OhayoKD wrote:Dutchball97 wrote:falcolombardi wrote:
2009 lebron vs orlando is a contender for the bedt he has ever played
It would be insane to blame him for that one when 2010 is right there as a fine in a vacuum but underwhelming for him series
2015 was also lebron playing with a bad back and no scorer help
Saying that jokic has a way worse support cast, or even a way worse performing cast off 1 game is wild too
The Magic really weren't much deeper than the Cavs in 2009. LeBron having no scoring help in 2015 is also just not really true with Mozgov, Smith and Thompson averaging in the double figures.
Doesn't efficiency matter when judging that? IIRC, per 538, even with LeBron being inefficient that series, shots from his teammates were less effecient, and that is with Lebron posting 50:10 ast:tov while drawing a crazy amount of defensive attention while having basically all of the offense run through him with no kyrie or love and slowing the pace to a crawl to take the warriors out of their rythym.
Adding to this, Lebron was creating a ton of that offense FOR them.
Smith averaged 12.8 ppg, almost exclusively through his 7.8 3PA/g at 35.9%. He was a 53.8% TS guy.
Mozgov created basically nothing for himself, and averaged 10.6 ppg on 57.7% TS and 87.8% of his baskets were assisted.
Thompson averaged 9.6 ppg on 55.8% FG and 58.2 TS%, and was 62.5% assisted. He also shot 58.5% at the line.
So what are we really talking about here? That isn't "scoring support," that's "rotation player-level production which required Lebron to do all the work for it to happen."
Lebron's postseason TS% sucked that year. 53% versus Boston, 46.0% against the Bulls, 50.6% versus Atlanta and 47.7% versus the Warriors. Couldn't hit a 3 to save his life and shot under 42% inside the arc. Was getting violently disrespected by the refs the whole time, too. Over 30% of his shots in the RA and his FTr dropped from like .41 to around .30. But he also absolutely couldn't shooting outside of the RA to save his gorram life for basically all 20 games that postseason. But he also had so little help. Shumpert shot 36% FG, Smith was at 40.3% and quite marginal from 3 in volume, Mozgov was literally useless unless it was a spoon-fed dunk, Dellevadova shot 34.6%, when Kyrie was there he was a 43.8% FG guy but still quite positive on O, 34.7% FG from James Jones, 41.5% from Kevin Love over 4 games... and on and on and on.
All of the other shot creators were injured, the roleplayers bit chunks. And yeah, Lebron's middle game isn't his strength. Even in years he has shot well, that hasn't been the centerpiece of his game, and it showed. He was taking 50% of his shots inside 10 feet, though, and basically couldn't buy a foul call to save his life, which was trialsome. That was a fairly significant carry job. And then he missed Kyrie for the entirety of the Finals, and didn't have Love for almost the entire run. While running into the best defense in the league in the Finals.