The4thHorseman wrote:michaelm wrote:Iwasawitness wrote:
When did LeBron team up with his biggest rivals?
He teamed up with other elite players 3 times, twice with players widely considered top 5 in the NBA. How extreme they were as rivals is a point for subtle definition, and/or sophistry from LeBron fans, but imo KD regarded LeBron as his greatest rival, not Curry or GSW, which is probably testament to LeBron but KD to GSW was also a consequence of LeBron’s own actions and choices; there is again imo no way KD joins GSW without LeBron previously forming both the Heatles, and the Cavs team his second time around at the Cavs, and he and the Heatles being acclaimed for beating KD and his fledgling OKC team in 2012. No one has ever explained to me why there should have been any restrictions on what other elite players chose to do as FAs after 2010. As KD actually said, maintaining parity in the NBA was never in his job description/contract.
I myself have no problem with any choice LeBron made as a Free Agent, but found the AD signing to the Lakers a little smelly given he was mid contract rather than a FA and was a Klutch client, but he only has one career himself and the Pelicans were not exactly a well run franchise where he had good ongoing prospects so I can sympathise with him not wanting to waste further years of his prime there even if it involved reneging on a contract.
Outside of Wade, who are the 2 other superstars he teamed up with / went to go to play with?
Well, Anthony Davis is a given. Unquestionably a superstar.
And then we get to Chris Bosh and Kevin Love. Obviously, these are not quite the caliber of player of Wade and AD. However, we need to remember the context in which LeBron teamed up with Bosh and Love—in particular, the seasons they’d just had before the team-ups occurred.
In 2014, Kevin Love had been 2nd in the NBA in BPM, 3rd in the NBA in PER, 4th in WS/48, 5th in EPM, 5th in RAPTOR, and 6th in LEBRON. By all accounts, Kevin Love had absolutely played like a superstar the year before LeBron teamed up with him.
Granted, that was definitely Love’s best year (though he’d been all-NBA second team in his previous non-injury year before that, including being ranked 6th in BPM, 5th in PER, 7th in WS/48, voted 6th in MVP voting, etc., so 2014 wasn’t an anomaly). But Kevin Love was also 25 years old in 2014, and therefore just entering the age-range where we’d expect him to be peaking for the next few years. Would Love have continued being a superstar if he’d not teamed up with LeBron and sacrificed tons of touches and changed his body and playstyle to fit with LeBron? We don’t know. But we certainly have good indication of that, since he pretty clearly was a superstar player in 2014, right before LeBron teamed up with him and was entering an age range where we’d expect him to peak for a few years.
So then we get to Bosh. In 2010, Bosh was 4th in PER, 14th in WS/48, 18th in BPM, 20th in EPM, and 24th in LEBRON. He’d just been 12th in MVP voting. Unlike Kevin Love—where the data makes very clear he was a superstar prior to joining LeBron—the data here is a bit more all over the place. Overall, it’s more supportive of the idea that he was an all-star player who was borderline all-NBA. So probably not a superstar, but still a really good player—and an incredible one to have as your 3rd best player.
So yeah, the answer to this question is Wade, AD, and Love (with Bosh being a tier below that). The data we have is strongly supportive of the idea that all three of those guys were superstars when LeBron teamed up with them.
Unfortunately he just accepted his player option, so a minimum of one more year of seething for ya, champ.
