So first, the YouTube links are problematic for me so I wasn't able to watch what he was talking about.
I do understand the point about the difference between a typical Jordan-block compared to an interior deterrent though, and would agree that the larger LeBron is more of an interior guy.
However, it's strange to me to use that as a focal point as if in these circumstances LeBron is playing with Jordan-block-type guys while he takes on a more interior role. That's true of Wade to be sure, but not most of the guys.
I also think we just need to really talk through what's meant by "paint protection". Here are some of the options based on what I've seen so far:
1) Basketball goalie
2) The ability to dominate the painted area on defense against opposing men.
3) The ability to deter attacks in/to the paint by those with the ball when you are in the paint.
4) Anti-Gravity - a tendency for all opposing players to avoid the territory around you.
5) The regressive impact your presence on the court has on scoring in the paint.
I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of you and others on this, but would really emphasize that "paint protection" is a metaphor, and you can't just co-opt the meaning of a metaphor and expect to have productive communication. I'm inclined to say the use of a new and/or non-metaphorical term would be a good thing here.
OhayoKD wrote:I'll push more strongly on the idea that Lebron being an anchor wasn't clear-cut here. These defenses generally collapsed without him(moreso in the second cleveland stint), dropped as his own indvidual influence faded, and regularized data like drapm, dpipm, ect, ect has him leading the team across the board for the rs and the playoffs. This is true whether you go with his first mvp years, the heatles, or the second cavs stint.
Even if you doubt the extent of his paint protection, he also usually offers signifcant value as the primary defensive quarterback/play-caller, and, in his best years at least, can do a job vs bigger and smaller players, notably having a big role in limiting steph curry in 2015 and 2016, and derrick rose in 2011. Returning to paint protection, even in 2020, with Davis as the undisputed best defender, Lebron was tasked with most of the paint protection for 2 of the lakers 4 series with AD shutting down key perimiter matchups with minimal help.
I don't think Lebron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals to what he was exerting in his heatle years, and I think that at least partially informed the approach of slowing the game to a grinding halt.
"anchor" is another metaphor, which originally meant something more like "last line of defense" but you're interpreting it as "most valuable defender", and that emerging semantic drift is causing more confusion here.
Re: "I don't think LeBron was even capable of expending comparable offensive energy in the 2015 finals". I mean, he went for 35/13/8 in those finals with everyone commenting how much energy he was exerting. You want to say he had even more energy when he was younger? Cool, but from a perspective of whether he was "compensating" by lowering offensive energy in those finals, this fact is as moot as the theory is counter to what people who were watching perceived.
OhayoKD wrote:Regarding "out-valuing" Jordan, I'm cautious there. Jordan's teams had more dominant top-end seasons than LeBron's teams did, and while I'm all for looking at supporting cast, there is also the matter that Jordan seemed to force an intensity with his teammates that LeBron often did not. It was utterly insane watching the '95-96 Bulls at the time, and I feel like as we look back in history we have this tendency to feel like it was inevitable based on the talent on the roster when it really wasn't.
That's plausible, though I'd ask how much credit we think MJ deserves for the off-court side of this as the Bulls seemed to be able to mantain this drive in 1994 in Jordan's absence coming off a three-peat.
Hmm, 2 things:
1) What exactly are you perceiving as "drive" in '93-94? Are you simply inferring drive because the team has a good W-L record?
2) Do you think they still had drive in '94-95? If not, why not? If so, then why did '95-96 seem like such a shocking shift?
OhayoKD wrote:
My point was really that he maintained jordan+ impact signals on teams of various quality(floor vs cieling) with various teammates. But if you aren't talking era-relative adaptability, I don't have a strong enough opinion to contest it. I will, however, offer a caution: for modern era translation, box-production going up does not mean a player has become more valuable. Scoring 30 ppg where the field is scoring 20 pgg isn't necessarily worse than scoring 40 ppg in a where the field scores 30 ppg. Crude example but it should illustrate the point. If you are going to argue Jordan gets better thanks to spacing, it can't just be a matter of numbers. You need to argue that he will be better relative to his peers in 2022 than 1991. According to ben, jordan was a limited pure passer even relative to kobe(found half as many good passes per 100 iirc), so i'm not sure having him helio vs more sophisticated and talented defenses produces better results(as far as winning goes).
"he translates well" needs a little more support than "ah, spacing -> numbers go brr"
Can you elaborate on what you're seeing from Kareem in terms of "impact signals"?
