capfan33 wrote:lessthanjake wrote:Bad Gatorade wrote:
Even without "advantageous variance" at play, LeBron from, say, 2009-2020 was still better than he was in 2024. For example, LeBron shot 26% from 3 in the 2012 playoffs, and LeBron was, IMO, quite clearly "better" than in 2024, even with shooting on the colder side. I'm pretty happy to compare Jokic to prime LeBron without that variance too.
The bolded is what should be done. That’s my point. And if someone just takes how LeBron played in the series against Denver and then layers on the ways that prime LeBron was better without accounting for positive shooting variance LeBron had in the series (amongst other ways he was better than his general current baseline), then one is effectively comparing Jokic to LeBron with positive shooting variance added on (and doing so using a roundabout analogy). And then it becomes an unfair comparison. That’s been my whole point.2 shots in 5 games is... 0.4 shots per game (which is 0.8 points). That's... not really a notable difference in terms of addressing the question "how good was LeBron?" Yes, individual shots/redistributions of shooting variance can be pivotal in deciding a series, but it shouldn't decide how good a player was holistically.
I disagree, and certainly disagree once we layer on some other variance that makes the number higher. A point or two here and there really is the difference between the impact of different tiers of players in the NBA.It's more accurate to compare 2024 LeBron's "variance" to his own 2024, given that skillsets are not uniform over time, nor is LeBron's physical health post-2019ish.
That is right if we were trying to actually isolate out variance specifically. But that’s not the relevant inquiry here. Whether LeBron shot so well in this series because of actual variance or because he’s just a better shooter now than he was in his prime (or a combination of the two) is not really relevant. The relevant thing is just that he shot better than we’d expect prime LeBron to have shot, because we are assessing how prime LeBron probably would’ve performed compared to how current LeBron actually performed. The question of how we’d have expected current LeBron to have performed is not a relevant question.In other words - as I postulated earlier, the variance in shooting percentage matters less than you're making out, because akin to how players can have a hot/cold jump shot, they can also vary in how astute their finishing is. After all, we've seen players miss open dunks many times, and that's a high percentage, defenseless shot, lol. There's evidence to believe that LeBron's positively inclined shooting may be somewhat offset, if not completely offset, by the variance in finishing.
Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.
Anyways, talk of shooting variance is largely just going down one specific rabbit hole. My point was a more general one—which was that LeBron was substantially better in this series than his current baseline. That’s corroborated by all sorts of data. And my point was just that, if we ignore that and act like prime LeBron would’ve been as much better in this series as he was better than LeBron’s current baseline, then it’s an unfair comparison.
Dude, are you really spending this much time arguing over 2 midrange jump shots in a 6 game series? Like, I'm sure you can make better arguments then this. It's common sense.
Narrator: they couldn't