What if Pippen had quit and MJ had to go it without him?

[tsherkin]

Fans bring up the 66 wins in the regular season and then blame the supporting cast for the early playoff exit. LeBron gets all of the praise and none of the blame, as usual.

Do you not understand how ignorant this is as a reply?

What he can do over 82 games against a variety of competition is very different than what he can do against a team like the Magic.

Lebron did everything possible as an individual, but he ran into a 59-win ORL team that was the best D in the league. And in that ECF series (which is not really an "early exit"), Mo Williams shot 37.1% FG, Delonte West shot 31.8% from 3, and the only guy besides Lebron who averaged 15+ ppg was Mo Williams and his 50.5%.

You have to be trolling to suggest that series was Lebron's fault.

[parsnips33]

Fans bring up the 66 wins in the regular season and then blame the supporting cast for the early playoff exit. LeBron gets all of the praise and none of the blame, as usual.

Do you not understand how ignorant this is as a reply?

What he can do over 82 games against a variety of competition is very different than what he can do against a team like the Magic.

Lebron did everything possible as an individual, but he ran into a 59-win ORL team that was the best D in the league. And in that ECF series (which is not really an "early exit"), Mo Williams shot 37.1% FG, Delonte West shot 31.8% from 3, and the only guy besides Lebron who averaged 15+ ppg was Mo Williams and his 50.5%.

You have to be trolling to suggest that series was Lebron's fault.

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

[tsherkin]

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

Of course. They defended well and, during the RS and some of the earlier rounds, they hit open shots.

The problem became when they ran into higher-order defenses. They did fine as roleplayers, but when they were asked to perform against better teams, or asked to step up, they lacked the capacity. Which is no surprise, because no one ever considered them anything but what they were: roleplayers.

But ultimately, Cleveland was a 112.4 ORTG squad in 09 LARGELY on the back of Lebron. He scored over 28% of their total points and did it at 109 TS+, while functioning as their primary playmaker. He was far and away their best player and their only real creator. So their offense was almost entirely driven by his scoring and creation, and their ability to finish what he spoon-fed them.

Without any outlets around him, and with some of his guys specifically failing in that series, what happened before isn't super relevant to why they lost to the Magic.

[lessthanjake]

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

Of course. They defended well and, during the RS and some of the earlier rounds, they hit open shots.

The problem became when they ran into higher-order defenses. They did fine as roleplayers, but when they were asked to perform against better teams, or asked to step up, they lacked the capacity. Which is no surprise, because no one ever considered them anything but what they were: roleplayers.

But ultimately, Cleveland was a 112.4 ORTG squad in 09 LARGELY on the back of Lebron. He scored over 28% of their total points and did it at 109 TS+, while functioning as their primary playmaker. He was far and away their best player and their only real creator. So their offense was almost entirely driven by his scoring and creation, and their ability to finish what he spoon-fed them.

Without any outlets around him, and with some of his guys specifically failing in that series, what happened before isn't super relevant to why they lost to the Magic.

I don’t think the bolded is really right. The Cavs didn’t lose to the Magic because their offense was bad. Their offense held up just fine in that series (in fact, their ORTG in the series was above the Magic’s RS ORTG, so if the Cavs had had an average defensive performance, they’d probably have won). That was in significant part because LeBron played really well on that end, of course, but this really wasn’t an example of the league’s #1 defense winning a series by clamping the other team down. It was actually the Cavs just not being able to stop the Magic on the other end. LeBron himself didn’t actually play very good defense in that series, so he was partly to blame for that. Looking at the whole picture, I think we can easily say he still had a really good series despite being part of the defensive problems, but I just wanted to clarify that I don’t really think it makes a lot of sense to say that that team simply ran into a problem when facing “higher-order defenses.” I think they ran into a problem trying to defend against Dwight with a lot of spacing around him.

[tsherkin]

I don’t think the bolded is really right. The Cavs didn’t lose to the Magic because their offense was bad. Their offense held up just fine in that series.

No it didn't. They dropped to a 109.8 ORTG team while Lebron was bombing 38.5 ppg, 8.3 rpg and 8.0 apg on 59.1% TS (+5.5% rTS).

Lebron went insane. Mo Williams folded up inside his own ass. West was crap. Big Z rocked 48.7% TS. No one else beside Lebron could score.

Offense was very specifically a problem.

They ALSO struggled badly to defend the Magic, but that doesn't invalidate their drop-off, which was masked to some degree by Lebron's individual brilliance (Game 6 notwithstanding).

I think they ran into a problem trying to defense Dwight with a lot of spacing around him.

Yeah, Dwight was fantastic that series. It was arguably the best basketball he played in his entire career. But that series would have been very different if Mo Wiliams, Big Z and Delonte West had shown up on the offensive end.