It's those samples I mentioned in the last post, with the 71/72 bucks being peers for the peak bulls(era-relative anyway) and holding up well(63 win pace) when oscar was out of the lineup(cieling raising), you have him winning 56 on a 27 win team(identical record to the bulls pre-mj) as a rookie and then going from 3-14 to a 48(srs) or 45 win pace(record) in 75 with his second and third best players plummeting in production(floor-raising). The weakest sample >10 game sample iirc comes with the 75 and 78 lakers(from ben's peak video on the cap) with a 32 win team lifted to a 52 win team. Compared to the progression of the bulls where you have a 27 win team reach 48-50 wins(sub 50 srs), a schematic jump, and then another massive jump in 1991(the blip is oakley's depature in 89 which conincdes with a defensive collapse), I get the impression Kareem hit goat-level(71/72) team results with less help, contention(40-63), with less help, and everything below with less help. Additinonally he's able to replicate this with his the nature of his supporting cast being significantly shook-up(post-75). It also doesn't hurt that Kareem is considered one of the best players in the world before he enters the nba and is flirting with perfection(team-wise) in college and highschool. I don't know we have anything else really(well, besidesincomplete box-aggregates from the era), but in lieu of a compelling counter-case, i think its probable Kareem has a relative to era impact advantage, even if we theorize that he doesn't translate across eras as well.[/quote]
Okay, but do remember that there's that soft middle to Kareem's career where the Lakers were going nowhere, and know that at least with Ben's prime WOWYR metric Kareem doesn't look as good as Jordan. Now, much as I respect Ben, I wouldn't treat a number like this as a definitive answer, however I'd be real careful about running with an in-head-WOWY if it tells you something counter to what the data has told him.
And of course, if you've done something more quantitative, or you see a specific issue with Kareem's data along these lines, please elaborate.
OhayoKD wrote:I'm definitely focused on LeBron's blips when I talk about Jordan being the more robust playoff performer, but I don't think "immense longevity" really explains it. I remember watching LeBron in his early prime, and I remember the ways he struggled. At the time I was one of the ones trying to calm others down about what it said about limits to LeBron's capacity, and I don't think I've actually changed my stance.
In general, there's a common issue I tend to call the "Fast Eddie" growth curve (after the character in the 1961 move "The Hustler") where a young guy can hit phenomenal highs but is more easily rattled than the old, grizzled vet. Fast Eddie over the course of the movie makes that transition, and I think there are a bunch of actual athletes who show similar tendencies, with LeBron being one of them.
I think it's actually important not to give Jordan too much credit for being "perfect" in avoid chokes, but while LeBron has developed toward being greatly robust with time, it's hard for me to say that that actually allowed him to be more dominant over any run than Jordan was.
So what specifically do you define as a "run" here. I feel pretty comfortable Lebron was more robust in his second cavs stint on the basis of how he was relatively unaffected by opposing defensive quality, how the cavs relative defense was more effective against better offenses than worse offenses(sort of implying they weren't even going at full gear), his production improving over the course of the series as jordan's generally declined, and significantly better looking aupm/pipm single year results(ben presents thar as an average), better three year on/off(2nd behind duncan wierdly enough), and what looks like staggering life if you go with "pure impact". (cavs are a sub 30 in games lebron doesn't play reflecting a collapse on both ends and play like a 65-70 win team in the 16/17 playoffs while playing like the 88-90 bulls in the 15 playoffs when love and kyrie go out).
You might respond to me with "but the regular season"(and jordan's box-stuff looks better), but then I look at the better holistic signals(which account for defense better) for lebron(rapm, non-regularized impact, pipm), and would have to respond "are we sure about that?"[/quote]
I think the 2nd Cavs run is a good place to focus for LeBron having a more bulletproof run than Jordan.
I also think that the focus on the playoffs makes sense...but it's tricky because the East was weak and the Cavs lost to the Warriors every time but one. That one win is beyond huge of course, but beyond that the team's playoff highlights involved teams led by Paul Millsap and DeMar DeRozan.
OhayoKD wrote:I would point out that from '87-88 to '90-91, the defensive improvement of the team was negligible. It was the offense that changed. When you zoom in like you've done I understand why you draw different conclusions, but flat out: Jordan proved he was capable of leading an elite defense before Phil or Pippen got there, it was the offense where he was unproven.
Well to be clear, the "proof" you're referencing is the 1988 regular season. Here are my quibbles:
1. If we zoom out a little more, 1988 is the only season prior to pippen and grant's ascension(and per pipm, on/off/partial rapm, Jordan's own decline in terms of "two-way" impact) where the Bulls managed a good regular season defense. That defense did not hold up in the postseason and it fell back to average in the following regular season. This rise and immediate decline coincided with Oakley's time at the Bulls. Oakley was chicago's premier front-court presence and probably the second best defender on that singular strong regular season defense.
