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

[falcolombardi]

Maybe because Jordan never came close to facing teams like what Lebron saw from 2014-18.

The 2017 Warriors replaced Harrison Barnes with Kevin Durant, on what had been a team that when healthy was already fully on par with Jordan’s best teams… and then Lebron played them to a relative draw in his minutes (strictly speaking I think they outscored him when he was on the court by a couple of points over the entirety of the series). With an immediately apparent inferior roster, he had them at the same level. But that becomes a five game loss when it is a blowout every minute he ends off the court.

2018 they did fare a lot worse, so it is certainly fair to say the Cavaliers played above their heads in 2017 (unless we want to argue Kyrie was directly worth something like a fifteen point per game swing). But again: this was a 1996/97 level team that replaced their fifth starter with peak Kevin Durant. It is not an “excuse” to acknowledge there should be no reasonable path to victory barring internal meltdowns by the Warriors, just as it is not an “excuse” to say that the 1985-89 Bulls had no reasonable path to a title either.

I think cavs were outscored by 7 total points in the series in lebron minutes, lots of it is game 4 blowout although lebron also went +7 in game 3 which cavs lost in the 3 minutes he missed

Overall lebron minutes were an "average" -1.6 in that series which is wildly good all thinghs considered, shame cavs couldnt play non-lebron minutes a bit better and take the series to 6 at least

[homecourtloss]

Just thought I should share this quote by Ben Taylor. It is a small sample like he said but still noteworthy.

"The 2016 Cavs, the team that beat the Warriors. Injuries have masked an all-time level offense, led by LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and even Kevin Love. They are not in the upper stratosphere of shooting efficiency, but are a low-turnover offense (11.5%) that benefits from player-specific offensive rebounding by Tristian Thompson.

But how good is an offense that can only take advantage of a fundamentally poor defense? While most offenses perform better against weaker defenses, Cleveland has no correlation between an opponent’s defensive strength and its own offensive production. A linear regression predicts that the Cavs offense will actually perform better against elite defenses than almost every team on this list, including Golden State. Given the small samples, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this, but it is worth noting nonetheless." -Ben Taylor

Also, I made a similar argument about the Lakers in 87, 70sFan rightfully pointed out to me that their offensive results were resilent against very strong defenses in subsequent years.

We may not have the same sample size for those Cavs teams against elite defenses, but we also shouldn't just assume their outlier offenses were merely a result of the competition they were playing against either.

Lebron faced defenses were not even bad they usually were average at worst and elite at best

2016 pistons (-0.9) 12th of 30 ranked

2016 hawks (-5.0), 2nd of 30 ranked

2016 raptors (-1.2) 11th of 30 ranked

2016 warriors (-2.6) 6th of 30 ranked

2017 pacers (0.0) 16th of 30 ranked

2017 raptors (-1.0) 11th of 30 ranked

2017 celtics (-0.4) 13th of 30 ranked

2017 warriors (-4.8) 2nd of 30 ranked

Average -2.0 defense for lebron opponents

Lets compare with 87-88 lakers here

1987 denver (+1.9) 15th of 23 ranked defensively

1987 warriors (+7.1) 21th of 23 ranked

1987 seattle (+2.0) 17th of 23 ranked

1987 celtics (-1.5) 9th of 23 ranked

1988 spurs (+4.8) 22nd of 23 ranked defensively

1988 jazz (-4.9) 1st of 23 ranked

1988 mavs (-0.3) 15th of 23 ranked

1988 pistons (-2.7) 2nd of 23 ranked

Average: +0.8 defense

Is not even close

So why if he had tougher defensive rivals than showtime lakers?

For the record here is 1991-1992 bulls rivals

1991 knicks (-0.6) 12th of 27

1991 sixers (+0.2) 16th of 27

1991 detroit (-3.3) 4th of 27

1991 lakers (-2.9) 5th of 27

1992 miami (+2.9) 24th of 27

1992 knicks (-4.0) 2nd of 27

1992 cavs (0.0) 11th of 27

1992 blazers (-4.0) 3rd of 27

Average: -1.5 defense

Average Defense rating faced

87-88 magic: +0.7
91-92 jordan: -1.5
16-17 Lebron: -2.0

So much for statpadding on weak defenses

And this is when the defenses he faces actually were weaker,

thw rivals lebron faced from 2011-2014 are a historically great group defensively that beats anythingh most all time greats had to deal with

.....And he also had monster offensive ratings vs them too btw

Did monstrously well against these defenses, too.

Since 2008, the first year NBA.com has data for ORtg while a certain player is on or off court, LeBron’s had some absolutely wild offensive playoff series success relative to the defense faced. This is how the Cavs’, Heat’s, Lakers’ offenses did with LeBron on court

2018 Cavs vs. Raptors, -2.7 rDRtg, 105.3 DRtg, 132.2 ORtg w/LeBron, +26.9 rORtg
2017 Cavs vs. Celtics, -.4 rDRtg, 108.0 DRtg, 131.1 ORtg w/LeBron, +23.1 rORtg
2016 Cavs vs. Hawks, -5.0 rDRtg, 100.8 DRtg, 122.2 ORtg w/LeBron, +21.4 rORtg
2017 Cavs vs. Warriors, -4.8 rDRtg, 103.4 DRtg, 120.2 ORtg w/LeBron, +16.8 rORtg
2016 Cavs vs. Raptors, -1.2 rDRtg, 104.8 DRtg, 121.3 ORtg w/LeBron, +16.5 rORtg,
2014 Heat vs. Pacers, -7.4 rDRtg, 98.9 DRtg, 114.7 ORtg w/LeBron, +15.8 rORtg
2016 Cavs vs. Pistons, -.9 rDRtg, 104.9 DRtg, 120.5 ORtg w/LeBron, +15.6 rORtg
2017 Cavs vs. Raptors, -1.0 rDRtg, 107.1 DRtg, 121.0 ORtg w/LeBron, +13.9 rORtg
2012 Heat vs. Celtics, -6.4 rDRtg, 97.5 DRtg, 110.9 ORtg w/LeBron, +13.4 rORtg
2012 Heat vs. Knicks, -3.6 rDRtg, 100.2 DRtg, 113.5 ORtg w/LeBron, +13.3 rORtg
2012 Heat vs. Thunder, -1.4 rDRtg, 102.1 DRtg, 113.9 ORtg w/LeBron, +11.8 rORtg
2013 Heat vs. Pacers, -6.1 rDRtg, 99.0 DRtg, 110.6 ORtg w/LeBron, +11.6 rORtg
2010 Cavs vs. Bulls, -2.3 rDRtg, 104.2 DRtg, 115.4 ORtg w/LeBron, +11.2 rORtg
2013 Heat vs. Bucks, -.7 rDRtg, 104.2 DRtg, 115.1 ORtg w/LeBron, +10.9 rORtg
2017 Cavs vs. Pacers, -0.0 rDRtg, 108.1 DRtg, 118.9 ORtg w/LeBron, +10.8 rORtg
2009 Cavs vs. Hawks, -.7 rDRtg, 106.7 DRtg, 117.1 ORtg w/LeBron, +10.4 rORtg
2009 Cavs vs. Magic, -6.4 rDRtg, 101.1 DRtg, 111.3 ORtg w/LeBron, +10.0 rORtg
2014 Heat vs. Bobcats, -2.9 rDRtg, 103.3 DRtg, 113.3 ORtg w LeBron, +10.0 rORtg
2014 Heat vs. Nets, +1.0 rDRtg, 106.7 DRtg, 115.6 ORtg w/LeBron, +8.9 rORtg
2013 Heat vs. Bulls, -2.7 rDRtg, 101.9 DRtg, 110.0 ORtg w/LBron, +8.1 rORtg
2015 Cavs vs. Bulls, -1.3 rDRtg, 103.3 DRtg, 111.2 ORtg w/LBron, +7.9 rORtg
2008 Cavs vs. Celtics, -8.6 rDRtg, 98.1 DRtg, 105.7 ORtg w/LBron, +7.6 rORtg
2015 Cavs vs. Hawks, -2.5 rDRtg, 102.3 DRtg, 109.8 ORtg w/LeBron, +7.5 rORtg
2009 Cavs vs. Pistons, -.3 rDRtg, 106.4 DRtg, 113.9 ORtg w/LeBron, +7.5 rORtg
2020 Lakers vs. Rockets, -.5 rDRtg, 109.8 DRtg, 117.1 ORtg w/LeBron, +7.3 rORtg
2011 Heat vs. Sixers, -2.3 rDRtg, 103.8 DRtg, 110.8 ORtg w/LeBron, +7.0 rORtg
2013 Heat vs. Spurs, -4.3 rDRtg, 100.3 DRtg, 106.7 ORtg w/LeBron, +6.4 rORtg
2020 Lakers vs. Heat, -1.1 rDRtg, 109.3 DRtg, 115.5 ORtg w/LeBron, +6.2 rORtg
2016 Cavs vs. Warriors, -2.6 rDRtg, 102.8 DRtg, 108.7 ORtg w/LeBron, +5.9 rORtg
2011 Heat vs. Celtics, -7.0 rDRtg, 99.0 DRtg, 104.6 ORtg w/LeBron, +5.6 rORtg
2018 Cavs vs. Celtics, -4.7 rDRtg, 103.2 DRtg, 107.4 ORtg w/LBron, +4.2 rORtg
2020 Lakers vs. Blazers, +4.2 rDRtg, 114.3 DRtg, 117.5 ORtg w/LeBron, +3.2 rORtg
2015 Cavs vs. Celtics, -1.1 rDRtg, 103.5 DRtg, 106.5 ORtg w/LeBron, +3.0 rORtg
2008 Cavs vs. Wizards, +2.1 rDRtg, 107.9 DRtg, 110.8 ORtg w/LeBron, +2.7 rORtg
2011 Heat vs. Bulls, -7.0 rDRtg, 99.5 DRtg, 102.0 ORtg w/LeBron, +2.5 rORtg
2012 Heat vs. Pacers, -1.5 rDRtg, 102.1 DRtg, 103.8 ORtg w/LeBron, +1.7 rORtg
2020 Lakers vs. Nuggets, +.4 rDRtg, 110.4 DRtg, 112.0 ORtg w/LeBron, +1.6 rORtg
2011 Heat vs. Mavs, -2.3 rDRtg, 104.1 DRtg, 105.3 ORtg w/LeBron, +1.2 rORtg
2015 Cavs vs. Warriors, -4.2 rDRtg, 100.4 DRtg, 100.7 ORtg w/LeBron, +.3 rORtg
2014 Heat vs. Spurs, -4.3 rDRtg, 101.4 DRtg, 101.4 ORtg w/LeBron, +0.0 rORtg
2010 Cavs vs. Celtics, -3.8 rDRtg, 103.2 DRtg, 103.0 ORtg w/LeBron, -.2 rORtg
2018 Cavs vs. Warriors, -1.0 rDRtg, 106.8 DRtg, 105.4 ORtg w/LeBron, -1.4 rORtg
2018 Cavs vs. Pacers, -.5 rDRtg, 107.3 DRtg, 102.1 ORtg w/LeBron, -5.2 rORtg

[falcolombardi]

I always asks this but again

Why is lebron having worse peak teams than jordan or other greats like curry and bird always blamed in his offense portability?

Lebron cavs and even miami teams in 2012-2017 were as good as any of the guys who are supposedly better ceiling raisers cause they fit better with better offensive talent. We saw lebron teams play with offensive talent and the results were up there with literally anyone

Is it because arguing 17 curry or 86 bird >> 16 lebron -defensively- doesnt pass the smell test?

