therealbig3 wrote:LeBron has struggled for sure, specifically with his outside shot. And he's turned the ball over a lot too. It's been his worst playoffs from a statistical perspective in a while, no doubt about it. CP3 is being CP3 and putting up his typical highly efficient stats.
But I feel like LeBron is being asked to do so much more for his team at this point, with Kyrie being hurt and Love out. And for example, even when LeBron is not making shots, his ability to draw defensive attention and create for others will always mean that he's a net positive impact offensive player on the court. And his defense has been excellent in these playoffs imo.
Paul is great though, and he has an argument over LeBron for sure. I just think that LeBron's inefficient scoring can cause people to underrate the impact he's still having for his team. I also feel like one of the only criticisms you can make of Paul is still holding true: part of the reason why he's so ultra efficient is because he plays really safe and can disappear for large stretches of games as a result. It's hard to really point out when LeBron isn't making a significant impact on the game though. Paul put up great numbers in the last 2 games, but it's hard to really praise him too much for it though, because he was a -8 and a -9 on the court during those games, and it's been noted by a few people how invisible he seemed to be down the stretch of the last game. And they were blown out in game 5 anyway.
And Paul did miss 2 playoff games.
The super efficient criticism that CP3 gets is the same exact thing that James gets. Both are effecient, and both are criticized for playing safe and taking safe shots, which I don't think either one has that much basis for.
At the end of the day, CP3 might have played better down the stretch, but he still put up 28 points - with 11 or 12 assist on top of that. How can a player be passive when they nearly had 30 points?
He's ultra efficient because he's a good decision maker, has the best handles and has an elite jump shot, he's not a game manager.
While Paul did miss 2 games, he still played all 82 games in the RS, and he's playing against much better competition than Lebron is - really the Clippers have had harder opponents than anyone in this playoff stretch. The Rockets are just a downgrade from the Spurs, so people are looking as if the Rockets are a scrub team, when they're a solid Western team - which would make them a contender in the East (pretty much better than every team in the East but a healthy Cleveland).
@ Doc MJ
The Clippers losing to the Rockets will look bad because they are a much better team, but I don't know how Blake Griffin can be penalized heavily for it. The real truth it, if CP3 had been healthy during this series, they could have even swept the Rockets - Blake Griffin has been a constant force and even won game 1 (almost game 2) without CP3 against a playoff caliber team. He seems to be a much more effective player than James Harden in the post season.
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