5 year plus-minus of various all-time nba peaks(Feat. Shaq, Lebron, Jordan, Robinson and Curry)

[AEnigma]

Or maybe it needed Manu to be effectively absent from that 2008 game from Argentina.

At what point do we just admit healthy Manu was better than Kobe? Apparently better in 28 minutes a game in 2003 than Kobe was, all-time Olympic carry-job in 2004, played a better series against a top defence in 2005 than Kobe ever did or in fact had (imagine Tayshaun locking up Manu? would never happen), and then had the remainder of his postseason prime cruelly disrupted by recurring injuries — at which point Kobe suddenly became relevant again? Pretty fishy.

[DraymondGold]

You say the Healthy Playoff 2012 heat were 91-Bulls level. But... I'm not sure that's true. Let's just take the sample you mentioned, when all three stars were healthy vs the Celtics and the Thunder, they played at a +12.7 SRS . But Jordan's 91 Bulls played at a +15.73 SRS!

To summarize: Multiple Jordan's Bulls years sweep LeBron's teams away in the regular season. The same is true (to a lesser extent) in the playoffs. And if you shrink the sample size even more to just include the best 9 games from the 2012 Heat... Jordan's 91 Bulls still look better by a clear margin (to say nothing of the 96 Bulls).

And again, before you claim it's the teammates, we once again have to return to the scalability discussion in the previous posts.

We've shrunk the sample size of the 2012 playoffs, let's shrink the sample of the 2011 playoffs to just look at the first three series. The 2011 Heat played at a +9.2 Playoff SRS, which is great.... but massively far behind the +15.73 of the 91 Bulls (again, to say nothing of the 96 Bulls). This would also fall clearly behind the 92 Bulls and the 93 Bulls.

And again, this is with a shrunken playoff sample for both Miami Heat teams. The gap gets bigger if we take a full-playoff sample for either and the gap grows even more if we start to include the regular season. These teams are clearly worse than Jordan's.

If the above numbers don't convince you that LeBron's teams weren't as good as Jordan's, I'm not sure what will. Which is okay I guess, we don't have to agree on everything.

Love the sudden shift to team playoff SRS in a conversation about how Lebron had better on-court ratings but his teammates’ inability to function without him dragged overall team performance down compared to the Bulls. Jordan with that elite bench scalability.

Let me summarize how our past two conversations have gone, at least from my point of view.

Conversation 1 (several pages back)
Everybody else: *not discussing time machine argument*
DraymondGold: *also not discussing time machine argument*
AEnigma: DraymondGold, why didn't you bring up the time machine argument? You're only discussing "the specific frame" that "you wanted". Your comment lacks thoroughness for not bringing up the time machine. Furthermore, "Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient. I do not really care what your answers are [to these questions], because you cannot actually answer most of them"


Conversation 2:
Other people: *bring up team quality*
DraymondGold: *brings up SRS to measure team quality*
OhayoKD: *replies to my comment about SRS*
DraymondGold: *mentions SRS in reply to OhayoKD's reply*
AEnigma:*sarcastically* "Love the sudden shift to team playoff SRS"

If we're not talking about a time machine, why am I expected to suddenly shift the conversation away to discuss time machine? If we're talking about SRS, why am I expected to not bring up SRS?

When most people reply to someone else's comment, their reply is expected to be relevant to what that person said. You've now criticized me for doing exactly that. Twice!

While there's nothing wrong with bringing up a new topic, usually when replying to someone else's comment, people are not expected to ignore what the previous person was saying and shift topics. You've now criticized me for NOT suddenly shifting topics, twice!

These expectations on how basic conversations should go seem.... strange. I don't really know how to handle a conversation where my replies are expected to NOT be related to the comment I'm replying to.

But the on/off numbers make it pretty clear to me that LeBron faces diminishing returns when playing off-ball more (+5.4 vs Jordan's +8.5 or Cavs LeBron's +9), and somebody will be forced to play off-ball when you pair better teammates together.

But if you are trying to build a team with better teammates, the costars will probably going to be more on-ball like Wade, and so the team would get diminishing returns forcing either of them off-ball. (or Draymond/Pippin, to bring in the costars mentioned in my conversation with falcolombardi)

Ohayo spent a lot of time analysing the context to that +5.4, you could at least engage with the content rather than shifting to “team SRS”.

I think looking at how the individual years in general instead of trying to force a comparison between specific years makes this clearer:

Lebron's 09, 10, 12, 13, 16 and 17 are at +10, +8, +7.5, +7, +7.5, and +7.7 respectively.

You get 5 different seasons which would all boost the average of MJ's 89-91 peak.

My apologies, but where are you getting these numbers? Are they playoff-only or regular season, per 100 possessions or per 48 minutes? they don't quite match what I'm seeing on pbpstats.com... if you're comparing regular season per 100 stats for LeBron to Jordan's playoff-only per 48, both of those different contexts would make LeBron's stats look better and Jordan's worse.

LeBron's average playoff only on-rating from 2011-2014 is +5.4 per 48, which would certainly bring MJ's 89-93 average down from +8.5...

Mj's average aupm for that three year stretch is +7 his average bpm is +7.9. The average between the two(what ben uses for lebron's years) would be +7.35. In the quoted section you get 6 years in a 9 year span that beat that. Two which beat any mj year outright.

Likewise, where are you getting these stats?

In Thinking Basketball's final "Greatest Peaks" video, he states Jordan's 3-year playoff AuPM is 2nd All time. Lebron's is 3rd all time in his first Cavs stint, and his Heat/2nd Cavs numbers are worse.

Similarly, in the same video, he states 89-91 Jordan's best 3-year playoff BPM is 1st all time. LeBron's 09-11 stats are clearly lower in 2nd, and even lower in Miami.

Where are you getting these stats (?)

His point is that the arbitrary three year frame specifically hurts Lebron because he has three separate two-year runs stronger than anything Jordan is showcasing. Now, maybe there is something to be said for consistency, but that consistency is also team-dependent — which is why you have one Jordan fan here complaining about the unfairness of looking at 1995 or how the team did by replacing Jordan with Kukoc and some depth pieces.

