OhayoKD wrote:And if we raise srs high enough(say...+6?), Lebron's record against vs "actual srs" suddenly becomes historically good! But sure, Shaq played in a tougher conference. His teams also did far worse against those tougher opponents and were generally far worse in the playoffs adjusting for opponent. And of course when we use playoff srs(or surrounding championships/proximity to championships), the 13 Spurs are pretty clearly a different calibre of opponent than the kings or the blazers even if you insist on pretending them coasting in the regular season while Miami went all-out(exacerbating major injury issues that had started a year back) somehow made them "easier".
That’s just objectively untrue. Even just taking the two players being compared here, it’s incorrect. LeBron’s playoff record against 6+ SRS teams is 5 wins 7 losses. Shaq’s playoff record against 6+ SRS teams is 8 wins and 4 losses (and one of those losses was in a playoff series he played 12 minutes in, so it’s really 8 wins and 3 losses). LeBron had trouble beating high SRS teams. This gets obscured by having beaten the 2016 Warriors, but it’s just true overall. With the kind of record he had against 5+ SRS or 6+ SRS teams, it’s quite safe to say he was very lucky not to have to face more of them. Prime Shaq had to face a lot of them, and he typically beat them.
Regardless, this is not a logical extrapolation:Basically, there’s not actually a whole lot of reason to think LeBron’s teams could’ve gotten through the gauntlets that Shaq’s teams did with the same level of frequency.
Uh, no. The much better playoff teams should do better, not worse. There is more "whole lot of reason" to favor Lebron's winners than Shaq's.
If LeBron’s teams usually lost against high SRS teams, then I think it is safe to say there’s not a whole lot of reason to think they would’ve gotten through gauntlets that included multiple high SRS teams. History tells us that even one high SRS teams presents LeBron with a >50% chance of losing, so adding another high SRS opponent to a playoff run (which is basically what the difference is between LeBron’s title runs and Shaq’s) would likely dramatically reduce the chances of LeBron getting a title.
And you can point to high playoff SRS or whatever if you want, but the whole point here is about resiliency against really great teams. I don’t doubt that LeBron’s teams can disproportionately smack around relatively weak playoff teams (which then causes a high playoff SRS for LeBron’s team). The question is how they’d do against great teams, and the answer over the course of LeBron’s career was not great overall, while for Shaq it was pretty great.
points out, we can’t really do it this way) out at like +9 offense and +6 defense against a 73 win team. 