[lessthanjake]

I don’t think the bolded is really right. The Cavs didn’t lose to the Magic because their offense was bad. Their offense held up just fine in that series.

No it didn't. They dropped to a 109.8 ORTG team while Lebron was bombing 38.5 ppg, 8.3 rpg and 8.0 apg on 59.1% TS (+5.5% rTS).

Lebron went insane. Mo Williams folded up inside his own ass. West was crap. Big Z rocked 48.7% TS. No one else beside Lebron could score.

Offense was very specifically a problem.

They ALSO struggled badly to defend the Magic, but that doesn't invalidate their drop-off, which was masked to some degree by Lebron's individual brilliance (Game 6 notwithstanding).

Having only a 2.6 ORTG drop off against the league’s #1 defense is actually good. Again, if they’d merely held the Magic to the Magic’s RS ORTG, they’d have outscored the Magic in the series. If all a very good defensive team needs is to be an average defense in order to win the series, then I think it makes very little sense to say that offense was the problem. The bigger thing than a 2.6 ORTG drop off against the #1 ranked defense was definitely having a 10.1 DRTG drop off against the #11 ranked offense.

I think you can parse things and say that, given how well LeBron played on offense they should’ve done *even better* on offense than they did and therefore offense is to blame despite the ORTG actually being pretty good. But that gets into questions of how the Magic actually game planned against them, and, more importantly, simply ignores the fact that the offense clearly did enough that even an okay defensive display would’ve been enough to win the series.

[tsherkin]

[
Having only a 2.6 ORTG drop off against the league’s #1 defense is actually good.

Again, though, consider Lebron's individual performance and that of the next three guys. They effectively stalled the rest of the offense and only a Herculean performance by Lebron raised their offense to that particular level.

The guys around him sucked on offense, aside from low-usage bigs like Anderson Varejao and Ben Wallace (who was 6/10 in the series). You can't really walk around that. They were all scoring below average efficiency, and apart from Boobie Gibson, Lebron's main spacing support crapped their pants in that series.

[NbaAllDay]

[
Having only a 2.6 ORTG drop off against the league’s #1 defense is actually good.

Again, though, consider Lebron's individual performance and that of the next three guys. They effectively stalled the rest of the offense and only a Herculean performance by Lebron raised their offense to that particular level.

The guys around him sucked on offense, aside from low-usage bigs like Anderson Varejao and Ben Wallace (who was 6/10 in the series). You can't really walk around that. They were all scoring below average efficiency, and apart from Boobie Gibson, Lebron's main spacing support crapped their pants in that series.

Not sure how this is going over his head.

Lebron goes nuclear and they still drop ORTG, obviously because the rest underperformed.

Using the 'team's rating (which is proped up heavily by what Lebron did) to show a 'minimal' change is pretty poor.

[NbaAllDay]

Also no surprise Lebron is talked about more in an MJ thread, driven again by the same insecure crowd.

Funny thangs.

[OhayoKD]

Fans bring up the 66 wins in the regular season and then blame the supporting cast for the early playoff exit. LeBron gets all of the praise and none of the blame, as usual.

Do you not understand how ignorant this is as a reply?

What he can do over 82 games against a variety of competition is very different than what he can do against a team like the Magic.

Lebron did everything possible as an individual, but he ran into a 59-win ORL team that was the best D in the league. And in that ECF series (which is not really an "early exit"), Mo Williams shot 37.1% FG, Delonte West shot 31.8% from 3, and the only guy besides Lebron who averaged 15+ ppg was Mo Williams and his 50.5%.

You have to be trolling to suggest that series was Lebron's fault.

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

I mean...they did go 11-0 without him the next year with Lebron taking up point. Considering how older and less productive versions of James have gone close to a 60-win pace (59 i think) without kyrie/wade over a 6 year stretch, I'd be surprised if the 09 Cavs weren't able to win at least 60 or so minus williams.

That said I don't think Mo-williams shooting stops them from making the finals with a healthy Ben Wallace.

[lessthanjake]

[
Having only a 2.6 ORTG drop off against the league’s #1 defense is actually good.

Again, though, consider Lebron's individual performance and that of the next three guys. They effectively stalled the rest of the offense and only a Herculean performance by Lebron raised their offense to that particular level.

The guys around him sucked on offense, aside from low-usage bigs like Anderson Varejao and Ben Wallace (who was 6/10 in the series). You can't really walk around that. They were all scoring below average efficiency, and apart from Boobie Gibson, Lebron's main spacing support crapped their pants in that series.

Not sure how this is going over his head.

Lebron goes nuclear and they still drop ORTG, obviously because the rest underperformed.

Using the 'team's rating (which is proped up heavily by what Lebron did) to show a 'minimal' change is pretty poor.

