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

[falcolombardi]

Haven't read through the whole thread but has anyone figured out yet why the author didn't include MJ's off #s in the 90 season? Seems like a glaring admission that would skew results.

Also, I find it a little disingenous to isolate playoffs only given the massive discrepancy between the way players of this era and players of the 80s and 90s treated the regular season.

Wait, 90' is not included? I thought it was because the data graphic says "88-93"

Ohh i got it is because is a 5-year comparision. Ben used 88,89 then 91-93 it seems

[VanWest82]

Haven't read through the whole thread but has anyone figured out yet why the author didn't include MJ's off #s in the 90 season? Seems like a glaring admission that would skew results.

Also, I find it a little disingenous to isolate playoffs only given the massive discrepancy between the way players of this era and players of the 80s and 90s treated the regular season.

Wait, 90' is not included? I thought it was because the data graphic says "88-93"

Ohh i got it is because is a 5-year comparision. Ben used 88,89 then 91-93 it seems

But he calculated his 90 ON #s though. Seems fishy.

[VanWest82]

Also, is Ben including the 94 Bulls in his OFF calculations after they'd replaced old and finished Cartwright and Paxson et. al, with Kukoc, Longley, and Kerr with Pippen, Grant, and BJ having career years? Surely he couldn't have been that biased, though based on the way he's framed different segemts of years it seems like he might've been. If so, that's super disengenous.

Or perhaps Ben thinks Kawhi wasn't worth much to the 19 Raptors in the regular season because Siakam, VanVleet, and OG substantially improved during the 20 regular season?? Holy crap. And people think I'm biased against Lebron.

[falcolombardi]

Also, is Ben including the 94 Bulls in his OFF calculations after they'd replaced old and finished Cartwright and Paxson et. al, with Kukoc, Longley, and Kerr with Pippen, Grant, and BJ having career years? Surely he couldn't have been that biased, though based on the way he's framed different segemts of years it seems like he might've been. If so, that's super disengenous.

Or perhaps Ben thinks Kawhi wasn't worth much to the 19 Raptors in the regular season because Siakam, VanVleet, and OG substantially improved during the 20 regular season?? Holy crap. And people think I'm biased against Lebron.

Ok lets slow down a bit lol

94 is not included at all for jordan as he didnt play for the bulls that year. He wouldnt have any data from that year. 95 may or may not be. I would need to rewatch the video but i think it wasnt. Dont quote me on that tho

I think ben has his preferences/biases and god knows i have called them out nonstop at times lol. But he likes jordan and has said he ranks jordan higher than lebron because he thinks his style of play is more scalable and portable

I dont think he is fixing the numbers but if he did i dont think it would be to prop up lebron over jordan as it would go against his jordan peak>lebron peak stance and his philosophy of pretty much always ranking the more off-ball player ahead of their on-ball peers

2020 raptors wouldnt be included in a on-off for kawhi cause he didnt play for them

It is admittedly weird than he would go 88,89,91 and skip 90 but doubt it would be out of some anti jordan agenda that would go against his "jordan goat peak" stance.

If anythingh i have felt the opposite at times lol. As when he uses 3-year stretches to compare lebron and jordan in stats where lebron does better but not consecutively (ex: he uses 89-91 for jordan which are his best 3 years in X stat but uses 2008-2010 for lebon when 2009,2010,2012 would beat jordan in that stat)

[VanWest82]

Also, is Ben including the 94 Bulls in his OFF calculations after they'd replaced old and finished Cartwright and Paxson et. al, with Kukoc, Longley, and Kerr with Pippen, Grant, and BJ having career years? Surely he couldn't have been that biased, though based on the way he's framed different segemts of years it seems like he might've been. If so, that's super disengenous.

Or perhaps Ben thinks Kawhi wasn't worth much to the 19 Raptors in the regular season because Siakam, VanVleet, and OG substantially improved during the 20 regular season?? Holy crap. And people think I'm biased against Lebron.