About the last point, we're now discussing different things.

Are we debating Jordan and LeBron, peak vs peak?
Are we debating Jordan and LeBron, prime vs prime?
Or are we debating Jordan and LeBron, career vs career?

I brought up 1 year, 2-year, 3 year, 4-year, and 5 year samples. These seem perfectly relevant when discussing peak. If Heat LeBron looks worse (or doesn't look better) than Jordan in 1-year framing (91 vs 12/13), 2-year framing (11-12 / 12-13), 3-year framing (89-91 / 12-14), 4-year framing (11-14), and 5 year framing... I don't think this is a case of "arbitrary three year frame specifically hurting LeBron". If all of those samples are arbitrary, what sample wouldn't be arbitrary??


4 and 5 year samples also seem relevant when discussing prime, although yes, you could indeed take a larger sample if you'd like to discus prime or career.

[f4p]

kobe on the 2008 olympic team might be a perfect microcosm of all the kobe arguments we've ever seen.

if you like kobe, kobe took over the defensive POA role and got everyone to buy in. if you don't, it's just another "kobe on national tv" defensive effort from the ultimate PR defensive player (note, i probably lean to it had an impact in getting everyone to buy in, but certainly wasn't the only thing).

if you like kobe, he was a culture setter. if you don't, you notice he was the guy who played on a team full of stars and yet still took shots like he was with the lakers, including turnaround post-ups and iso 3's. meanwhile, guys who much more organically take to team ball like lebron and wade were big time scorers on huge efficiency.

if you like kobe, he took over the 4th quarter of the gold medal game. if you don't, you once again point out than on a team where efficiency was practically guaranteed, kobe was i believe 4-12 shooting (edit: i got 3-7 watching the game again) in the 1st 3 quarters and you point out that, despite protestations to the contrary, shots taken in the first 3 quarters still count towards the final score. meanwhile, lebron and wade shot like 70% for the game.

if you like kobe, he showed his mamba mentality in the 4th, hitting 3 or 4 huge shots, some of them very tough, and saved the gold medal. if you don't, you point out it was no different than what kobe always does in big moments. iso's and takes tough shots and that he doesn't make nearly as many of them as his fans think, and in this case they just happened to go in, in a game where other people overall played better.

without weighing in for that particular team (because i'm not even entirely sure where i come down), i will just say as someone who was massively into that game and was watching at 2 AM, knowing i had to be at work at 7, i'm glad he made those shots.

[f4p]

Kobe took over in the fourth quarter, we can give that to him. But does that mean he was the best player? Does that mean he was justified in taking shots away from players at other times? It is a nice narrative, but that is all it is.

Also, I don't quite get the whole, "it was too big of a moment comment" either. Especially considering Wade had a Finals MVP at this point, something that Kobe didn't. Yet the Olympics Final was something that Wade nor Lebron wasn't prepared for?

04 Lebron didn't play much in the Olympics (played well when he die) either because NBA superstars were playing, while in Jordan's time only college players played. Yet Lebron is being criticized. I imagine he once again is speaking on things he knows nothing about.

Did you watch the game? How do you reconcile what actually happened with your post?

i watched the game. the first thing i remember is kobe and lebron each picking up 2 fouls in like 5 minutes, getting the game off to a bad vibes start. kobe making shots in the 4th doesn't somehow mean wade and lebron were frozen, it just means kobe took the shots, because that's pretty much his default setting. lebron went 6-9 and 2-3 on 3's so it's not like he sucked. and it's an even weirder claim with wade, who led the team with 27 points, shot 9-12 and 4-7 on 3's, and hit what was effectively the clinching 3 with 2 minutes left (on a pass from a triple-teamed lebron). even after kobe's scoring, it was a needed 3 because spain just wouldn't stop scoring. with his dominant 4th, kobe caught up to lebron at about 70 TS%, but wade was ridiculous at 90%. they all 3 played really well overall and all of it was needed as team USA had about a 137 ORtg and Spain 126 ORtg, assuming i just calculated it correctly.

[VanWest82]

Also, I don't quite get the whole, "it was too big of a moment comment" either. Especially considering Wade had a Finals MVP at this point, something that Kobe didn't. Yet the Olympics Final was something that Wade nor Lebron wasn't prepared for?

04 Lebron didn't play much in the Olympics (played well when he die) either because NBA superstars were playing, while in Jordan's time only college players played. Yet Lebron is being criticized. I imagine he once again is speaking on things he knows nothing about.

Did you watch the game? How do you reconcile what actually happened with your post?

i watched the game. the first thing i remember is kobe and lebron each picking up 2 fouls in like 5 minutes, getting the game off to a bad vibes start. kobe making shots in the 4th doesn't somehow mean wade and lebron were frozen, it just means kobe took the shots, because that's pretty much his default setting. lebron went 6-9 and 2-3 on 3's so it's not like he sucked. and it's an even weirder claim with wade, who led the team with 27 points, shot 9-12 and 4-7 on 3's, and hit what was effectively the clinching 3 with 2 minutes left (on a pass from a triple-teamed lebron). even after kobe's scoring, it was a needed 3 because spain just wouldn't stop scoring. with his dominant 4th, kobe caught up to lebron at about 70 TS%, but wade was ridiculous at 90%. they all 3 played really well overall and all of it was needed as team USA had about a 137 ORtg and Spain 126 ORtg, assuming i just calculated it correctly.

Yeah everyone scored well that game, but USA guys got tight down the stretch in the 4th which is why Kobe went Kobe even though he had been the designated stopper up until that point, deferring to the young guys who wanted to play offense. Are you disagreeing that they got tight in the 4th, because I think most people would argue they did. There were a lot nervous faces looking answers. Not Kobe. And yeah, it was only one quarter, but it was also the only time that team was tested.