Cause that is exactly where those teams differed, not in "offensive scalability"

Even the argument of blaming lebron for his cavs teams being weak without him (somehow he makes them bad at basketball) doesnt even work cause a lot of it was them being ass in defense without lebron, the cavs usually held up ok offensively but collapsed defensively when lebron sat. Miami and 20 lakers too for the most part kept ok offenses when lebron

[DraymondGold]

No, what you are trying to argue is that the disparity represents a clear advantage to Jordan, with no real analysis of whether Jordan’s supposed scalability was ever too meaningfully tested next to worse fitting players, whether he would be a meaningfully better fit with Wade-type players overall, whether Pippen-type players universally fit worse with Lebron overall, or what the trends are across the many archetypes of players you find across the league.

Previous posts by me in this thread had 600+ words, 300 words, 660+ words, 450 words, often with additional numerical research. If you wanted me to consider 1) how Jordan's scalability was tested, 2) whether Jordan would fit with Wade-type players, 3) how often these make a difference for winning a championship, that could add 200-300-500 words for each point.

I'm happy to discuss these in detail, but I'm not sure anyone wants to read a 1000-2000 word post. Rather than telling me "what I am trying to argue" and telling me that I have "no real analysis on" these points, why not just ask me what I think about those points? When people write 500 words on one topic but miss other points, I don't assume what they're trying to argue and don't accuse them of putting no thought into the other points. I assume their time is valuable and don't have the inclination to write 500 words on every variation, without hearing there's interest from other people first.

[and for the record, I've discussed some of those 3 points in other threads with falcolombardi and so didn't feel the need to repeat previous conversations without someone else mentioning interest first]

Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient.

I do not really care what your answers are, because you cannot actually answer most of them — and it is true that even trying to answer the one about all player types would be absurdly labour intensive.

Welp, if 500 word arguments aren’t thorough, if people are required to make a 1000 word argument that preemptively address 3+ counters that others haven’t even voiced yet in order to be thorough… you may find that the majority of your own lists are lacking thoroughness as well.

Because that’s literally the threshold you’re asking me to hit for my arguments to be called “thorough.”

But I’ll keep in mind that’s your threshold for thoroughness for the rest of your arguments

Then that cuts away from the assertion that the 2016/17 Cavaliers were “ideal” for Lebron lol. As you said, ideal offence is not ideal team. But Lebron made it work! Because unlike Jordan, he can at least passably anchor a defence.

And I agree that peak LeBron's the better defender, and you'll never hear me say otherwise (unless we're discussing older motor-limited Lebron vs peak Jordan, in which case Jordan has an argument).

If we're discussing realistic scalability (e.g. how well players play on teams with better teammates), how realistic is it to build a team with
A) the offensive fit of the 16/17 Cavs when LeBron's on, and
B) far better defensive teammates than the 16/17 Cavs, And/Or
C) enough talent to not fall apart during LeBron's off minutes?
... because that basically what's being asked to prevent LeBron from having diminishing returns on offense, good performance on defense, and not fall apart without LeBron. TO me, this seems like a much more unrealistic teambuilding requirement than what Jordan needs to be the best player on a similar All-Time-Great SRS team.

… You literally just described Jordan’s teams.

Since you’re demanding 500+ word thoroughness from me… yeah I’m gonna need more thoroughness from this argument. You provide no evidence to support this claim whatsoever.

I think it’s far from a given that Jordan had clearly better offensive value and fit than LeBron’s best years, so since you're expecting me to preemptively address counters before others even voice them, I might suggest you start there if you'd like your own arguments to pass the same "thoroughness" tests mine are supposed to.

Maybe you wanted it to be that specific frame. Always interesting how selectively era relativity gets applied.

There's no time machine in on/off data. The on/off numbers are based on the opponents you faced in the time you faced them. And this thread's about on/off data. So No, it's not what I wanted it, it's literally baked into the title of the thread.

Did you see anyone else mention a time machine in any 189 posts in this thread? Because unless I missed something (which is entirely possible), I sure haven't...

Please don't blame one person for not talking about something that nobody else was talking about! If you'd like to talk about time machine, great, then raise the topic yourself... but don't just accuse others of being biased or manipulating the topic of conversation to their advantage if you don't have to

Wow, and I never said “time machine” either! Crazy…

Why do you need to disingenuously pretend this thread occurs in a random vacuum. Player comparisons consistently involved considerations of era substitutions and evolutions. As you know. Because you do it too (even if not in this exact thread).

But here it becomes inconvenient so we should pretend that is not a reality of how these players are discussed.

"Hang on, why aren’t you considering Kareem or Wilt? We’re discussing who has the best peak and you haven’t mentioned two GOAT peak contenders at all... you haven't proven at all that LeBron's peak is better than either Kareem's or Wilt's.

For that matter, why haven’t you brought up health and durability? Or the technological and training advantages that LeBron had. Are you intentionally trying to hide something?"

^^see, the above argument is a straw man. Can you see how those statements are not really productive to the conversation?

If a group of people aren’t discussing something, I don’t single one of them out and blame them for not raising something unrelated or semi-related to the current topic of discussion. To do so would be a straw man.

Again, in the future, if there’s a separate topic that my post is missing, ask me what my opinion is. Don’t just assume that I’m ignoring it because I’m biased or stupid. If you give me this courtesy, I’ll give you the same.
Otherwise we can both go back to strawmanning each other, but that seems like a clear waste of time to me. You know which option I’d prefer…. It’s up to you.

No, what you are trying to argue is that the disparity represents a clear advantage to Jordan, with no real analysis of whether Jordan’s supposed scalability was ever too meaningfully tested next to worse fitting players, whether he would be a meaningfully better fit with Wade-type players overall, whether Pippen-type players universally fit worse with Lebron overall, or what the trends are across the many archetypes of players you find across the league.

Previous posts by me in this thread had 600+ words, 300 words, 660+ words, 450 words, often with additional numerical research. If you wanted me to consider 1) how Jordan's scalability was tested, 2) whether Jordan would fit with Wade-type players, 3) how often these make a difference for winning a championship, that could add 200-300-500 words for each point.

I'm happy to discuss these in detail, but I'm not sure anyone wants to read a 1000-2000 word post. Rather than telling me "what I am trying to argue" and telling me that I have "no real analysis on" these points, why not just ask me what I think about those points? When people write 500 words on one topic but miss other points, I don't assume what they're trying to argue and don't accuse them of putting no thought into the other points. I assume their time is valuable and don't have the inclination to write 500 words on every variation, without hearing there's interest from other people first.

[and for the record, I've discussed some of those 3 points in other threads with falcolombardi and so didn't feel the need to repeat previous conversations without someone else mentioning interest first]

Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient.

I do not really care what your answers are, because you cannot actually answer most of them — and it is true that even trying to answer the one about all player types would be absurdly labour intensive.

Our point is that you are using definitive labels based on extraordinarily limited samples extrapolated with total speculation, and then yeah, not really bothering to put in any work to better support that speculation. Jordan/Pippen better in-era fit than Lebron/Wade + Jordan less of a ballhandler, ergo Jordan more scalable, ergo Jordan better.

Welp, at this point the conversation has officially stopped being productive. The moment you assume the other person "cannot actually answer" your questions and the moment you "do not really care what [their] answers are", you stop having a conversation and start having a monologue.

I'm not that interested in listening to a monologue of someone who won't listen to me. So, apologies, but I won't be responding until it seems productive two-way discussion has returned. It's too bad we couldn't have a productive conversation -- maybe next time...

[homecourtloss]

Those higher SRS's advantages are strongly correlated to jordan bench minutes vs lebron bench minutes. The playoffs ON-OFF suggests lebron could take worse teams (OFF) to roughly the same heights (ON)

The idea that lebron is at fault for his teams being weaker without him goes against the much simpler occam razor that they were not as well built as jordan teams

Remember this is 16-21 sample vs jordan 88-93 sample. Jordan cast was already fairly good by 90 and lebron cast includes 19 lakers, 18 cavs and davis-less 21 lakers who were not that great rosters

Add to it pippen being a clearly better player than kyrie. And horace grant being honestly a comparable player to love and lebron only having 1 and a half year of davis in this 6-year sample and it doesnt seem outlandish at all that jordan teams were just better and that was why they had better results without their respective Goat contender

With any other comparision when we see guys have similar ON but one has a worse OFF we find it more impressive the guy who takes a worse roster to similar heights. See: jokic vs other mvp contenders this season by on/off

Why do we change the whole framework to reason ourselves backwards here?

It honestly feels like reasoning backwards why jordam having the slightly worse impact metrics at peak is not actually worse. And we use a comtrived reasoning that is only applied this one time (the worse your team is without you tje less impressive it is how much you raise them)

Would we argue this logic if the results were reversed?

Honest question. If jordsn had the same ON and worse OFF than lebron would anyone be arguing lebron as actually more impressive and more of a ceiling raiser or saying jordan makes his teams worse without him?

Did anyone argue giannis over jokic last regular season cause both had similar ON but nuggets had much worsr off

Even the common arguments against lebron ceiling raising always focus on offense (as making a case that curry or bird or magic are better defenders is really hard and even making the case jordan is a significatively enough better defender to explain the srs gap is also hard)

Offense being an area where lebron teams arguably reached higher heights than the bulls or warriors

The argument aleays goes curry warriors or jordan bulls > lebron heat/cavs because they fit better with better offensive talent

The answer always is "lebron teams actually peaked as high or higher on offense"

and since arguing curry>lebron or bird>lebron or whoever offensive star>lebron as ceiling raisers based on defense doesnt usually pass the sniff test

it just goes into very vague and overcomplicated (imo) reasonings about why is actually lebron fault he makes his teammates bad ar basketball and stuff like that

I never got back to this, so I figured I'd give a quick answer since LeBron's scalability came up in the other thread.

You ask why we downgrade LeBron for having roughly the same On rating (though it is lower than Jordan's) and much worse off. You ask whether we'd do the same treatment for other players if the situation was reversed, like Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

There's a simple answer: we're trying to explain the puzzling situation of the LeBron Miami heat, where LeBron shows greater diminishing returns than Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

Let me shift your questions to a different question, as I think this new one speaks to our primary disagreement. Why is LeBron's on-rating so poor (relative to other Tier 1 peaks) with the Miami heat?

The Miami Heat in 11/12 and 13/14 have the best off-rating of LeBron's entire prime. That suggests these are the years with better teammates, which fits what you said that healthy Wade/Bosh are LeBron's best supporting cast when LeBron's off. It also fits popular opinion.

Yet... LeBron's on-court differential in 11/12 and 13/14 is clearly worse than 09/10, 15/16, 16/17, and 20/21. If this Heat dynasty was LeBron's best teams, why did they underperform so much when LeBron was on the court, especially since 2012/2013 is most people's choice for peak LeBron?

The only answer that makes sense to me and that fits with occam's razor (which you suggested focusing on), is that LeBron has diminishing returns with better teammates. That's a case of poor scalability.

You suggest the on-court rating is close to Jordan's. Let's check. Per 100, 11-14 LeBron's 4-year playoff-only on-court differential is +6.1 per 100. Converting to per 48, we get
11-14 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +5.3 (but LeBron's best off-court rating)
89-93 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.0 (better off-rating)
91-96 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.5 (better off-rating)
16-21 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +9.0 (drastically worse off-rating).

So with the better supporting cast, LeBron has drastically worse on-court performance. That's over 33% worse than Jordan's on-court differential. To me, that suggests worse scalability with better teammates.

LeBron only has his best on-court performance during the years that he had better fitting but far less valuable teammates, who completely fell apart without him (to a sufficient extent that LeBron's best teams ended up being overall worse than Jordan's, see my SRS post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100798717#p100798717). This suggests better floor raising by LeBron (but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

To reiterate: do you not see diminishing returns with the Miami Heat? Why else would LeBron's on-court performance be significantly worse than Jordan's or other LeBron teams?

