LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team

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LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#1 » by Prince187 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:18 pm

Only including players on teams with winning records who play at least 20mpg. He literally has the worst plus minus among all of them.This is a damning statistic if there ever was one and should be considered a black mark on his career. The only thing that matters is winning and he makes his team significantly worse when he’s playing because he cares more about stat padding. If i were a lakers fan I’d be praying he retires after this season

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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#2 » by dhsilv2 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:24 pm

Raw plus minus...dude, get a better hobby. There's plenty of things to hate on lebron for. You don't need to misuse stats to do it.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#3 » by Michael Jackson » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:27 pm

dhsilv2 wrote:Raw plus minus...dude, get a better hobby. There's plenty of things to hate on lebron for. You don't need to misuse stats to do it.



This
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#4 » by EmpireFalls » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:30 pm

Yeah watching that playoff game yesterday with him statpadding his way to 27-12-9-3-3, we were all wondering: how much better would the Lakers be if they had given Jarred Vanderbilt his minutes instead?
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#5 » by sp6r=underrated » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:44 pm

I think plus/minus is a very, very valuable stat but it is notoriously noisy which is why even plus/minus fans want large sample sizes and use other seasons as part of the analysis. It is also why even people who believe +/- take single game +/- with a huge grain of salt.

I'll use a player from the past who is a plus/minus darling. If you look at 2005, KG took a massive hit in performance by raw plus/minus. It doesn't show up at all in the box score. And it disappears the next season. My guess it was just noise.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/garneke01.html

And that's my guess with Lebron here. He looks very strong the previous 2 seasons. My guess is this is just noise. If we see the pattern continue though I'll begin to believe there is a real decline in place.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#7 » by Chokic » Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:55 pm

This is very apparent from watching the lakers over the past 5 seasons. The only difference is they don't really have scapegoats to point finger to now
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#8 » by Prince187 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:01 pm

dhsilv2 wrote:Raw plus minus...dude, get a better hobby. There's plenty of things to hate on lebron for. You don't need to misuse stats to do it.


throughout his career I’ve seen people use raw plus minus to build up LeBron but now that his plus minus is historically bad suddenly it’s a meaningless stat. That’ll change again when he retires and they start talking about how great his career plus minus is
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#9 » by kazyv » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:01 pm

Single play raw pm stats? Cherrypicked for a player that is forty no less? And playing on an ill contructed team? Nobody could be that stupid. I'm convinced this is a false flag hater. A hidden pro lebron psyop if you will. How else are you going to get people that would normally hate on LeBron to his defense?
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#10 » by Prince187 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:10 pm

EmpireFalls wrote:Yeah watching that playoff game yesterday with him statpadding his way to 27-12-9-3-3, we were all wondering: how much better would the Lakers be if they had given Jarred Vanderbilt his minutes instead?


You mean the game where he went scoreless in the 4th, bricked a 30 foot 3 pointer with lots of time left on the shot clock when LA was up by one point with 1 minute left, had an inbounds pass stolen from him with 30 seconds left, and was responsible for the foul on Ant ?
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#11 » by EmpireFalls » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:12 pm

Prince187 wrote:
EmpireFalls wrote:Yeah watching that playoff game yesterday with him statpadding his way to 27-12-9-3-3, we were all wondering: how much better would the Lakers be if they had given Jarred Vanderbilt his minutes instead?


You mean the game where he went scoreless in the 4th, bricked a 30 foot 3 pointer with lots of time left on the shot clock when LA was up by one point with 1 minute left, had an inbounds pass stolen from him with 30 seconds left, and was responsible for the foul on Ant ?

Yeah I was just thinking to myself: what if Vando had played the entire game instead? Double digit win at least.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#12 » by Texas Chuck » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:18 pm

I feel so bad for this vast cabal of posters who only exist to hate Lebron James. The best basketball player of all-time who has been the face of this league we love for over 20 years with nary a scandal and elite play from damn near stem to stern.

I can't imagine how much one's own life has to suck to spend this much constant time and energy attacking a guy like LeBron. But I sure hope all of you meet someone, or re-connect with family, or find a cause, or just a good dog. You need some positivity in life. This ain't healthy.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#13 » by dhsilv2 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:26 pm

Prince187 wrote:
dhsilv2 wrote:Raw plus minus...dude, get a better hobby. There's plenty of things to hate on lebron for. You don't need to misuse stats to do it.


throughout his career I’ve seen people use raw plus minus to build up LeBron but now that his plus minus is historically bad suddenly it’s a meaningless stat. That’ll change again when he retires and they start talking about how great his career plus minus is


If raw plus minus correlates with RAPM data, most don't consider it a bad thing to use to be lazy. If there's a meaningful gap it's something you'd want to be cautious with. This isn't new.

https://xrapm.com/

Here's his xrapm, I don't have RAPM ready, but this should be good enough. Now you'll see Lebron's xRAPM is good but...it's low enough you could make a thread like this and have a pretty reasonable starting point. Certainly one most of the guys who use stats wouldn't roll their eyes at. But instead you've got what is clearly a wild outlier that requires more nuance to discuss.

You could similarly ask laker's fans why the on off is so bad. This would allow a nuanced discussion of rotations and minutes with the bench. While also coming back, maybe lebron's defense wasn't very good this year, and it was awful to start the year. But instead you took the worst pay to approach it and you'll likely just not get a great discussion as it's kinda dead on arrival. Lebron's clearly not the worst player on his team.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#14 » by GeorgeMarcus » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:33 pm

In OP's defense, I do think we're seeing evidence of a drop in defensive impact. I mean the guy is 40 so to be doing what he's doing now is still insanely impressive. But yeah, after 21 straight seasons (!!) of positive on/off, this was the first season LeBron dipped into the red.

There are, of course, other factors at play. I'd blame the learning curve of playing with Luka but I'm pretty sure he was in the red before the trade too.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#15 » by Cavsfansince84 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:35 pm

EmpireFalls wrote:Yeah watching that playoff game yesterday with him statpadding his way to 27-12-9-3-3, we were all wondering: how much better would the Lakers be if they had given Jarred Vanderbilt his minutes instead?


No idea if this comment is meant to be in green font or not.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#16 » by bisme37 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 7:37 pm

I continue to not understand why folks seem to wake up and go to bed consumed with thoughts of their least favorite person. Bron doesn't even know y'all exist. Different strokes for different folks I guess, but it just seems like a recipe for a bad day.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#17 » by cpower » Mon Apr 28, 2025 8:24 pm

dhsilv2 wrote:Raw plus minus...dude, get a better hobby. There's plenty of things to hate on lebron for. You don't need to misuse stats to do it.

he is 56th in EPM as well so definitely not noise.. Lebron is the greatest 40 year old NBA player ever but he is no All NBA.. As great as Lebron is I dont think he needs these freebies to add things to his amazing resume.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#18 » by 52-12-7 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 8:41 pm

Lebron in the playoffs have been a beast so far. In the regular season? He was an empty stat player. There is nothing wrong to admit that.
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#19 » by KyRo23 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 8:47 pm

Your plus/minus for good/garbage posts should be about a -87
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Re: LeBron has the worst plus/minus of any player on a good team 

Post#20 » by TheGOATRises007 » Mon Apr 28, 2025 8:52 pm

LeBron's impact in the RS isn't as bad as those numbers, but it was a step down from the previous seasons.

In the playoffs, you could argue he's been the 2nd best player so far. Only Jokic ahead of him.

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