[VanWest82]

the discussion recently has been about lebron’s scalability compared to jordan, specifically lebron’s ability to maintain his strong offensive impact when playing more off-ball due to having stronger teammates

Scalability or portability? It sounds like you're referring to the latter.

the olympics are a setting where players like lebron and jordan will naturally be asked to play off-ball more. is it the same playing environment as the nba? no, of course not. i don’t see why that means it can’t be discussed, i think it’s an interesting question actually

It can be discussed, though I don't believe it is helpful given the lack of quality competition for the US teams in question. They were just too good. What are we really learning in that setting?

if one’s thesis is that lebron is able to maintain his high offensive production while playing off-ball surrounded by stars in an international setting, but not in the nba, it begs the question of why that is: what part of the ruleset/gameplay is specifically benefiting lebron in international gameplay?

Lebron doesn't seem to be one of the guys affected by the international rules though I must admit I did think he would be at the time, just like I thought Giannis would be affected. But again, it's really hard to even say that much. If Bron had taken a bunch of scrubs into international competition and done well then we could say that for sure. (note that I'm talking about young Lebron here. Post 2012 Lebron really had no weaknesses and would've succeeded in any environment.)

so im a bit confused as to why we’re all harping in on defense and steal numbers here. the point clearly seems to be focused on offensive production in an off-ball role.

The poster who brought up Olympics wasn't just talking about on ball, off ball, but about impact. Then he preceded to completely leave out one side of the ball. Jordan and Pippen were the real stars of that 92 team because of the way they wrecked teams defensively.

But specifically wrt Kobe, he was the main defensive stopper in 08. It was talked about repeatedly by team USA how Kobe was the one who would sacrifice so guys like Lebron, Melo, Wade could be the stars. Kobe was Pippen...until the gold medal game where he became Jordan down the stretch. Role is context.

[AEnigma]

Conversation 1 (several pages back)
Everybody else: *not discussing time machine argument*
DraymondGold: *also not discussing time machine argument*
AEnigma: DraymondGold, why didn't you bring up the time machine argument? You're only discussing "the specific frame" that "you wanted". Your comment lacks thoroughness for not bringing up the time machine. Furthermore, "Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient. I do not really care what your answers are [to these questions], because you cannot actually answer most of them"


Conversation 2:
Other people: *bring up team quality*
DraymondGold: *brings up SRS to measure team quality*
OhayoKD: *replies to my comment about SRS*
DraymondGold: *mentions SRS in reply to OhayoKD's reply*
AEnigma:*sarcastically* "Love the sudden shift to team playoff SRS"

If we're not talking about a time machine, why am I expected to suddenly shift the conversation away to discuss time machine? If we're talking about SRS, why am I expected to not bring up SRS?

When most people reply to someone else's comment, their reply is expected to be relevant to what that person said. You've now criticized me for doing exactly that. Twice!

While there's nothing wrong with bringing up a new topic, usually when replying to someone else's comment, people are not expected to ignore what the previous person was saying and shift topics. You've now criticized me for NOT suddenly shifting topics, twice!

These expectations on how basic conversations should go seem.... strange. I don't really know how to handle a conversation where my replies are expected to NOT be related to the comment I'm replying to.

I think it is strange to act as if sentences are said in a vacuum. I have asked you before to make more of an effort to actually consider the positions being taken. Is Ohayo trying to argue that the Heat bench is better than the Bulls bench? Is he trying to argue they were better without Lebron than the Bulls were without Jordan? Alright, fine, you responded with SRS when he talked about how the healthy Heat and how the later Cavaliers performed in terms of SRS, but part of conversation is reading between the lines for what points a person is trying to convey even if the face value statement opens the door to a different consideration.

And if you were invested in “conversation” you would know this… because he has been talking about this for the past week! Where is the “conversation” in you re-listing the exact same SRS ranks you did ten pages ago in response to the same person? Is a ”conversation” where one party only responds one way to a given prompt, with zero evolution as the “conversation” continues? Again I ask: is this a “conversation”, or is it a prepared lecture with no room for deviation?

About the last point, we're now discussing different things.

Are we debating Jordan and LeBron, peak vs peak?
Are we debating Jordan and LeBron, prime vs prime?
Or are we debating Jordan and LeBron, career vs career?

I brought up 1 year, 2-year, 3 year, 4-year, and 5 year samples. These seem perfectly relevant when discussing peak. If Heat LeBron looks worse (or doesn't look better) than Jordan in 1-year framing (91 vs 12/13), 2-year framing (11-12 / 12-13), 3-year framing (89-91 / 12-14), 4-year framing (11-14), and 5 year framing... I don't think this is a case of "arbitrary three year frame specifically hurting LeBron". If all of those samples are arbitrary, what sample wouldn't be arbitrary??

4 and 5 year samples also seem relevant when discussing prime, although yes, you could indeed take a larger sample if you'd like to discus prime or career.

Okay so here again we are acting like this statement is made in a vacuum. When the core argument at play is “I do not think that +5.4 mark is properly representative of their actual level with Lebron relative to the Bulls with Jordan”, moving right past that and repeating “+5.4, +5.4, +5.4” makes for a ineffective conversation, no?

[Djoker]

And the league had 8 teams in the 60's, that must mean the 90's were a wildly diluted league in comparision/s

The 2010's have a couple teams more but out of a much bigger talent pool both in the united states
(population growth and popularity rise of the sport)

And worldwide. We have a higher amount of high to ultra high end talent coming overseas than ever before

That is a much bigger deal that having 30 teams instead of 29.

And more importantly the reason why people bring up expansions is because suddendly adding a bunch of bad teams to the league inflates the top teams SRS's as it suddendy increases the proportion of bad teams they face

The suddenness of it has nothing to do with it. Expansion dilutes talent and it dilutes talent for all subsequent seasons not just the seasons right after expansion.

International talent pool.. I'll give you that but I think you're overrating its impact. The late 90's NBA had Hakeem, Ewing, Mutombo, Sabonis, Kukoc, Divac just off the top of my head. And in 2017 Giannis, Embiid and Jokic weren't in their primes yet and Luka hadn't entered the league yet so the international talent was much weaker than it is now. In the 80's and 90's a lot of talented internationals still went to US colleges and thus weren't classified as international players but Hakeem and Ewing certainly weren't American.