That is quite the extrapolation to take here: both because it ignores the context of the miami era runs (like their awful depth in 2011, weaker than jordan bulls relative to era spacing in 2012, wade injury amd struggles in 2013, wade being past his prime by 2014)

And because wade, which you have pointed out nonstop in the wade discussion thread, is not the best second option to have because of his lack of off ball shooting

Specially because you are not considering the fact wade was literally playing injured in 2013 with his legs shot (look up wade on-off numbers vs san antonio, they are absurd and way beyond mere diminishing returns cause portability)

And by 2014 he was just straight up out of his prime

That is half of the miami playoffs run with a incredibly diminished wade

(but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

What do you mean with cost? This seems to be going again into "it must be lebron fault that his teams dont do well when he doesnt play" territory

I want to emphasize the bolded parts. I think it’s a stretch to categorically say “better supporting cast” in the Miami days and then lump 2011-2014 together without the context available as Falco points out (i.e., 2011 supporting cast corpses, 2013 Wade post season injury, 2014 Wade falling apart and not providing spacing). 2012 and 2013 look to be strengthened casts with Allen (defensive liability), Battier and Andersen who of course paired so well with James.

James + Wade in the regular season

2011: 113.5 ORtg, 101.4 DRtg, +12.1 on court, 111.7 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +1.8 better ORtg
2012: 110.2, 96.6, +13.6 on court, 110.0 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +.2 better
2013: 114.2, 99.8, +14.4 on court, 111.4 highest ORtg in league (Miami), Wade+James +2.8

Looks to me that James did plenty well with Wade. For reference, in 1996-1997 season in which the Bulls won 69 games (and could have won 70+ if not resting at the end of the season), Jordan + Pippen was +13.3 on court

2013 James+Wade: +14.4 on court
2012 James+Wade: +13.6
1997 Jordan+Pippen: +13.3
2011 James+Wade: +12.1

Wade and James were wildly successful. But yes, they didn’t put everything together in the playoffs and regular season except in 2012. 2011 saw the Dallas series and an overall poor playoffs as far as on court dominance is concnernee, and then 2013 saw Wade injured, but look at 2012:

2012 Playoffs: James+Wade +13.5; James+Wade+Bosh +13.9

James + Kyrie regular season

2015: 114.3, 102.6, +11.7, 111.6 highest ORtg in league, kyrie+James +2.7 better
2016: 114.0, 105.5, +8.5 (114.6 with Delly, 94.8 DRtg, +16.1; 115.2, 100.7 with TT, +14.5), 113.5 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +.5 better
2017: 119.6, 109.2, +10.4, 114.8 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +4.8 better

James+Kyrie never really reached the on court Dominace of Wade+James in the regular season.

Playoffs

2015: 108.2, 103.3, +4.9
2016: 117.4, 104.9, +12.5
2017: 123.1, 110.4, +12.7

James+Kyrie also never quite reached James+Wade on court peaks of the 2012 season though of course 2017 includes 5 games played Against the best team ever.

[falcolombardi]

I never got back to this, so I figured I'd give a quick answer since LeBron's scalability came up in the other thread.

You ask why we downgrade LeBron for having roughly the same On rating (though it is lower than Jordan's) and much worse off. You ask whether we'd do the same treatment for other players if the situation was reversed, like Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

There's a simple answer: we're trying to explain the puzzling situation of the LeBron Miami heat, where LeBron shows greater diminishing returns than Jordan/Curry/Jokic.

Let me shift your questions to a different question, as I think this new one speaks to our primary disagreement. Why is LeBron's on-rating so poor (relative to other Tier 1 peaks) with the Miami heat?

The Miami Heat in 11/12 and 13/14 have the best off-rating of LeBron's entire prime. That suggests these are the years with better teammates, which fits what you said that healthy Wade/Bosh are LeBron's best supporting cast when LeBron's off. It also fits popular opinion.

Yet... LeBron's on-court differential in 11/12 and 13/14 is clearly worse than 09/10, 15/16, 16/17, and 20/21. If this Heat dynasty was LeBron's best teams, why did they underperform so much when LeBron was on the court, especially since 2012/2013 is most people's choice for peak LeBron?

The only answer that makes sense to me and that fits with occam's razor (which you suggested focusing on), is that LeBron has diminishing returns with better teammates. That's a case of poor scalability.

You suggest the on-court rating is close to Jordan's. Let's check. Per 100, 11-14 LeBron's 4-year playoff-only on-court differential is +6.1 per 100. Converting to per 48, we get
11-14 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +5.3 (but LeBron's best off-court rating)
89-93 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.0 (better off-rating)
91-96 Jordan's playoff on-court differential per 48: +8.5 (better off-rating)
16-21 LeBron's playoff on-court differential per 48: +9.0 (drastically worse off-rating).

So with the better supporting cast, LeBron has drastically worse on-court performance. That's over 33% worse than Jordan's on-court differential. To me, that suggests worse scalability with better teammates.

LeBron only has his best on-court performance during the years that he had better fitting but far less valuable teammates, who completely fell apart without him (to a sufficient extent that LeBron's best teams ended up being overall worse than Jordan's, see my SRS post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100798717#p100798717). This suggests better floor raising by LeBron (but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

To reiterate: do you not see diminishing returns with the Miami Heat? Why else would LeBron's on-court performance be significantly worse than Jordan's or other LeBron teams?

That is quite the extrapolation to take here: both because it ignores the context of the miami era runs (like their awful depth in 2011, weaker than jordan bulls relative to era spacing in 2012, wade injury amd struggles in 2013, wade being past his prime by 2014)

And because wade, which you have pointed out nonstop in the wade discussion thread, is not the best second option to have because of his lack of off ball shooting

Specially because you are not considering the fact wade was literally playing injured in 2013 with his legs shot (look up wade on-off numbers vs san antonio, they are absurd and way beyond mere diminishing returns cause portability)

And by 2014 he was just straight up out of his prime

That is half of the miami playoffs run with a incredibly diminished wade

(but floor raising again comes at a cost, since the worse teammates perform significantly worse without LeBron).

What do you mean with cost? This seems to be going again into "it must be lebron fault that his teams dont do well when he doesnt play" territory

I want to emphasize the bolded parts. I think it’s a stretch to categorically say “better supporting cast” in the Miami days and then lump 2011-2014 together without the context available as Falco points out (i.e., 2011 supporting cast corpses, 2013 Wade post season injury, 2014 Wade falling apart and not providing spacing). 2012 and 2013 look to be strengthened casts with Allen (defensive liability), Battier and Andersen who of course paired so well with James.

James + Wade in the regular season

2011: 113.5 ORtg, 101.4 DRtg, +12.1 on court, 111.7 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +1.8 better ORtg
2012: 110.2, 96.6, +13.6 on court, 110.0 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +.2 better
2013: 114.2, 99.8, +14.4 on court, 111.4 highest ORtg in league (Miami), Wade+James +2.8

Looks to me that James did plenty well with Wade. For reference, in 1996-1997 season in which the Bulls won 69 games (and could have won 70+ if not resting at the end of the season), Jordan + Pippen was +13.3 on court

2013 James+Wade: +14.4 on court
2012 James+Wade: +13.6
1997 Jordan+Pippen: +13.3
2011 James+Wade: +12.1

Wade and James were wildly successful. But yes, they didn’t put everything together in the playoffs and regular season except in 2012. 2011 saw the Dallas series and an overall poor playoffs as far as on court dominance is concnernee, and then 2013 saw Wade injured, but look at 2012:

2012 Playoffs: James+Wade +13.5; James+Wade+Bosh +13.9

James + Kyrie

2015: 114.3, 102.6, +11.7, 111.6 highest ORtg in league, kyrie+James +2.7 better
2016: 114.0, 105.5, +8.5 (114.6 with Delly, 94.8 DRtg, +16.1; 115.2, 100.7 with TT, +14.5), 113.5 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +.5 better
2017: 119.6, 109.2, +10.4, 114.8 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +4.8 better

James+Kyrie never really reached the on court Dominace of Wade+James in the regular season.

For all the talk of lebron stacked casts and lower ceiling approach he actually reaches the highest heights and his teams fall a bit short of the goat teams only because of what happens without him

How does that square out with a lower ceiling player that has unfairly stacked teams?

[homecourtloss]

That is quite the extrapolation to take here: both because it ignores the context of the miami era runs (like their awful depth in 2011, weaker than jordan bulls relative to era spacing in 2012, wade injury amd struggles in 2013, wade being past his prime by 2014)

And because wade, which you have pointed out nonstop in the wade discussion thread, is not the best second option to have because of his lack of off ball shooting

Specially because you are not considering the fact wade was literally playing injured in 2013 with his legs shot (look up wade on-off numbers vs san antonio, they are absurd and way beyond mere diminishing returns cause portability)

And by 2014 he was just straight up out of his prime

That is half of the miami playoffs run with a incredibly diminished wade



What do you mean with cost? This seems to be going again into "it must be lebron fault that his teams dont do well when he doesnt play" territory

I want to emphasize the bolded parts. I think it’s a stretch to categorically say “better supporting cast” in the Miami days and then lump 2011-2014 together without the context available as Falco points out (i.e., 2011 supporting cast corpses, 2013 Wade post season injury, 2014 Wade falling apart and not providing spacing). 2012 and 2013 look to be strengthened casts with Allen (defensive liability), Battier and Andersen who of course paired so well with James.

James + Wade in the regular season

2011: 113.5 ORtg, 101.4 DRtg, +12.1 on court, 111.7 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +1.8 better ORtg
2012: 110.2, 96.6, +13.6 on court, 110.0 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +.2 better
2013: 114.2, 99.8, +14.4 on court, 111.4 highest ORtg in league (Miami), Wade+James +2.8

Looks to me that James did plenty well with Wade. For reference, in 1996-1997 season in which the Bulls won 69 games (and could have won 70+ if not resting at the end of the season), Jordan + Pippen was +13.3 on court

2013 James+Wade: +14.4 on court
2012 James+Wade: +13.6
1997 Jordan+Pippen: +13.3
2011 James+Wade: +12.1

Wade and James were wildly successful. But yes, they didn’t put everything together in the playoffs and regular season except in 2012. 2011 saw the Dallas series and an overall poor playoffs as far as on court dominance is concnernee, and then 2013 saw Wade injured, but look at 2012:

2012 Playoffs: James+Wade +13.5; James+Wade+Bosh +13.9

James + Kyrie

2015: 114.3, 102.6, +11.7, 111.6 highest ORtg in league, kyrie+James +2.7 better
2016: 114.0, 105.5, +8.5 (114.6 with Delly, 94.8 DRtg, +16.1; 115.2, 100.7 with TT, +14.5), 113.5 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +.5 better
2017: 119.6, 109.2, +10.4, 114.8 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +4.8 better

James+Kyrie never really reached the on court Dominace of Wade+James in the regular season.

For all the talk of lebron stacked casts and lower ceiling approach he actually reaches the highest heights and his teams fall a bit short of the goat teams only because of what happens without him

How does that square out with a lower ceiling player that has unfairly stacked teams?

It doesn’t and the evidence points away from it, but these narratives have stuck.

[falcolombardi]

I want to emphasize the bolded parts. I think it’s a stretch to categorically say “better supporting cast” in the Miami days and then lump 2011-2014 together without the context available as Falco points out (i.e., 2011 supporting cast corpses, 2013 Wade post season injury, 2014 Wade falling apart and not providing spacing). 2012 and 2013 look to be strengthened casts with Allen (defensive liability), Battier and Andersen who of course paired so well with James.

