NO-KG-AI wrote:OhayoKD wrote:NO-KG-AI wrote:Agree with all this.
Dwyane Wade took his game off the ball to a much bigger extent in Miami than LeBron did, is that even in question? Rightfully btw, it is clearly the right move, somebody has to give up primacy between those two, and LeBron was bigger, better, and younger and more durable, the logical fit. Both LeBron and Wade have spoken openly about their conversations regarding Wade taking a bigger backseat to allow LeBron and the Heat to flourish.
But yea, the Heat playing Bosh at the 5 and going with another shooter in the front court was very frequent otherwise their offense would stall out and go through struggles (comparatively). The LeBron formula for creating great offenses is dead in the water without sacrificing some size and defensive acumen for shooting and space.
The 2012 heat had worse space and shooting(relative to era) and went +14 in the games lebron, wade and bosh all played.
The 2020 Lakers had worse space and shooting relative to era and were all-time dominant
The 2015 kyrie-less love-less Cavs had worse space and shooting relative to era without kyrie and love and still were as good as the 88-90 bulls
You know what every team i just listed has in common? They all capped out at a 40 win pace without lebron. The cavs*with kyrie and love) capped at a 30 win pace. The bulls were a 30 win cast in 84 before getting better, ascended from average to "league best" as jordan's effiency, volume, and impact data plateued or declined across the board(regular season or postseason), and were a 55 win team without jordan sweeping a 48 win team in the first round and taking the 61 knicks to 7.
But why use evidence when you can push a baseless narrative?
You're cherry picking tiny sample sizes to try and prove LeBron's teams were comparable offensively for small stretches, even when it's plenty clear they are a lot more talented offensively than the Bulls were.
And as we all know, the sole marker of offensive talent is how many points you can put up by yourself.
You're trying to paint this picture of Lebron's teams failing without him, when he was always there and always holding the ball, so it's kind of irrelevant and not at all what me or anyone else is even arguing about.
… But he was not always there. He missed time, he left otherwise intact teams, he staggered with his costars (more than Jordan ever did with Pippen)… and the results paint a pretty clear picture over a large sample of time.
Do you mean the 11-12 Heat that were 8th on offense
The team that was 12.4 points better on offence with Lebron?
and were 3rd on offense in the playoffs?
Ah I guess sample size and defensive opposition stops mattering the second it becomes inconvenient to Jordan’s deification narrative.
The 2015 Cavaliers were 3rd on offense with 53 games of Kyrie and 77 from Love. What's your point?
And were a +9.9 relative offence with Lebron on the court.
Again, I said Jordan produced way better offenses than LeBron ever was able to sustain over any significant period than LeBron was ever able to muster
His
teams certainly were better than Lebron’s, but I thought we were comparing individual impact, no?
even when having usually more than one offensive star player next to them, that were capable of putting up 25+ on great efficiency, and most of them being excellent shooters for their position as well.
Yet weirdly enough, they generally struggled to generate offence without Lebron on the court. Hm, it is almost as if isolation scoring itself does not inherently drive good offence. Which you would know if you paid any attention to Jordan’s teams before 1990.
And what the hell does "spacing relative to era" even mean? offensive rating doesn't have adjusted ratings based on spacing. The Bulls produced multiple great offensive ratings without the floor spacing LeBron's teams enjoyed. Space makes it easier to score and generate easier offense. It wasn't harder for LeBron to scorer or create buckest because his team was only the 12th best spaced team of its own era or something. They had more space than Jordan's teams, therefore he had more opportunities to get it done..
Do you think league offensive rating has just risen linearly every year.
Fun fact: league average rating for Lebron’s career until 2017 was lower than it was for Jordan’s career. Despite spacing improvements. How strange.
And since these are league relative offensive comparisons, yes, it does matter that relative to his own league, Jordan had comparatively more space to work with than Lebron did. Even if in an absolute sense Lebron’s era was more spaced out, evolutions in defence did not guarantee that made life easy. If you ever bothered to think about this for more than half a second, you probably could have figured that out by just remembering that 2002-04 had more “space” than most of Jordan’s career, yet scoring was still in a miserable state because defences were far less restrained.
LeBron has played the ass end of his career in the easiest era ever to generate efficient offense
Cool, most of us are perfectly fine analysing Lebron’s offences before that jump.
and his teams are never going to match up to the overall dominance of the Jordan/Pippen Bulls, despite LeBron's running mates being more numerous and way more offensively dominant than Pippen ever was... because of Jordan's abilities.
And why did those “abilities” not do anything for him in 1988 and 1989. So so so very strange how these oh so untalented offensive teammates were the ones who correlated best with the Bulls’ offensive evolution. And similarly strange how there were significant declines every time Pippen was diminished or injured.
TLDR. LeBron has played with teammates that are better at putting the ball in the basket,
Famously basketball is just about stacking isolation scorers. That is why the 1969 Lakers blew away the 1969 Celtics and why the 1977 76ers blew away the 1977 Blazers.
Jordan stans, man. Would be nice if you ever showed some real interest in the sport.
and in an environment where it is easier to put the ball in the basket.
So easy, that is why until 2017 the league struggled to do it more than it did during Jordan’s era.
his teams just flat out haven't been as good at putting the ball in the basket as the Bulls. It's that simple.
Except they have. The stipulation is just that Lebron needs to be on the court for them to do so.
You can draw whatever conclusion you want from that, or use 5-15 game samples where LeBron's teams played at Jordan levels or whatever. I don't like working with tiny sample sizes, spot minutes, even single seasons get dicey when we have like nearly a decade of dominance from both that can be looked at....
True!
2009: +13 net offensive impact to team, +7.3 on-court offence relative to league
2010: +15.3 net offensive impact to team, +8.2 on-court offence relative to league
2011: +4.6 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league
2012: +12.4 net offensive impact to team, +5.9 on-court offence relative to league
2013: +11.9 net offensive impact to team, +10.7 on-court offence relative to league
2014: +9 net offensive impact to team, +7.1 on-court offence relative to league
2015: +13.6 net offensive impact to team, +9.9 on-court offence relative to league
2016: +12.6 net offensive impact to team, +9 on-court offence relative to league
2017: +14.8 net offensive impact to team, +9.6 on-court offence relative to league
2018: +7.9 net offensive impact to team, +6.3 on-court offence relative to league
Wow, look at that, a decade of offensive dominance in the regular season. I sure am glad I did not pretend that Lebron played every minute and was solely responsible for how his team performed while he was on the bench.
y'all can have this thread.
Yeah because it turns out when confronted with data that spits all over the common mythos, Jordan stans immediately need to flee the area.