If it was easy to win 72 games in 1996 it was still easy to win 72 games in 2016. Maybe a little less or a little more but about the same.

I dont think anyone said it was easy to win 72 games in 1996

But is true that for such a short amount of nba 75 year history, the heavy expansion eras like the early 70's and mid 90's hold a disproportionate amount of the league greatest records and net ratings

71 bucks followed by 96 bulls followee by 72 lakers are still the highest full season srs ever and both came in the mid of expansion.97 bulls are 5th

Here is the top SRS regular seasons ever

1st 71 bucks
2nd 96 bulls
3rd 72 lakers
4th 17 warriors
5th 97 bulls
6th 72 bucks

The early 70's are particularly striking and that was the heaviest expansion era in nba history

Maybe the 96 bulls still win 70 games regardless, in fact i think the effect of expansion in a team record and srs is small in the grand scheme of thinghs maybe half a point or a couple extra wins

But is very likely it exists to some degree

Or maybe it's just a coincidence. We saw a Lebron-led Cavs team with admittedly mediocre talent win 66 games and have a +8.68 SRS in 2009. That surely must have been a weak era as well. Outside of the Bulls in the 90's, no other team in that decade was winning an unusually high number of games. In the 70's there were a few but there's no way anyone can say that the early 70's was an easy era. Those Bucks for instance had to play the Lakers, Knicks, Bullets, and Celtics 5-6 times a season each. And there's also the issue of health.

Anyways the whole tougher competition argument which is how this started kind of falls on it's face when you realize MJ beat more 50+ win teams, more 55+ win teams, more 60+ win teams and more of basically every SRS cutoff of opposition. Lebron has the one upset over the 2016 Warriors but that's isn't enough to make a convincing argument. I wouldn't say MJ had tougher competition either but there is no convincing argument to make for Lebron. And besides MJ fans could always flip on you and say "If the historically great Bad Boy Pistons weren't around, MJ leads 0th percentile casts according to Ben Taylor to titles in 1989 and 1990" and it's plausible that the Bulls beat the injured Lakers in 1989 and the Blazers in 1990 if they made it.

But what-if arguments are fool's gold anyways.

And again the crux of my argument isn't just the lost series but how he lost them. If you are just shellacking opponents to reach the finals and then you get annihilated when you get there (three blowout loses in five games is exactly that...) there is something to talk about. Either a) your team is legitimately great and you got embarrassed and should own up to it or b) you faced weak competition to get there in which case you should get less credit for the journey there. And there could be option c) which is a bit of both a) and b). But there has to be some explanation beyond "OOO the Warriors" because the Cavs were supposedly more dominant against East opponents than the 90's Bulls were. That level of team shouldn't get destroyed by anyone.

[dcstanley]

One point that's irking me- how exactly is a lineup consisting of Klay/Barnes/Iggy/Draymond sacrificing offense/spacing for defense? This foursome shot a combined 40% from three on 16 attempts per game in the 2016 regular season. I'm not sure why folks act like Lebron has played with outlier spacing throughout his career.. This cast has better spacing than your average Lebron cast. Of course, Cleveland went all in on shooting but that proved to be a mistake. The Cavs would have been much better off with a Draymond analog (say Al Horford) than they were with Kevin Love.

You could argue that Curry's off-ball movement and overall style of play made playing Dray and Iggy together feasible but we've seen the Warriors cruise through playoff series in the vaunted Western Conference without Curry (or with a limited Curry) on the backs of Dray, Klay and Iggy. Obviously, small sample size theater but I think it's relevant if we're going to apportion the credit for their offensive performances to Steph.

[OhayoKD]

Does measuring the 16 Cavs Overall SRS underrate them, because it underrates their playoff opponents? I have trouble thinking that the 2016 Warriors were underrated by overall-SRS for when they faced the Cavs. They had a top 10 regular season SRS ever in NBA history. It's true that they beat the OKC who were good, but they were also clearly worn down much more by the time they got to the Cavs than LeBron's Cavs were (who had a cakewalk to the finals relative to the opponents the Warriors faced). And the Cavs won 3 of their games when Draymond was suspended, Bogut was injured and out, Barnes had the worst shooting streak of his playoff life, and when Curry was clearly wearing down due to his injuries. I can't imagine

Do the 2017 Cavs improve over the 2016 Cavs? Almost certainly on offense, but they lost a ton of ground on defense. Taking their playoff SRS, the 16 Cavs were +14.55 while the 17 Cavs were +13.74, dragged down by a putrid +0.01 relative defense (putrid for all-time standards).

In what world is a high 60-win team not good enough for a title? Obviously they're good enough for a title. But I wasn't asking whether they were good enough for a title: I was asking whether they were better for a title than Jordan's teams. And Jordan's teams hit +15.73 and +16.60 in playoff-only SRS, which far surpasses LeBron's best playoff-only rating (to say nothing of the regular season gap, which is massive).

Even if were to grant that the 91 bulls were much better than the cleveland cavs(and to be fair they certainly are _better_ emperically), the relevance ultimately comes down to championship likelihood. So let me put it this way:

Which team do you think the best bulls beat the cavs don't. How many of those teams do you think they are? I'd wager the second cleveland cavs would be likely to win against each of the teams the jordan bulls beat . I'd wager the +13 srs heat(more on why the sample size being reduced is non-negotiable for your argument) can do it. I'd wager the 2020 lakers can do it. And i'm pretty sure the playoff data would back me up for all of that.(feel free to vet me). The only stint where i think you'd have a compelling argument for jordan's best opponents would be the 09-10 cavs, but ofc that is extremely reliant on playoff data from a massive cold streak. In the regular season the cavs(who lebron was either more or waaay more valuable to) were one of the best teams ever and kept that going until they went cold vs a red hot magic. Heck, even the 2015 cavs(which you still haven't addressed) based on what they did in the playoffs(without love or kyrie) are probably emperically good enough to beat some of the bulls best opponents(swept a 50 win srs, 60 win team, took a 67 team to 6), and that was lebron with no spacing, a broken back, a broken jump, defending+playmaking with a collection of teammates worse than the bulls before they even drafted MJ.