Ok lets slow down a bit lol

94 is not included at all for jordan as he didnt play for the bulls that year. He wouldnt have any data from that year. 95 may or may not be. I would need to rewatch the video but i think it wasnt. Dont quote me on that tho

I think ben has his preferences/biases and god knows i have called them out nonstop at times lol. But he likes jordan and has said he ranks jordan higher than lebron because he thinks his style of play is more scalable and portable

I dont think he is fixing the numbers but if he did i dont think it would be to prop up lebron over jordan as it would go against his jordan peak>lebron peak stance and his philosophy of pretty much always ranking the more off-ball player ahead of their on-ball peers

2020 raptors wouldnt be included in a on-off for kawhi cause he didnt play for them

It is admittedly weird than he would go 88,89,91 and skip 90 but doubt it would be out of some anti jordan agenda that would go against his "jordan goat peak" stance.

If anythingh i have felt the opposite at times lol. As when he uses 3-year stretches to compare lebron and jordan in stats where lebron does better but not consecutively (ex: he uses 89-91 for jordan which are his best 3 years in X stat but uses 2008-2010 for lebon when 2009,2010,2012 would beat jordan in that stat)

Seems pretty clear he's including the 94 playoffs in his OFF calculations (edit: he explicitly says in the video they're included) with all those new faces and guys having career years as well as 95 when MJ was as shell coming back from baseball minus Horace. And who knows what's going on with his 90 #s given there's no OFF calculation included.

[VanWest82]

This is just as disingenuous as the many general board anti-MJ rants about how 94 Bulls were just as good without MJ.

The author tries to bury his ultra biased take in a bunch of pro-MJ film and analysis but his statistical agenda is pretty obvious.

[falcolombardi]

This is just as disingenuous as the many general board anti-MJ rants about how 94 Bulls were just as good without MJ.

The author tries to bury his ultra biased take in a bunch of pro-MJ film and analysis but his statistical agenda is pretty obvious.

"Him arguing that jordan has the goat peak is a false flag for his anti jordan agenda" my friend what

If ben taylor has an anti jordan agenda he is not doing a good job pushing it lol. Even in that video he goes out of his way to remind the viewers that jordan can still be the goat peak even if others have better on/off in the playoffs

Now about why he is showing 94? The greater point he is making in that part of the video is how jordan supporting casts improved over the 90's and showing how gradually they did better and better when jordan sat from the 80's to the late 90's

Is not even there to talk about jordan himself. The point of that graph is the non-jordan circles

[VanWest82]

"Him arguing that jordan has the goat peak is a false flag for his anti jordan agenda" my friend what

If ben taylor has an anti jordan agenda he is not doing a good job pushing it lol. Even in that video he goes out of his way to remind the viewers that jordan can still be the goat peak even if others have better on/off in the playoffs

Now about why he is showing 94? The greater point he is making in that part of the video is how jordan supporting casts improved over the 90's and showing how gradually they did better and better when jordan sat from the 80's to the late 90's

Is not even there to talk about jordan himself. The point of that graph is the non-jordan circles

Let me try this again in the sober light of day. For starters, even though Taylor has MJ's 96-98 numbers, he chooses not to use them, instead claiming these other periods that included his baseball years were his best playoff net on/offs. As you can see below, this is false. (I acknowledge that the 96-98 perid doesn't quite meet his min OFF cut off)



I am willing to believe that Taylor just goofed and uploaded a Youtube video he'd clearly spent hours upon hours on without the 90 OFF numbers even though he showed the ON numbers, and that his calculations did include both. We've all made mistakes professionally.

It's the inclusion of the 94 and 95 numbers that give me pause. 95 is more of a curiosity. It's interesting in that we like to know how good 80% baseball MJ was. But as has been detailed again and again again on these forums...the 93 team was old and tired; the 94 team had a bunch of new talent and a renewed commitment to basketball by Scottie, Horace, and BJ who finally got to be leaders; the 95 team lost Horace and replaced him with no one. Treating these years in an apples to apples manner is really tough. Again, it's curiosity type stuff. It is not something one uses to muddy stats in a supposedly good faith comparison.

