KembaWalker wrote:MartinToVaught wrote:1993Playoffs wrote:Huge LeBron fan but I gotta be objective with this realizations
1. Jokic may actually be peaking higher than LBJ (at least on offense). It’s pretty close
2. Jokic is doing this with traditionally less help than LeBron in a tougher conference
Jokic's been one of my favorite players since way back when Nurkic was still on the Nuggets with him, but this still feels like a wild overreaction. LeBron has dragged some worse supporting casts than Jokic's ever played with to the Finals.
In the East
Lebron James took a 66-win Western team to 6 in a down year without his 2nd and 3rd best player a series after sweeping a 60-win team with 48 minutes of the 2nd best player. There is no "carrying teams" argument for Jokic against early 30's Lebron and Jokic does not compare to Lebron in any empirical standard that is removed from specific box-inputs or one-year on/off(if you ignore the postseason)
If Jokic was actually on this level, you would not need to be using his performance against a 39 year old Lebron as your benchmark
mademan wrote: kyrie...but it was clear that it was more just an incredible amalgamation of talent a
The Nuggets without Jokic were better than the Cavs without Lebron and Kyrie's next team saw minimal improvement when Kyrie played. Reality would suggest what you considered "clear" was not really true.
Lessthanjake wrote:Jamal Murray is not an all-NBA player. He has played like one in some playoff series, but that’s not what he is overall IMO and that’s *definitely* not what he has played like in this series.
He has played like one in the playoffs since 2020 on average and played like one for the two playoff runs the Nuggets were remotely relevant. If the Nuggets make a deep run this postseason without Jamal playing like an all-nba player we can revisit things, but the Nuggets have close to no track record of being very good without Jamal playing all-nba basketball.
As has been noted, and you ignored, Murray takes the toughest selection of shots of anyone on the Nuggets and Miami and the Lakers have focused on limiting Murray. Without Murray's track record as a superstar or superstar adjacent playoff performer, the Nuggets would not look nearly as good as they currently they do.
You simply cannot help but fall back on amorphous “coaching advantage” arguments. For you, everything is always about LeBron having a coaching disadvantage and other great players in history being compared to LeBron having a coaching advantage
The other players I've seen mentioned as having a coaching advantage vs Lebron by Heej are
-> Jordan, who has the easiest to quantify coaching advantage in the history of the sport (run away lead in coach rapm, 5 championships without, 1990 mid-season srs jump, surprisingly good results without jordan, results without jordan and pippen, results without jordan and grant, dramatically less successful when removed)
-> Curry, who has one of the easiest to quantify coaching advantages in the history of the sport (2014 vs 2015, several playoff series won without)
Both are dramatically less "amorphous" than your assertions that
A. Lebron struggles more to fit with star teammates than either
B. Murray's playoff jump is a result of a jump in how much easier Jokic makes things for Murray in the playoffs
C. These teams are similarly talented
Please stop projecting. The main source of motivated reasoning on this thread(and really, this board) is you.