capfan33 wrote:
The team undoubtedly was better but I guess the question here is how much better are we talking. 17 wins is, of course, a very low bar to clear and while I would assume the Cavs are better in 05, I can't imagine they were significantly better.
You ain't even Ohayo, my question was is 05 even the year being discussed? and what does "when healthy" mean? Is it before or after trades? Which trades is it before or after?
Regarding the 2nd point of shooting, I think the idea is that nowadays with 3-point shooting a single offensive engine with just shooting and not much else can elevate the team's offense tremendously, even if they don't have much offensive talent overall. But Lebron didn't have that advantage that comes with elite spacing or much talent, and still managed to elevate the offense to +5 levels despite this. Their overall ORTG was 2.3 PTS higher than the Nuggets despite the Nuggets having guys like Andre Miller and Kenyon Martin who were very solid offensive supporting cast options in their own right.
Again what does this actually mean? What is an overall ORTG because they had a +0.5 offense during the regular season and the Nuggets had a -0.1 offense. And no one is comparing Melo and LeBron, especially since Melo had a terrible season so what is the supporting cast thing supposed to prove? You named two notoriously bad shooters as well, KMart was one of the worst mid volume midrange shooters in the league and ventured out deep where he was usually shooting like 20% and Andre Miller is the worst 3 point shooting PG prior to Ben Simmons. If anything you're reinforcing my point about exactly how bad that offense was at shooting and they were still about as good as the Cavs because it mattered less back then.
Also, this is later on in your post but "The issue here is that with 3-point shooting it's easier to blowout teams and postseason offensive ratings have trended upwards for ages." I think the bolded somewhat contradicts what you're trying to say here. I would probably agree with you theoretically that 3-point shooting causes more variance and therefore blowouts, ORTG spike (as I said, still want to see some hard evidence), but if that's the case then once again, what Lebron was able to do without particularly great spacing even for the era is quite impressive.
1. I said it matters less than it does now to have shooters. Ohayo said the opposite. This point isn't contradictory, since teams shot less back then the variance wasn't as big a deal. The more the average team shoots, the more it becomes a big deal to have good shooting.
2. Elevation of what to what? You guys still haven't even explained where the hell that +5 number or this +2.3 number comes from. Actually talk your points out when you make them don't vaguely mention things in passing and refuse to elaborate because I'm truly lost right now at what y'all are talking about.
Moreover, the fact that a young Lebron who was reliant on driving with an unreliable jump shot could power such high-caliber offenses without particularly great spacing is definitely a significant feather in his cap any way you slice it, even if Ohayo may have overstated it somewhat.
They were a +0.5 offense ranked 12th in the league bro.
So you're right on this being a bit unfair to MJ in the sense that he played a lot of 5-game series and didn't get as many opportunities to play 7-game series against easier opponents, but the thing is as you said, most early round opponents aren't going to be as good. With that in mind, it should theoretically be easier to beat these opponents without having to go to 6 or 7 games in the first place.
Theoretically, yes. In reality MJ had two of his best series on the first round against the Cavs and they both went to 5. Not to mention, again, it penalizes MJ for winning too many series in 4 or less games. It's not really a good supporting argument to say "well LeBron is a slow starter".
If you actually look at the time period involved, it doesn't involve postseasons pre-08 where Lebron did get to beat up on relatively inferior competition post-game 4. But a quick glance from 08 onwards, he gets 2 games against Washington (where he actually played worse than he did the first 4 games of the series), a game against Chicago in 10 which was by far his worst game of the series, a game against Philly which was also either the worst or 2nd worst game of the series, a very meh game against the Knicks in 2012, game 5 against Brooklyn in 2014 which was whatever, you get the idea.
You have to go to 2018 to find a good example of him "stat-padding" (I'm not trying to strawman you, I'm just trying to sum up the argument you were making here that is a very reasonable argument to make) in games 5-7 of a playoff series. Lebron's dominance in the first round of the playoffs has been noted before, and as such, the vast majority of these 5-7 games are played in the later rounds against significantly tougher competition. As such, I don't think it's really unfair at all to say that Lebron improves more than MJ does as a series goes on,
I'm not saying it's not, I'm saying why is this relevant. Let's say LeBron starts the series a +6.0 then elevates to an +8.0 for the last three games, is that better than being a +8.0 for four games and a +6.0 the next three games? Hell you can **** around and lose in 4, or be down 3-1 by the time you turn it on. Plus there's more games in game 1-4 than in games 5-7. Like this is the playoffs not the regular season, when you get the wins matters less than if you get them, because one you win the games it's done.
while no comparison is perfect I think it's more than reasonable. It's a pretty clear trend that also fits with their approach to the game as players, Lebron being more calculated and MJ more straightforward. And I think there are philosophical arguments to be made for either approach being better, not making judgments on that here.
