SeniorWalker wrote:Owly wrote:SeniorWalker wrote:People talk about value added but LeBron is not going to stay with the team for his entire career. When the roster weakens, hes going to leave for better shores.
On top of that, he will dictate things and force the team to build in a certain way and leave the roster gutted and depleted when he inevitably does leave within a few years. This is not my opinion, its david Griffin's. If youre a GM, undoubtedly LeBron will bring a ton of value to your franchise in the short run but in the long run its highly questionable if you wouldnt rather have a number of others players that wont leave you high and dry.
LeBron has kept in incredible shape for a 17 year athlete but hes also had far more freedom and power to assemble his own teams than anyone and leave when he sees a better situation. I think that should be taken into account when one talls better career. If I'm a GM and owner, tbh LeBron is not even in my top 5 of players I want for career because i know for sure im not getting all of it and I have to deal with all of the above and the headaches of his passive aggressive personality. I want someone who is going to be committed to winning at all costs, not interfere with my job, and not leave when a better situation comes up somewhere else. There are a number of ATG that have done better than Bron on that front evem though Bron is a better individual talent.
I have to wonder how you can make an informed decision on who would "leave you high and dry" across eras. A large chunk of history is pre-free agency. Then without an individual player max you can pay wild amounts to keep guys until the late 90s (at the extreme MJ using 1.240329218 x the salary cap in 1997). Even after that longer contracts were available than are now so movement was less likely. You can maybe get some indication from trade demands (Magic, Olajuwon) but can't really compare fairly because situations are so unalike.
Its interesting that you bring up free agency history. Many ATG played before free agency but it also didn't start with LeBron.
In actuality, it is no exaggeration to say that LeBron essentially created this environment with the decision in 2010. That will unquestionably be the biggest part of his legacy, the player empowerment era. There has never, ever been anything remotely resembling that before LeBron and none since. There are a large number of things that we have only seen during the LeBron era, most importantly the very significant klutch sports influence that even GMs around the league openly admit is problematic for them. This is well beyond "hakeem never had a chance to do this!" I have to ask if you're blind here, no disrespect to you, but when has this even been so much as attempted with anyone else? Seriously. No one has to speculate with LeBron. The conditions exist because he and his team created them. And because he created them we have to evaluate it as part of his legacy, not try to pretend like a Hakeem would've done this in another timeline. Its just not applicable. LeBron is the chosen one of the corporate world, nobody else ever had a shot at his position.
And thats why one had to question career value with LeBron because he played with such an enormous advantage over his peers on the ATG lists. LeBron playing for 3 different franchises and getting to the finals would be a remarkable achievement compared to others, if it were along similar conditions where the teams built organically. But, in the words of david griffin, these teams 'did not build organically', they were mashed together, recruited, and stolen away from other franchises to fit LeBron with what was essentially "skipping the line" to contend for a title in a narrow window. What if in LeBrons likely 20 year career, he doesnt get to switch teams 4 times while ensuring each time that he immediately gets access to elite talent to contend with? He didnt just take random assortments of players to the finals 10 times, he was gifted rosters through his league influence. Any honest assessment takes this into consideration when looking at his career value. You have to.
The better question is, how did LeBron amass so much league influence in the first place? I suspect you may want to ask Disney and Nike those questions, since they have handled LeBron's career since before he entered the league.
You say free agency didn't start with LeBron but seem ignore the rest.
No individual player max (nor a cap on length meant) again MJ could be offered a contract 1.24x the cap. Magic could be offered a 25 year contract extension. Nor a rookie scale. A smart team could structure contracts such to ensure a player they had the rights to had neither the means nor the desire to leave.
You ask when this has been attempted by others and ask if I'm blind and I have to ask if you read the above. Few if any great players had the capacity to make vaguely close to as much money on contracts by transferring teams* (and of course LeBron has been willing to leave money on the table to play for a good team, a boon to a GM). It's the player (not "LeBron") empowerment era because of how CBAs (in concert with more players being independent [from salary]-ly wealthy) implicitly encouraged this (fwiw, probably at least the second player empowerment era, the first perhaps being the early-to-mid 90s where the top rookies held huge
financial leverage and got monster contracts sometimes adjacent to franchise valuations before ever playing and even with stuff like a one year opt out [C Webb], and again Jordan could get more than the cap - players had different types of leverage at different times).
If there's a specific move or set of moves you want to discuss fine, but with the "stolen" teams, "inevitable" leaving, "skipping the line" (which also somewhat ignores the point that, say, Magic didn't have to be concerned that secondary level stars would have the leverage to demand to leave their teams, historically if you had a good cast it tended to stay that way) suggest you're invested in a moralistic perspective in which what was done was inevitable and wrong.
If your assessment is based on finals runs of course you would have to take supporting talent into account (and arguably as importantly in this case, conference [im]balance). Fwiw, I don't think LeBron's were exceptional in general (Cleveland 1: good fit, pedestrian talent; Miami: exceptional top end talent [initially, less so with Wade slipping], Wade a poor fit, 4-10 weak especially the early years ...). Off the top of my head I think I'd prefer Jordan (once built up), Magic or Bird's casts in their eras. As implied above the East has been very weak (though, otoh, not as much as the Showtime Lakers' West).
I don't think your Disney Nike stuff is a better question than how you apply this criteria across wildly different circumstances (and with differing levels of [but generally limited] information), but given it's the one you wanted to answer I think I'll leave it there.