James + Wade in the regular season

2011: 113.5 ORtg, 101.4 DRtg, +12.1 on court, 111.7 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +1.8 better ORtg
2012: 110.2, 96.6, +13.6 on court, 110.0 highest ORtg in league, Wade+James +.2 better
2013: 114.2, 99.8, +14.4 on court, 111.4 highest ORtg in league (Miami), Wade+James +2.8

Looks to me that James did plenty well with Wade. For reference, in 1996-1997 season in which the Bulls won 69 games (and could have won 70+ if not resting at the end of the season), Jordan + Pippen was +13.3 on court

2013 James+Wade: +14.4 on court
2012 James+Wade: +13.6
1997 Jordan+Pippen: +13.3
2011 James+Wade: +12.1

Wade and James were wildly successful. But yes, they didn’t put everything together in the playoffs and regular season except in 2012. 2011 saw the Dallas series and an overall poor playoffs as far as on court dominance is concnernee, and then 2013 saw Wade injured, but look at 2012:

2012 Playoffs: James+Wade +13.5; James+Wade+Bosh +13.9

James + Kyrie

2015: 114.3, 102.6, +11.7, 111.6 highest ORtg in league, kyrie+James +2.7 better
2016: 114.0, 105.5, +8.5 (114.6 with Delly, 94.8 DRtg, +16.1; 115.2, 100.7 with TT, +14.5), 113.5 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +.5 better
2017: 119.6, 109.2, +10.4, 114.8 highest ORtg in league, Kyrie+James +4.8 better

James+Kyrie never really reached the on court Dominace of Wade+James in the regular season.

For all the talk of lebron stacked casts and lower ceiling approach he actually reaches the highest heights and his teams fall a bit short of the goat teams only because of what happens without him

How does that square out with a lower ceiling player that has unfairly stacked teams?

It doesn’t and the evidence points away from it, but these narratives have stuck.

I hate to accuse people of "falling into narratives" but when you point over and over to, lets say, lebron team offensive results whenever someome argues his offense style has a limited ceiling

and yet the arguments keep being repeated in tje discussion

It starts to feel like narratives/aesthetics taking precedence over data and results

[AEnigma]

Previous posts by me in this thread had 600+ words, 300 words, 660+ words, 450 words, often with additional numerical research. If you wanted me to consider 1) how Jordan's scalability was tested, 2) whether Jordan would fit with Wade-type players, 3) how often these make a difference for winning a championship, that could add 200-300-500 words for each point.

I'm happy to discuss these in detail, but I'm not sure anyone wants to read a 1000-2000 word post. Rather than telling me "what I am trying to argue" and telling me that I have "no real analysis on" these points, why not just ask me what I think about those points? When people write 500 words on one topic but miss other points, I don't assume what they're trying to argue and don't accuse them of putting no thought into the other points. I assume their time is valuable and don't have the inclination to write 500 words on every variation, without hearing there's interest from other people first.

[and for the record, I've discussed some of those 3 points in other threads with falcolombardi and so didn't feel the need to repeat previous conversations without someone else mentioning interest first]

Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient.

I do not really care what your answers are, because you cannot actually answer most of them — and it is true that even trying to answer the one about all player types would be absurdly labour intensive.

Welp, if 500 word arguments aren’t thorough, if people are required to make a 1000 word argument that preemptively address 3+ counters that others haven’t even voiced yet in order to be thorough… you may find that the majority of your own lists are lacking thoroughness as well.

Because that’s literally the threshold you’re asking me to hit for my arguments to be called “thorough.”

But I’ll keep in mind that’s your threshold for thoroughness for the rest of your arguments

Difference is I am not interested in making these strong affirmative statements about “scalability” the way you are. Verbosity does not hide lack of substance, although in your defence that is hardly an uncommon mistake.

And I agree that peak LeBron's the better defender, and you'll never hear me say otherwise (unless we're discussing older motor-limited Lebron vs peak Jordan, in which case Jordan has an argument).

If we're discussing realistic scalability (e.g. how well players play on teams with better teammates), how realistic is it to build a team with
A) the offensive fit of the 16/17 Cavs when LeBron's on, and
B) far better defensive teammates than the 16/17 Cavs, And/Or
C) enough talent to not fall apart during LeBron's off minutes?
... because that basically what's being asked to prevent LeBron from having diminishing returns on offense, good performance on defense, and not fall apart without LeBron. TO me, this seems like a much more unrealistic teambuilding requirement than what Jordan needs to be the best player on a similar All-Time-Great SRS team.

… You literally just described Jordan’s teams.

Since you’re demanding 500+ word thoroughness from me… yeah I’m gonna need more thoroughness from this argument. You provide no evidence to support this claim whatsoever.

I think it’s far from a given that Jordan had clearly better offensive value and fit than LeBron’s best years, so since you're expecting me to preemptively address counters before others even voice them, I might suggest you start there if you'd like your own arguments to pass the same "thoroughness" tests mine are supposed to.

Offensive value? Perhaps. Fit? In what ways did they not fit? If I were designing a team around Jordan for his era, I would want strong defenders and passers who would let me shoulder the scoring load. Bonus if you can also balance that with shooters. There is nothing preemptive when this thread has repeatedly gone over the fit problems of all Lebron’s teams. If you want to be the first to argue that Jordan’s teams did not fit him to the same extent, go right ahead, no one is stopping you. Otherwise, looks like you just got pissy that I asked you to make a real argument.

That is the problem with starting from an set end position — Jordan > Lebron — rather than legitimately trying to work through it. Or do you feel the notion that Wade and Pippen are in fact very stylistically different players was a stunning revelation? Did it blow your mind to consider what Jordan might look like with that type of player? I was certainly not the first person to bring up defensive fit and the stacking nature of that side of the court, so there at least you had some warning from these deeply unfair questions that definitely should not be expected if you want to say x playing better with y teammate proves scalability over z playing with n teammate.

There's no time machine in on/off data. The on/off numbers are based on the opponents you faced in the time you faced them. And this thread's about on/off data. So No, it's not what I wanted it, it's literally baked into the title of the thread.

Did you see anyone else mention a time machine in any 189 posts in this thread? Because unless I missed something (which is entirely possible), I sure haven't...

Please don't blame one person for not talking about something that nobody else was talking about! If you'd like to talk about time machine, great, then raise the topic yourself... but don't just accuse others of being biased or manipulating the topic of conversation to their advantage if you don't have to

Wow, and I never said “time machine” either! Crazy…

Why do you need to disingenuously pretend this thread occurs in a random vacuum. Player comparisons consistently involved considerations of era substitutions and evolutions. As you know. Because you do it too (even if not in this exact thread).

But here it becomes inconvenient so we should pretend that is not a reality of how these players are discussed.

"Hang on, why aren’t you considering Kareem or Wilt? We’re discussing who has the best peak and you haven’t mentioned two GOAT peak contenders at all... you haven't proven at all that LeBron's peak is better than either Kareem's or Wilt's.

True, but sadly, we do not have on/off splits for either. On splits are also tough, although in Wilt’s case, we can almost extrapolate those anyway lol. Maybe one day we can track them the way that was done for Jordan.

Man, that was tough. Really bent me out of shape with that question, but somehow I managed.

For that matter, why haven’t you brought up health and durability?

Do you feel that distinguishes the two?

Or the technological and training advantages that LeBron had. Are you intentionally trying to hide something?"

We can certainly talk about those, although I think Lebron as a base level athlete was always starting beyond Jordan. There perhaps is the durability argument — is Lebron as durable without? — but looking at Kareem and Karl Malone, I do not think it is incomprehensible that he could be. If you want to go over them more, we can, but I tend to think that those advantages have if anything more of an equalising force when every player can potentially be “maximised” by training and top of the line medical care than in previous eras where that was much less equal.

^^see, the above argument is a straw man. Can you see how those statements are not really productive to the conversation?

How was it unproductive? Honestly I would rather you question things like that than ignore them. Maybe you would be caught less off guard if you tried to think about basic ideas like that before taking such strong stances.

If a group of people aren’t discussing something, I don’t single one of them out and blame them for not raising something unrelated or semi-related to the current topic of discussion. To do so would be a straw man.

The problem is that you think it is unrelated lol.

Again, in the future, if there’s a separate topic that my post is missing, ask me what my opinion is. Don’t just assume that I’m ignoring it because I’m biased or stupid. If you give me this courtesy, I’ll give you the same.
Otherwise we can both go back to strawmanning each other, but that seems like a clear waste of time to me. You know which option I’d prefer…. It’s up to you.

I am not interested in opinions in a vacuum. Obviously we all share them. That can sometimes be incidentally valuable, and others might find them more than incidentally valuable. But I do not care about your opinion that Jordan is more scalable and therefore more valuable unless it is a substantiated one — and I have said why I do not feel you came close to that.

Now, you are obviously under no obligation to substantiate your opinions… but if you want them to be valued or meaningfully engaged with, then having substantiation would probably get you a lot less pushback.

Our point is that you are using definitive labels based on extraordinarily limited samples extrapolated with total speculation, and then yeah, not really bothering to put in any work to better support that speculation. Jordan/Pippen better in-era fit than Lebron/Wade + Jordan less of a ballhandler, ergo Jordan more scalable, ergo Jordan better.

Welp, at this point the conversation has officially stopped being productive. The moment you assume the other person "cannot actually answer" your questions and the moment you "do not really care what [their] answers are", you stop having a conversation and start having a monologue.

I'm not that interested in listening to a monologue of someone who won't listen to me. So, apologies, but I won't be responding until it seems productive two-way discussion has returned. It's too bad we couldn't have a productive conversation -- maybe next time...

… If you think you have definitive answers to how Wade would fit with Jordan and how Lebron would fit with Pippen, then it sounds like you are the one uninterested in what other people say. Where is the conversation? “I know the answers, ask me what they are?” I know you do not want a monologue: you prefer to act as if you are giving a lecture. But when you try to give a lecture without actual, demonstrable knowledge, or even some superficial sense of authority, no one really has a reason to listen.

EDIT: I stand by my prior posts and the criticisms I brought up, but reading this one back, dislike the tone I used. I will at least try to clarify that last part. I do not believe that you sincerely are trying to say you have definitive answers here. If you are, that would be strange, because it should be something of a given that talks about fundamentally changing teams and teammates and playstyles is all pretty hypothetical — especially with Jordan, who did not exactly have a lot of variation during his career. I think if you are not taking an era relative approach in this instance, as you said you were not, then the case for a scalability advantage also becomes easier. Although there as well not much work is being done to really substantiate it, if we simply say it was easier for Jordan’s playstyle to scale in that era, I personally will not pushback much on that. However, when so many of these conversations about scalability — Bird, West, Robinson — revolve around modern translation and arguments that their own eras may have limited their latent scalability, it seems unreasonable to me to suddenly act shocked when era comparisons are brought up for Jordan and Lebron and their “scalability”. That is all.

[DraymondGold]

I think how much more "scalable" pippen in illegal defense era (hence his off ball shooting was less of a issue for fit with jordan) was than wade in the start of 3 point era was is not being acnowledged here either. Specially because a bigger proportion of his value came off defense and rebounding than wade

If we are going to talk about scalability we need to also mention how much of a easier fit pippen was, specially cause era difference with spacing and illegal D rules

Jordan could play in monster defense/rebounding lineups with harper/rodman/pippen/longley as starters without suffering the huge spacing disadvange relative to the league a lineup like that would have in the early 2010's

And here is the thingh. All this scalability talk is always about offense (usually saying lebron is a less scalable defensive player than lile bird or curry doesnt really pass the sniff test)

Lebron for all the scalability concerns actually has better offenses than most of the guys supposed to be much, much better ceiling raisers and scalable players

We -know- lebron, even in miami which is only his second best offensive run, has playoffs offenses as good as the best jordan offense runs.

Is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the reason for lebron teams worse off compared to mike is -defense- aka jordan having similar on-off in offense than bron but worse defensive impact (amd again defense is literally the most scalable skill)

The point isn't to maximize on-court offensive rating, but to maximize overall team rating (i.e. maximize wins). Plenty of people have argued that the Cavs were more offense-first over Curry's Warriors or Jordan's Bulls. Both Kerr and Jackson have been shown to value defense often over offense in many of their role players, which seems like the exact opposite approach of the 17 Cavs especially (but many other LeBron teams too).

