plus minus numbers containing a season's worth of games is also pretty flawed. Given that stars play 40+ minutes per game, those OFF samples are very small and thus incredibly noisy. And if you're using even bigger samples than that (100+ playoff games) then you're conflating data from so many years together with different circumstances, aging etc. not considered which makes peak comparisons impossible. It becomes closer to a career comparison...

[LukaTheGOAT]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Relying on playoff plus minus numbers containing a season's worth of games is also pretty flawed. Given that stars play 40+ minutes per game, those OFF samples are very small and thus incredibly noisy. And if you're using even bigger samples than that (100+ playoff games) then you're conflating data from so many years together with different circumstances, aging etc. not considered which makes peak comparisons impossible. It becomes closer to a career comparison...

Just thought I should share this quote by Ben Taylor. It is a small sample like he said but still noteworthy.

"The 2016 Cavs, the team that beat the Warriors. Injuries have masked an all-time level offense, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love. They are not in the upper stratosphere of shooting efficiency, but are a low-turnover offense (11.5%) that benefits from player-specific offensive rebounding by Tristian Thompson.

But how good is an offense that can only take advantage of a fundamentally poor defense? While most offenses perform better against weaker defenses, Cleveland has no correlation between an opponent’s defensive strength and its own offensive production. A linear regression predicts that the Cavs offense will actually perform better against elite defenses than almost every team on this list, including Golden State. Given the small samples, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it is worth noting nonetheless." -Ben Taylor

[capfan33]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Relying on playoff plus minus numbers containing a season's worth of games is also pretty flawed. Given that stars play 40+ minutes per game, those OFF samples are very small and thus incredibly noisy. And if you're using even bigger samples than that (100+ playoff games) then you're conflating data from so many years together with different circumstances, aging etc. not considered which makes peak comparisons impossible. It becomes closer to a career comparison...

Just thought I should share this quote by Ben Taylor. It is a small sample like he said but still noteworthy.

"The 2016 Cavs, the team that beat the Warriors. Injuries have masked an all-time level offense, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love. They are not in the upper stratosphere of shooting efficiency, but are a low-turnover offense (11.5%) that benefits from player-specific offensive rebounding by Tristian Thompson.

But how good is an offense that can only take advantage of a fundamentally poor defense? While most offenses perform better against weaker defenses, Cleveland has no correlation between an opponent’s defensive strength and its own offensive production. A linear regression predicts that the Cavs offense will actually perform better against elite defenses than almost every team on this list, including Golden State. Given the small samples, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it is worth noting nonetheless." -Ben Taylor

Also, I made a similar argument about the Lakers in 87, 70sFan rightfully pointed out to me that their offensive results were resilent against very strong defenses in subsequent years.

We may not have the same sample size for those Cavs teams against elite defenses, but we also shouldn't just assume their outlier offenses were merely a result of the competition they were playing against either.

[dcstanley]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Isn't the same true about Jordan in the late 1990s? Pippen was better than any player on the opposing team throughout the 1997 and 1998 Eastern Conference playoffs. I guess you could argue Mourning and Miller were better than him but you could also argue that Lowry and Paul George were better than Kyrie.

[falcolombardi]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Relying on playoff plus minus numbers containing a season's worth of games is also pretty flawed. Given that stars play 40+ minutes per game, those OFF samples are very small and thus incredibly noisy. And if you're using even bigger samples than that (100+ playoff games) then you're conflating data from so many years together with different circumstances, aging etc. not considered which makes peak comparisons impossible. It becomes closer to a career comparison...

Just thought I should share this quote by Ben Taylor. It is a small sample like he said but still noteworthy.

"The 2016 Cavs, the team that beat the Warriors. Injuries have masked an all-time level offense, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love. They are not in the upper stratosphere of shooting efficiency, but are a low-turnover offense (11.5%) that benefits from player-specific offensive rebounding by Tristian Thompson.

But how good is an offense that can only take advantage of a fundamentally poor defense? While most offenses perform better against weaker defenses, Cleveland has no correlation between an opponent’s defensive strength and its own offensive production. A linear regression predicts that the Cavs offense will actually perform better against elite defenses than almost every team on this list, including Golden State. Given the small samples, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it is worth noting nonetheless." -Ben Taylor

Also, I made a similar argument about the Lakers in 87, 70sFan rightfully pointed out to me that their offensive results were resilent against very strong defenses in subsequent years.

