#10 Highest Peak of All Time (LeBron '09)

[Doctor MJ]

His G3 2010 against Boston was probably the best game between his 09-10 playoff runs. Then what happened? Well, the Celtics were a better team is what happened. And Rondo was a fierce matchup problem for Cleveland (what would have happened in 11 if Rondo didn't injure his elbow??). But did James have 3 bad games or was it symptomatic of something else? Looks to me like there were a few rough games and nothing more (elbow-gate, leaving cleveland, whatever else you want to mentally speculate). But that's what happens when you play an all-time good defense -- they make you have some bad games. (see: Jordan, Michael, 1993.) Orlando was not such a defense.

Were it simply a case of LeBron looking not as good against Boston, I think '09 vs '10 would be a good debate to have. The thing that puts it out of discussion for me is that I think there was more to it than that. I saw game 5. I think LeBron was in his own head, for reasons that go a heck of a lot deeper than "Wow, this is a good defense.". One could say I'm putting too much narrative in LeBron's head, but there are times where I don't think you can get away from the psychology. Why would a superstar take possessions off in a critical Game 5 that he didn't take off in regular season games, and he didn't take off in Game 6?

[mysticbb]

Why would a superstar take possessions off in a critical Game 5 that he didn't take off in regular season games, and he didn't take off in Game 6?

Maybe he really had trouble with his elbow and then decided to take stronger painkillers in game 6? Which then had him being slightly dizzy in game 6, explaining his worse offensive performance? Isn't that at least a somewhat reasonable explantion without getting to caught up in playing psychologist?

[MisterWestside]

True, but who is doing that?

I think many of the posts in these projects tend to emphasize on-off more than anything else. Whether it's intentional or not.

But that is true for ALL great players in the history of the game. So, shouldn't we at least give credit to those who made it easier for their teammates?

Sure, and on-off data is definitely an essential part in understanding of the game. I don't see how rapcity said anything that suggested otherwise, though.

He simply said it isn't the sole factor, and I agree. And it isn't just about Dirk; no matter if your name is Dirk, LeBron, Magic, Bird, Russell, etc. and you help make the game easier for your teammates, credit needs to go to those who make shots, set screens, or do anything else to work well with the star on the floor. Even if they "stink" without him.

After all, Dirk could land himself on a team which doesn't fit as well around him as his Dallas 'mates, or are talented enough to perform at a decent level when he's off the floor. But it doesn't change Dirk's inherent skills/talents/greatness as a player.

To make one thing clear, I don't think that Nowitzki's 2011 season belongs into the discussion about the #10 peak; I see James anno 2009, Garnett 2004, Erving 1976, etc pp. ahead of him. It just irks me to see the hyperbole in such discussions.

Fair enough.

[mysticbb]

After all, Dirk could land himself on a team which doesn't fit as well around him as his Dallas 'mates, or are talented enough to perform at a decent level when he's off the floor. But it doesn't change Dirk's inherent skills/talents/greatness as a player.

We don't even need to change teams here, we saw in other seasons that Nowitzki's teammates couldn't use the opportunities in the same fashion. But we also saw different sets of teammates around Nowitzki and that team being able to reach the same level of play as the 2011 Mavericks with Nowitzki on the court. But to show something, to show how much of an effect the minutes without the star player can have to the overall team success: When Durant was off the court, the Thunder played in 623 min at +4.9 per 100 possession. When Nowitzki was off in 1043 min, the Mavericks played -7.4. When we just switch the performance level here when the players were off and keep the level with the player the same (Durant +6.4, Nowitzki +5.9) we would get the Mavericks to be a +5.6 team, while the Thunder would be a +3.6 team now. That means, the Thunder are going down to be a 40 wins team instead of 47, and the Mavericks would go up to a 45 wins team instead of 36, a 16 game swing right here. Just looking at how they played with the star player will not tell us that at all. And acting like that would have little effect on the outcome of a season is ignoring the impact that can have.
Well, obviously those 16 wins difference are a rather extreme example, but 10 wins difference in a 82 game season by that is not that uncommon. Also, people should not dismiss all the off minutes as "garbage time", because in a normal game the star player is usually getting most of his rest before garbage time would even start.