2. 1988 is also an outlier for Jordan in terms of D-PIPM, and via various people's film-tracking, jordan's perimiter and paint activity, foot speed, and defensive error rate all go the wrong direction from that point forward. Even if 1988 MJ could lead a good defense, that doesn't necessarily apply to all versions of MJ.
3. If we compare to this Lebron's own outlier outcome(2009), the defense wasn't nearly as good(-2 vs -5), held up much worse in the playoffs, and experienced a much smaller drop-off(regularized or non-regularized) when the player in question went off the court. Lebron's corresponding 5 year D-RAPM was the 5th best. Lebron's playoff D-RAPM, for his career, is tied with Kawhi(consider how many more games that is maintained over for Lebron) as of 2020.
4. Lebron matches or exceeds jordan's 88 dpipm score at multiple points including 2020. Even in 2021, with Davis an injured shell, the Lakers are the best defense in the league before Lebron gets hurt. Using raw, stuff, I'd also say the 15 cavs and the 16 cavs are better defenses than the 88 bulls when we consider the post-season, and again, the experience a bigger drop-off without Lebron in the rs.
5. To really zoom-in on 2015, the cavaliers aren't initally very good at defense. Lebron rests and rejuvenates and the cavs defense skyrockets when he's back(top 10 post-miami vacation). Again, Lebron seems tied to the defensive success of his teams in a way Jordan doesn't.
I don't know it much matters where you draw the lines here. Unless we think Jordan was anchoring the defense for the Bulls at their peak(and I don't think the timeline of their improvement, film-tracking, or non-decline in 94 support this), Lebron looks more impressive. Maybe Lebron suffers from some sort of defensive port concern, but in lieu of that, Lebron strikes me as more impactful defensively and I'm not sure it's particularly close.[/quote]
1. I think I got into this with falco. I think we should be careful about trying to downplay a player's significance in Achievement X as a means to downplay his significance in Achievement Y. Jordan on his own was not enough to ensure a Top 5 defense, but the same is true for Pippen or Phil Jackson the coach or LeBron.
2. I'd appreciate if you could share where you're getting the data on these metrics.
3. I certainly understand being more impressed with LeBron's D, and as I've noted, my analysis also sides with LeBron.
4. Uh, the Lakers had the best DRtg in the league over the entire year despite playing most their minutes without LeBron. To me the story of the Laker defense that year was about how good the Laker role players had become in Vogel's scheme...which was why it was so heartbreaking the way they then seemed to treat those players as if they were background extras when planning their off-season strategy.
5. You're using LeBron's presence in 2015 show a general trend of defensive WOWY impact while also pointing to 2020, while ignoring the way the defense caved in between those years. Meanwhile, you use the years between 1988 and 1991 to try to talk as if Jordan really didn't have much defensive impact. If feels to me like you're in real danger of falling prey to confirmation bias.
OhayoKD wrote:1. I will say, that when you are discussing a 20 year career, its likely not wise to assume a player's mentality/philosophy has been identical throughout. Perhaps in 2022 Lebron overestimated himself, but in 2016 Lebron demanded the Cavs pay big bucks for a three-and-d. It's also possible the limitations of 2022 Lebron were more limiting than prior versions. In 2021 the Lakers were looking league-best before injury, and still looked like a threat to the suns. You say 2020 is a fluke, but Lebron first pulled the "win with bleh spacing" trick in 2012 and got impressively close in 2015. As falco mentioned, Lebron has the two "worst shooting" titles of the era with Gianni's bucks coming closest. And ultimately, with time, comes volume. We would expect more bad and more good here.
2. The specific thing I think Lebron deserves credit(at least as far as off-court winning goes) is his willingness to actively pursue co-stars. The lakers were not the only option for AD to potentially win, but Lebron was the guy who was socializing with him and unofficially "tampeing" to get him. Old-heads, including Jordan, have looked down on that practice, but Lebron encouraged it, repeatedly exploiting friendships to help his teams get co-stars. Maybe he erred when he went for the shiny thing again with Westbrook, but it was probably necessary for the Lakers to win in 2020.
3. I think with off-court analysis it is important to look at process independent of the tangible results in a specific case. While the Wizards may have been **** with or without Jordan, its not hard to see a variety of situations where contention is at play where MJ's conduct at the Wizards doesn't ruin things. Even at the Bulls, Jordan played a role in the relationship fraying with Krause. He's quoted having made anti-semetic remarks, he punched a teammate, got into beef with various bigs, and had issues with Erving out of spiteful envy.