We may not have the same sample size for those Cavs teams against elite defenses, but we also shouldn't just assume their outlier offenses were merely a result of the competition they were playing against either.

Lebron faced defenses were not even bad they usually were average at worst and elite at best

2016 pistons (-0.9) 12th of 30 ranked

2016 hawks (-5.0), 2nd of 30 ranked

2016 raptors (-1.2) 11th of 30 ranked

2016 warriors (-2.6) 6th of 30 ranked

2017 pacers (0.0) 16th of 30 ranked

2017 raptors (-1.0) 11th of 30 ranked

2017 celtics (-0.4) 13th of 30 ranked

2017 warriors (-4.8) 2nd of 30 ranked

Average -2.0 defense for lebron opponents

Lets compare with 87-88 lakers here

1987 denver (+1.9) 15th of 23 ranked defensively

1987 warriors (+7.1) 21th of 23 ranked

1987 seattle (+2.0) 17th of 23 ranked

1987 celtics (-1.5) 9th of 23 ranked

1988 spurs (+4.8) 22nd of 23 ranked defensively

1988 jazz (-4.9) 1st of 23 ranked

1988 mavs (-0.3) 15th of 23 ranked

1988 pistons (-2.7) 2nd of 23 ranked

Average: +0.8 defense

Is not even close

So why if he had tougher defensive rivals than showtime lakers?

For the record here is 1991-1992 bulls rivals

1991 knicks (-0.6) 12th of 27

1991 sixers (+0.2) 16th of 27

1991 detroit (-3.3) 4th of 27

1991 lakers (-2.9) 5th of 27

1992 miami (+2.9) 24th of 27

1992 knicks (-4.0) 2nd of 27

1992 cavs (0.0) 11th of 27

1992 blazers (-4.0) 3rd of 27

Average: -1.5 defense

Average Defense rating faced

87-88 magic: +0.7
91-92 jordan: -1.5
16-17 Lebron: -2.0

So much for statpadding on weak defenses

And this is when the defenses he faces actually were weaker,

thw rivals lebron faced from 2011-2014 are a historically great group defensively that beats anythingh most all time greats had to deal with

.....And he also had monster offensive ratings vs them too btw

[falcolombardi]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Isn't the same true about Jordan in the late 1990s? Pippen was better than any player on the opposing team throughout the 1997 and 1998 Eastern Conference playoffs. I guess you could argue Mourning and Miller were better than him but you could also argue that Lowry and Paul George were better than Kyrie.

Paul george is 100% better than kyrie lol, how is it even a debate?

[Djoker]

Just thought I should share this quote by Ben Taylor. It is a small sample like he said but still noteworthy.

"The 2016 Cavs, the team that beat the Warriors. Injuries have masked an all-time level offense, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love. They are not in the upper stratosphere of shooting efficiency, but are a low-turnover offense (11.5%) that benefits from player-specific offensive rebounding by Tristian Thompson.

But how good is an offense that can only take advantage of a fundamentally poor defense? While most offenses perform better against weaker defenses, Cleveland has no correlation between an opponent’s defensive strength and its own offensive production. A linear regression predicts that the Cavs offense will actually perform better against elite defenses than almost every team on this list, including Golden State. Given the small samples, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it is worth noting nonetheless." -Ben Taylor

Also, I made a similar argument about the Lakers in 87, 70sFan rightfully pointed out to me that their offensive results were resilent against very strong defenses in subsequent years.

We may not have the same sample size for those Cavs teams against elite defenses, but we also shouldn't just assume their outlier offenses were merely a result of the competition they were playing against either.