I agree, that using that as the only basis would be foolish, because at the end of the day you would need to have someone scoring points, grabbing rebounds, playing defense, producing, being efficient, etc. pp. It also needs to be considered how well a team plays with the star player, because in the end it must be taken into consideration how likely a championship with that player is. Thus, just basing it on on/off (in/out) would be wrong. But as I mentioned it before, I don't really see someone doing it, even though it is more prominent in recent years to do such analysis, I don't see people really ignoring the context. That's why I was surprised by rapcity's comment.

[colts18]

The Warriors were not a true 8 SRS or even close to it. I think at the time you could say they were a true 4-5 SRS team. Look at the 04 Pistons and 08 Lakers who had absurd SRS after midseason trades then brought back all the major players the next year and had those extreme SRS regress to the mean. The 04 Pistons were playing better than any team in NBA history played in a full season, then in 2005 they were a 3.31 SRS team despite their starting lineup averaging 78 games played. They had a +13 MOV in the RS games with Sheed which was a 22 game sample similar to the Warriors 21 game sample.

[mysticbb]

The Pistons in the 2005 playoffs played at a +8.4 SRS level. So, their regular season values are probably not that telling. Look at how bad they played when they had main pieces missing (Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton), they even had trouble with teams like the Hawks or Bobcats. As it seems, a couple of players missing with injuries can have a big effect. So, no idea how much stock you put into "true" here, but the 2005 Pistons were hardly a "true 3.31 SRS team".
So, the point stands, the Warriors were much better than an average team. But even with being just "4 to 5", we are talking about a much better team here anyway.

[colts18]

The Pistons in the 2005 playoffs played at a +8.4 SRS level. So, their regular season values are probably not that telling. Look at how bad they played when they had main pieces missing (Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton), they even had trouble with teams like the Hawks or Bobcats. As it seems, a couple of players missing with injuries can have a big effect. So, no idea how much stock you put into "true" here, but the 2005 Pistons were hardly a "true 3.31 SRS team".
So, the point stands, the Warriors were much better than an average team. But even with being just "4 to 5", we are talking about a much better team here anyway.

Some interesting numbers to me:

04:
when Pistons starting 5 on court together: +8.3 per 100 possessions (16 MPG)
Starting 5 minus Sheed + Okur: +9.9
Starting 5 minus Sheed + Corliss: +10.9

05:
Pistons starting 5: +10.8 (21 MPG in 67 games, but overall 17 MPG in divided by 82 game season)
Pistons starting 5 minus Sheed+ McDyess: +8.3
Pistons starting 5 minus Ben + McDyess: +10.2


Granted they did improve in the playoffs. 04 Starting lineup was +14.5 (played an amazing 23 MPG together). In 2005 they were +5.9 in the playoffs (22 MPG).

So it wasn't the Pistons starting 5 fueling the the increased MOV in 04, it was the bench play. They played the same amount of MPG in 04 and 05, but the bench in 05 was worse.

[SideshowBob]

PS I've just realized that this is possibly the biggest waste of time in any of these last 3 projects. 09 v 12 LeBron is a great debate, but the end result is quite close in performance.

Why is the 2010 version not included in this discussion?

+1

I know I haven't really participated in any discussion prior to this, but I want to chime in here. Why indeed, is 2010 Lebron not being included? If this is a comparison of peaks and its been clear that we're trying to go beyond something as simple as just a "most successful season" list, then why exclude what might just be Lebron at his absolute best (IMO his strongest regular season), even if the playoffs were underwhelming. Allow me to present the case.