Why would the Warriors/Bulls want to prioritize putting better offensive players who are worse overall players on the court, if doing so will cost wins? If we compare LeBron's overall team net rating to Curry's or Jordan's, both "better ceiling raisers" Curry and Jordan come out on top with some separation, as does "better ceiling raiser" Bird in 86 (though those Celtics much less consistently reached that level). [Source: my previous SRS post in this thread, and the Top 100 Overall-SRS team list which is linked in that post]

Tell me with all honesty, do you think curry/bird vs lebron is the reason why the 17 warriors or 86 celtics were better -defensively- than somethingh lebron 16 cavs ?

Taking away the LeBron comparison for a sec, do I think Curry/Jordan/Bird are the reason that the Warriors/Bulls/Celtics could focus on defense as much as they did? Absolutely. Curry is the system for the Warriors... why is it that so many random players have all-career revivals with the Warriors? McGee went from the laughing stock of the league to a serviceable player on perennial contenders. Nobody heard of Gary Payton II, until suddenly he started being able to make enough shots to stay on the floor (because they were all wide open corner shots). McCaw, McKinnie, Bell, Shaun Livingston, Otto Porter Jr, etc etc... all career-best seasons or career-revival seasons when playing with Curry/Warriors.

You can draw similar parallels with Bird and Jordan. Rodman would never have been the offensive contributor he was on another non-Jordan team. These 3 players act as the fulcrum of offensive systems that at their best get the absolute most out of players, helping propel their teams to the top. These stars act as the fulcrum particularly on offense, enabling many flawed often defensive-first players to fit in an offensive scheme and provide meaningful contributions on both sides. This kind of fit on good teams is scalability and ceiling raising at work.

Okay, now let's bring back LBJ into this. Do I think Curry and Bird are better than LeBron? Obviously not. The defensive gap alone is too large to overcome. Do I think Curry and Bird are more scalable, and does that partially (but obviously not completely) shrink some of the gap? Sure.

Jordan bulls could get away with playing all those defense first lineups in no small part because of the era rules. They had fine spacing relative to their in era competition because putting non shooters out there was more doable

Id you teleported the 96 bulls to 2012 they would be in for some tough balancing act decisions in how to balance their bad spacing/great rebounding defense players (harper,pippen, rodman, longley) with their great spacing/weaker defense and rebounding guys (kukok, kerr) around jordan. Decisions the ruleset and era style solved for them which didnt happen with lebron heat teams

Yeah, I'm pretty amenable to everything you said here Their era was favorable to the strategy and team they built.

Is that lucky chance? Absolutely not! As a smart organization (which unfortunately can't be said for all organizations ), they chose the best players they could knowing the strategy and style they were going for. If you teleported the full 96 Bulls organization to 2012 and gave them time to adjust, they'd almost certainly prioritize getting better three point shooting throughout most of their roster than they did back in the 90s.

But you're right that the roster they had could get away with much less shooting than the Heat (and got punished less for having less shooting than modern teams) because the illegal defensive rules allowed teams to use non-shooters as floor spacers.

Look at somethingh like the 2012 heat which had below average 3 point shooting volume -and- efficiency yet won a ring with dominant offensive advantage. Those teams didnt have much of a offensive talent/spacing/shooting advantage (relatice to era) if at all vs curry or bird or jordan teams.

Sure, but I'd remind you that the Heat much less effective with LeBron on in 11/12 as Curry's Warriors, Jordan's Bulls, or even LBJ's 2nd Cavs stint (see previous Heat stats I mentioned). So here might be LBJ's relative lack of scalability (compared to other stars) limiting his team's performance... he didn't have shooting, and so the lack of fit held him back.

Now on the warriors example

Lebron teams in 16-17 had better offensive relatice ratings than the warriors with dursnt did in 17-18. Did they also have better offensive talent? They were offense first cause they couldnt have everythingh.

The 17-18 warriors could pair multiple all time level shooters , scorers and specially defenders. They didnt have to be offense first or defense first cause they had such a talent advantage they could be both.

They didnt have to make any choice between offense first and defense first, their 2 way talent did it for them where lebron only had the offensive talent around

Yep, I agree so far...

Let me ask these questions

Do you think curry/bird impacting the [b]defense[/b] more than lebron is why the 17-18 warriors or 86 celtics were a better defense than the 16 or 17 cavs? Cause that is the reason they had better results, not their offense which is where lebron scaling concerns come from (for some reason) even when he has led goat tier offenses

I think it's possible both that some other teams (17 warriors for sure) had more help and that LeBron has scalability concerns.

other stars' scalability: I think Jordan/Curry/Bird may have been able to get better offenses if their teams focused on offenses with similar offensive talent level to the 16/17 Cavs (less sure about Bird). I think their better offensive scalability enabled their team to focus on defense more than the 16/17 Cavs. For example, I think Curry would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Draymond and I think Bird would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Walton, both of whom helped provide the defense that you cite. I fear greater diminishing returns on offense if LeBron played with those defensive players instead of Curry/Bird, just like LeBron had diminishing returns with 11/12 Wade (LBJ only had +5.4 on-rating in the 11-12 playoffs vs 89-93 Jordan's +8.5 or 15-19 Curry's +12.5).

Do you not think wade off ball issues would be a lesser fit problem if illegal D existed still as in jordan era? Or pippen and co fit with jordan worse off in a era of more shooting and no illegal defense?

You always talk about how much more importsnt 3 point shooting is today when we discussed west vs wade, why not here?

I do think Wade's partially to blame. Like I said in one of my previous posts, I blame both LBJ and Wade... having two ball-dominant sub-optimal shooters in this era leads to diminishing returns on offense in this era. But unfortunately, if you're hoping to get a good defender on your team, you're likely to wind up a getting someone who's worse off-ball or worse shooting (e.g. Draymond/Walton), so if there's a player who doesn't have diminishing offensive returns with those defensive players, that might help the team!

That said, the more you discuss era, the more amenable I am to your suggestion that the lack of illegal defense hurts the scalability of LBJ's Heat (i.e. both LBJ/Wade) more than the rules of the 90s hurt the Bulls.

It is definitely pertaining to the discussion as jordan played with bad 3 point shooting co-stars in a era where it mattered much less. Lebron played with a no 3 point shooting co-star in a era where it mattered more

Do you not think illegal D is a big part of why bulls could play those Defense/rebound first teams around jordan scoring without worrying as mucg about spacing?

Yeah, I buy that. Like I said in my previous post, scalability likely changes with era. Just like you shouldn't expect Bill Russell to be just as valuable today playing the exact same way he did in the 60s (he'd have to change with the times), I wouldn't expect Jordan to be just as scalable today if he played the exact same way as he did in the 90s (he'd have to change with the times). Same goes for LBJ/Wade moving back... the different ruleset/style would change their value/scalability, maybe slightly for the better or slightly for the worse. And of course it all depends on how they'd adapt to the new rules/style too.

[falcolombardi]

The point isn't to maximize on-court offensive rating, but to maximize overall team rating (i.e. maximize wins). Plenty of people have argued that the Cavs were more offense-first over Curry's Warriors or Jordan's Bulls. Both Kerr and Jackson have been shown to value defense often over offense in many of their role players, which seems like the exact opposite approach of the 17 Cavs especially (but many other LeBron teams too).

Why would the Warriors/Bulls want to prioritize putting better offensive players who are worse overall players on the court, if doing so will cost wins? If we compare LeBron's overall team net rating to Curry's or Jordan's, both "better ceiling raisers" Curry and Jordan come out on top with some separation, as does "better ceiling raiser" Bird in 86 (though those Celtics much less consistently reached that level). [Source: my previous SRS post in this thread, and the Top 100 Overall-SRS team list which is linked in that post]

Tell me with all honesty, do you think curry/bird vs lebron is the reason why the 17 warriors or 86 celtics were better -defensively- than somethingh lebron 16 cavs ?

Taking away the LeBron comparison for a sec, do I think Curry/Jordan/Bird are the reason that the Warriors/Bulls/Celtics could focus on defense as much as they did? Absolutely. Curry is the system for the Warriors... why is it that so many random players have all-career revivals with the Warriors? McGee went from the laughing stock of the league to a serviceable player on perennial contenders. Nobody heard of Gary Payton II, until suddenly he started being able to make enough shots to stay on the floor (because they were all wide open corner shots). McCaw, McKinnie, Bell, Shaun Livingston, Otto Porter Jr, etc etc... all career-best seasons or career-revival seasons when playing with Curry/Warriors.

You can draw similar parallels with Bird and Jordan. Rodman would never have been the offensive contributor he was on another non-Jordan team. These 3 players act as the fulcrum of offensive systems that at their best get the absolute most out of players, helping propel their teams to the top. They do so particularly on offense, enabling many flawed often defensive-first players to fit in an offensive scheme and provide meaningful contributions on both sides. This kind of fit on good teams is scalability and ceiling raising at work.

Okay, now let's bring back LBJ into this. Do I think Curry and Bird are better than LeBron? Obviously not. The defensive gap alone is too large to overcome. Do I think Curry and Bird are more scalable, and does that partially (but obviously not completely) shrink some of the gap? Sure.

Jordan bulls could get away with playing all those defense first lineups in no small part because of the era rules. They had fine spacing relative to their in era competition because putting non shooters out there was more doable

Id you teleported the 96 bulls to 2012 they would be in for some tough balancing act decisions in how to balance their bad spacing/great rebounding defense players (harper,pippen, rodman, longley) with their great spacing/weaker defense and rebounding guys (kukok, kerr) around jordan. Decisions the ruleset and era style solved for them which didnt happen with lebron heat teams

Yeah, I'm pretty amenable to everything you said here Their era was favorable to the strategy and team they built.

Is that lucky chance? Absolutely not! As a smart organization (which unfortunately can't be said for all organizations ), they chose the best players they could knowing the strategy and style they were going for. If you teleported the full 96 Bulls organization to 2012 and gave them time to adjust, they'd almost certainly prioritize getting better three point shooting throughout most of their roster than they did back in the 90s.

But you're right that the roster they had could get away with much less shooting than the Heat (and got punished less for having less shooting than modern teams) because the illegal defensive rules allowed teams to use non-shooters as floor spacers.

Look at somethingh like the 2012 heat which had below average 3 point shooting volume -and- efficiency yet won a ring with dominant offensive advantage. Those teams didnt have much of a offensive talent/spacing/shooting advantage (relatice to era) if at all vs curry or bird or jordan teams.

Sure, but I'd remind you that the Heat much less effective with LeBron on in 11/12 as Curry's Warriors, Jordan's Bulls, or even LBJ's 2nd Cavs stint (see previous Heat stats I mentioned). So here might be LBJ's relative lack of scalability (compared to other stars) limiting his team's performance... he didn't have shooting, and so the lack of fit held him back.

Now on the warriors example

Lebron teams in 16-17 had better offensive relatice ratings than the warriors with dursnt did in 17-18. Did they also have better offensive talent? They were offense first cause they couldnt have everythingh.

The 17-18 warriors could pair multiple all time level shooters , scorers and specially defenders. They didnt have to be offense first or defense first cause they had such a talent advantage they could be both.

They didnt have to make any choice between offense first and defense first, their 2 way talent did it for them where lebron only had the offensive talent around

Yep, I agree so far...

Let me ask these questions

Do you think curry/bird impacting the [b]defense[/b] more than lebron is why the 17-18 warriors or 86 celtics were a better defense than the 16 or 17 cavs? Cause that is the reason they had better results, not their offense which is where lebron scaling concerns come from (for some reason) even when he has led goat tier offenses

I think it's possible both that some other teams (17 warriors for sure) had more help and that LeBron has scalability concerns.

other stars' scalability: I think Jordan/Curry/Bird may have been able to get better offenses if their teams focused on offenses with similar offensive talent level to the 16/17 Cavs (less sure about Bird). I think their better offensive scalability enabled their team to focus on defense more than the 16/17 Cavs. For example, I think Curry would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Draymond and I think Bird would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Walton, both of whom helped provide the defense that you cite. I fear greater diminishing returns on offense if LeBron played with those defensive players instead of Curry/Bird, just like LeBron had diminishing returns with 11/12 Wade (LBJ only had +5.4 on-rating in the 11-12 playoffs vs 89-93 Jordan's +8.5 or 15-19 Curry's +12.5).