I explicitly addressed this argument already. But, in any event, their ORTG didn’t even *really* drop. The Cavaliers’ regular season rORTG was +4.1, and their rORTG in that series was +7.9. Relative to the opponent they played, their offense actually was significantly *better* in that series than their regular season offense. Of course, LeBron’s particularly good offensive performance in the series is a huge part of that. But when an offense genuinely overperforms its RS rORTG, I just think it’s very odd to insist that offense was the team’s problem.

And that’s particularly the case when the opposite happened on defense. The Cavs’ RS rDRTG that year was -5.9 (with negative numbers being good for rDRTG). Their rDRTG in that playoff series was +3.3. It was very clearly the defense that slipped massively from what it had done in the regular season, not the offense. The offense actually was better! One can of course posit that that only occurred with the offense because LeBron was so good offensively in that series, but LeBron is part of the offense (and wasn’t being game planned for in a vacuum). The fact is that the Cavaliers defense was very clearly the main issue. Maybe the Cavaliers could’ve overcome their defensive collapse if the team had done even better on offense. That’ll always be true—it’s always possible to do even better on one side of the ball in order to make up for a deficiency on the other end. But when a team’s rORTG improves by 3.8 and their rDRTG gets 9.2 worse, the primary culprit for the series loss was obviously defense.

[penbeast0]

I do have a problem with the entire team around a superstar collapsing and people say, see, the star was great just everyone else sucked. Was the superstar playing hero ball? Did he really do a good job of trying to get his teammates involved in their sweet spots?

Note that it could still happen even if the superstar was playing great team ball as well as great individual ball but it always makes me question it.

[tsherkin]

I do have a problem with the entire team around a superstar collapsing and people say, see, the star was great just everyone else sucked. Was the superstar playing hero ball? Did he really do a good job of trying to get his teammates involved in their sweet spots?

Note that it could still happen even if the superstar was playing great team ball as well as great individual ball but it always makes me question it.

The entire structure of the team was about Lebron doing his thing and looking to get guys the ball in certain places, though. And Lebron was moving the ball well, it's one of his core traits. Guys weren't hitting C+S 3s, and he had no secondary creator. It isn't a surprise that this happened. It's an old tale. Lie 86 Jordan versus Boston, for example. There's certainly truth to what lessthanjake is saying about the defensive side of things, but that was a tight series, so improvement on either side of the ball would have helped Cleveland win. And Lebron really didn't enter into that series with potent offensive help.

They had reasonable fit, I mean, they defended well and there were some good C+S guys, Varejao and Big Z were generally good on the O-Boards. But the non-Lebron starters were BRUTAL on offense, and both Varejao and Big Z weren't as effective against Orlando on the offensive glass because Dwight was an animal there. ANd Ben Wallace was old, injured and didn't even manage 15 mpg, and Joe Smith was spare parts at that point.

Like, it's tough to lend credence to criticism of Lebron in that series (not that you were making such, pen) because his roster was so underwhelming compared to everyone else. The Magic that season, even without Jameer Nelson and JJ Redick, still sported Rashard Lewis (an All-Star), and a quality player in Hedo Turkoglu. Guys able to support scoring in the teens on reasonable efficiency, spacing around Dwight, functioning as ball-handling initiators in the PnR, etc. The level of offensive support was considerably superior.

Dwight was also amazing, so that difference in supporting cast was pretty significant, even though it's not like the 09 Magic were a dominant superteam or anything like that. But they could operate the offense without Dwight pretty capably, and they functioned as a solid defensive unit, and then Dwight was a beast. On Cleveland' side of things, though, they had no real ability to initiate competent scoring action on a regular basis without Lebron, which was problematic, and directly related to their lack of a player as good as even Rashard Lewis playing alongside him.

[parsnips33]

Do you not understand how ignorant this is as a reply?

What he can do over 82 games against a variety of competition is very different than what he can do against a team like the Magic.

Lebron did everything possible as an individual, but he ran into a 59-win ORL team that was the best D in the league. And in that ECF series (which is not really an "early exit"), Mo Williams shot 37.1% FG, Delonte West shot 31.8% from 3, and the only guy besides Lebron who averaged 15+ ppg was Mo Williams and his 50.5%.

You have to be trolling to suggest that series was Lebron's fault.

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

I mean...they did go 11-0 without him the next year with Lebron taking up point. Considering how older and less productive versions of James have gone close to a 60-win pace (59 i think) without kyrie/wade over a 6 year stretch, I'd be surprised if the 09 Cavs weren't able to win at least 60 or so minus williams.

That said I don't think Mo-williams shooting stops them from making the finals with a healthy Ben Wallace.