The Cavaliers finish with a 61-21 record and a 6.19 SRS, both down from the previous year, though it should be noted that the roster was riddled with absences and injuries throughout the season. Williams plays 69 games as opposed to 81, West misses 20 games in the early season, Shaq misses 29 games and posed further issues by never fitting into Cleveland's offensive system very well (of the 10 best offensive lineups Cleveland ran that year with >40MP, Shaq was in one of them), Gibson played 19 fewer games than the year before, Ilgauskas/Jamison trade caused chemistry issues with Jamison struggling particularly to fit in on the defensive end (and randomly dropping off to a 50% FT shooter after shooting 70% in WAS an shooting 73% for his career), Kuester leaving as the head offensive coach, etc.

Despite all this, they managed to go 60-16 in the 76 games that James played (he missed 4 games at the end, which Brown at the time attributed to lingering issues but later claimed was due to his elbow, both of which, could be given as an explanation for his relatively inconsistent performance in the last month or so of the regular season), and using ElGee's In/Out method, were roughly a 6.89 SRS team in the 76 games James played in, putting up an ORTG of 111.8 (#3 in the league, +4.2). On the other hand, they went 1-5 in the 6 games they played without him (close win against the Spurs at home, 1 close loss against ORL at the dead end of the season, the other 4 were very winnable games, and its not unreasonable to suggest that they would have won 65-66 again had Lebron played, which would be a slight overperformance based on their +7 SRS w/Lebron), put up a -2.95 SRS in those 6 games and an ORTG of 103.6 (-4.0).

Taking a further look at just the offense, with James ON Court:

2009: 116.4 (+8.1, #1)
2010: 116.6 (+9.0, #1)

So despite the drop overall, Cleveland's offense with James on the floor is even more impressive than the previous year, which his ORAPM seems to support (+7.1). Let's take it further and compare the performance against top 5 defensive teams (Orlando, Boston, Houston, San Antonio in 2009 and Charlotte, Milwaukee, Orlando, Los Angeles, and Boston in 2010) excluding any games James didn't play in (and one game against Boston in which Garnett did not play).

2009: 106.5 (-1.8 LA, #24) against an expected DRTG of 102.9 (+3.6)
2010: 108.8 (+1.2 LA, #11) against an expected DRTG of 103.3 (+5.5)

So what I see here is a Lebron who's running an offense even better than the year before, despite having less/weaker talent to work with. The roster was frequently changing around him, he was asked to play far more roles in various lineups and he managed to adjust and perform better than he had before.

The most evident example of this, of course, was the extended stretch at the end of January 2010 and through February 2010 where Williams missed significant time and Lebron was thrust into the De-Facto PG position. Looking purely from a box-score perspective, over this 11 game stretch James put up 31.0/6.6/10.5 on 61.8% TS with 3.8 TO. Taking it further, Cleveland posted a 115.5 ORTG (+7.9 LA) over this period, which would be tied with Nash's Suns for the best offense in the league. So not only is he able to take on the larger scoring load and creation load due to the loss of the team's secondary ball handler and playmaker, he's able to do so while effectively IMPROVING the offense and while IMPROVING his own efficiency.

Getting into the box-score, James' individual numbers look better: 30/7/9 on 60% TS (+7.1 ORAPM, +2.6 DRAPM, +9.8 overall) in 2010 vs 28/8/7 on 59% TS (+6.6 ORAPM, +2.8 DRAPM, +9.3 overall) in 2009. Prior to the mid-late March injury (whatever caused him to miss the 4 games at the end of the season), even his PER was higher than the 31.1 he finished with, somewhere above 32.0 which would be ahead of his 31.7 from 2009. I don't like putting much stock into "clutch" numbers, but I know colts has been stressing those in his posts for 2009, so again 66/16/8 on 63% TS (+37 overall) in 2010 vs 56/14/13 on 69% TS (+45 overall) in 2009.

So with all that in mind, I just don't see how Lebron's 2009 regular season at least could be considered superior to his 2010 regular season. While the 09 Cavs certainly maintained a consistently higher level of play, it seems that the 2010 Cavs were dropping off to a much lower level when James was off the floor, and thus even a greater level of lift from him would not propel their numbers to match 2009 overall (thought they were arguably even better with him on the court).