Do you not think wade off ball issues would be a lesser fit problem if illegal D existed still as in jordan era? Or pippen and co fit with jordan worse off in a era of more shooting and no illegal defense?

You always talk about how much more importsnt 3 point shooting is today when we discussed west vs wade, why not here?

I do think Wade's partially to blame. Like I said in one of my previous posts, I blame both LBJ and Wade... having two ball-dominant sub-optimal shooters in this era leads to diminishing returns on offense in this era. But unfortunately, if you're hoping to get a good defender on your team, you're likely to wind up a getting someone who's worse off-ball or worse shooting (e.g. Draymond/Walton), so if there's a player who doesn't have diminishing offensive returns with those defensive players, that might help the team!

That said, the more you discuss era, the more amenable I am to your suggestion that the lack of illegal defense hurts the scalability of LBJ's Heat (i.e. both LBJ/Wade) more than the rules of the 90s hurt the Bulls.

It is definitely pertaining to the discussion as jordan played with bad 3 point shooting co-stars in a era where it mattered much less. Lebron played with a no 3 point shooting co-star in a era where it mattered more

Do you not think illegal D is a big part of why bulls could play those Defense/rebound first teams around jordan scoring without worrying as mucg about spacing?

Yeah, I buy that. Like I said in my previous post, scalability likely changes with era. Just like you shouldn't expect Bill Russell to be just as valuable today playing the exact same way he did in the 60s (he'd have to change with the times), I wouldn't expect Jordan to be just as scalable today if he played the exact same way as he did in the 90s (he'd have to change with the times). Same goes for LBJ/Wade moving back... the different ruleset/style would change their value/scalability, maybe slightly for the better or slightly for the worse. And of course it all depends on how they'd adapt to the new rules/style too.

Sure, but I'd remind you that the Heat much less effective with LeBron on in 11/12 as Curry's Warriors, Jordan's Bulls, or even LBJ's 2nd Cavs stint (see previous Heat stats I mentioned). So here might be LBJ's relative lack of scalability (compared to other stars) limiting his team's performance... he didn't have shooting, and so the lack of fit held him back.

I think here the issue is you are not comparing lebron with jordan anymore but lebron with lebron himself (lebronception?)

Why does it matter to a jordan vs lebron comparision that lebron has other even better results than his heat years when his heat years offenses are as good as jordan best offense runs anyway?

other stars' scalability: I think Jordan/Curry/Bird may have been able to get better offenses if their teams focused on offenses with similar offensive talent level to the 16/17 Cavs

I wont push too much on bulls/celtics but are you saying the durant era warriors had less offensive talent than the cavs?

Durant is essentially a super version of kyrie as far as strenghts and weaknesses go. And klay is a comparable offensive player to love (although i admit i prefer love offense here by a bit) and as far as non shooter starters i prefer draymond passing over thompson offensve rebounding

Go down the roster and cavs have more rotation shooters but warriors have other strenghts like iguodala passing

Do you really think it was lebron who played with more offensive talent here? I honestly think is even-ish at absolute best -for curry-

In fact i think warriors barely missing a beat offensively without durant sans 2017 is undertalked, if lebron had similar results to lebron + durant we would never stop hearing it as an examplr of lebron bad scalability. With curry is only praise that thw warriors (outside 17) were roughly as good when durant missef games

lebron having the worse defensive teammates by far doesnt automatically give him the better offensive ones, at least in the durant years (which are the only ones who reached similar offensive heights as lebron cavs)

Now leaving the 17-18 warriors aside i can see an argument the 86 celtics or jordan bulls teams did have less offensive talent. But i think is very close regardless

I will talk about the bulls


People usually think of offensive talent as amount og great scorers in a team and maybe a bit about great passers or spacing.

People rarely consider the GOAT level*offensive rebounding bulls roster had with rodman/grant/pippen as part of jordan offensive help for example.

(*shouts out to 2016 thunder, drexler blazers and every team moses malone played at too)

Lebron best offensive teams had two other great scorers (wade/bosh and kyrie/love) where jordan teams only had one (pippen) and that is usually all what gets compared really.

Thinghs like jordan teama often having great offense more on the back of their offensive rebounding that anythingh else dont get considered as offensive stackednes.

Hell i think you may be surprised how often bulls offense was "carried" to a degree by the offensive rebounding of pippen/rodman/grant. Even im some of their best offensive years. Amd offensive rebounding is not somethingh usually accounted for in offensive cast comparisions

Thinghs like pippen being a better creator, offensive rebounder and decision maker than kyrie dont get considered when peopkle look at only at scoring volume/efficiency (and lets be honest, aesthetics) to say kyrie>pippen in offense

Love/bosh is universally seen as a much better offensive third option than rodman or grant even though these guys added a ton of offensive value too as offensive rebounders or finishers.

Now is bosh/love a better -first- or even second option than rodman/grant? Yeah, easily.

Do i want to run my offense through rodman/grant/love/bosh? Not particularly

Do i want to run too much offense through these guys when lebron/kyrie/wade/jordan/pippen exist? Again not particularly

Lebron second options had still very big roles (were wade or kyrie offensove roles much smaller than pippen?, kyrie literally would tske more shots than lebron)

And lebron much maligned third options (bosh/love) didnt exactly have smaller roles than jordan third options (horace/rodman) did they?

I believe, although this is my theory that if you made a big 3 with the 90 bulls adding a offensive star scorer who is worse offensively than pippen he would have the same thing happen to him as it happend to bosh/love and lose prominence going from a bad team first option to a contender third one.

Like I said in one of my previous posts, I blame both LBJ and Wade... having two ball-dominant sub-optimal shooters in this era leads to diminishing returns on offense in this era

I mostly agree....but playing with wade would still affect jordan spacing wise. Jordan is not gonna want (nor do you want him to) become a "100%" off ball player to keep the ball in wade hands so whenever jordan is "ON-BALL" wade lack of spot up threat would affect him

And lets remember that

A) miami lebron was a surprisingly effective spot up 3 point shooter

B) miami lebron added offensive off ball value as a roll-man in the pick and roll, cutting (although funnily enough i think lebron peaked at this last 2 years in lakers lol, the amount of points he gets off exploding like a running back to catch amd drive to the rim is ridiculous) fast break runner, etc

Is not like lebron presence on the floor was a issue for wade possesions nearly to the same extent it was the other way around. Lebron shot was a lot more respected except in the spurs finals (and even thst was in part cause they totally ignored wade off ball to swarm lebron driving lanes)

where honestly i think he was too much into his head ala 2011 to look for the optimal shot and not "settle" for his jumper to the point it took him off rythim and made him less effective for the first half of the series. But that is going off a tangent

[OhayoKD]

Here are the top teams by composite (regular-season/playoff) SRS:
1. 1996 Jordan
2. 1991 Jordan
3. 1992 Jordan
4. 1997 Jordan
5. 2016 LeBron
6. 2012 LeBron
7. 1998 Jordan
8. 2013 LeBron
9. 2009 LeBron
10. 2020 LeBron
11. 2017 LeBron
12. 1993 Jordan
13. 2011 Miami Heat
14. 2015 LeBron

So by Overall SRS, Jordan has played on 4 better teams than LeBron, and the top 2 are better by a wide margin. This is a list that weights playoffs highly. Taking playoffs only, the 91 Bulls and 96 Bulls also gain separation from any of LeBron’s teams (including the 16/17 Cavs), and playoff-only SRS is the kind of stat that could overrate the 16 Cavs slightly as it wouldn’t account for opponent injury. You mention the 12 Heat were as good in the playoffs as the 91 Bulls, but unfortunately that’s flat out not true and the margin isn’t insignificant per SRS.

In sum: I’m not sure LeBron has played on as good teams as MJ.

Now you may argue: they’re as good when LeBron’s on the court. They just fall apart when LeBron’s off! But first, it’s worth noting that 89-93 Jordan has a better on-rating than LeBron’s best sample in his second cavs stint.
Second… that’s exactly my point!

Let me introduce a slight change in phrasing for your definition for scalability. I’m not married to this different definition, but it may more clearly indicate the point I’m making. Rather than saying “scalability is how well you perform on better teams” (like resilience is how well you perform against better teams), let’s change the phrasing to: “how well you perform with better teammates.”

Well, when we look at these cases, per above, LeBron faces diminishing returns with better teammates, as shown in having generally worse differential in his on minutes. [I can also link to a more in-depth analysis of how LeBron’s scoring specifically declined with better teammates, and this is a bigger decline than players who are usually seen as more scalable like Curry].

Why does this matter? Well, you’re probably going to need to play with better teammates to improve your chances of winning a championship. If you face less diminishing returns with these teammates, your on-minutes will be far more dominant. If you play with better teammates, your off minutes won’t be as bad. These will help your teams win championships. So if there’s scalability concerns, that would limit LeBron’s ability to play on better teams / with better teammates, which would slightly hurt his championship odds.

I will note that Thinking Basketball has made this direct comparison of how Jordan and LeBron would perform on better teams / with better teammates, and he’s argued that Jordan would perform better. He used available data and film analysis to make the case that Jordan’s more scalable than LeBron. It’s an interesting argument, and perhaps one that would be fun to discuss if we have time (not sure personally), but I just want to say this is a different argument from whether LeBron has scalability concerns at all.

. This one’s interesting. It’s possible box stats have a bias for Jordan.

But I’m not sure it’s true that LeBron has the significant pure plus-minus advantage, at least not at his peak (though maybe over the course of his prime). Jordan’s 3 year playoff AuPM is better than any of LeBron’s runs. Jordan’s 3 year playoff PIPM estimate is better than LeBron’s Miami years (haven’t checked his other years). And Jordan’s partial RAPM sample in 91 is better than LeBron’s RAPM in 13.

1. It goes both ways. The warriors are going to be underrated based on not going all-out in the regular season, especially in 2017. Even in 2016 their starters played way less minuites during the regular season. The cavs and the warriros both weren't really going all-out save for one or two matchups in the playoffs. Ultimately even with the injury to curry, the warriors beat an okc team that played 67 win basketball when healthy and decisively beat down the 70 win srs spurs. And in the final the series was pretty close to a tie. Then the cavs seem to have improved the following postseason. Probably fair to have the cavs as a 66-70 ish level playoff team even if you take their srs at face value.

Overall probably does increase the gap for the bulls but if we're talking the championshp probability, gaps in regular season score for a top seed probably don't make a signifcant difference. Like, what situation are you imagining where 67+ win playoff basketball isn't good enough for the title? Is cieling raising defined as your value on a team capable of beating the 17 warriors?

Like really the cavs were probably coasting for the first three rounds(their relative defensive rating increasing dramatically as they played stronger offenses supports this) and they were blowing teams of comparable srs to the first three point bulls by similar point differentials. Then they push a 67 win team without co-stars in 2015 and beat a 70 win team the next year. Then they get even better in 2017.


2. When bosh wade and lebron were in the lineup the 12 heatles went 8-1 winning by a margin of 15 points vs the 48 srs celtics and by a margin of 9 points over the 58 win pace thunder. That seems 91-level to me. Now consider that the co-stars aren't supposed to be good fits, their spacing was pretty bad, and that they were dealing with constant injury thoughout. Don't think 2012 really supports your theory that well. They had lots of issues/fit stuff to work out and yet when it came to time to win they crushed everyone when they shared the court. Notably they were much more dominant than the 13 heat in the playoffs vs comparably strong opponents. Despite the 13 heat having alot more spacing and lebron supposedly being alot more portable.