Lebron faced defenses were not even bad they usually were average at worst and elite at best

2016 pistons (-0.9) 12th of 30 ranked

2016 hawks (-5.0), 2nd of 30 ranked

2016 raptors (-1.2) 11th of 30 ranked

2016 warriors (-2.6) 6th of 30 ranked

2017 pacers (0.0) 16th of 30 ranked

2017 raptors (-1.0) 11th of 30 ranked

2017 celtics (-0.4) 13th of 30 ranked

2017 warriors (-4.8) 2nd of 30 ranked

Average -2.0 defense for lebron opponents

Lets compare with 87-88 lakers here

1987 denver (+1.9) 15th of 23 ranked defensively

1987 warriors (+7.1) 21th of 23 ranked

1987 seattle (+2.0) 17th of 23 ranked

1987 celtics (-1.5) 9th of 23 ranked

1988 spurs (+4.8) 22nd of 23 ranked defensively

1988 jazz (-4.9) 1st of 23 ranked

1988 mavs (-0.3) 15th of 23 ranked

1988 pistons (-2.7) 2nd of 23 ranked

Average: +0.8 defense

Is not even close

For the record here is 1991-1992 bulls rivals

1991 knicks (-0.6) 12th of 27

1991 sixers (+0.2) 16th of 27

1991 detroit (-3.3) 4th of 27

1991 lakers (-2.9) 5th of 27

1992 miami (+2.9) 24th of 27

1992 knicks (-4.0) 2nd of 27

1992 cavs (0.0) 11th of 27

1992 blazers (-4.0) 3rd of 27

Average: -1.5 defense

Average Defense rating faced

87-88 magic: +0.7
91-92 jordan: -1.5
16-17 Lebron: -2.0

So much for statpadding on weak defenses

And this is when the defenses he faces actually were weaker,

thw rivals lebron faced from 2011-2014 are a historically great group defensively that beats anythingh most all time greats had to deal with

.....And he also had monster offensive ratings vs them too btw

That data you posted fails to correct for the fact that Lebron's East opponents look better by virtue of playing more games against other Eastern Conference opponents. Anyone watching those playoffs knew that the Raptors/Celtics/Pacers/Pistons of those years would never ever win a playoff round in the Western Conference. Heck, considering they wouldn't finish as a top 4 seed, they may not have won a game against the likes of Golden State, San Antonio or OKC. The gap in competition between East and West was gargantuan in those years.

[Djoker]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Isn't the same true about Jordan in the late 1990s? Pippen was better than any player on the opposing team throughout the 1997 and 1998 Eastern Conference playoffs. I guess you could argue Mourning and Miller were better than him but you could also argue that Lowry and Paul George were better than Kyrie.

Sure. Pippen was also better. But Kyrie was also better than Steph in the 2016 Finals if we extend that line of thinking. And he wasn't even much worse than Steph in the 2017 Finals either.

Lowry being better than Kyrie is laughable... PG has a case but in 2016, Indy didn't even play the Cavs.

Basically this is what this argument comes down to.. IF Lebron's Cavs didn't play weak teams and were truly on the level of 1990s Bulls in terms of playoff dominance when Lebron was on the floor (ON impact) then why did they completely fall off the map against the Warriors in the 2017 Finals? Like why did they, with Lebron, get pretty much completely decimated in the 2017 Finals outside of Game 4 when they were already down 0-3? Surely a team on par with the 1990's Bulls could have been far more competitive.

It kind of comes back to what actually happened in their entire careers too. If Lebron was really more impactful than Jordan, why couldn't he lead objectively at least equally talented supporting casts to more championships than Jordan could? Why couldn't he at least lead them to more competitive outcomes? Lebron's teams underachieved betting odds in the 2007, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018 finals. Too many of those finals should have been at least extremely competitive and ended up being total beatdowns. And there's always a plethora of excuses.

You know which hypothesis one should question most? Not one that doesn't fit a small sample of (playoff) +/- data... You should question a hypothesis that is greatly at odds with the actual result of impact, which is winning. If Lebron was better than Jordan, then he should have won more than Jordan. Or at the very very least should have won more than he did and pushed many of those finals to be more competitive. But he didn't... so he mostly probably isn't better then Jordan.

[falcolombardi]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Isn't the same true about Jordan in the late 1990s? Pippen was better than any player on the opposing team throughout the 1997 and 1998 Eastern Conference playoffs. I guess you could argue Mourning and Miller were better than him but you could also argue that Lowry and Paul George were better than Kyrie.

Sure. Pippen was also better. But Kyrie was also better than Steph in the 2016 Finals if we extend that line of thinking. And he wasn't even much worse than Steph in the 2017 Finals either.

Lowry being better than Kyrie is laughable... PG has a case but in 2016, Indy didn't even play the Cavs.