This is the argument you and ben have to make for "jordan better coz scalability" to be tenable. But even then 'scalability' is reliant on some unfounded assumptions here:

Now does some of that depend on Jordan's teammates? Of course. But if we consider teammates, we reach the same scalability concerns that I re-summarized in my previous reply to falcolombardi.
Okay, so the regular season performance doesn't support LeBron's teams (far worse than Jordan's). Peak Heat Playoff LeBron doesn't beat out Jordan in on-court rating (+5.4 << +8.5). So let's shrink the sample size even more. Let's just look at 2 series, for a total of 9 games.

You say the Healthy Playoff 2012 heat were 91-Bulls level. But... I'm not sure that's true. Let's just take the sample you mentioned, when all three stars were healthy vs the Celtics and the Thunder, they played at a +12.7 SRS . But Jordan's 91 Bulls played at a +15.73 SRS!

To summarize: Multiple Jordan's Bulls years sweep LeBron's teams away in the regular season. The same is true (to a lesser extent) in the playoffs. And if you shrink the sample size even more to just include the best 9 games from the 2012 Heat... Jordan's 91 Bulls still look better by a clear margin (to say nothing of the 96 Bulls).

And again, before you claim it's the teammates, we once again have to return to the scalability discussion in the previous posts.
Yeah, unfortunately this is not true too.

We've shrunk the sample size of the 2012 playoffs, let's shrink the sample of the 2011 playoffs to just look at the first three series. The 2011 Heat played at a +9.2 Playoff SRS, which is great.... but massively far behind the +15.73 of the 91 Bulls (again, to say nothing of the 96 Bulls). This would also fall clearly behind the 92 Bulls and the 93 Bulls.

And again, this is with a shrunken playoff sample for both Miami Heat teams. The gap gets bigger if we take a full-playoff sample for either and the gap grows even more if we start to include the regular season. These teams are clearly worse than Jordan's.

Let's be clear here, for your argument to function, using the shruken samples is not optional. You are specifcally trying to use "lebron-wade-bosh unimpressive results=lebron less scalable" as argumentation, so using games where one of bosh, wade(or both) aren't available is obviously unacceptcable. Similarly using when they aren't that good anymore is also not useful. And while i was generous humoring your use of 2011 lebron, using lebron in one of the worst years of his prime, is also pretty weak. How well do you think jordan holds up if i decide to include 95 or bind jordan to 97 or 98? If you want to use the data of 'prime' lebron-wade-bosh, then use the data of lebron-wade-bosh.

2011 is cutting it(they don't have an offensive system, lebron is at a nadir in regular season and postseason performance) but whatever. The only useful data from 2012 is the one where those three are sharing the field(duh), and in 2013 wade falls off a cliff post injury(up until that point the 2013 heat,finally afforded spacing, are killing all comers).


I'll concede the 2012 heat don't quite matchup to the 91 bulls, but i'd guess they beat all the bulls side excepting 96 and 91 and i'm guessing you'd agree. So let's consider:

You spend a lot of time theoerizing how good jordan's teammates really were but this is mostly just you tryign to think of team strength in absolute terms(all-star vs role player) as opposed to relative terms(how did they compare to the opposition).

All evidence we have tells us that lebron's heatles teammates were not[i] as good as jordan's:

#1 Jordan dropped off in [i]effiency in defense, playmaking, and scoring, droppedd off in all his impact metrics, ect, ect, yet the bulls defense and offense skyrocketed to league best when they were merely average defensively/good with jordan at his most effecient, most productive, and most impactful(pick the metric, idc, pre 91 jordan beats 91 jordan)
#2. Jordan plays bad and meh in the first two games of the ecf and the bulls obliterate the 2nd best team in the east in the first two games.
#3 Jordan leaves, the bulls add some role players and...huh, they sweep a 48 win team and then lose in 7 to a 61 win team
#4 next year they lose rodman, have olympic fatigue, ect, still a 50 win srs without mj though they underperform that in record(a bit better than .500)

The heat without lebron(remember these guys allegedly do what lebron does so they guys shouldn't do too badly).... are a 40 win team.

They also have worse relative to era spacing, have two best players who are both offense-slanted and do largely the same thing, ect, ect....

Finally, lebron is a much better three point shooter post-heat(as in he's outright good) so why would this even matter for later lebron's?

There's a lot of reasons for the heat not being as good as the bulls that have nothing to do with "73 win beater lbj is a worse cieling raiser", so idk why you started with that. There's even alot of reasons that have nothing to do with "heatles james is a worse cieling riasier." Jordan's value/effiency dipped with better teammates or he got worse. You can choose either narrative but neither's implications look to good for mj here.

Either
A. Peak Jordan can only hit 50 wins with a 30 win team or
B. Jordan's value dropped off when his team got better despite having several circumstantial advantages in terms of fit over lebron

and there's
C. What team does any of this matter against? Lebron+bosh+wade were good enough for +12 in the playoffs when they shared the court and were in the range of "their best" with bad relative to era spacing despite lebron overall having less help than mj. What team is too strong for that which the 91 or 96 bulls are beating?

Finally
D. you specifically wanted to compare lebron's teams to his other teams to make the case that lebron gets better team results solo than he does with co-stars. The problem with his is his 2012 results(with bosh and wade in the lineup coz duh) blow away the 2013 postseason results despite inferior spacing. Lebron with kyrie blows away lebron without. And Lebron with AD blows away just about any other lebron year in the playoffs despite inferior spacing. Lebron's teams "don't get better with co-stars" isn't a thing. So your assumption that lebron given a 50 win team can't elevate them higher than mj did is pure supposition.

My apologies, but where are you getting these numbers? Are they playoff-only or regular season, per 100 possessions or per 48 minutes? they don't quite match what I'm seeing on pbpstats.com... if you're comparing regular season per 100 stats for LeBron to Jordan's playoff-only per 48, both of those different contexts would make LeBron's stats look better and Jordan's worse.

Ben's videos. Ben's average aupm/rapm thing is from a top 10 video.