Now, the playoffs is where it gets a bit tricky. As far as I can tell, his first-round Chicago series was superior to what we saw against Detroit and Atlanta the year before (all average to above-average defensive teams) and this is DESPITE him playing far more inconsistently than usual (the elbow issue had already popped up in games 1 and 4, before the left handed free throw fiasco in game 5). Evidence, 22/8/7 on 53% TS in Games 1 and 5, 39/10/9 on 74% TS in Games 2-4. Watching that series again, in Game 5 I saw a Lebron who lacked full game aggression and exhibited a certain passivity that we saw again later in the Boston series. Again, evidence, after maintaining a 32% USG in the first four games, he puts up a USG of only 23.9%, taking only 12 shots, in a close game Game 5 no less. What would be the reasoning for that? Certainly after putting up 35/9/8 in the first 4 games it's not that he's not skilled enough to take on the defense. Nor is this Chicago team posing enough of a threat for him to give up, or lock himself out of the game due to not being mentally strong enough to handle the adversity. Is it really that far-fetched to believe that he could have been injured, and that this injury was one that could show up and affect his play one day and then not cause much of a problem another day?

There's documented evidence that his outside shooting showed somewhat of a correlation to how many rest days he had, specifically in the last month or so of the season and the playoffs. The elbow issue that he claimed to have would be something that effected exactly that, long distance shooting, so why is it so much more likely that he choked or seized up mentally or just wasn't skilled enough to cope with the tough playoff defenses, defenses that he was able to tear apart that very year?

So let's move on the to Celtics series. He plays great in Games 1 and 3, putting up 37/8/7 on 67% TS. Both games are in line with how he performed vs. Boston in the regular season (37/7/8 on 57% TS). Also, notably, BOTH games came after 3 days of rest and both were the result of strong outside shooting performances from him (barometer - 16/20 FT 80%). On the other hand, in the 4 losses, he put up 22/10/7 on 49% TS. All four were far worse outside shooting performances (barometer - 36/50 FT 72%) and un-coincidentally, all four came after only a SINGLE day of rest, as opposed to the 3 days he had before the good games. Looks like a pattern to me, one that could be easily explained by an injury that would very clearly hamper a jumpshot.

So at the end, it comes down to that postseason performance. The regular season, to me, clearly suggests that he was at a level above his previous 09 level, and the playoffs looked like they would have been the same story had it not been for the slip ups. I suppose at that point, it comes down to what you're willing to attribute the struggles to. If the faltering is attributed to the idea that he was a fundamentally flawed player who got exposed by an elite defense OR that he just had a mental breakdown in the face of adversity, then yeah, I can't really pick this season as his best one. But if you're willing to consider that he was actually hampered by injury, I think its perfectly reasonable to believe that he was better and more impactful in 2010 and 2009, and in that case I'm willing to pick 2010 as his peak year with confidence.

[JordansBulls]

1. ardee - Lebron 09
2. Doctor MJ - Lebron 09
3. C-izeMe - Lebron 09
4. colts18 - Lebron 09
5. DavidStern - Lebron 09
6. DrMufasa - Lebron 12
7. drza - Garnett 04
8. ElGee -
9. JordansBulls - Lebron 12
10. Vinsanity420 -
11. therealbig3 - Lebron 09
12. Josephpaul - Lebron 12
13. ThaRegul8r -
14. PTB Fan -
15. bastillon -
16. SDChargers#1 - Lebron 12

Lebron 09 - 6 votes
Lebron 12 - 4 votes
Garnett 04 - 1 vote

[mysticbb]

So it wasn't the Pistons starting 5 fueling the the increased MOV in 04, it was the bench play. They played the same amount of MPG in 04 and 05, but the bench in 05 was worse.