Basically this is what this argument comes down to.. IF Lebron's Cavs didn't play weak teams and were truly on the level of 1990s Bulls in terms of playoff dominance when Lebron was on the floor (ON impact) then why did they completely fall off the map against the Warriors in the 2017 Finals? Like why did they, with Lebron, get pretty much completely decimated in the 2017 Finals outside of Game 4 when they were already down 0-3? Surely a team on par with the 1990's Bulls could have been far more competitive.

It kind of comes back to what actually happened in their entire careers too. If Lebron was really more impactful than Jordan, why couldn't he lead objectively at least equally talented supporting casts to more championships than Jordan could? Why couldn't he at least lead them to more competitive outcomes? Lebron's teams underachieved betting odds in the 2007, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018 finals. Too many of those finals should have been at least extremely competitive and ended up being total beatdowns. And there's always a plethora of excuses.

You know which hypothesis one should question most? Not one that doesn't fit a small sample of (playoff) +/- data... You should question a hypothesis that is greatly at odds with the actual result of impact, which is winning. If Lebron was better than Jordan, then he should have won more than Jordan. Or at the very very least should have won more than he did and pushed many of those finals to be more competitive. But he didn't... so he mostly probably isn't better then Jordan.

Well for starters no team jordan ever beat was remotely on the 17 warriors level, that had quite a bit to do with it.

Second. Lebron kept the cavs competitive with a team that played +14~ srs basketball when fully healthy in 2017. The cavs for example in game 3 outscored warriors in 45 minutes lebron played and lost the game when he sat

I dont have the numbers at hand but when lebron played the cavs kept within 2-3 points against a team that was historically off the charts

[capfan33]

The issue with glorifying Lebron playoff ON ratings in 2016-2017 in particular is the weakness of the Eastern Conference. In fact in every playoff series in 2016 and 2017 (except the finals) Lebron and Kyrie were the best players on the floor and in some series you could make the case that Love was the 3rd best player on the floor. With that kind of talent advantage beating up on bad teams, you will rack up some monster rORtg numbers. None of those East teams win a single playoff series in the Western Conference in those years in all likelihood and that's kind of a unique situation in NBA history with the exception of maybe 1980's Western Conference. That's also why Magic may look better than Bird in offensive impact which someone posted about earlier in the thread. His team just got to beat up on terrible opposition compared to Bird who went through much tougher teams in the East.

Isn't the same true about Jordan in the late 1990s? Pippen was better than any player on the opposing team throughout the 1997 and 1998 Eastern Conference playoffs. I guess you could argue Mourning and Miller were better than him but you could also argue that Lowry and Paul George were better than Kyrie.

Sure. Pippen was also better. But Kyrie was also better than Steph in the 2016 Finals if we extend that line of thinking. And he wasn't even much worse than Steph in the 2017 Finals either.

Lowry being better than Kyrie is laughable... PG has a case but in 2016, Indy didn't even play the Cavs.

Basically this is what this argument comes down to.. IF Lebron's Cavs didn't play weak teams and were truly on the level of 1990s Bulls in terms of playoff dominance when Lebron was on the floor (ON impact) then why did they completely fall off the map against the Warriors in the 2017 Finals? Like why did they, with Lebron, get pretty much completely decimated in the 2017 Finals outside of Game 4 when they were already down 0-3? Surely a team on par with the 1990's Bulls could have been far more competitive.

It kind of comes back to what actually happened in their entire careers too. If Lebron was really more impactful than Jordan, why couldn't he lead objectively at least equally talented supporting casts to more championships than Jordan could? Why couldn't he at least lead them to more competitive outcomes? Lebron's teams underachieved betting odds in the 2007, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018 finals. Too many of those finals should have been at least extremely competitive and ended up being total beatdowns. And there's always a plethora of excuses.

You know which hypothesis one should question most? Not one that doesn't fit a small sample of (playoff) +/- data... You should question a hypothesis that is greatly at odds with the actual result of impact, which is winning. If Lebron was better than Jordan, then he should have won more than Jordan. Or at the very very least should have won more than he did and pushed many of those finals to be more competitive. But he didn't... so he mostly probably isn't better then Jordan.