Especially with your focus being on transporting players to the modern nba, how well do you think Jordan's off-court behavior plays in the age of social media. It's not hard to see this breaking a locker-room:
https://thesportsrush.com/nba-news-michael-jordan-used-flaming-fagot-as-reference-for-kwame-brown-his-whipping-boy-according-to-si-and-washington-post/While the Bulls were able to survive, does your understanding of how organizations work support the idea that Jordan is a positive leadership influence? Particularly if we're transposing this to 2022, I see loads of potential pitfalls with MJ's off-court antics
We celebrate when machismo and "killer instinct" succeeds, but we tend to sweep aside when it fails
1. As I've said, it's not just 2022, this began in 2018 with his arrival in LA. The Westbrook stuff has only made clear how clear-cut his priorities were.
Re: 2nd stint Cavs. Indeed, after the Heatles, LeBron seemed like he understood what kind of fit he actually needed, which is why it was so maddening to see how he changed with his next team. A couple things though:
a) On those Cavs, he didn't explicitly choose role players over stars. He came to Cleveland because they had Kyrie and could were able to acquire Love. That's what he cared about first and foremost, and so in that sense, I'm not sure if anything actually changed. Just as LeBron pushed the Cavs to get Love to create a 3-star team, he pushed the Lakers to get Westbrook. The difference really is that in the first circumstance the Cavs had a big time prospect to trade, in the second they had to sacrifice the supporting cast. And that - along with the fact that he drastically overrated Westbrook - is why the former wasn't a bad move but the latter was one of the most damaging moves I can ever remember a player twisting his team to make.
b) I do think it likely that LeBron's advanced age in LA led him to believe that he needed someone who could "play LeBron" so that he could rest. I really don't know if there's any evidence that this is why he was obsessed with getting a 3rd star at all cost, but I'm sure it relates to why he ended up zeroing in on the absolute worst fitting teammate he could have ever had in Westbrook.
Re: "You say 2020 is a fluke but he did it before." I think we need to drill down further here than just "They were great at 3's, but they won the title."
I said 2020 was a fluke specifically because the Bubble caused teams to shoot better than they ever did before, and the Lakers improving their spacing capacity was exactly what they needed to shore up their obvious weakness at shooting. We can debate whether that really made the difference for them in the playoffs, but this was absolutely a change precisely in the direction they needed due to reasons that they couldn't have expected to occur.
What about 2012? Let's look at it like this:
In the playoffs, the Heat played 4 teams.
The Heat had a higher 3PAr than 2 of those teams in the RS.
The Heat had a higher 3P% than the other two teams in the RS.
The Heat hit more 3's than their opponents in 3 out of their 4 PS series.
And also had a higher 3P% than 3 out of their 4 PS opponents.
In a nutshell, this absolutely was not a team that was winning despite being outstripped from the arc against the opponents they were playing.
Now, was their stellar defense a part of the reason for this? Sure, but it wouldn't have been enough to make up the difference against the shooters of today's game.
In 2012, the Heat were literally not at a massive spacing disadvantage, and that's how they won.
In 2022, they would get crushed trying to play the same way.
Hence, trying to take 2012 & 2020 together and say "LeBron is the exception to the rule!" is looking for a simpler, and yet more mysterious, rule than what actually happened. In the first run, it wasn't really an exception to the rule. In the second, there was something really anomalous happening.
Re: 2015 "impressively close". Certainly impressive and close, but I do think it's important to remember that once the Warriors adapted, it really wasn't all that close. In that series, the Cavs had no ability to run an effective offense, and were getting by on the Warriors being unsure how to attack a Cavs team that looked very different from the one the Cavs had intended to put out there. It was no given even that the Warriors would figure it out in time, but figure it out they did, and in the end, it's those last 3 games in the series that foretell what we'd have expected to happen if the two teams kept playing each other indefinitely.
2. Pursuing co-stars. In general I'm not looking to judge this as if it's a bad thing, and I'll also say it's not a new thing. From the Laker perspective, LeBron, AD & Westbrook are just 3 more established stars the team was able to acquire as part of a long line of similar players going back to Wilt.
This incidentally means that while I'm very critical of LeBron, I'm certainly not letting Laker management off the hook for the Westbrook situation. The reality is that this was a very Laker mistake to make.
3. I'm quite critical of Jordan's bullying tendencies and push back at any idea that he represents an ideal leader. I agree with you that behaving like this in eras closer to the present would not go well, and can certainly see arguments for why LeBron would be the better player to draft in today's league.
At the same time, I think Jordan's all-encompassing approach probably helped the team with the 3-peats and was likely essential to their 72-10 year.
Leadership impact is a slippery, slippery thing.