In the end it was the starting 5, because getting Rasheed Wallace makes it possible to have better frontcourt players on the bench (Cambell, Okur). They also replaced Atkins' minutes with Mike James, a big improvement. So, it was not just Rasheed Wallace, but other pieces as well.
Then for 2005 the Pistons losing Okur due to free agency, Williamson due to a trade for an injured Coleman (who was waived later that season). They lost Mike James in free agency, which also led to increased minutes for Lindsey Hunter. They added McDyess, but the numbers are suggesting that he was rather a downgrade from Okur+Williamson. That all led to a worse bench play in 2005. When the bench was less involved in the playoffs, the Pistons done much better than in average for the season. So, overall the Pistons' deals in the 2004 offseason were overall much closer to what the Warriors did in 2007 offseason than I thought. Nearly, destroying a big trade win they had in the 2004 season. Keeping Williamson would have probably been the better decision. Okur's offer from the Jazz was huge, they likely didn't want to match, because they still had Milicic. Anyway, bigger shifts seem not that unlikely by changes due to a trade or injury. Thus, handling the 2007 Warriors as if they were just an average team, seems rather ignorant.

[C-izMe]

PS I've just realized that this is possibly the biggest waste of time in any of these last 3 projects. 09 v 12 LeBron is a great debate, but the end result is quite close in performance.

Why is the 2010 version not included in this discussion?

+1

I know I haven't really participated in any discussion prior to this, but I want to chime in here. Why indeed, is 2010 Lebron not being included? If this is a comparison of peaks and its been clear that we're trying to go beyond something as simple as just a "most successful season" list, then why exclude what might just be Lebron at his absolute best (IMO his strongest regular season), even if the playoffs were underwhelming. Allow me to present the case.

The Cavaliers finish with a 61-21 record and a 6.19 SRS, both down from the previous year, though it should be noted that the roster was riddled with absences and injuries throughout the season. Williams plays 69 games as opposed to 81, West misses 20 games in the early season, Shaq misses 29 games and posed further issues by never fitting into Cleveland's offensive system very well (of the 10 best offensive lineups Cleveland ran that year with >40MP, Shaq was in one of them), Gibson played 19 fewer games than the year before, Ilgauskas/Jamison trade caused chemistry issues with Jamison struggling particularly to fit in on the defensive end (and randomly dropping off to a 50% FT shooter after shooting 70% in WAS an shooting 73% for his career), Kuester leaving as the head offensive coach, etc.

Despite all this, they managed to go 60-16 in the 76 games that James played (he missed 4 games at the end, which Brown at the time attributed to lingering issues but later claimed was due to his elbow, both of which, could be given as an explanation for his relatively inconsistent performance in the last month or so of the regular season), and using ElGee's In/Out method, were roughly a 6.89 SRS team in the 76 games James played in, putting up an ORTG of 111.8 (#3 in the league, +4.2). On the other hand, they went 1-5 in the 6 games they played without him (close win against the Spurs at home, 1 close loss against ORL at the dead end of the season, the other 4 were very winnable games, and its not unreasonable to suggest that they would have won 65-66 again had Lebron played, which would be a slight overperformance based on their +7 SRS w/Lebron), put up a -2.95 SRS in those 6 games and an ORTG of 103.6 (-4.0).

Taking a further look at just the offense, with James ON Court:

2009: 116.4 (+8.1, #1)
2010: 116.6 (+9.0, #1)

So despite the drop overall, Cleveland's offense with James on the floor is even more impressive than the previous year, which his ORAPM seems to support (+7.1). Let's take it further and compare the performance against top 5 defensive teams (Orlando, Boston, Houston, San Antonio in 2009 and Charlotte, Milwaukee, Orlando, Los Angeles, and Boston in 2010) excluding any games James didn't play in (and one game against Boston in which Garnett did not play).

2009: 106.5 (-1.8 LA, #24) against an expected DRTG of 102.9 (+3.6)
2010: 108.8 (+1.2 LA, #11) against an expected DRTG of 103.3 (+5.5)

So what I see here is a Lebron who's running an offense even better than the year before, despite having less/weaker talent to work with. The roster was frequently changing around him, he was asked to play far more roles in various lineups and he managed to adjust and perform better than he had before.