In 2011 lebron had one of the worst series of his career in the final for a close loss to a team that had smoked three 55+ win teams before them. Before that they were operating at a pretty similar level to the first three peat bulls. From reporting that was when their system was completely improvised and the spacing was pretty bad. Idrk if it makes sense to extrapolate that lebron at his best gets worse team results with better teammates. The 2012 heat with wade/bosh/lebron sharing the court were way more dominant than the 2013 heat despite
a. The 2013 heat having much better spacing
b. lebron allegedly being much easier to build around due to his shooting improvement
The 2011 heat were on pace for a better postseason than the 2013 heat until a lesser lebron had an outlier bad performance.

The 2020 Lakers were waaay more dominant than the 2013 heat in the playoffs. Was that because lebron was way better?

Is "lebron's teams get worse when the teammates get better" really the right conclusion here? Idk.

3. I'm specifically arguing that being "more scalable" does not mean "better cieling raiser". To be a better cieling raiser you have to be (generally) more valuable on a certain treshold of team. A player can be less scalable AND a better cieling raiser if his value is still higher than whoever you're comparing him to.

4. 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.

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.

Mj's "parital" rapm samples peak at +7, lebron has three different seasons that go at +10 and one that goes at +9.

And then just using the sample without mregulization(which tends to overdistribute value to role players), one player is taking a 27 win team to 48-50 wins while the other has a 5-25 team winning 60+ in his first cleveland stint, a 40 win team to 60 in his miami stint, and a 25-30 win team to 50-60 in his second cleveland stint.

Unless I'm missing something the only measures their best years lineup favorably or comparably for mj is box-score aggregates(jordan generally gets an rs edge, lebron gets a playoff edge, though per has them even in the rs and favors ps lebron) and ben's bpm where jordan has better individual years but lebron has the best one year peak.


5. It's probably worth noting jordan's own indivudal impact stuff drops as of 91 and he's less effecient at basically everything in 91 relative to 90. I'll let you decide if that's jordan getting worse, if that's a scalability thing,, or a bit of both

[/quote]
sorry to be annoying draymond, but if you find the time could you respond to this? Feel like it addresses alot of the stuff you're talking about right now(2012 heat, cavs teams overall strength, ect)


Also I feel like you should probably address that two of lebron's title winning teams had the worst spacing of anyone in the last x years

[MyUniBroDavis]

I always asks this but again

Why is lebron having worse peak teams than jordan or other greats like curry and bird always blamed in his offense portability?

Lebron cavs and even miami teams in 2012-2017 were as good as any of the guys who are supposedly better ceiling raisers cause they fit better with better offensive talent. We saw lebron teams play with offensive talent and the results were up there with literally anyone

Is it because arguing 17 curry ceiling raising >> 16 lebron -defensively- doesnt pass the smell test? Cause that is exactly where those two teams differed, not in "offensive scalability"

Even the argument of blaming lebron for his cavs teams being weak without him (somehow he makes them bad at basketball) doesnt even work cause a lot of it was them being ass in defense without lebron, the cavs usually held up ok offensively but collapsed defensively when lebron sat

Lebron being only a floor raiser has always been a really weird take, of the teams he played with a decent amount of talent

The 2015 cavs played at a 59 win pace
The 2016 cavs played at a 60 win pace
The 2017 cavs played at a 56 win pace

The 2020 Lakers team played at a 64 win pace

In the playoffs, the 2016 cavs, the 2017 cavs, and the 2020 Lakers were all ATG level teams

2016 cavs (+14.55 SRS 8th)

2017 cavs (+13.74 SRS 18th)

2020 Lakers (+11.7 SRS 37th)

The 2020 Lakers were -57 in garbage time (I counted it as 4th quarters where they were winning by more than 15, although it’s -51 if you do it by more than 20) (7 games)

So that’s a +14.44 SRS

They were +31 in non garbage time fourth quarters, (14 games)

If we assume they win the garbage time fourth quarters by the same amount they do non garbage time fourths if they play normally, that comes out to +15.17 SRS, which would be 7th.

I don’t think we’ve seen Lebron in a situation with great talent and great fit, but the 2020 Lakers and the 2016 cavs were genuine ATG teams in the postseason, all three had a higher than 115 off rtg (only thr 2020 Lakers weren’t the best offense, and that’s because of the jazz who had a 120 off rtg in their first round exit because of Mitchell, along with garbage time stuff).

I should note, roughly speaking, the 2020 Lakers had a 120 off rtg in the first three quarters, and a 102.4 off rtg in the fourth quarter

While it may seem significant in a bad way, their defense was 111 in fourth quarters while it was a bit above 108 for the first three overall. Their non garbage time MOV in the fourth quarter is only slightly off of theirs for the first three (+2.8 vs +2.2), so it’s fair to assume their off rtg is what’s dragged down significantly by garbage time

But looking at it by the specifics

The 2020 Lakers, the 2016 cavs, and the 2017 cavs were all Top tier playoff offenses. Each one was more impressive individually than every non 2017 Warriors offense in terms of their offensive rating relative to everyone else, taking into account the issues with garbage time with the 2020 lakers

Adjusting for garbage time didn’t help ou the 2020 Lakers as much as I thought it would but they still end up with a 116.6 offense, which is still ATG.

On the offense side of things the 2016 cavs and 2017 cavs are both ATG postseason offenses, while the 2020 Lakers are also in that category adjusting for garbage time (and the jazz really pull up the average league offense and are a clear outlier, taking them out puts the Lakers there as well).

It’s not as if they’re a tier below ATG, for reference the 91 bulls are a +6.3 offense in the playoffs, the 2016 cavs were +8.8 on offense, the 2017 cavs +9, and the 2020 Lakers +4.6 (around +5-7!adjusting for garbage time or/and the jazz)


1967 76ers +3.2
1971 bucks +5.4 (last digit might be wrong)
1985 Lakers +6.8
1986 Celtics +4.4
1987 Lakers +7.8
1991 bulls +6.3
1993 bulls +5.9
1996 bulls +4.7
2001 Lakers +7.1
2016 cavs +8.8
2017 Warriors +7.7
2017 cavs +9.0
2018 Warriors +5
2019 Warriors +5.9
2020 Lakers +4.6 (around +5.5 if you take out garbage time, around +6.5 if you do that and take out the jazz who do stand out as an outlier among the teams listed here in bringing the average up, which isn’t an issue for most of these teams)

I don’t think it’s fair to say bron is a limited ceiling raiser given 3 of his last 4 playoff runs (doing adjustments that I think are fair, high SRS teams would be biased to winning garbage time you’d expect, while there wasn’t an outlier dragging the average team off rtg in any other of the seasons I listed I think)

This is obviously oversimplifying it, the 2017 Warriors are clearly the GOAT offense, but the 2016 and 2017 cavs teams were genuinely fantastic offensive teams

Give second stint cavs bron an all time great supporting cast and you’d get an all time great team, I don’t think the best team around lebron is worse than the best teams around Curry or Jordan on either end of the floor, nor do I think those teams are hard to form

I think of second stint cavs bron as his peak by a pretty wide margin, way over Miami bron and a good bit over first stint cavs bron as well, but I have it a good deal ahead of the other top tier peaks as well.

Lebron not being an impressive ceiling raiser is valid if you have a very strong team that fits around lebron, thay didn’t perform crazily when lebron played

The 2016 cavs team was arguably not a playoff team without lebron, 4-23 without him from 2015-2017, 1-5 in 2016, even with Kyrie and love healthy it’s something like 3-14 or something around that

You give lebron a team that alone can win 50-60 games, that is also built well around him, and that’s gonna be a GOAT tier team very easily

[MyUniBroDavis]

Admittedly I’m hopping in a bit here, but I think most of us treat lebron 2016-2020, 2011-2015, and 08-10 as different players to an extent, I think 2016-2020 Lebron is more portable than his previous versions, while being the person you pick first for a reliable top tier offense

Like I’m high on Curry too, but I do think that you give lebron talent and fit similar to that 2017 Warriors and you get results that end up better

Curry can plug and fit into more teams seamlessly, but there’s nothing about Lebrons game 2016-2022 that means he should struggle in terms of portability

He’s at the point where he’s a pretty darn good three point shooter (at least 2017-2022) especially in open catch and shoot situations, you don’t help off of lebron, he’s someone that can be a roll man and be incredibly effective in short roll situations and finishing outright, he’s a smart cutter

Lebrons on ball game is arguably the greatest ever, but his off ball game isn’t poor at all, in fact it’s pretty great, and better than most ATG perimeter players, outside of the sharpshooters.

His off ball game is versatile, and outside of shooting which he grades out well in via ball index (as in, elite, which seeing the progression in his game makes sense) you have a guy that can fill pretty much any role off ball at an elite level.

Draymond is considered a great roll man partner for players that demand blitzes for good reason, for example, and with a good jump shot he’s a strong positive offensively i would argue. Make him 3 inches taller, give him a consistent jump shot, make him a better passer, and make him the most dominant finisher in nba history (for a non center), and then you’re gonna have a very strong offensive player that can fit into many systems

The issue is drag and dropping him onto teams that already have a max ball dominant player (or getting one) whose off ball games are weak and need the ball, but only idiots like the Lakers would do that, and that’s a limitation of those players not lebron

[OhayoKD]

Tell me with all honesty, do you think curry/bird vs lebron is the reason why the 17 warriors or 86 celtics were better -defensively- than somethingh lebron 16 cavs ?

Taking away the LeBron comparison for a sec, do I think Curry/Jordan/Bird are the reason that the Warriors/Bulls/Celtics could focus on defense as much as they did? Absolutely. Curry is the system for the Warriors... why is it that so many random players have all-career revivals with the Warriors? McGee went from the laughing stock of the league to a serviceable player on perennial contenders. Nobody heard of Gary Payton II, until suddenly he started being able to make enough shots to stay on the floor (because they were all wide open corner shots). McCaw, McKinnie, Bell, Shaun Livingston, Otto Porter Jr, etc etc... all career-best seasons or career-revival seasons when playing with Curry/Warriors.

You can draw similar parallels with Bird and Jordan. Rodman would never have been the offensive contributor he was on another non-Jordan team. These 3 players act as the fulcrum of offensive systems that at their best get the absolute most out of players, helping propel their teams to the top. They do so particularly on offense, enabling many flawed often defensive-first players to fit in an offensive scheme and provide meaningful contributions on both sides. This kind of fit on good teams is scalability and ceiling raising at work.

Okay, now let's bring back LBJ into this. Do I think Curry and Bird are better than LeBron? Obviously not. The defensive gap alone is too large to overcome. Do I think Curry and Bird are more scalable, and does that partially (but obviously not completely) shrink some of the gap? Sure.

Jordan bulls could get away with playing all those defense first lineups in no small part because of the era rules. They had fine spacing relative to their in era competition because putting non shooters out there was more doable

Id you teleported the 96 bulls to 2012 they would be in for some tough balancing act decisions in how to balance their bad spacing/great rebounding defense players (harper,pippen, rodman, longley) with their great spacing/weaker defense and rebounding guys (kukok, kerr) around jordan. Decisions the ruleset and era style solved for them which didnt happen with lebron heat teams

Yeah, I'm pretty amenable to everything you said here Their era was favorable to the strategy and team they built.

Is that lucky chance? Absolutely not! As a smart organization (which unfortunately can't be said for all organizations ), they chose the best players they could knowing the strategy and style they were going for. If you teleported the full 96 Bulls organization to 2012 and gave them time to adjust, they'd almost certainly prioritize getting better three point shooting throughout most of their roster than they did back in the 90s.

But you're right that the roster they had could get away with much less shooting than the Heat (and got punished less for having less shooting than modern teams) because the illegal defensive rules allowed teams to use non-shooters as floor spacers.

Look at somethingh like the 2012 heat which had below average 3 point shooting volume -and- efficiency yet won a ring with dominant offensive advantage. Those teams didnt have much of a offensive talent/spacing/shooting advantage (relatice to era) if at all vs curry or bird or jordan teams.