[Djoker]

i'm guessing they just mean the stockton/malone jazz in general. 2 all-time greats together for 18 years who practically never missed a game due to injury, and they never made the finals until everybody else in the west basically just aged out. certainly not on the level of a tried and tested, amazing role player, dynasty spurs team with hall of famers with past and future rings.

they definitely benefited from the expansion as we had bulls 72 and 69 wins, sonics 64, and jazz 64 all in a 2 year window.

also, the 1998 jazz would seem to have the same situation as the 2014 spurs except even worse. they faced an 8th seeded rockets with hakeem having his first big injury year and they struggled even more than the spurs. they went down 2-1 and were getting worked by barkley in game 4 early in the 2nd quarter when barkley tore his triceps and then the rockets hakeem/barkley alternating offense went to crap (and drexler shot 2-14 in game 5 in the last game of his career). the spurs didn't get as close to losing. granted, the spurs were also partially saved by dajuan blair kicking someone and getting suspended. if anything, it just shows results aren't perfectly transitive, as that same jazz team shouldn't have swept the lakers and that spurs team shouldn't have made the finals based on the 1st round results. but when they clicked, they clicked.

Expansion inflated the league to 29 teams in the late 90's. The 2014 NBA had 30 teams. I can understand how it was easier to win 72 games in the late 90's compared to the 80's but I don't understand how it is easier to win 72 in the late 90's compared to the 10's when there was 1 more team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[falcolombardi]

Expansion inflated the league to 29 teams in the late 90's. The 2014 NBA had 30 teams. I can understand how it was easier to win 72 games in the late 90's compared to the 80's but I don't understand how it is easier to win 72 in the late 90's compared to the 10's when there was 1 more team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the top SRS regular seasons ever

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

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

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

But is very likely it exists to some degree

[AEnigma]

And worth reiterating here those expansion criticisms were mostly — albeit not entirely, because they are potentially relevant to Jordan’s and Lebron’s on-court ratings too — brought up in direct response to calling the 1997 Jazz just as good as and arguably better than the 2013/14 Spurs.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Does anyone ever look at Olympics play when trying to determine impact? We have an example of MJ, Lebron, and Kobe (said to be largely a carbon copy of MJ in many ways), playing with more talented teammates where not everything is centered around them.

For example,

Since ability to play off ball was brought up;

In the Olympics where they all did not have everything run through them:

08 Lebron-15.5 pts, 3.8 assists 60.2FG%, 46.4 3PT% in 24.8 minutes (8 games)
12 Lebron-13.3 pts, 5.6 assists 60.3FG%, 30 3 PT% in 25.1 minutes (8 games)

08 Kobe-15pts, 2.1 assists 46.2FG%, 32.1 3PT% in 23.5 minutes (8 games)

92 MJ-14.9pts, 4.8 assists, 45.1 FG%, 21.1 3PT% in 23.1 minutes of play (8 games)



We actually have more info on Lebron and Kobe through multiple Olympic FIBA event series (where they have multiple games)

06 Lebron at the MNT-15.8 pts, 2.2 assists, 64.6 FG%, 41.2 3 PT% in 19.4 minutes (5 games)

06 Lebron at the WC-13.9 pts, 4.1 assists, 58.2 FG%, 33 3PT% in 24.2 minutes (9 Games)

07 Lebron at the OLY Qualifier-18.1 pts, 4.7 assists, 75 FG%, 62.2 3PT% in in 22.2 minutes (10 games)

08 Lebron at the MNT-15.3 pts, 4 assists, 66.7 FG%, 42.9 3PT% in 25.8 minutes (4 games)

12 Lebron at the MNT-18.6 pts, 4 assists, 59 FG%, 50 3 PT% in 25.8 minutes (5 games)


Now the reputed more portable Kobe

07 Kobe at the TOA-15.3 pts, 2.9 assists, 54.8 FG%, 45.9 3PT% in in 19.9 minutes

08 Kobe at MNT-13.4 pts, 3.6 assists, 50 FG%, 36.8 3PT%

I know there is a lot of nice numbers we don't have, that would be nice to know, but it doesn't seem like MJ or Kobe are outright bringing more offensive value than Lebron in these roles where they were forced to play off ball. These are somewhat prime versions of all these guys (some might argue Lebron's prime doesn't start until his 08-09 season), yet I don't see unassailable proof that either Kobe or MJ are bringing more off-ball value. And without calculating the total averages, it seems as if Lebron shot the 3 ball best.