The most evident example of this, of course, was the extended stretch at the end of January 2010 and through February 2010 where Williams missed significant time and Lebron was thrust into the De-Facto PG position. Looking purely from a box-score perspective, over this 11 game stretch James put up 31.0/6.6/10.5 on 61.8% TS with 3.8 TO. Taking it further, Cleveland posted a 115.5 ORTG (+7.9 LA) over this period, which would be tied with Nash's Suns for the best offense in the league. So not only is he able to take on the larger scoring load and creation load due to the loss of the team's secondary ball handler and playmaker, he's able to do so while effectively IMPROVING the offense and while IMPROVING his own efficiency.

Getting into the box-score, James' individual numbers look better: 30/7/9 on 60% TS (+7.1 ORAPM, +2.6 DRAPM, +9.8 overall) in 2010 vs 28/8/7 on 59% TS (+6.6 ORAPM, +2.8 DRAPM, +9.3 overall) in 2009. Prior to the mid-late March injury (whatever caused him to miss the 4 games at the end of the season), even his PER was higher than the 31.1 he finished with, somewhere above 32.0 which would be ahead of his 31.7 from 2009. I don't like putting much stock into "clutch" numbers, but I know colts has been stressing those in his posts for 2009, so again 66/16/8 on 63% TS (+37 overall) in 2010 vs 56/14/13 on 69% TS (+45 overall) in 2009.

So with all that in mind, I just don't see how Lebron's 2009 regular season at least could be considered superior to his 2010 regular season. While the 09 Cavs certainly maintained a consistently higher level of play, it seems that the 2010 Cavs were dropping off to a much lower level when James was off the floor, and thus even a greater level of lift from him would not propel their numbers to match 2009 overall (thought they were arguably even better with him on the court).

Now, the playoffs is where it gets a bit tricky. As far as I can tell, his first-round Chicago series was superior to what we saw against Detroit and Atlanta the year before (all average to above-average defensive teams) and this is DESPITE him playing far more inconsistently than usual (the elbow issue had already popped up in games 1 and 4, before the left handed free throw fiasco in game 5). Evidence, 22/8/7 on 53% TS in Games 1 and 5, 39/10/9 on 74% TS in Games 2-4. Watching that series again, in Game 5 I saw a Lebron who lacked full game aggression and exhibited a certain passivity that we saw again later in the Boston series. Again, evidence, after maintaining a 32% USG in the first four games, he puts up a USG of only 23.9%, taking only 12 shots, in a close game Game 5 no less. What would be the reasoning for that? Certainly after putting up 35/9/8 in the first 4 games it's not that he's not skilled enough to take on the defense. Nor is this Chicago team posing enough of a threat for him to give up, or lock himself out of the game due to not being mentally strong enough to handle the adversity. Is it really that far-fetched to believe that he could have been injured, and that this injury was one that could show up and affect his play one day and then not cause much of a problem another day?

There's documented evidence that his outside shooting showed somewhat of a correlation to how many rest days he had, specifically in the last month or so of the season and the playoffs. The elbow issue that he claimed to have would be something that effected exactly that, long distance shooting, so why is it so much more likely that he choked or seized up mentally or just wasn't skilled enough to cope with the tough playoff defenses, defenses that he was able to tear apart that very year?

So let's move on the to Celtics series. He plays great in Games 1 and 3, putting up 37/8/7 on 67% TS. Both games are in line with how he performed vs. Boston in the regular season (37/7/8 on 57% TS). Also, notably, BOTH games came after 3 days of rest and both were the result of strong outside shooting performances from him (barometer - 16/20 FT 80%). On the other hand, in the 4 losses, he put up 22/10/7 on 49% TS. All four were far worse outside shooting performances (barometer - 36/50 FT 72%) and un-coincidentally, all four came after only a SINGLE day of rest, as opposed to the 3 days he had before the good games. Looks like a pattern to me, one that could be easily explained by an injury that would very clearly hamper a jumpshot.