I'm not sure if you're overrating Kyrie or underrating Steph, but Steph generally speaking is a significantly better player than Kyrie. 2016 considering Stephs injury maybe, but like I don't think Kyrie has any case over Steph in 2017, Steph was the best player on arguably the best team ever.

And to the point about betting odds, sometimes the betting odds are wrong. Moreover I think there are better ways to evaluate individual players than through team results based on betting odds. I don't think anyone in good faith would argue that Lebron underachieved in 2007, 14, 17 or 18 given the circumstances.

Also 2007 especially is an odd year to bring up, that's probably not one of Lebron's 12 best seasons and he was very raw at that point, he was 22 lol. Jordan was 2 years removed from college at that point and getting swept in the 1st round, and moreover Jordan has 11 functional years as a player, so throwing 2007 in their as some sort of black mark compared to MJ doesn't make any sense.

[Bidofo]

That data you posted fails to correct for the fact that Lebron's East opponents look better by virtue of playing more games against other Eastern Conference opponents. Anyone watching those playoffs knew that the Raptors/Celtics/Pacers/Pistons of those years would never ever win a playoff round in the Western Conference. Heck, considering they wouldn't finish as a top 4 seed, they may not have won a game against the likes of Golden State, San Antonio or OKC. The gap in competition between East and West was gargantuan in those years.

So were you going to correct for that fact or just lob a talking point and hope it stuck? Is the argument here that 8th seeds like the Pacers and Pistons are weak because if they switched conferences, instead of already being swept by obviously superior teams in the East, they'd be swept by obviously superior teams in the West? Yea...no ****. The same logic would apply to MJ's opponents those years as well.

Just take a look at the first two teams the 16+17 Cavs and 91+92 Bulls beat in the playoffs, you'd see LeBron's competition is better based on many metrics.

16 Pistons vs 91 Knicks: Pistons have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (15-15 vs 11-17)
16 Hawks vs 91 Sixers: Hawks have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better record vs West (19-11 vs 12-16)
17 Pacers vs 92 Heat: Pacers have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (16-14 vs 11-15)
17 Raptors vs 92 Knicks: same wins, virtually same SRS, Raptors have the better offense, Knicks with better record vs West (17-9 vs 17-13)

The stats don't really fit the narrative, the complete opposite in fact. The conference finalists are more or less a wash, 16 Raptors ≈ 92 Cavs, 91 Pistons ≈ 17 Celtics.

[DraymondGold]

Here are the top teams by composite (regular-season/playoff) SRS:

Here are the top teams by composite (regular-season/playoff) SRS:

Those higher SRS's advantages are strongly correlated to jordan bench minutes vs lebron bench minutes. The playoffs ON-OFF suggests lebron could take worse teams (OFF) to roughly the same heights (ON)

The idea that lebron is at fault for his teams being weaker without him goes against the much simpler occam razor that they were not as well built as jordan teams

Remember this is 16-21 sample vs jordan 88-93 sample. Jordan cast was already fairly good by 90 and lebron cast includes 19 lakers, 18 cavs and davis-less 21 lakers who were not that great rosters

Add to it pippen being a clearly better player than kyrie. And horace grant being honestly a comparable player to love and lebron only having 1 and a half year of davis in this 6-year sample and it doesnt seem outlandish at all that jordan teams were just better and that was why they had better results without their respective Goat contender

With any other comparision when we see guys have similar ON but one has a worse OFF we find it more impressive the guy who takes a worse roster to similar heights. See: jokic vs other mvp contenders this season by on/off

Why do we change the whole framework to reason ourselves backwards here?

It honestly feels like reasoning backwards why jordam having the slightly worse impact metrics at peak is not actually worse. And we use a comtrived reasoning that is only applied this one time (the worse your team is without you tje less impressive it is how much you raise them)

Would we argue this logic if the results were reversed?

Honest question. If jordsn had the same ON and worse OFF than lebron would anyone be arguing lebron as actually more impressive and more of a ceiling raiser or saying jordan makes his teams worse without him?