[VanWest82]

It's tough to compare Jordan's 92 experience to Kobe's or Lebron's. Dream team won by an average of 43 ppg. MJ averaged 4.6 steals per game in only 23 mins. He was surely the most impactful defensive player in that tournament. But it's just unclear how much we can take from that given how lopsided those games were. FWIW, Jordan also averaged a team high 17 ppg in the 84 Olympics as their best player on the way to gold despite only being 20. How did Lebron do as a 20 year old in the 04 Olympics?

Kobe also famously took on the stopper role for Team USA and had to take over in the gold medal game when Lebron, Wade, et. were noticeably taken by the moment in the second half. Sacrificing for the good of the team should be rewarded, not punished after the fact in legacy comparisons using only offensive stats.

[falcolombardi]

Are we really gonna talk olympic games stats?

Not trying to be an ass but the context of olympivs competition is completely different than any nba season down to the ruleset

[VanWest82]

Are we really gonna talk olympic games stats?

Not trying to be an ass but the context of olympivs competition is completely different than any nba season down to the ruleset

I agree though portability through international rules is an interesting angle worth considering in the right context. There are great NBAers who have looked just so so in those circumstances. I just don't like the reaching back in time to evaluate one guy's impact on a stupidly stacked roster vs. another's.

[DraymondGold]

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?

Hiya falcolombardi!

I'm... not sure what you mean by "I am not comparing LeBron to Jordan anymore." I literally reference Jordan in the very sentence you're referring to, and every one of my posts that include on/off numbers include Jordan's... Am I missing something?

Further, you say LeBron's "heat years offenses are as good as jordan's best offense runs". But... that's just not true. The heat's best PS relative offensive rating was in 14 at +9.6 and in 12 at +8.8, while Jordan's best was in 91 at +11.7 and 93 at +9.8. And remember, LeBron's on-rating with the Heat was +5.4 to Jordan's +8 and +8.5. Jordan's years seem significantly better than the heat years, no?

To address your point on whether we should care if LeBron's best years (per on/off) came with the Heat or the Cavs -- i think it does. The point I'm trying to make is that the way to have Lebron's team perform better when LeBron's off is to play like the Heat, but LeBron performs much worse when on the Heat (+5 vs Jordan's +8.5). The way to get LeBron's numbers to beat Jordan's requires playing a way where the team falls apart with LeBron off the court. LeBron could never line up having the on-court impact he had with the Cavs while playing in a team scheme that allowed players to thrive when he was off too.

This is the scalability I'm talking about. On better teams, who could survive the minutes without LeBron (which is important for helping win a championship), LeBron performed worse (worse ceiling raising). When surrounded by better fitting talent who weren't as good without him, LeBron seems to outpace Jordan (better floor raising), but at the cost of having the teams fall apart without him and make his teams overall worse than Jordan's. The result is that no LeBron team is better than Jordan's best teams.

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

The only reason the Warriors could get away with players who were far worse shooters but better passers and defenders was because of Curry and his off-ball movement and his shooting. Both Draymond and Iguodala (arguably the Warriors' two best defenders) would be far worse offensively with LeBron.

Regardless of whether Lebron had more offensive talent, he had far better shooting depth and played on a team that focused far more on offense than combining the best offense/defense. If you'd like to argue that LeBron's still the better overall player than Curry or even the better offensive player, that's fine. But the point is he shows greater diminishing returns (both in +/- data and in individual stats like scoring/efficiency) more than many other stars like Curry, and this shrinks the gap, and this diminishing gap is oh-so-important when comparing him against another GOAT-level peak like Jordan, where every point counts. Just to reiterate, when peak Jordan's off-ball more he's at a +8.5 on-court rating while when peak LeBron's off-ball more he's at +5.4.

[quick qualifier: it's also not quite true that Curry never showed LeBron-level offenses before Durant. His 16 team's offenses outpace any regular season numbers from any LeBron team ever... though they obviously declined in the playoffs when Curry got injured ]

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.

The rebounding thing is a fair point, but I see this much more with the 2nd 3-peat Bulls than the first 3-peat Bulls. Do you see Jordan's teammates having a strong offensive rebounding advantage from 89-93 over LeBron's teammates?