So at the end, it comes down to that postseason performance. The regular season, to me, clearly suggests that he was at a level above his previous 09 level, and the playoffs looked like they would have been the same story had it not been for the slip ups. I suppose at that point, it comes down to what you're willing to attribute the struggles to. If the faltering is attributed to the idea that he was a fundamentally flawed player who got exposed by an elite defense OR that he just had a mental breakdown in the face of adversity, then yeah, I can't really pick this season as his best one. But if you're willing to consider that he was actually hampered by injury, I think its perfectly reasonable to believe that he was better and more impactful in 2010 and 2009, and in that case I'm willing to pick 2010 as his peak year with confidence.

This is it. The regular seasons are so close that PS (at least for now) and consistency are really what's separating years. And in 10 Lebron had a better team and worse record.

[ElGee]

PS I've just realized that this is possibly the biggest waste of time in any of these last 3 projects. 09 v 12 LeBron is a great debate, but the end result is quite close in performance.

Why is the 2010 version not included in this discussion?

Are you asking me why other people haven't voted for 2010?

[Doctor MJ]

PS I've just realized that this is possibly the biggest waste of time in any of these last 3 projects. 09 v 12 LeBron is a great debate, but the end result is quite close in performance. We've got 50 players to enshrine and we've spent the most time debating a guy against himself. I'm LeBron gag-ordering myself

It's funny. I actually dig this. I feel like there hasn't been enough of this kind of debate within a player's career.

[Doctor MJ]

Why would a superstar take possessions off in a critical Game 5 that he didn't take off in regular season games, and he didn't take off in Game 6?

Maybe he really had trouble with his elbow and then decided to take stronger painkillers in game 6? Which then had him being slightly dizzy in game 6, explaining his worse offensive performance? Isn't that at least a somewhat reasonable explantion without getting to caught up in playing psychologist?

Point taken. There are possible explanations other than the mental. We never know the full story.

What we do know is that LeBron played in such a way that merely calling it a "bad game" is insufficient. He played bizarre.

[Tim_Hardawayy]

PS I've just realized that this is possibly the biggest waste of time in any of these last 3 projects. 09 v 12 LeBron is a great debate, but the end result is quite close in performance. We've got 50 players to enshrine and we've spent the most time debating a guy against himself. I'm LeBron gag-ordering myself

It's funny. I actually dig this. I feel like there hasn't been enough of this kind of debate within a player's career.

Wait til we get to Kobe, there's probably 5 different seasons you could make an argument for his peak.

[Doctor MJ]

Alright folks, calling this for LeBron '09.

[mysticbb]

Are you asking me why other people haven't voted for 2010?

No, I actually asked, because I have the impression that 2010 James wouldn't be in your personal discussion about James' peak season as well.

SideshowBob, great post about James in 2010. That also shows that we could even say 2010 was his peak season. I would just use the injury here as the reason to put that below 2009, but still on par with 2012.

[JordansBulls]

Are you asking me why other people haven't voted for 2010?

No, I actually asked, because I have the impression that 2010 James wouldn't be in your personal discussion about James' peak season as well.

SideshowBob, great post about James in 2010. That also shows that we could even say 2010 was his peak season. I would just use the injury here as the reason to put that below 2009, but still on par with 2012.

I think he was still better in 2009 and had less help as well than he did in 2010.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Are you asking me why other people haven't voted for 2010?

No, I actually asked, because I have the impression that 2010 James wouldn't be in your personal discussion about James' peak season as well.

SideshowBob, great post about James in 2010. That also shows that we could even say 2010 was his peak season. I would just use the injury here as the reason to put that below 2009, but still on par with 2012.

I think he was still better in 2009 and had less help as well than he did in 2010.

This is a big reason why I thought 2-3 year peaks would have been a bit more meaningful. It tends to muddy the waters when you're debating 09 vs 10 vs 12 Lebron. No career is the same every year, so you're forced to make awkward selections.