Stockton says LeBrons titles don’t have value

[A_Fernz23]

The only Finals you can really hold against LeBron is 2011 and even then, there were so many variables to be considered that didn't just simply entail Bron playing bad. Mavs had more depth than Heat and played at a 62 win pace with Dirk, the Heat were legitimately trash outside their big three from a washed up Mike Bibby who only came in at the end of the season, Joel Anthony, Chalmers who wasn't as developed nor received as much play time to Miller who had both his wrists injured. That Heat team was heavily dependent on LeBron closing out games, he played 10 full second halves and five 45 minute games including 2 overtimes leading up to the Finals, that along with his weight gain would've contributed to fatigue, that's the biggest minute load of any wing in over 40 years, only AI, Shaq and Bron in 2007 played similar or more minutes during a full playoff run if I recall, he hasn't played the same kind of minutes since even in 2018 when he had a worse team. That's not to mention Spoelstra's coaching decisions throughout the 2011 Finals including repeatedly using a lineup that only had like 30 minutes of play time together in the regular season and stagnant offensive schemes.

Bumpin that. Relative to the league, LeBron’s teams didn’t have as big a gap in Finals he was favoured in(2020 Heat is an obvious exception and Sansterre has a great piece on how heavily the 2013 Spurs load managed in the regular season) compared to some other legends and vs the 90s Bulls at the time amongst a few others. Magic had some of the easiest roads to the finals of all time yet he never gets penalised, even Jordan had a few overrated runs including 1991(39 win Knicks, 76ers who were a below average defense w -0.2 net rating, a Pistons team riddled with injuries and the Lakers with injured Byron and Worthy who was literally a negative on defense because of his ankle throughout the whole series). I would argue that even the 2011 Mavs and “baby” Thunder beat any Finals opponent of MJ’s including the 97 Jazz or at least give the 97 Jazz a significant challenge, sweeping a great Lakers and OKC team, peak Dirk with Terry who wasn’t just lighting up choked Bron but also Kobe, Shawn Marion who was still reliable and Tyson Chandler who was one of the best rim protectors in the league, the Thunder beat a great Spurs team with a 7.7 net rating by a point diff of 4.5, KD who was top 5 at that point, Westbrook was all-NBA level, Ibaka who was a DPOY level player like Chandler along with multiple reliable pieces like Thabo and Collison.

[michaelm]

Top 10 draft picks are not the only way to build a contender around a generational talent. Hell, the Cavs had a number 10 pick the year after they drafted LeBron and they took Luke Jackson over Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, and Jameer Nelson.

This has been discussed before on here, but the problem is that people around LeBron and LeBron himself forced Cavs to go all in when LeBron was 22. That's ludicrous. 22-year-olds don't lead teams to NBA titles even if their name is LeBron. You're just not going to beat experienced, balanced, well-built teams at that age. Maybe you get lucky and win a series or two just based on your youth and talent, but you need to win 16 games to be an NBA champion.

The Cavs traded away so many first and second round picks and traded away anything resembling young talent for corpses of players like Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak, Shaq, Antawn Jamison. There was never a plan beyond "right now," as if James was 35 at the time and not barely 25 by the time he left.

The Cavs needed to both come up with a long-term plan, wait for talent to develop, or wait for good trades or free agency to work out. They also needed to wait for LeBron to mature and for some of the strong teams around that time to either age out or break up. That's the NBA and that's the reality for every star player. You need planning, you need some luck, and you need patience. The Cavs and LeBron acted that same way the Lakers and LeBron have been acting the past few years except LeBron was 15(!) years younger. It was never going to work out.

Fair enough, I didn’t follow the NBA or the Cavs closely enough back then to know what draft picks they had. Whether this was on LeBron rather than the Cavs organisation becomes the question though, did he pressure them to go win now when he was 20 ?.

I am a Curry partisan and whether partly due to injury misfortune which eventually became good fortune or not GSW who had been similarly hapless as a franchise managed to build around him to win 4 titles which they didn’t commence doing until he was 25. Their owner was prepared to spend as well as take short term fan disapproval, and at least had the good judgement to get Jerry West involved, though.

If Lebron was on a team that was LeBron, Klay, Barnes, Green, Bogut - Livingston, Barbosa, Iggy, Festus when he was 26 then he wouldn't have left the Cavs.

If they then swapped Barnes for Durant then he wouldn't have ever left. Through all the iterations of the Warriors if you swapped LeBron with Curry then LeBron would have never left either.

Just interesting how the dice roll.

[intended as a reply to your next post].

This is where we disagree, of course Curry is not responsible for the innate talent of his team-mates or the hard work they put in to develop that talent, but if you build a team long term around a player I don’t consider it to be drawing too long a bow to suggest a cohesive team is more likely to result than from assembling already elite players who have become so elsewhere regardless of fit which is which is how LeBron’s teams have largely been constructed since 2010 imo. We don’t know how the players you mention would have fitted with players other than Curry, but do know they were good to great next to Curry. We also have the example of Andrew Wiggins, a huge contributor to a title next to Curry, not so elite elsewhere. Even KD an all time great player was the most effective he ever was imo next to Curry, who was prepared to sacrifice his own game to an extent to make this so. Particularly Barbosa wasn’t as good elsewhere, and I can probably extend this to other players, and we have the testimony of a player you mention in Iguodala who made a deliberate choice to join up with Curry in advance of the success of the team and is on the record attributing the success of the team, and the value of the franchise for that matter, to Curry and of David West who has said how wonderful and fortunate it was to be on the team.

This is different than what Stockton appears to be mostly saying though, I don’t consider LeBron’s path to have been easier or intrinsically less virtuous, it was probably harder and he definitely had the bad luck to be drafted by a poorly run franchise. Even as a Curry fanboy I also consider LeBron’s 4 titles to be more directly attributable to him Individually.

