The LeBron James - 21-22 Off-Season Thread Part 1 (Please Lock Thread)

[Colbinii]

Dont pretty much all impact metrics created always have lebron universally on top or almost there ?

Off the top of my head i think he has the best rapm results ever and only really loses to jordan in box score composites?

Yup--He is by far and away the greatest basketball player we have ever seen.

He can look at games from the 1990s and instantly tell you what the next play in the game was.

His combination of photographic memory and physical traits make him the undisputed GOAT player.

Imagine a player of his IQ within a motion offense like Golden State with flow and cognition. It would shatter 120+ Ortgs and any realistic measures we have.

[Heej]

Lol man getting into arguments with randoms on Twitter it makes me realize Jordan was really just KD on the Warriors with great 90s PR.

[homecourtloss]

In 47,000 minutes of play (he forgot a 0).

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Is it a boxscore stat? It seems like one with how high and low some od the pkayers in that list are

It’s an all in one, my recollection is that it’s act a tier 1 one (so tied with LEBRON and EPM)

Doesn’t mean it’s perfect none of them are ofc

What’s crazy about this out of all of LeBron’s total minutes (as this considers post season as well), about 10,000 of these minutes happened when he was a rookie or 2nd year player, i.e., when most players are either freshmen in college or rookies in the NBA, and after he’s turned 36 years of age, i.e., when the great majority of players aren’t high impact players.

[capfan33]

Dont pretty much all impact metrics created always have lebron universally on top or almost there ?

Off the top of my head i think he has the best rapm results ever and only really loses to jordan in box score composites?

I've seen this discussed before and I think it bears repeating that impact metrics are influenced quite a bit by the situation you're in and aren't perfectly reflective of you're inherent "goodness" as a player, if that makes any sense. With that being said, Lebron's metrics are so universally absurd I would say it's not as applicable in his case, that DPM stat is nuts.

[falcolombardi]

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So much for lebron and wade being a disaster fit

[falcolombardi]

Dont pretty much all impact metrics created always have lebron universally on top or almost there ?

Off the top of my head i think he has the best rapm results ever and only really loses to jordan in box score composites?

I've seen this discussed before and I think it bears repeating that impact metrics are influenced quite a bit by the situation you're in and aren't perfectly reflective of you're inherent "goodness" as a player, if that makes any sense. With that being said, Lebron's metrics are so universally absurd I would say it's not as applicable in his case, that DPM stat is nuts.

Yep the consistency of pretty much all stats or metrics on lebron being goat level is too hard to dismiss

If he had a single metric where he looked pedestrian haters would never stop using it as "proof" against him

Offensive ratings, win and without records, on-off, rapm, box score composites. Any single one that didnt have lebron at the top or near it and we would never hear the end of it

[falcolombardi]

Is it a boxscore stat? It seems like one with how high and low some od the pkayers in that list are

It’s an all in one, my recollection is that it’s act a tier 1 one (so tied with LEBRON and EPM)

Doesn’t mean it’s perfect none of them are ofc

What’s crazy about this out of all of LeBron’s total minutes (as this considers post season as well), about 10,000 of these minutes happened when he was a rookie or 2nd year player, i.e., when most players are either freshmen in college or rookies in the NBA, and after he’s turned 36 years of age, i.e., when the great majority of players aren’t high impact players.

Lebron is always compared with jordan but kareem may actually make more sense

Both played a lot of quality level (but still below peak level) pre/post prime seasons that lower their careers average and are almost held again them cause "number of rings between number of seasons"

Which benefits players that played college first and retired relarively early

And both had their young athletic peak years kind of wasted in mediocre-ish to outright weak rosters

[falcolombardi]

Lol man getting into arguments with randoms on Twitter it makes me realize Jordan was really just KD on the Warriors with great 90s PR.

Nobody ever had it so easy as kd on the warriors

But jordan benefitted from somethingh similar to curry. his teams were stacked in a undervalued way wity under valued players

Pippen, rodman, green, iggy were not huge scoring guys so they never got perceived as star help the way players like bosh, kyrie or lpve were

Even if draymond or pippen are easily better than kyrie they dont get you the same treatment as a scoring heavy co star

[Heej]

Lol man getting into arguments with randoms on Twitter it makes me realize Jordan was really just KD on the Warriors with great 90s PR.

