McBubbles wrote:SNPA wrote:rk2023 wrote:
Since 2012, the exact contrary has been true lol..The whole "LeCenter" thing in LA has been a gimmick, but Bron still has been playing it for us out of roster construction / necessities, played Point Guard for the 2020 Chip team and somewhat in 2021 on both very high-performing defensive slanted teams to floor raise while being a stellar help-defender, Played Power Forward in Miami and Cleveland and multiple points that fielded extremely good offenses. Of-course using LeBron on the ball is the most optimal for a team, but he still provides some value off-ball (not implying he's close to a Bird or Steph in that regard) with cutting, play-finshing, and more connective passing. Attached below is some BBI "Ball Dominance" measures from LeBron and Curry's prime FWIW.
Of course, Bird at either combo-forward position might be the most self-less basketball ever played from a star, but to act like LeBron is some slouch in that regard of team play is hog-wash.
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Not sure where Curry enters into this.
LeCenter is playing up, not down. And it doesn’t really matter because James has always forced his teams and teammates to play a style the conforms to him. He has spent his whole career going franchise to franchise forcing them to utilize all their current and future assets to build a style that fits him. And once they are used up he moves on. It’s the exact opposite of Bird who stayed with one team and adapted his game to fit his teammates.
From 2010 to 2011, in the space of a single off -season, LeBron got huge, massively improved his mid-range shooting, improved his 3 point shooting and post game, and massively decreased his ball dominance in order to play a PF role (a position he's complained and moaned about playing several times before) to address the Miami Heat's lack of spacing, **** front court and in order to not step on Wade's toes.
He literally took the ball out of his own hands and turned himself into a stretch big in order to help the team, you know, the thing people meme about him doing to his teammates?
How you can look at 2009-10 Lebron, and then 2011-2014 Lebron and think "hmph, Lebron never changes for his teammates" means you just don't know or care about objective reality regarding Lebron, plain and simple. It's not even like this was a gradual change, this happened immediately.
Also every single "they stayed on the same team" argument for any player not named LeBron or KG is invalid. Most of the top 10 were not only drafted or traded to extremely fortunate situations, but they weren't allowed to leave even if they wanted to, which of course they had no incentive to do in the first place.
Bird was drafted to a bad team.
As for James, you’ll have to show me. Maybe we have different definitions of massively.
https://www.nba.com/stats/player/2544
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/lebron-james-most-ball-possession-year
And yes, changing teams has some impact, obviously. That doesn’t make what I said invalid.
