Colbinii wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:OhayoKD wrote:1. Steph "outplaying" Lebron is not a given to me. You bring up that the Warriors outperformed Memphis. But by that same token, this Lebron-led offense is currently outperforming the the best absolute offense ever against a maybe the best playoff defense of their era(who held the kings 8 points under their rs). Their box-production looks similar, and while you may be inclined to say "gravity can't be captured in the statsheet", by the same token neither can Lebron(and Draymond's) influence as play-callers or whatever Lebron is doing defensively(though I suppose the latter matter isn't relevant for this discussion). The Warriors are still shooting better than the Lakers from open 3's. If gravity could actually garuntee game 6-level effiency from Wiggins, Draymond, and GP2 every game, they would not be down in the series.
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Okay, so I don't have time to reply to the entire message, but key points for me:
1. LeBron hasn't been the best player on his team. That's not even debatable when you factor in the defense, but even if you just go by offense, AD's had the better on-court ORtg the entire playoffs compared to LeBron.
Let's accept this premise. This inofitself does not preclude Lebron from outplaying Steph:
parapooper wrote:Sark wrote:Sofia wrote:How many of those other guys can say it was their team for every series?
Jordan is the only one where you can say he was unequivocally the best player in every series. Lebron has a few series where Wade and Davis were better.
Having someone play better than you doesn't necessarily mean it's easier to win.
Let's say you play at level 9
Which level of teammates + coach would be easier to win with:
team A level: 9 + 10 + 3 + 2 + -3 + -2 (coach) = 9 + 10 = 19 (has better teammate)
team B level: 9 + 7 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 9 (coach) = 9 + 30 = 39 (doesn't have better teammate but team is 2x as good overall)
That's without even going into other factors like team composition/fit/synergy or opponent strength
(This is just a general comment, not on MJ vs LBJ teams specifically)
With game 6, Lebron's on-court orating is now
119 while Steph's is at
111. Thanks to a
+18 swing for Lebron(and a
-17 swing against Steph), Lebron's +/- is
-3 to Steph's
-8. That said Steph's overall on/off sits at
+17 while Lebron is at
-8.7. Both lag behind the mark set by 2021 Lebron(
+36) which tops any Steph mark besides 2014(
+37). Perhaps Curry really peaked in 2014...or maybe we should be careful about trying to make definitive claims based on small playoff samples that are easily influenced by who you play with...
Something for you to think about though. The LeBron/AD/Vanderbilt line-up played 75 minutes together in this series. Do you want to guess what their Ortg is in those 75 minutes?
You probably didn't go low enough. It is 102.5. This puts AD/LeBron without Vanderbilt at 114.7.
But this trend is any line-up with Vanderbilt, because good teams know they can completely ignore Vanderbilt offensively. The same happened against Memphis, but the Lakers could win with a 108.1 Ortg with those 3 on the court.
Now, I am in the "Curry has been great this post-season" camp, but it is very apparent that good defensive teams can take advantage of Vanderbilt's offensive game and lock-up the Lakers.
Now that the series is over, this begs the next question, can Denver exploit them? I don't think Denver is as good defensively as Golden State or Memphis. The difference between Green/JJJ and whoever the best defender on Denver is is quite large.
The Lakers currently lack a competent back-up for Davis. This means that when AD comes off, the Lakers either play Lebron as a 5, or have him play as a 4 with
Rui playing center. In these lineups Lebron can play excellent defense(for a non-big) and still see his ratings tank as teams predictably have a much easier time scoring when there isn't a true big protecting the paint.
This is an example of
Staggering. A player comes off as more talented teammates come on leading to the team not dropping off as much when he's on the court. Lebron has done this before, notably staggering with Wade in Miami before doing it again with Davis in 2023. At the opposite end of the spectrum we have teams where the stars usually come off and on together. Examples of this include Jordan and Pippen, Shaq and Kobe, Magic and Kareem, and Steph and Dray. This ends up
inflating the drop-off in a way even adjusted metrics can't completely account for(and indeed, despite the weird 2014 mark, for his career, Steph's on/off falls off significantly in non-dray minutes). Lebron generally doesn't do this with the 2020/2021 Lakers(in the playoffs) being a notable exception.
Luckily we have a couple of ways to deal with these noisy and potentially distorted samples
1. We can look at games where players don't play at all, making wonky rotations/schematic approch less of a factor.
2. We can extend the sample, either by looking at surrounding years or deriving an off from the regular season and then adjusting for context
Surrounding years won't do much for us since Lebron missed his last postseason and has yet to play in 2024. That said, for whatever little its worth, Lebron's last postseason(2021) graded at
+36, higher than the
+6 Steph hit in 22. Lebron also gains clear separation from everyone else over larger samples:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=104328748#p104328748(With a glance at "play by play" on Steph's BBR page, it's apparent Steph would fare worse)
The relevance of this is questionable(Lebron is not what he once was), but for the sake of thoroughness, there it is.