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

Nobody's asking Jordan to become a "100% off ball player". What they are saying is that if you add better teammates (who will want the ball in their hands more), somebody's going to have to go off-ball more. This gives you two options:
1) Don't change the GOAT-player's usage at all (Jordan/LeBron), and cut into their costar's ball time instead. In all likelihood, this will limit the costar's impact (e.g. Wade's, or Draymond's who we mentioned, or Pippin), leading to diminishing returns. [unless the costar is good and a a great off-ball player, but that's rare]
2) Only change the GOAT-player's usage. As you say, make Jordan go "100% off ball" in favor of the costar. But that's obviously a terrible idea (and again would lead to diminishing returns)
3) Compromise. Have both the GOAT-player and the costar go a bit off ball more. That's what both the Bulls and the Heat did... Jordan went a touch off-ball more to allow for Pippin to play as a primary creator, and LeBron went a touch off ball more to allow time for Wade to run the offense. Here, we only face diminishing returns if the players have scalability issues.

Both teams went with option 3. So what happened? Well, Peak (and more off-ball) Jordan played at +8.5 when on the court, while peak (and more off-ball) LeBron played at +5.4 when on the court.


You mention LeBron's added value as a spot up shooter and roll man / cutter. That's absolutely true! And this offensive versatility (i.e. better scalability than 09) is part of the reason I take Heat LeBron > 09 Cavs LeBron when adding them to a good team. But the problem is he's going up against Jordan, who's even better off-ball.

You mention LeBron was a lot more accommodating for Wade than the other way around. That may be true, but... if LeBron forced the issue, if he forced the Heat to let him play like he did on the Cavs to get GOAT-level value from him, he'd be completely marginalizing Wade (who's also worse off ball, like Draymond or Pippin) and thus again lead to diminishing returns again.

[DraymondGold]

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)

No worries! Happy to discuss

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.

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

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

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.

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

Now does some of that depend on Jordan's teammates? Of course. But if we consider teammates, we reach the same scalability concerns that I re-summarized in my previous reply to falcolombardi.

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.

Okay, so the regular season performance doesn't support LeBron's teams (far worse than Jordan's). Peak Heat Playoff LeBron doesn't beat out Jordan in on-court rating (+5.4 << +8.5). So let's shrink the sample size even more. Let's just look at 2 series, for a total of 9 games.

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

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

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

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.

Yeah, unfortunately this is not true too.

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

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

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.

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

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

If you give LeBron the best off-ball big man in the league like AD in 2020, then you don't get diminishing returns.

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

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.

Sounds like we're using the same word to mean different things. Which is okay! But we should be sure to understand what the other means when we use these terms, just to avoid confusion.

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.

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

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

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

Likewise, where are you getting these stats?

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

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

Where are you getting these stats (?)

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

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

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

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

[homecourtloss]

This is just as disingenuous as the many general board anti-MJ rants about how 94 Bulls were just as good without MJ.

The author tries to bury his ultra biased take in a bunch of pro-MJ film and analysis but his statistical agenda is pretty obvious.

What is this?

Anti-MJ rants on the GB? Where?

Taylor has Jordan’s peak as his GOAT peak. What’s his “agenda”?

[AEnigma]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Likewise, where are you getting these stats?

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

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

Where are you getting these stats (?)

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

[AEnigma]

It's tough to compare Jordan's 92 experience to Kobe's or Lebron's. Dream team won by an average of 43 ppg. MJ averaged 4.6 steals per game in only 23 mins. He was surely the most impactful defensive player in that tournament. But it's just unclear how much we can take from that given how lopsided those games were. FWIW, Jordan also averaged a team high 17 ppg in the 84 Olympics as their best player on the way to gold despite only being 20. How did Lebron do as a 20 year old in the 04 Olympics?

Kobe also famously took on the stopper role for Team USA and had to take over in the gold medal game when Lebron, Wade, et. were noticeably taken by the moment in the second half. Sacrificing for the good of the team should be rewarded, not punished after the fact in legacy comparisons using only offensive stats.

Yes, Jordan was the best defensive player on a team with Pippen, Robinson, and Ewing, because of his high steal numbers.

But in 2008 obviously we do not look at steal numbers anymore, because Kobe was “the stopper” (of whom? Patty Mills?), and the fact he took more shots per minute than several other more efficient scorers on the team is actually his sacrifice.