LeBron's average playoff only on-rating from 2011-2014 is +5.4 per 48, which would certainly bring MJ's 89-93 average down from +8.5...

Likewise, where are you getting these stats?

In Thinking Basketball's final "Greatest Peaks" video, he states Jordan's 3-year playoff AuPM is 2nd All time. Lebron's is 3rd all time in his first Cavs stint, and his Heat/2nd Cavs numbers are worse.

Similarly, in the same video, he states 89-91 Jordan's best 3-year playoff BPM is 1st all time. LeBron's 09-11 stats are clearly lower in 2nd, and even lower in Miami.

Where are you getting these stats (?)

The three year sample is higher because jordan's best three years come in a row while all of lbj's three year samples have one down year holding them back.

Both you and Ben seem to be working backwards from the assumption lebron is bound by his healtles(ignoring that even over the course of the heatles the team context and lebron as a player is changing rapidly) years as opposed to just looking at the evidence without a preconcpetion of what lebron at his best must be. Lakers Lebron compares pretty well with prime mj stuff(think he beats all of them in pipm). 15-17 lebron romps if you take out mregularization and just look at raw impact and for the best lebron and jordan years to be a contest you need to use bpm's/box-score aggregates(and even then 09 reigns supreme).

I will repeat, in 2015 lebron had no spacing and defend+passed to an individual result arguably as impressive as any of mj's in terms of team influence. You have to really narrow what you're looking at here to get comparability.

The 91 vs 90 comment is interesting. Good catch! Do you think this is championship bias favoring 91 over 90? Most film review / reading I've done shows Jordan's a more willing teammate/passer/off-ball-player in 91 vs 90, which gains him value, but perhaps at the cost of some motor/young-athleticism. Do you think the athleticism is enough of a reason to take 90?

By film tracking jordan created less and had a similar amount of turnovers despite handing the ball a lot less. He also had more defensive breakdowns while making less defensive plays and doing virtually nothing at the rim. Finally his effiency and volume dropped despite playing weaker defenses. To make matters worse jordan's second best performance is highly inflated by garbage time. If you extrapolate a 4 quarter performance from jordan's performance from the first three quarters of game 2(before the game was effectively over), jordan's average in the ecf vs the pistons drops to 24. Jordan is fatly not as good in 91 as he is in 90 and 89 which while commendable playoff carry jobs, don't neccesarily even match what lebron does in a down year in 2015. It's a big reason why me and emp are skeptical of whether the adjusted metrics tell a more accurate story than just looking at the raw stuff. Pipm scales down what lebron is doing to 20 win territory but that doesn't really pass the sniff test and even ben seems to acknowledge this when he describes 2009 as a "40 win lift" even when metrics put it at ~25 wins. But even then, rapm favors lebron pretty strongly, and pipm and aupm seem to agree.

Do you have stats to support this? Presumably you're talking about 12 Miami and 2020 lakers?

Yes. That stat was posted earlier in this post:

2012 Heat: 9th/23rd
2013 Heat: 2nd/6th
2014 Spurs: 1st/16th
2015 Warriors: 1st/4th
2016 Cavaliers: 7th/3rd
2017 Warriors: 3rd/5th
2018 Warriors 1st/16th
2019 Raptors: 6th/11th
2020 Lakers: 21st/23rd
2021 Bucks: 5th/8th
2022 Warriors: 8th/3rd

Notably the 2012 heat and 2020 lakers were better in the playoffs than the 2013 heat. Ben off course never addresses this which is part of why alot of people here are rolling their eyes at his theories.

[f4p]

Did you watch the game? How do you reconcile what actually happened with your post?

i watched the game. the first thing i remember is kobe and lebron each picking up 2 fouls in like 5 minutes, getting the game off to a bad vibes start. kobe making shots in the 4th doesn't somehow mean wade and lebron were frozen, it just means kobe took the shots, because that's pretty much his default setting. lebron went 6-9 and 2-3 on 3's so it's not like he sucked. and it's an even weirder claim with wade, who led the team with 27 points, shot 9-12 and 4-7 on 3's, and hit what was effectively the clinching 3 with 2 minutes left (on a pass from a triple-teamed lebron). even after kobe's scoring, it was a needed 3 because spain just wouldn't stop scoring. with his dominant 4th, kobe caught up to lebron at about 70 TS%, but wade was ridiculous at 90%. they all 3 played really well overall and all of it was needed as team USA had about a 137 ORtg and Spain 126 ORtg, assuming i just calculated it correctly.

Yeah everyone scored well that game, but USA guys got tight down the stretch in the 4th which is why Kobe went Kobe even though he had been the designated stopper up until that point, deferring to the young guys who wanted to play offense. Are you disagreeing that they got tight in the 4th, because I think most people would argue they did. There were a lot nervous faces looking answers. Not Kobe. And yeah, it was only one quarter, but it was also the only time that team was tested.

again, this probably makes it a perfect microcosm. in a game where team USA was slicing through spain like a hot knife through butter and spain was close because they were just a slightly less hot knife themselves, when it was close in the 4th was it because suddenly everyone was scared but kobe? or was team USA probably going to keep scoring and it was just that kobe was always going to take a lot of shots if it got close, regardless of how his teammates felt, and possibly make them and possibly miss them? i would say pretty much any close game involves some nerves so maybe you could read that into the situation. but dwyane wade was a finals mvp who put up 27 points on 75% shooting in this very game and hit the clinching 3. lebron might have had a few more questions at this point in his career, but this is a guy with 25 points in a row against detroit and who was fresh off a 45 point game 7 right before the olympics. and kobe was fresh off a finals where he barely shot 40%. so it's not as if kobe was just there to show them how it was done in big games. but who knows, it was close and kobe hit a lot of shots to stay ahead of a red hot spain team and we won, so kudos to him.

[falcolombardi]

One point that's irking me- how exactly is a lineup consisting of Klay/Barnes/Iggy/Draymond sacrificing offense/spacing for defense? This foursome shot a combined 40% from three on 16 attempts per game in the 2016 regular season. I'm not sure why folks act like Lebron has played with outlier spacing throughout his career.. This cast has better spacing than your average Lebron cast. Of course, Cleveland went all in on shooting but that proved to be a mistake. The Cavs would have been much better off with a Draymond analog (say Al Horford) than they were with Kevin Love.