Moreover, "Like I don't see what's so positive about improving as a series goes on, you'd think the goal is 4-0 every round."
I fundamentally disagree with this in the context of this argument. You are right that from a mentality perspective, as a competitor in the lockerroom, this should be the mentality always. It's not actually the reality of what happens in the games themselves, however, and as such isn't the lens through which we should be analyzing players.
Just to illustrate this point, name me one player that has been able to consistently 4-0 (or 4-1 for the sake of argument) opponents in the playoffs throughout their career as the best or 2nd best player on their team. Name a player that has been able to do it in later rounds against better teams. It doesn't exist. Hell, the greatest winner ever got taken to 10-game 7s and many other 6-game series which often came down to the wire, even against vastly inferior teams. MJ during his immortal 3-peats got taken to 6 games in every finals series he played outside of 91 not to mention the playoff series' before that. Moses Malone's fo fo fo quote is infamous partly because of how rare it was for a team to showcase that level of dominance over the very best that the competition had to offer.
So yes, in reality, how players adapt as a series goes on is definitely relevant, especially when it comes to what I'm assuming we both care about the most, which is beating the best teams later on in the playoffs. In fact, being able to elevate your game as a series goes on against the best of competition is a very valuable and I would assume rare trait to have for a player and should definitely be looked at as a feather in Lebron's cap, I don't really see how it's arguable.
About this... The best teams are MORE likely to sweep you! The later games in the series won't even come in that case and all that adaptation is for naught. We can look at their career losses in later rounds (removing the first round) and see LeBron has lost 2 times in 4, 2 times in 5, 4 times in 6, and twice in 7. Meanwhile MJ has lost once in 5, twice in 6, and once in 7. Why? Because he was more likely to be up in a series early which gets rid of a lot of the pressure. MJ won 5 Finals series in 6 and was up 3-0, 3-1, 2-1, 2-1, and 3-0 in them. He won the other in 5. If you show up games 1-4 you can 100% close out teams or get enough of a buffer that it'll take an historic upset to win. Remember teams are 258-13 when up 3-1 in the playoffs.
So a few things. Firstly, yes MJ deserves a lot of credit (Rodman also stepped up big time) for carrying the Bulls in 98. But if the comparison here is MJ in his "Last Dance" carrying the Bulls, versus Dwyane Wade becoming a shell of his former self overnight hamstringing the Heat's offense for two straight postseasons in the middle of Lebron's peak, it's not much of a contest. (And I would say Rodman stepped up a decent amount more than Bosh did) And while every team deals with injuries, I would hazard that MJ had a reasonable amount of luck with regard to his teams in the 90s compared to most ATGs.
D. Wade only hamstrung them in 2013 prior to the Finals (all props to Bron for making past... umm... Indy and only Indy) and in 2014 in the Finals. Y'all are acting like he was actively bad in the playoffs.
And Bosh wasn't allowed to step up he was relegated to a defensively solid shooter. It's kinda odd I went from thinking the board was too high on him to thinking he's underrated in the last decade.
Also Rodman didn't step up for Scottie, they put him on the bench and Kukoc started because Scottie was terrible on that end and Scottie and Rodman starting games was a recipe for disaster.
2nd, saying the Pistons were better than the Spurs is definitely arguable at worst. While Sansterre's list is not the word of God, he has the Spurs a full 40 spots ahead of the Pistons and I would definitely say his list is at least a reasonable ballpark. Moreover, the Spurs have a decent amount better SRS and most of their best players missed quite a few games. In fact, would you guess (courtesy of Sansterre) that the player with the most minutes played that season for the Spurs, was Danny **** Green lol. So SRS likely underrates their SRS by a decent amount. Of course, SRS is not the be-all end-all, but as a starting point the Pistons already have an uphill climb in that regard.