Nobody ever had it so easy as kd on the warriors

But jordan benefitted from somethingh similar to curry. his teams were stacked in a undervalued way wity under valued players

Pippen, rodman, green, iggy were not huge scoring guys so they never got perceived as star help the way players like bosh, kyrie or lpve were

Even if draymond or pippen are easily better than kyrie they dont get you the same treatment as a scoring heavy co star

Exactly. He had an uncommonly lucky career as far as management goes. Got the best coach in the league for the majority of his prime, best executive. Got one of the best international talents on his team for cheap while the league was barely recognizing the goldmine out there in the world.

Had the second best wing of his era as a running mate that handled most of the offensive and defensive leadership roles allowing him to focus on individual assignments. And everyone else like Pippen and Horace Grant got hosed in contract negotiations so they were able to keep stacked teams around way easier.

Not to mention the weirdly weak draft classes between like 85-92 so there was a giant gap in young talent as he aged, and various injuries to potentially talented squads and players like Magic, Bird, Isiah, Bias, Lewis, Price, Hill, Hardaway, Petrovic, and probably others I'm forgetting.

I really see that as akin to America stepping into a massive post-WW2 Power vacuum. If you sim his career 100 times I bet there'd be like maybe 2-5 simulations max where his career turned out more fortunate. But that's life lol

[capfan33]

Lol man getting into arguments with randoms on Twitter it makes me realize Jordan was really just KD on the Warriors with great 90s PR.

Nobody ever had it so easy as kd on the warriors

But jordan benefitted from somethingh similar to curry. his teams were stacked in a undervalued way wity under valued players

Pippen, rodman, green, iggy were not huge scoring guys so they never got perceived as star help the way players like bosh, kyrie or lpve were

Even if draymond or pippen are easily better than kyrie they dont get you the same treatment as a scoring heavy co star

Exactly. He had an uncommonly lucky career as far as management goes. Got the best coach in the league for the majority of his prime, best executive. Got one of the best international talents on his team for cheap while the league was barely recognizing the goldmine out there in the world.

Had the second best wing of his era as a running mate that handled most of the offensive and defensive leadership roles allowing him to focus on individual assignments. And everyone else like Pippen and Horace Grant got hosed in contract negotiations so they were able to keep stacked teams around way easier.

Not to mention the weirdly weak draft classes between like 85-92 so there was a giant gap in young talent as he aged, and various injuries to potentially talented squads and players like Magic, Bird, Isiah, Bias, Lewis, Price, Hill, Hardaway, Petrovic, and probably others I'm forgetting.

I really see that as akin to America stepping into a massive post-WW2 Power vacuum. If you sim his career 100 times I bet there'd be like maybe 2-5 simulations max where his career turned out more fortunate. But that's life lol

I think one other thing is that there's this assumption that if he doesn't retire in 93 he would've won 8 straight titles, which I find very hard to believe for a multitude of reasons. I think from a narrative perspective it's hard to create one better than MJs with the 2 separate 3 peats and the underlying assumption that the 2 in the middle would've come naturally.

[ODanseTron]

LeBron will never be the GOAT as he can't achieve anywhere near as much as Jordan despite playing with way more talent. He teamed up with superstars and stars in Wade/Bosh, Kyrie/Love and Anthony Davis and still has asterisks on his resume by choking in the FInals, getting swept twice and having worse impact and stats and fewer DPOY's and MVPs and Finals MVP's and scoring titles than Jordan. LeBron fans thoroughly get dominated in every Jordan vs LeBron thread as there is no credible, objective evidence to rank LeBron as the GOAT. They bring up pitiful examples such as Jordan losing to vastly superior Pistons, Celtics etc teams without a real team and compare it to LeBron getting destroyed in the FInals multiple times while he was playing on a superteam himself. AT very best he could be argued at #2 but some could put him as low as #5 as well.

[Baski]

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So much for lebron and wade being a disaster fit

Well they sort of are. Being really good helps to overcome problems with fit though. It just tells me peak LeBron with a more natural fitting player, like say AD or Curry, would be even more successful than he and Wade were.

[falcolombardi]

LeBron will never be the GOAT as he can't achieve anywhere near as much as Jordan despite playing with way more talent. He teamed up with superstars and stars in Wade/Bosh, Kyrie/Love and Anthony Davis and still has asterisks on his resume by choking in the FInals, getting swept twice and having worse impact and stats and fewer DPOY's and MVPs and Finals MVP's and scoring titles than Jordan. LeBron fans thoroughly get dominated in every Jordan vs LeBron thread as there is no credible, objective evidence to rank LeBron as the GOAT. They bring up pitiful examples such as Jordan losing to vastly superior Pistons, Celtics etc teams without a real team and compare it to LeBron getting destroyed in the FInals multiple times while he was playing on a superteam himself. AT very best he could be argued at #2 but some could put him as low as #5 as well.