You could argue that Curry's off-ball movement and overall style of play made playing Dray and Iggy together feasible but we've seen the Warriors cruise through playoff series in the vaunted Western Conference without Curry (or with a limited Curry) on the backs of Dray, Klay and Iggy. Obviously, small sample size theater but I think it's relevant if we're going to apportion the credit for their offensive performances to Steph.

The 2016 non curry/klay warriors literally took more 3's in better efficiency that the non lebron/kyrie cavs in the finals, yet people bring up 3 point shooting to argue lebron had a superteam offensively in comparision to curry

I am fine with the argument the fully healthy 15-17 cavs had more offensive talent around lebron than the 15-16 warriors around curry but once durant joins warriors any offensive help advantage lebrom had evaporates lol

Just because a team has so much more defensive talent doesnt mean they couldnt also have more offensive talent too.

[f4p]

1) Don't change the GOAT-player's usage at all (Jordan/LeBron), and cut into their costar's ball time instead. In all likelihood, this will limit the costar's impact (e.g. Wade's, or Draymond's who we mentioned, or Pippin), leading to diminishing returns. [unless the costar is good and a a great off-ball player, but that's rare]

rare, like klay thompson?

[VanWest82]

again, this probably makes it a perfect microcosm. in a game where team USA was slicing through spain like a hot knife through butter and spain was close because they were just a slightly less hot knife themselves, when it was close in the 4th was it because suddenly everyone was scared but kobe? or was team USA probably going to keep scoring and it was just that kobe was always going to take a lot of shots if it got close, regardless of how his teammates felt, and possibly make them and possibly miss them? i would say pretty much any close game involves some nerves so maybe you could read that into the situation. but dwyane wade was a finals mvp who put up 27 points on 75% shooting in this very game and hit the clinching 3. lebron might have had a few more questions at this point in his career, but this is a guy with 25 points in a row against detroit and who was fresh off a 45 point game 7 right before the olympics. and kobe was fresh off a finals where he barely shot 40%. so it's not as if kobe was just there to show them how it was done in big games. but who knows, it was close and kobe hit a lot of shots to stay ahead of a red hot spain team and we won, so kudos to him.

I don't understand why all of this can't be true.

Yes, Wade was a FMVP and was playing great.
Yes, Lebron had already proven to be a generational talent and was playing great.
Yes, Kobe had just come off a Finals where he had failed vs. one of the better defensive juggernauts of that decade.
Yes, Kobe sacrificed during that Olympics.
Yes, Kobe shot poorly in the first three quarters of the gold medal game.
Yes, the moment got a little too big down the stretch for a bunch of USA stars, including Lebron and Wade, and Kobe bailed them out.

I just don't like these theoretical based arguments about what we think about guys based on their resume or whatever in order to re-write history. Let's just say what actually happened. The real story was good enough without the revision.

[falcolombardi]

1) Don't change the GOAT-player's usage at all (Jordan/LeBron), and cut into their costar's ball time instead. In all likelihood, this will limit the costar's impact (e.g. Wade's, or Draymond's who we mentioned, or Pippin), leading to diminishing returns. [unless the costar is good and a a great off-ball player, but that's rare]

rare, like klay thompson?

If we get into it rodman and grant were also off ball all star -ish impact players (defense and rebouding with some shooting in horace case) just like klay

[f4p]

One point that's irking me- how exactly is a lineup consisting of Klay/Barnes/Iggy/Draymond sacrificing offense/spacing for defense? This foursome shot a combined 40% from three on 16 attempts per game in the 2016 regular season. I'm not sure why folks act like Lebron has played with outlier spacing throughout his career.. This cast has better spacing than your average Lebron cast. Of course, Cleveland went all in on shooting but that proved to be a mistake. The Cavs would have been much better off with a Draymond analog (say Al Horford) than they were with Kevin Love.

You could argue that Curry's off-ball movement and overall style of play made playing Dray and Iggy together feasible but we've seen the Warriors cruise through playoff series in the vaunted Western Conference without Curry (or with a limited Curry) on the backs of Dray, Klay and Iggy. Obviously, small sample size theater but I think it's relevant if we're going to apportion the credit for their offensive performances to Steph.

exactly, people love to dig into possession on/off data for curry, while the bigger picture stuff shows a team that has won numerous playoff series without curry. most guys who get injured like in 2016 see a career year go to waste as their team loses in the 1st round. curry just pops back up to put the finishing touches on going to the WCF. or 2018. maybe they don't win it all with a normal team, but curry just chills and recuperates while his team wins the 1st round easily. the on/off data says klay is irrelevant, but he misses 2 years and the warriors don't make the playoffs and then he comes back and the warriors win the title. durant doesn't matter when he turns a 3-4 finals loss into a 16-1 playoff run, but then he gets hurt and they lose 4-1 in the games he doesnt play in the finals.

[VanWest82]

A few of the more interesting points made in the last page or so probably need a little push back:

1. Pre 91 MJ was not better than 91 MJ, and 92 Bulls were just as good if not better than 91 Bulls.
2. Having some combination of Draymond, Iggy, Barnes, and Bogut on the court does not give you better spacing than the average 15-18 Cavs team, excepting perhaps the 15 Finals. And if you're going to throw out a bunch of shooting stats at least have the courage to acknowledge the change Kerr made to a more motion based offense that led to that. Further, this is exactly the kind of thing that didn't happen with Lebron because no one dared to take the ball out of his hands, except for Blatt and Lebron promptly took it back without asking.
3. Claiming that we should wholescale disregard Lebron's 2011 season as proof of his questionable portability (at least pre-2012) all because it was a new group / new system is nonsense. Jordan changed roles and systems in 1990 and was just as good as always. In fact, there are many who refer to it as his second best season. I still think they win the title that year if Rodman doesn't cheap shot him end of 1st q game one. He was carving them up. Bulls would've taken at least one of the first two games had MJ not been so compromised.