Did anyone argue giannis over jokic last regular season cause both had similar ON but nuggets had much worsr off

Even the common arguments against lebron ceiling raising always focus on offense (as making a case that curry or bird or magic are better defenders is really hard and even making the case jordan is a significatively enough better defender to explain the srs gap is also hard)

Offense being an area where lebron teams arguably reached higher heights than the bulls or warriors

The argument aleays goes curry warriors or jordan bulls > lebron heat/cavs because they fit better with better offensive talent

The answer always is "lebron teams actually peaked as high or higher on offense"

and since arguing curry>lebron or bird>lebron or whoever offensive star>lebron as ceiling raisers based on defense doesnt usually pass the sniff test

it just goes into very vague and overcomplicated (imo) reasonings about why is actually lebron fault he makes his teammates bad ar basketball and stuff like that

I never got back to this, so I figured I'd give a quick answer since LeBron's scalability came up in the other thread.

You ask why we downgrade LeBron for having roughly the same On rating (though it is lower than Jordan's) and much worse off. You ask whether we'd do the same treatment for other players if the situation was reversed, like Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

There's a simple answer: we're trying to explain the puzzling situation of the LeBron Miami heat, where LeBron shows greater diminishing returns than Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

Let me shift your questions to a different question, as I think this new one speaks to our primary disagreement. Why is LeBron's on-rating so poor (relative to other Tier 1 peaks) with the Miami heat?

The Miami Heat in 11/12 and 13/14 have the best off-rating of LeBron's entire prime. That suggests these are the years with better teammates, which fits what you said that healthy Wade/Bosh are LeBron's best supporting cast when LeBron's off. It also fits popular opinion.

Yet... LeBron's on-court differential in 11/12 and 13/14 is clearly worse than 09/10, 15/16, 16/17, and 20/21. If this Heat dynasty was LeBron's best teams, why did they underperform so much when LeBron was on the court, especially since 2012/2013 is most people's choice for peak LeBron?

The only answer that makes sense to me and that fits with occam's razor (which you suggested focusing on), is that LeBron has diminishing returns with better teammates. That's a case of poor scalability.

You suggest the on-court rating is close to Jordan's. Let's check. Per 100, 11-14 LeBron's 4-year playoff-only on-court differential is +6.1 per 100. Converting to per 48, we get
11-14 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +5.3 (but LeBron's best off-court rating)
89-93 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.0 (better off-rating)
91-96 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.5 (better off-rating)
16-21 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +9.0 (drastically worse off-rating).

So with the better supporting cast, LeBron has drastically worse on-court performance. That's over 33% worse than Jordan's on-court differential. To me, that suggests worse scalability with better teammates.

LeBron only has his best on-court performance during the years that he had better fitting but far less valuable teammates, who completely fell apart without him (to a sufficient extent that LeBron's best teams ended up being overall worse than Jordan's, see my SRS post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100798717#p100798717). This suggests better floor raising by LeBron (but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

To reiterate: do you not see diminishing returns with the Miami Heat? Why else would LeBron's on-court performance be significantly worse than Jordan's or other LeBron teams?

[falcolombardi]

Here are the top teams by composite (regular-season/playoff) SRS:

Those higher SRS's advantages are strongly correlated to jordan bench minutes vs lebron bench minutes. The playoffs ON-OFF suggests lebron could take worse teams (OFF) to roughly the same heights (ON)

The idea that lebron is at fault for his teams being weaker without him goes against the much simpler occam razor that they were not as well built as jordan teams

Remember this is 16-21 sample vs jordan 88-93 sample. Jordan cast was already fairly good by 90 and lebron cast includes 19 lakers, 18 cavs and davis-less 21 lakers who were not that great rosters

Add to it pippen being a clearly better player than kyrie. And horace grant being honestly a comparable player to love and lebron only having 1 and a half year of davis in this 6-year sample and it doesnt seem outlandish at all that jordan teams were just better and that was why they had better results without their respective Goat contender

With any other comparision when we see guys have similar ON but one has a worse OFF we find it more impressive the guy who takes a worse roster to similar heights. See: jokic vs other mvp contenders this season by on/off

Why do we change the whole framework to reason ourselves backwards here?

It honestly feels like reasoning backwards why jordam having the slightly worse impact metrics at peak is not actually worse. And we use a comtrived reasoning that is only applied this one time (the worse your team is without you tje less impressive it is how much you raise them)

Would we argue this logic if the results were reversed?