Sure, but I'd remind you that the Heat much less effective with LeBron on in 11/12 as Curry's Warriors, Jordan's Bulls, or even LBJ's 2nd Cavs stint (see previous Heat stats I mentioned). So here might be LBJ's relative lack of scalability (compared to other stars) limiting his team's performance... he didn't have shooting, and so the lack of fit held him back.

Now on the warriors example

Lebron teams in 16-17 had better offensive relatice ratings than the warriors with dursnt did in 17-18. Did they also have better offensive talent? They were offense first cause they couldnt have everythingh.

The 17-18 warriors could pair multiple all time level shooters , scorers and specially defenders. They didnt have to be offense first or defense first cause they had such a talent advantage they could be both.

They didnt have to make any choice between offense first and defense first, their 2 way talent did it for them where lebron only had the offensive talent around

Yep, I agree so far...

Let me ask these questions

Do you think curry/bird impacting the [b]defense[/b] more than lebron is why the 17-18 warriors or 86 celtics were a better defense than the 16 or 17 cavs? Cause that is the reason they had better results, not their offense which is where lebron scaling concerns come from (for some reason) even when he has led goat tier offenses

I think it's possible both that some other teams (17 warriors for sure) had more help and that LeBron has scalability concerns.

other stars' scalability: I think Jordan/Curry/Bird may have been able to get better offenses if their teams focused on offenses with similar offensive talent level to the 16/17 Cavs (less sure about Bird). I think their better offensive scalability enabled their team to focus on defense more than the 16/17 Cavs. For example, I think Curry would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Draymond and I think Bird would do a better job maximizing the offensive fit of Walton, both of whom helped provide the defense that you cite. I fear greater diminishing returns on offense if LeBron played with those defensive players instead of Curry/Bird, just like LeBron had diminishing returns with 11/12 Wade (LBJ only had +5.4 on-rating in the 11-12 playoffs vs 89-93 Jordan's +8.5 or 15-19 Curry's +12.5).

Do you not think wade off ball issues would be a lesser fit problem if illegal D existed still as in jordan era? Or pippen and co fit with jordan worse off in a era of more shooting and no illegal defense?

You always talk about how much more importsnt 3 point shooting is today when we discussed west vs wade, why not here?

I do think Wade's partially to blame. Like I said in one of my previous posts, I blame both LBJ and Wade... having two ball-dominant sub-optimal shooters in this era leads to diminishing returns on offense in this era. But unfortunately, if you're hoping to get a good defender on your team, you're likely to wind up a getting someone who's worse off-ball or worse shooting (e.g. Draymond/Walton), so if there's a player who doesn't have diminishing offensive returns with those defensive players, that might help the team!

That said, the more you discuss era, the more amenable I am to your suggestion that the lack of illegal defense hurts the scalability of LBJ's Heat (i.e. both LBJ/Wade) more than the rules of the 90s hurt the Bulls.

It is definitely pertaining to the discussion as jordan played with bad 3 point shooting co-stars in a era where it mattered much less. Lebron played with a no 3 point shooting co-star in a era where it mattered more

Do you not think illegal D is a big part of why bulls could play those Defense/rebound first teams around jordan scoring without worrying as mucg about spacing?

Yeah, I buy that. Like I said in my previous post, scalability likely changes with era. Just like you shouldn't expect Bill Russell to be just as valuable today playing the exact same way he did in the 60s (he'd have to change with the times), I wouldn't expect Jordan to be just as scalable today if he played the exact same way as he did in the 90s (he'd have to change with the times). Same goes for LBJ/Wade moving back... the different ruleset/style would change their value/scalability, maybe slightly for the better or slightly for the worse. And of course it all depends on how they'd adapt to the new rules/style too.

Sure, but I'd remind you that the Heat much less effective with LeBron on in 11/12 as Curry's Warriors, Jordan's Bulls, or even LBJ's 2nd Cavs stint (see previous Heat stats I mentioned). So here might be LBJ's relative lack of scalability (compared to other stars) limiting his team's performance... he didn't have shooting, and so the lack of fit held him back.

I think here the issue is you are not comparing lebron with jordan anymore but lebron with lebron himself (lebronception?)

Why does it matter to a jordan vs lebron comparision that lebron has other even better results than his heat years when his heat years offenses are as good as jordan best offense runs anyway?

other stars' scalability: I think Jordan/Curry/Bird may have been able to get better offenses if their teams focused on offenses with similar offensive talent level to the 16/17 Cavs

I wont push too much on bulls/celtics but are you saying the durant era warriors had less offensive talent than the cavs?

Durant is essentially a super version of kyrie as far as strenghts and weaknesses go. And klay is a comparable offensive player to love (although i admit i prefer love offense here by a bit) and as far as non shooter starters i prefer draymond passing over thompson offensve rebounding

Go down the roster and cavs have more rotation shooters but warriors have other strenghts like iguodala passing

Do you really think it was lebron who played with more offensive talent here? I honestly think is even-ish at absolute best -for curry-

In fact i think warriors barely missing a beat offensively without durant sans 2017 is undertalked, if lebron had similar results to lebron + durant we would never stop hearing it as an examplr of lebron bad scalability. With curry is only praise that thw warriors (outside 17) were roughly as good when durant missef games

lebron having the worse defensive teammates by far doesnt automatically give him the better offensive ones, at least in the durant years (which are the only ones who reached similar offensive heights as lebron cavs)

Now leaving the 17-18 warriors aside i can see an argument the 86 celtics or jordan bulls teams did have less offensive talent. But i think is very close regardless

I will talk about the bulls


People usually think of offensive talent as amount og great scorers in a team and maybe a bit about great passers or spacing.

People rarely consider the GOAT level*offensive rebounding bulls roster had with rodman/grant/pippen as part of jordan offensive help for example.

(*shouts out to 2016 thunder, drexler blazers and every team moses malone played at too)

Lebron best offensive teams had two other great scorers (wade/bosh and kyrie/love) where jordan teams only had one (pippen) and that is usually all what gets compared really.

Thinghs like jordan teama often having great offense more on the back of their offensive rebounding that anythingh else dont get considered as offensive stackednes.

Hell i think you may be surprised how often bulls offense was "carried" to a degree by the offensive rebounding of pippen/rodman/grant. Even im some of their best offensive years. Amd offensive rebounding is not somethingh usually accounted for in offensive cast comparisions

Thinghs like pippen being a better creator, offensive rebounder and decision maker than kyrie dont get considered when peopkle look at only at scoring volume/efficiency (and lets be honest, aesthetics) to say kyrie>pippen in offense

Love/bosh is universally seen as a much better offensive third option than rodman or grant even though these guys added a ton of offensive value too as offensive rebounders or finishers.

Now is bosh/love a better -first- or even second option than rodman/grant? Yeah, easily.

Do i want to run my offense through rodman/grant/love/bosh? Not particularly

Do i want to run too much offense through these guys when lebron/kyrie/wade/jordan/pippen exist? Again not particularly

Lebron second options had still very big roles (were wade or kyrie offensove roles much smaller than pippen?, kyrie literally would tske more shots than lebron)

And lebron much maligned third options (bosh/love) didnt exactly have smaller roles than jordan third options (horace/rodman) did they?

I believe, although this is my theory that if you made a big 3 with the 90 bulls adding a offensive star scorer who is worse offensively than pippen he would have the same thing happen to him as it happend to bosh/love and lose prominence going from a bad team first option to a contender third one.

Like I said in one of my previous posts, I blame both LBJ and Wade... having two ball-dominant sub-optimal shooters in this era leads to diminishing returns on offense in this era

I mostly agree....but playing with wade would still affect jordan spacing wise. Jordan is not gonna want (nor do you want him to) become a "100%" off ball player to keep the ball in wade hands so whenever jordan is "ON-BALL" wade lack of spot up threat would affect him

And lets remember that

A) miami lebron was a surprisingly effective spot up 3 point shooter

B) miami lebron added offensive off ball value as a roll-man in the pick and roll, cutting (although funnily enough i think lebron peaked at this last 2 years in lakers lol, the amount of points he gets off exploding like a running back to catch amd drive to the rim is ridiculous) fast break runner, etc

Is not like lebron presence on the floor was a issue for wade possesions nearly to the same extent it was the other way around. Lebron shot was a lot more respected except in the spurs finals (and even thst was in part cause they totally ignored wade off ball to swarm lebron driving lanes)

where honestly i think he was too much into his head ala 2011 to look for the optimal shot and not "settle" for his jumper to the point it took him off rythim and made him less effective for the first half of the series. But that is going off a tangent

Okay, I feel like this really needs to be made clear since draymond keeps using the 2012 heat as proof for all his theories here and everyone keeps just taking it as face value for some reason.

If you take out games where one of wade or bosh were injured, the 2012 heat were as dominant as the 91 bulls in the playoffs. They went 8-1, went 3-0 vs a 48 win team(won by a margin of 15) and then went 4-1 vs a 58 win team winning by an average margin of 8/9.

The heat were worse without lebron than the bulls without jordan, theoerically had worse fit, had worse spacing relative to era and ultimately acheived the same postseason results when the three stars were on the court. This is despite them going in and out of lineups, them just having established an offensive system and Lebron not being a good shooter yet(he would become that in his second cleveland stint)

This whole "the 12 heat didn't reach the same highs" **** is honestly just a terrible argument. Lebron had to put one of the worst performances of his career)and they didn't even practice offense allegenbdly) for them to narrowly lose to a red-hot playoff behomith(mavs wrecked two 55 win teams 8-1) and the next year despite a bunch of unfavorable circumstances they obliterated the competition when their horses were available. In 2013 they were destroying the league until wade got hurt due to injury and they managed to survive both of LBJ's co-stars falling of a cliff to clinch a second title. This included a win over another red-hot playoff behomith in the 13 spurs.

Heatles when healthy were absolutely an atg team and would smoke most title teams relative to era. "Diminishnig returns" here is being massively overplayed based on a couple of individual series(pacers in 13, mavs in 11) which had a lot of factors besides the fit of "peak lebron, wade, and bosh"

[falcolombardi]

Okay, I feel like this really needs to be made clear since draymond keeps using the 2012 heat as proof for all his theories here and everyone keeps just taking it as face value for some reason.

I was mostly talking offense here since the reasoning draymond uses is about offensive portability/scalability

When those heat teams were not worse offenses on average than the average bird celtics, jordan bulls or curry warriors team. The idea that these guys teams peaked higher thanks to offensive portability doesnt work at all when they didnt have better offenses

The scalability line of argument doesnt make sense from the start imo

[OhayoKD]

Okay, I feel like this really needs to be made clear since draymond keeps using the 2012 heat as proof for all his theories here and everyone keeps just taking it as face value for some reason.

I was mostly talking offense here since the reasoning draymond uses is about offensive portability/scalability

When those heat teams were not worse offenses on average than the average bird celtics, jordan bulls or curry warriors team. The idea that these guys teams peaked higher thanks to offensive portability doesnt work at all when they didnt have better offenses

The scalability line of argument doesnt make sense from the start imo

Yeah but why. The heatles in the small sample draymond is using to mark down every other version of lebron were as dominant as the 91 bulls when the co-stars lebron couldn't fit with due to "scalability" were on the court. That's the lede. Don't bury it.

If dray can't get around that, then their theory collapses like a deck of cards.

[Clyde Frazier]

Terribly sorry that making thorough arguments is inconvenient.

I do not really care what your answers are, because you cannot actually answer most of them — and it is true that even trying to answer the one about all player types would be absurdly labour intensive.

This is bordering on a personal attack. Be respectful or you'll receive an official warning next time.

[PistolPeteJR]

All that really tells me is Jordan fit better with Pippen than Lebron did with Wade in their respective eras.

Literally all this is. Whether they realize and/or acknowledge it or not, some posters are trying to use "fit" as an argument for the player's value and scalability. There are so many variables that are either unaccounted for or just straight up being ignored to fit agendas. Intentionally or not, it's dishonest.

[LukaTheGOAT]

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