[capfan33]

The suddenness of it has nothing to do with it. Expansion dilutes talent and it dilutes talent for all subsequent seasons not just the seasons right after expansion.

International talent pool.. I'll give you that but I think you're overrating its impact. The late 90's NBA had Hakeem, Ewing, Mutombo, Sabonis, Kukoc, Divac just off the top of my head. And in 2017 Giannis, Embiid and Jokic weren't in their primes yet and Luka hadn't entered the league yet so the international talent was much weaker than it is now. In the 80's and 90's a lot of talented internationals still went to US colleges and thus weren't classified as international players but Hakeem and Ewing certainly weren't American.

If it was easy to win 72 games in 1996 it was still easy to win 72 games in 2016. Maybe a little less or a little more but about the same.

I dont think anyone said it was easy to win 72 games in 1996

But is true that for such a short amount of nba 75 year history, the heavy expansion eras like the early 70's and mid 90's hold a disproportionate amount of the league greatest records and net ratings

71 bucks followed by 96 bulls followee by 72 lakers are still the highest full season srs ever and both came in the mid of expansion.97 bulls are 5th

Here is the top SRS regular seasons ever

1st 71 bucks
2nd 96 bulls
3rd 72 lakers
4th 17 warriors
5th 97 bulls
6th 72 bucks

The early 70's are particularly striking and that was the heaviest expansion era in nba history

Maybe the 96 bulls still win 70 games regardless, in fact i think the effect of expansion in a team record and srs is small in the grand scheme of thinghs maybe half a point or a couple extra wins

But is very likely it exists to some degree

Or maybe it's just a coincidence. We saw a Lebron-led Cavs team with admittedly mediocre talent win 66 games and have a +8.68 SRS in 2009. That surely must have been a weak era as well. Outside of the Bulls in the 90's, no other team in that decade was winning an unusually high number of games. In the 70's there were a few but there's no way anyone can say that the early 70's was an easy era. Those Bucks for instance had to play the Lakers, Knicks, Bullets, and Celtics 5-6 times a season each. And there's also the issue of health.

Anyways the whole tougher competition argument which is how this started kind of falls on it's face when you realize MJ beat more 50+ win teams, more 55+ win teams, more 60+ win teams and more of basically every SRS cutoff of opposition. Lebron has the one upset over the 2016 Warriors but that's isn't enough to make a convincing argument. I wouldn't say MJ had tougher competition either but there is no convincing argument to make for Lebron. And besides MJ fans could always flip on you and say "If the historically great Bad Boy Pistons weren't around, MJ leads 0th percentile casts according to Ben Taylor to titles in 1989 and 1990" and it's plausible that the Bulls beat the injured Lakers in 1989 and the Blazers in 1990 if they made it.

But what-if arguments are fool's gold anyways.

And again the crux of my argument isn't just the lost series but how he lost them. If you are just shellacking opponents to reach the finals and then you get annihilated when you get there (three blowout loses in five games is exactly that...) there is something to talk about. Either a) your team is legitimately great and you got embarrassed and should own up to it or b) you faced weak competition to get there in which case you should get less credit for the journey there. And there could be option c) which is a bit of both a) and b). But there has to be some explanation beyond "OOO the Warriors" because the Cavs were supposedly more dominant against East opponents than the 90's Bulls were. That level of team shouldn't get destroyed by anyone.

It was an easy era, it was the most diluted the NBA has been since Russell entered the league. Yea there were some incredible teams but the bad teams were baaadddd, inflating the win totals of those great teams. It's not a coincidence that there was such a cluster of high-end teams in the early 70s, they were getting free wins off of teams that honestly shouldn't have existed.

[capfan33]

A few of the more interesting points made in the last page or so probably need a little push back:

1. Pre 91 MJ was not better than 91 MJ.
2. Having some combination of Draymond, Iggy, Barnes, and Bogut on the court does not give you better spacing than the average 15-18 Cavs team, excepting perhaps the 15 Finals. And if you're going to throw out a bunch of shooting stats at least have the courage to acknowledge the change Kerr made to a more motion based offense that led to that. Further, this is exactly the kind of thing that didn't happen with Lebron because no one dared to take the ball out of his hands, except for Blatt and Lebron promptly took it back without asking.
3. Claiming that we should wholescale disregard Lebron's 2011 season as proof of his questionable portability (at least pre-2012) all because it was a new group / new system is nonsense. Jordan changed roles and systems in 1990 and was just as good as always.

1. From everything I've seen MJ peaked from 89-91 and while I wouldn't say he was better in 89 or 90 I defintely don't think he was worse either. The only reason he didn't win a title was beacuse his team sucked ass, and he was still probably a Pippen migraine away from winning in 90 anyways.
2. I think the Warriors probably had better spacing compared to the 15 Cavs, 16 is arguable, from 17 onwards I would go Cavs. Also, the Heat did take the ball out of Lebron's hands quite a bit, it's not that easy to just implement a motion offense in 1 off-season. Moreover, none of the coaches Lebron has played for were particularly adept at creating complex offensive systems outside of Spolestra and potentially Lue, but Lue was thrown in half-way through the year.
3. Not just a new group/system, it was the worst healthy year of Lebron's prime where he had 0 half-court driving ability and as such his overall skillset/impact was muted. I don't think it's wrong to hold the year against Lebron, but it was an outlier.

[VanWest82]

3. Not just a new group/system, it was the worst healthy year of Lebron's prime where he had 0 half-court driving ability and as such his overall skillset/impact was muted. I don't think it's wrong to hold the year against Lebron, but it was an outlier.

I'm a little confused on this point. You acknowledge he was healthy but claim he had 0 half court driving ability when he's been widely considered one of the best drivers in basketball history.

The argument is that it was his worst healthy year because he was not as portable as some other stars. To give him credit, he improved his jump shot and off ball play (e.g. screening, fighting for post position, etc.) in the half court the following summer and so he became more portable, even though Miami effectively changed the offense back to Lebron ball that year anyway.