iggymcfrack wrote:Djoker wrote:Given what happened to Lebron in the playoffs in surrounding years, 2009 starts looking like a pretty massive outlier in terms of postseason performance. And it makes sense considering it is just 14 games.
Knowing what we know which is that both Lebron's skillset (outside shooting, post game) and mentality grew over the years, it's not difficult to make an argument that 2013 Lebron was better despite having inferior box score and impact stats.
2010: 11.5 BPM, +23.2 on/off
2013: 10.4 BPM, +0.2 on/off
In at least one of the 2 "surrounding years", LeBron had much better playoff numbers than he had in his supposed peak season.
Because LeBron performed so poorly in the embarrassing loss to the Mavs, the narrative is that he had to have learned something following the '11 season that he didn't have before that made him reach his final form. This is the reason so many people refuse to acknowledge 2009 as his peak. When in reality, the 2011 Finals were kind of a fluky event with Bron getting stymied by Rick Carlisle's zone and also deferring too much to Dwyane Wade. It was one underperformance, not a symptom of LeBron failing to reach "championship level" yet.
Here are the playoff game scores grouped from '09 and '13:
Game scores in 2009 playoffs
40+: 2
35-40: 1
30-35: 4
25-30: 4
20-25: 1
15-20: 2
10-15: 0
Game scores in 2013 playoffs
40+: 0
35-40: 0
30-35: 2
25-30: 5
20-25: 9
15-20: 4
10-15: 3
Those just aren't remotely comparable performances. '09 LeBron has 7 games with a game score over 30 and 3 under 25. '13 LeBron has 2 games with a game score over 30 and 16 games under 25. LeBron's 11th best game (out of 14) in '09 has a higher game score than his 5th best game (out of 23) in '13. And then there's the on/off stuff:
'09 Cavs with Bron: +11.6
'09 Cavs w/o Bron: +3.2
'13 Heat with Bron: +7.3
'13 Heat w/o Bron: +7.1
There isn't really much of a coherent case for '13 over '09 other than RANGZZZ and narrative.
Not sure if I disagree with the conclusion (I’ve set forth my thoughts on that earlier in the thread), but I think this is focused way too much on playoff on-off. I think single-year playoff on-off should basically have virtually zero weight put on it. The sample size is just too small for it to have any meaning. For instance, in 2008-2009, the playoff “off” sample for LeBron is 97 minutes. In 2012-2013, the playoff “off” sample is 154 minutes. There’s really just zero meaning to be taken from data derived from that kind of sample. Honestly, even if we expanded it out to include three-year samples, it’s still too small a sample to be very meaningful.
In general, I think sometimes we should all just be cognizant of the fact that sometimes the data we have just inherently can’t tell us much of anything. This is the biggest conundrum with looking at NBA data IMO. The playoffs are way more important than regular season, so we’d want to focus on playoff data, and box score data can’t take into account as much as impact data does, so we’d theoretically want to preference playoff impact data, but playoff impact data has such small sample sizes that it can’t really tell us anything. There’s no great solution there. When it comes to this particular discussion, I think the fact that LeBron’s on-off was much better in the 2008-2009 regular season than it was in the 2012-2013 regular season should give us more confidence in the idea that he’d likely have had better playoff impact data in 2008-2009 with a larger sample too (though, it should be acknowledged that even single-regular-season impact data is a small sample). But that’s just an inference, and not one that people would necessarily agree with if one really thinks playoff basketball is super different from regular season basketball. Anyways, if we did accept that inference as likely being right, then it comes down to whether we think that is more a consequence of differing context rather than LeBron himself actually being better.
From 2008-2010, this is what LeBron put up in the playoffs:
30.3 PER, .280 WS/48, 13.2 BPM, +18.3 on/off
You think "quite a few players" have matched or exceeded that production? Name me one other than Jordan. Here's a complete list of players who have put up a 13 BPM for even one postseason:
1. LeBron
2. Jordan
3. Hakeem (4 games in a 1st round loss)
4. Kawhi (got injured in middle of run)
5. Dr. J (ABA)
6. Wade (5 games in a first round loss)
That's it. And that's just for one year. Not a 3 year peak like LeBron.
Leaving aside the on-off point discussed above, I do want to note that LeBron’s stats in that three-year span can’t exactly be compared to three-year spans of other players who went much further in the postseason in their best years (or, perhaps more pertinently, to LeBron himself in later years when he was going further). In that three-year span, LeBron’s team lost in the second round twice and the conference finals once. Racking up a high BPM is of course a good deal easier when the first round makes up such a large portion of the games. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that he did get a good Celtics team in the ECSF two of those years. But still. Those great stats are largely driven by incredible early-round stats, and it’s likely those stats would not have remained as high if his team was going to the finals every year (like he was with the Heat).