Again, variance. And Sansterre took regular season and postseason and combined them, so actually the Pistons and their star player being Isiah Thomas (infamously a top 2 playoff riser ever) is probably a bigger detriment to suppressing team SRS. Not to mention he has the Grizzlies pegged as a +8.0 team because they beat OKC like a drum which doesn't take into account Westbrook's injury at all. Either way they're on the same level at least, so it's odd to pretend MJ never faced similar comp and played well. If the 90 Bulls took them to 7 the 92 Bulls easily win.
To be fair, a lot of ATGs, especially those in the top tier have had MVPs stolen from them, Kareem, even moreso than Lebron, comes to mind but you can definitely make the same argument for Lebron. I think the POY projects that are done here are probably my preferred version of "MVP" which more accurately reflects this.
POY and MVP are fundamentally different things and I only brought this up because Ohayo attributed MJ's MVPs to being in an expansion era which doesn't really make sense to me at all.
MJ didn't get anywhere near the finals at the same age and I generally think that holding a definitively pre-prime series against a player that harshly is not particularly useful. And if MJ had to face Bruce Bowen and that Spurs team with that type of help, while I think he would probably score better than Lebron, I don't think he would torch them either. Hell, he didn't face a defense that good until the Knicks in 93 and struggled to score the ball, in his prime, with the caveat that his team did play well offensively (albeit with significantly more talent than the 07 Cavs).
A hell of a caveat indeed. The Bulls had a +13 offense in that series while MJ averaged 32 ppg and 7 apg on 52 TS% with only a 7 TOV%. He had a 113 individual ORTG (+14). On top of that no team has even been as many standard deviations away from the league average DRTG as the 93 Knicks in the history of the league. The gap between the Knicks and the #2 defense (the Sonics led by GP, Kemp, McMillan, etc.) was same as the gap between #2 and #20.
And had some pretty mediocre scoring series against the Pistons as well who were a reasonable amount worse defensively.
Reasonable to who? The Spurs had a -6 defense in the 07 playoffs and a -6.6 defense in the regular season.
The Pistons from 88-90 had a -8.1, -5.8, and -8.3 defense in the playoffs.
And what you're calling "some mediocre scoring series" is really only one in 88. In 89 he gave em 30 on 56 TS% and in 90 he gave em 32 on 57 TS%. Not just that but comparing mediocre to terrible isn't really the way to go. LeBron was god awful in 07 and in 08 against the Celtics.
Regardless if you want to give LeBron credit for longevity, then you can't suddenly want 2011, 2007, and 2008 removed from the conversation. It's either all worth mentioning or not at all worth mentioning. Especially when Ohayo talked so much about Wizards MJ in that post.
Ok, I think even you have to admit this is a bit of a reach. While I'm not a rings guy, you seem to put at least some stock into it, (if not ofc say so), but even still, framing it this way pretty conveniently leaves out the 11-6 ring disparity lol.
I clearly don't put stock into rings as if that's all that matters. It's obviously going to be easier to get rings in a 8-12 team league with less playoff rounds. There's a reason the greatest dynasties in all the big 3 sports (40-50s Yankees, 60s Packers, 50-60s Celtics) all happened when the leagues were about half to a third of the size of their modern versions. Being the best out of 27 teams is a lot harder than being the best out of 8. Not to mention the Celtics got a bye round and were straight in the Conference Finals most years. MJ won just as many series as Russell did to get 11 rings in his 6 ring run.
I'm not high on Russell, but like factually speaking ignoring era transport, I don't think you can make a convincing argument Jordan was even close to a comparable winner to Russell. And Russell's overall win percentage would probably be helped by the expansion of the playoffs, and you're also saying that their win percentage was comparable if you take the best 8 years of MJ, not his whole career. IDK, this seems like a stretch to me on many levels. (And I have MJ over Russell)
If this was how it worked dynasties would be MORE common after league expansion across sports not less. The same way I value the modern Patriots over the 60s Packers is the same way I see the 90s Bulls and 60s Celtics as equally accomplished.
The Celtics were playing teams with losing records in the Finals some years, he wasn't hurt by there being less rounds that's ludicrous.
Also I did take MJ's whole career. Did you read the part of my post where I listed the 5 players with a better postseason record than Russell?