Honest question. If jordsn had the same ON and worse OFF than lebron would anyone be arguing lebron as actually more impressive and more of a ceiling raiser or saying jordan makes his teams worse without him?

Did anyone argue giannis over jokic last regular season cause both had similar ON but nuggets had much worsr off

Even the common arguments against lebron ceiling raising always focus on offense (as making a case that curry or bird or magic are better defenders is really hard and even making the case jordan is a significatively enough better defender to explain the srs gap is also hard)

Offense being an area where lebron teams arguably reached higher heights than the bulls or warriors

The argument aleays goes curry warriors or jordan bulls > lebron heat/cavs because they fit better with better offensive talent

The answer always is "lebron teams actually peaked as high or higher on offense"

and since arguing curry>lebron or bird>lebron or whoever offensive star>lebron as ceiling raisers based on defense doesnt usually pass the sniff test

it just goes into very vague and overcomplicated (imo) reasonings about why is actually lebron fault he makes his teammates bad ar basketball and stuff like that

I never got back to this, so I figured I'd give a quick answer since LeBron's scalability came up in the other thread.

You ask why we downgrade LeBron for having roughly the same On rating (though it is lower than Jordan's) and much worse off. You ask whether we'd do the same treatment for other players if the situation was reversed, like Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

There's a simple answer: we're trying to explain the puzzling situation of the LeBron Miami heat, where LeBron shows greater diminishing returns than Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

Let me shift your questions to a different question, as I think this new one speaks to our primary disagreement. Why is LeBron's on-rating so poor (relative to other Tier 1 peaks) with the Miami heat?

The Miami Heat in 11/12 and 13/14 have the best off-rating of LeBron's entire prime. That suggests these are the years with better teammates, which fits what you said that healthy Wade/Bosh are LeBron's best supporting cast when LeBron's off. It also fits popular opinion.

Yet... LeBron's on-court differential in 11/12 and 13/14 is clearly worse than 09/10, 15/16, 16/17, and 20/21. If this Heat dynasty was LeBron's best teams, why did they underperform so much when LeBron was on the court, especially since 2012/2013 is most people's choice for peak LeBron?

The only answer that makes sense to me and that fits with occam's razor (which you suggested focusing on), is that LeBron has diminishing returns with better teammates. That's a case of poor scalability.

You suggest the on-court rating is close to Jordan's. Let's check. Per 100, 11-14 LeBron's 4-year playoff-only on-court differential is +6.1 per 100. Converting to per 48, we get
11-14 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +5.3 (but LeBron's best off-court rating)
89-93 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.0 (better off-rating)
91-96 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.5 (better off-rating)
16-21 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +9.0 (drastically worse off-rating).

So with the better supporting cast, LeBron has drastically worse on-court performance. That's over 33% worse than Jordan's on-court differential. To me, that suggests worse scalability with better teammates.

LeBron only has his best on-court performance during the years that he had better fitting but far less valuable teammates, who completely fell apart without him (to a sufficient extent that LeBron's best teams ended up being overall worse than Jordan's, see my SRS post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100798717#p100798717). This suggests better floor raising by LeBron (but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

To reiterate: do you not see diminishing returns with the Miami Heat? Why else would LeBron's on-court performance be significantly worse than Jordan's or other LeBron teams?

That is quite the extrapolation to take here: both because it ignores the context of the miami era runs (like their awful depth in 2011, weaker than jordan bulls relative to era spacing in 2012, wade injury amd struggles in 2013, wade being past his prime by 2014)

And because wade, which you have pointed out nonstop in the wade discussion thread, is not the best second option to have because of his lack of off ball shooting

Specially because you are not considering the fact wade was literally playing injured in 2013 with his legs shot (look up wade on-off numbers vs san antonio, they are absurd and way beyond mere diminishing returns cause portability)

And by 2014 he was just straight up out of his prime

That is half of the miami playoffs run with a incredibly diminished wade

(but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

What do you mean with cost? This seems to be going again into "it must be lebron fault that his teams dont do well when he doesnt play" territory

[AEnigma]

All that really tells me is Jordan fit better with Pippen than Lebron did with Wade in their respective eras.