Til lebron fans dont have the mamba mentality

[capfan33]

It’s an all in one, my recollection is that it’s act a tier 1 one (so tied with LEBRON and EPM)

Doesn’t mean it’s perfect none of them are ofc

An all in one that is only boxscore or does it include +/- ?

Is there a tier of stats?

it does include on/off

opinion of NBA execs for example is one way to determine which metrics are valued more. i assume that's what the comment was in reference to. example:

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Don't know if anyone else has noticed, but if you go on the website for DPM, based on Root Mean Square Error, DPM is 1st... followed by EPM and then Lebron. So it lines up nicely with this.

[MyUniBroDavis]

An all in one that is only boxscore or does it include +/- ?

Is there a tier of stats?

it does include on/off

opinion of NBA execs for example is one way to determine which metrics are valued more. i assume that's what the comment was in reference to. example:

Read on Twitter

Don't know if anyone else has noticed, but if you go on the website for DPM, based on Root Mean Square Error, DPM is 1st... followed by EPM and then Lebron. So it lines up nicely with this.

Yeah that’s what I meant with testing and stuff

[homecourtloss]

LeBron will never be the GOAT as he can't achieve anywhere near as much as Jordan despite playing with way more talent. He teamed up with superstars and stars in Wade/Bosh, Kyrie/Love and Anthony Davis and still has asterisks on his resume by choking in the FInals, getting swept twice and having worse impact and stats and fewer DPOY's and MVPs and Finals MVP's and scoring titles than Jordan. LeBron fans thoroughly get dominated in every Jordan vs LeBron thread as there is no credible, objective evidence to rank LeBron as the GOAT. They bring up pitiful examples such as Jordan losing to vastly superior Pistons, Celtics etc teams without a real team and compare it to LeBron getting destroyed in the FInals multiple times while he was playing on a superteam himself. AT very best he could be argued at #2 but some could put him as low as #5 as well.

3 posts, joined 2017, and you come to the LeBron thread.

[eminence]

A twitter thread from Kostya on some of the above:

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[donnieme]

Why does it never get mentioned that Lebron has a case for greatest inside scorer of all time? It's honestly becoming more obvious with how he's retaining his efficiency with a declining athleticism. Harks back to the theory that many know he's great without knowing what is actually great about him. This is why there's the myth he's great at everything but transcendent at nothing. His efficiency and volume numbers are surpassed only by Shaq and one could make a case even rivals them.

When we talk scoring greats we talk greatest midrange and 3pt shooters but rarely mention players excelling in the most efficient shot in basketball.

[Heej]

Why does it never get mentioned that Lebron has a case for greatest inside scorer of all time? It's honestly becoming more obvious with how he's retaining his efficiency with a declining athleticism. Harks back to the theory that many knows he's great without knowing what is actually great about him. This is why there's the myth he's great at everything but transcendent at nothing. His efficiency and volume numbers are surpassed only by Shaq and one could make a case even rivals them.

When we talk scoring greats we talk greatest midrange and 3pt shooters but rarely mention players excelling in the most efficient shot in basketball.

Interesting. Is Giannis on Pace to surpass them in this? Because it sure seems that way watching him.

[letskissbro]

Was thinking of making this a new topic but what do you guys think of LeBron's 06 and 07 seasons? They're hardly talked about and I feel like opinion on them has been down on here ever since backpicks but I'm really not seeing any evidence to suggest that LeBron was much worse than Kobe or Wade during those seasons, if he was at all. DPM sees LeBron and Wade relatively even and even a rung above Kobe and tbh I'm inclined to agree.



Ben's film study and points about LeBron's improvements as a passer and defender in 09 are great and all but by all accounts he seems to have already been an MVPish player by 06.

A big deal has also been made about Luka supposedly eclipsing young LeBron but there isn't any evidence to support that except the inflated box score stats of today. He was probably on pace with LeBron during his rookie and sophomore years but he's flatlined since while LeBron made a leap in 06 and another in 08. He really is the Kobe to LeBron's Mike.