Looking at games where neither played(statmuse)...in games where Steph didn't play, the Warriors posted an o-rating of
115(
14-12 overall,
-.9 net). In games where Lebron didn't play, the Lakers posted an o-rating of
113(
13-14 overall,
-1.1 net. In games without Lebron but with Davis, the Lakers posted an o-rating of
118 with the Lakers going
116 when things reversed
Allowing data from games where Lebron and Steph participated(PBP), the Lakers with Lebron and without Davis posted an o-rating of
120 with a net-rating of
4.34. The Lakers with Davis, but without Lebron, posted an o-rating of
115 with a net rating of
+3.1(Ad's defense eats into some of the offensive gap). The Warriors without Curry(note that I'm not adding a star like I did with Lebron) posted an o-rating of
114 with a net-rating of
-1.12. The Warriors
with Curry improve to an o-rating of
119 to go with a net-rating of
5.18. The Lakers without Lebron posted an o-rating of
111 with a net-rating of
-4.96. The Lakers with Lebron posted an on-court rating of
117 alongside a net-rating of
+4.5Looking at all those samples, here are a few notes
1. The Warriors without Curry do as well or better than the Lakers without Lebron overall
2. The Warriors offense without Curry does as well or better than the Lakers without Lebron overall
3. Just looking at games without Lebron, the Lakers offense with Davis but without Lebron do better than the Warriors without Curry
4/ Looking at all the lineups, The Lakers offense with Davis but without Lebron do about as well as the Warriors offense without Steph.
5. Lebron's presence leads to a bigger swing than Steph's does both offensively and overall, aligning with Lebron almost "sweeping" Steph in impact stuff I linked last page with an advantage with basically any approach(the sole exception is EPM which grades the two as comparable)
6. Some of the stuff from point 5 is skewed with Lebron not getting the chance to play much with the new and improved Lakers during the regular season. As it happens, even the post-trade la saw their record improve massively with Lebron in the lineup jumping from a
47-win pace to a
68-win one(not sure what the net-rating was).
All considered, I don't think it's clear at all that Curry entered the series with less help overall, let alone offensively.
With that in mind, let's compare how these offenses faired in the postseason(since the Warriors and Lakers were much better defenses in the postseason, I'll ignore Lebron's defensive contributions, and use their defensive ratings vs Sacremento and Memphis respectively as a starting point)
The Warriors offense was -
2 against the
+3 defense of the Sacremento Kings(in this context a positive is bad defensively and a negative is bad offensively)
The Lakers offense was
+1 against the
-3.5 Grizzlies.
The Warriors defense held the absolute best offense ever
6.8 points below their regular season average giving them a defensive rating of -6.8. The Lakers defense held Memphis
10.6 points below their regular season average giving them a rating of -10.6.
In the second round(again, ignoring that Lebron has arguably been the best defensive forward these playoffs), the Lakers fell a bit short of covering the spread only outpacing the Dub's o-rating by a margin of
2.9. Not sure I should weigh this, if we use the individual o-ratings you opened with, Lebron easily covers the gap with his o-rating of 119 being 8 points higher than Steph's 111.
Regardless, taking the playoffs as a whole, the Lakers performed better offensively than the Warriors faring significantly better against a much better defense in round one and only marginally underperforming in round two despite larger samples suggesting that it was Steph who entered with more help and the Warriors hitting a higher percentage of open looks. Pair that with Lebron scoring more efficiently on similar volume, creating higher quality looks on average, amd commanding his offense the way draymond commands steph's, and I don't see why we should take it as some given that Steph outplayed Lebron. Maybe it's time to consider actually
valuing what Lebron offers on the mental side of the game instead of just paying it lipservice?
Lebron at 38, having played twice as many minutes while carrying a potential season ender that has forced him to completely reinvent his game, has arguably outplayed the guy whose offense you rated so high that you voted him as the
3rd best peak ever. No, that's not the only reason, but it's certainly not a bad one.
Lebron has an impact portfolio that cooks everyone from the last 40 years, was leading +6.6(full-strength) offenses at 21(without 3-point specialists), and at 38 is going toe to toe(if anything, it's probably Lebron who was at a disadvantage) with a guy many people were calling the greatest offensive player ever while letting two of his teammates take turns dominating the ball.
Only Magic and Nash have led comparable or better playoff offenses. Only magic, nash, and oscar have seen their presence correlate with such large team-lvl offensive swings, and none of those three have managed to replicate that success in the variety of situations, roles, and circumstances Lebron has.
Yet instead of maybe adjusting your prior, you went and the noisiest thing imaginable to try and argue that Davis. who has been outscored, outcreated, on arguably worse efficiency(1:1 ast%:tov% on less shot attempts, less pass attempts, and way less ball-handling) while offering almost none of what Lebron does as a floor general, has actually been carrying Lebron
offensively,
Yes AD is the MVP, but it was Steph who entered with the better regarded pieces, Steph who had home-court, the Warriors who've been better without their star this year
and the last three. the Warriors who were favored coming off a championship with what was basically the same roster, and the Warriors who had dealt with an easier opponent in round one. It was Lebron who the oldest, Lebron who'd played the most minutes, and Lebron who was playing on one foot. Yet it was the Lakers who played better in the first round, the Lakers who played better in the second round, the Lakers who performed better on both ends(offensively
and defensively), and Lebron who emerged to try and vanquish yet another B2B MVP
When you're using lineups where Lebron
is playing center to argue he's being carried, it's time to call it quits.