[capfan33]

That data you posted fails to correct for the fact that Lebron's East opponents look better by virtue of playing more games against other Eastern Conference opponents. Anyone watching those playoffs knew that the Raptors/Celtics/Pacers/Pistons of those years would never ever win a playoff round in the Western Conference. Heck, considering they wouldn't finish as a top 4 seed, they may not have won a game against the likes of Golden State, San Antonio or OKC. The gap in competition between East and West was gargantuan in those years.

So were you going to correct for that fact or just lob a talking point and hope it stuck? Is the argument here that 8th seeds like the Pacers and Pistons are weak because if they switched conferences, instead of already being swept by obviously superior teams in the East, they'd be swept by obviously superior teams in the West? Yea...no ****. The same logic would apply to MJ's opponents those years as well.

Just take a look at the first two teams the 16+17 Cavs and 91+92 Bulls beat in the playoffs, you'd see LeBron's competition is better based on many metrics.

16 Pistons vs 91 Knicks: Pistons have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (15-15 vs 11-17)
16 Hawks vs 91 Sixers: Hawks have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better record vs West (19-11 vs 12-16)
17 Pacers vs 92 Heat: Pacers have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (16-14 vs 11-15)
17 Raptors vs 92 Knicks: same wins, virtually same SRS, Raptors have the better offense, Knicks with better record vs West (17-9 vs 17-13)

The stats don't really fit the narrative, the complete opposite in fact. The conference finalists are more or less a wash, 16 Raptors ≈ 92 Cavs, 91 Pistons ≈ 17 Celtics.

Also this, it's not the ABA era. The NBA is a very mature, well-developed league at this point. Even though the east generally has been weaker than the west, the actual difference in record due to eastern teams playing more eastern opponents I would guess is pretty small. Like there all NBA caliber teams, it's not like the east is the G-league or anything like that.

[falcolombardi]

That data you posted fails to correct for the fact that Lebron's East opponents look better by virtue of playing more games against other Eastern Conference opponents. Anyone watching those playoffs knew that the Raptors/Celtics/Pacers/Pistons of those years would never ever win a playoff round in the Western Conference. Heck, considering they wouldn't finish as a top 4 seed, they may not have won a game against the likes of Golden State, San Antonio or OKC. The gap in competition between East and West was gargantuan in those years.

So were you going to correct for that fact or just lob a talking point and hope it stuck? Is the argument here that 8th seeds like the Pacers and Pistons are weak because if they switched conferences, instead of already being swept by obviously superior teams in the East, they'd be swept by obviously superior teams in the West? Yea...no ****. The same logic would apply to MJ's opponents those years as well.

Just take a look at the first two teams the 16+17 Cavs and 91+92 Bulls beat in the playoffs, you'd see LeBron's competition is better based on many metrics.

16 Pistons vs 91 Knicks: Pistons have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (15-15 vs 11-17)
16 Hawks vs 91 Sixers: Hawks have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better record vs West (19-11 vs 12-16)
17 Pacers vs 92 Heat: Pacers have more wins, better SRS, better defense, better offense, better record vs West (16-14 vs 11-15)
17 Raptors vs 92 Knicks: same wins, virtually same SRS, Raptors have the better offense, Knicks with better record vs West (17-9 vs 17-13)

The stats don't really fit the narrative, the complete opposite in fact. The conference finalists are more or less a wash, 16 Raptors ≈ 92 Cavs, 91 Pistons ≈ 17 Celtics.

Also this, it's not the ABA era. The NBA is a very mature, well-developed league at this point. Even though the east generally has been weaker than the west, the actual difference in record due to eastern teams playing more eastern opponents I would guess is pretty small. Like there all NBA caliber teams, it's not like the east is the G-league or anything like that.

I once ran the math on this based on the average east vs west record in the 2000's (didnt consider divisional schedule differences cause it was too mucj hassle for how marginal the difference is)

The average west team would win around 1.3 games more and the average east team around 1.3 less if they switched conferences

[falcolombardi]

All that really tells me is Jordan fit better with Pippen than Lebron did with Wade.

It tells me that having a non-shooting second option was a much smaller deal in the illegal defense rules era

You couldnt get away with playing rodman/longley/pippen simultaneously today

Without it, pippen weaker jump shooting would have been a much bigger issue fitting around jordan

[AEnigma]

True, I will amend the statement to also say “in their respective eras”.