OK but you get my general point right? If the quality of LeBron's teammates has an impact on postseason results, surely it does on the regular season results too and vice versa. As amazing as he is, he's not allowed to play without 4 other guys wearing the same jersey on the floor with him

[OhayoKD]

Shouldn't those guys get credit for the regular season win total though? Clearly the lion's share goes to LeBron, but there has to be a 2 way street when it comes to giving credit/blame. If Mo Williams shot that way in the regular season, they don't come close to 66 wins

I mean...they did go 11-0 without him the next year with Lebron taking up point. Considering how older and less productive versions of James have gone close to a 60-win pace (59 i think) without kyrie/wade over a 6 year stretch, I'd be surprised if the 09 Cavs weren't able to win at least 60 or so minus williams.

That said I don't think Mo-williams shooting stops them from making the finals with a healthy Ben Wallace.

OK but you get my general point right? If the quality of LeBron's teammates has an impact on postseason results, surely it does on the regular season results too and vice versa. As amazing as he is, he's not allowed to play without 4 other guys wearing the same jersey on the floor with him

sure

[tsherkin]

OK but you get my general point right? If the quality of LeBron's teammates has an impact on postseason results, surely it does on the regular season results too and vice versa. As amazing as he is, he's not allowed to play without 4 other guys wearing the same jersey on the floor with him

Sure, but it's important to differentiate their success in the RS versus the PS versus a given series of discussion. And then to articulate their specific contributions, their pros and cons.

So for example, on balance in the RS, their C+S game, rebounding and defense were very strong complements to Lebron's core game. But as opponent difficulty rose, the lack of someone who could really take the pressure off Lebron and/or lead the offense when he hit the bench became a larger issue. And when guys weren't hitting their 3s at a high rate, the team's O stuttered significantly because individual scoring and passing can go only so far. Particularly when the opponent is having a field day against you with its multi-pronged attack.

[The Explorer]

I do have a problem with the entire team around a superstar collapsing and people say, see, the star was great just everyone else sucked. Was the superstar playing hero ball? Did he really do a good job of trying to get his teammates involved in their sweet spots?

Note that it could still happen even if the superstar was playing great team ball as well as great individual ball but it always makes me question it.

This is the narrative that James fanaticals like to push which doesn't add up. This is not just any superstar we are talking about. Remember most people on this forum are saying he is the greatest basketball player the world has ever seen. And many are claiming the 2009 season was the greatest peak season anyone has ever seen. And many claim he is among the very top playmakers the game has ever seen. When you view from that lens, it becomes an absurd argument to say the star was great and everyone else sucked so the losses deserve no blame.

[Cavsfansince84]

This is the narrative that James fanaticals like to push which doesn't add up. This is not just any superstar we are talking about. Remember most people on this forum are saying he is the greatest basketball player the world has ever seen. And many are claiming the 2009 season was the greatest peak season anyone has ever seen. And many claim he is among the very top playmakers the game has ever seen. When you view from that lens, it becomes an absurd argument to say the star was great and everyone else sucked so the losses deserve no blame.

This is kind of a vast over simplification if the goal is to add context to a certain series or playoff run by a top 10 all time player. Granted yes the bar is high for goat candidates but ok, so then did the 86-90 series not happen for MJ? What context are you adding beyond 'his teammates kept him from winning titles' if that's no longer any kind of excuse for LeBron in 09 and quite likely 10? Its quite possible to say that LeBron became an overall better leader and playmaker after 09 but that he still had a spectacular series which came in a series loss I think. Just as we could with MJ against 86 Boston where he couldn't even get his team a single win and less so in 88-90 where the Pistons kept beating him. The baseline for being a goat candidate is very high but it doesn't players are perfect. Even Russell had to rely on a lot of game/series winning shots by teammates in order to have the finals record he had. I think we can go further in adding context then what we've seen in this thread so far if we want to get a better perspective on what is being discussed. Its fine if you want to say LeBron should have done more in 09 but its way too superficial to just leave it at that with the unspoken inference that MJ would have just willed his team to a win or something as though he never lost.

[OhayoKD]

I do have a problem with the entire team around a superstar collapsing and people say, see, the star was great just everyone else sucked. Was the superstar playing hero ball? Did he really do a good job of trying to get his teammates involved in their sweet spots?

Note that it could still happen even if the superstar was playing great team ball as well as great individual ball but it always makes me question it.

This is the narrative that James fanaticals like to push which doesn't add up. This is not just any superstar we are talking about. Remember most people on this forum are saying he is the greatest basketball player the world has ever seen. And many are claiming the 2009 season was the greatest peak season anyone has ever seen. And many claim he is among the very top playmakers the game has ever seen. When you view from that lens, it becomes an absurd argument to say the star was great and everyone else sucked so the losses deserve no blame.

I guess this is a narrative too?

08-10 Cavs without Lebron

1-15

11-Cavs pre-trade

15-win pace

"Lebron played hero ball" is a narrative.

"Lebron carried an incredibly weak cast way further than they had any right to be" actually aligns with reality.