[michaelm]

Double

[zimpy27]

Fair enough, I didn’t follow the NBA or the Cavs closely enough back then to know what draft picks they had. Whether this was on LeBron rather than the Cavs organisation becomes the question though, did he pressure them to go win now when he was 20 ?.

I am a Curry partisan and whether partly due to injury misfortune which eventually became good fortune or not GSW who had been similarly hapless as a franchise managed to build around him to win 4 titles which they didn’t commence doing until he was 25. Their owner was prepared to spend as well as take short term fan disapproval, and at least had the good judgement to get Jerry West involved, though.

If Lebron was on a team that was LeBron, Klay, Barnes, Green, Bogut - Livingston, Barbosa, Iggy, Festus when he was 26 then he wouldn't have left the Cavs.

If they then swapped Barnes for Durant then he wouldn't have ever left. Through all the iterations of the Warriors if you swapped LeBron with Curry then LeBron would have never left either.

Just interesting how the dice roll.

This is where we disagree, of course Curry is not responsible for the innate talent of his team-mates or the hard work they put in to develop that talent, but if you build a team long term around a player I don’t consider it to be drawing too long a bow to suggest a cohesive team is more likely to result than from assembling already elite players who have become so elsewhere regardless of fit which is which is how LeBron’s teams have largely been constructed since 2010 imo. We don’t know how the players you mention would have fitted with players other than Curry, but do know they were good to great next to Curry. We also have the example of Andrew Wiggins, a huge contributor to a title next to Curry, not so elite elsewhere. Even KlD an all time great player was the most effective he ever was imo next to Curry, who was prepared to sacrifice his own game to an extent to make this so. Particularly Barbosa wasn’t as good elsewhere, and I can probably extend this to other players, and we have the testimony of a player you mention in Iguodala who made a deliberate choice to join up with Curry in advance of the success of the team and is on the record attributing the success of the team, and the value of the franchise for that matter, to Curry and of David West who has said how wonderful and fortunate it was to be on the team.

This is different than what Stockton appears to be mostly saying though, I don’t consider LeBron’s path to have been easier or intrinsically less virtuous, it was probably harder and he definitely had the bad luck to be drafted by a poorly run franchise. Even as a Curry fanboy I also consider LeBron’s 4 titles to be more directly attributable to him Individually.

I think it takes 1 season to build the chemistry. I mean look at the 2016 Cavs, no ordinary team without chemistry couldn't have taken down the 73-9 Warriors in the finals.

Look at the 2022 Warriors team.
Pretty much a new team for 4 players.

[michaelm]

If Lebron was on a team that was LeBron, Klay, Barnes, Green, Bogut - Livingston, Barbosa, Iggy, Festus when he was 26 then he wouldn't have left the Cavs.

If they then swapped Barnes for Durant then he wouldn't have ever left. Through all the iterations of the Warriors if you swapped LeBron with Curry then LeBron would have never left either.

Just interesting how the dice roll.

This is where we disagree, of course Curry is not responsible for the innate talent of his team-mates or the hard work they put in to develop that talent, but if you build a team long term around a player I don’t consider it to be drawing too long a bow to suggest a cohesive team is more likely to result than from assembling already elite players who have become so elsewhere regardless of fit which is which is how LeBron’s teams have largely been constructed since 2010 imo. We don’t know how the players you mention would have fitted with players other than Curry, but do know they were good to great next to Curry. We also have the example of Andrew Wiggins, a huge contributor to a title next to Curry, not so elite elsewhere. Even KlD an all time great player was the most effective he ever was imo next to Curry, who was prepared to sacrifice his own game to an extent to make this so. Particularly Barbosa wasn’t as good elsewhere, and I can probably extend this to other players, and we have the testimony of a player you mention in Iguodala who made a deliberate choice to join up with Curry in advance of the success of the team and is on the record attributing the success of the team, and the value of the franchise for that matter, to Curry and of David West who has said how wonderful and fortunate it was to be on the team.

This is different than what Stockton appears to be mostly saying though, I don’t consider LeBron’s path to have been easier or intrinsically less virtuous, it was probably harder and he definitely had the bad luck to be drafted by a poorly run franchise. Even as a Curry fanboy I also consider LeBron’s 4 titles to be more directly attributable to him Individually.

I think it takes 1 season to build the chemistry. I mean look at the 2016 Cavs, no ordinary team without chemistry couldn't have taken down the 73-9 Warriors in the finals.

Look at the 2022 Warriors team.
Pretty much a new team for 4 players.

Intended to reply to your next post with my previous post as you probably realised.

Sure, the 2016 Cavs played great together, including players other than Irving like TT, and Irving himself came to appreciate how helpful being next to LeBron was to his game after he left the Cavs and expressed regret about his decision to leave.

[Rust_Cohle]

2017 cavs probably beat the warriors without KD in fairness

I don't really see how. One of the reasons Cleveland managed to win in 2016 is that they managed to provide a decent amount of defensive resistance. That was pretty much out the window in 2017 as they were a really bad defensive team. They did have an outstanding offense, and on paper they were stacked across multiple positions, but they had chemistry issues.

Not to mention, 2017 Warriors are more than likely coming in with a lot of anger and bitterness after what happened in 2016. They aren't going to take that lying down. And then of course, we can't ignore the roster improvements that would've been made. Remember, this is a team that had the cap space to sign Durant as a free agent. As Steve Nash pointed out, if it wasn't Durant, it was going to be someone else. Either way, the Warriors were going to improve.

Agree, they didn’t need to replace Harrison Barnes with a top 5 player in the NBA to be considerably better than they were with him playing as he did in the 2015 play-offs, and the 2015 finals in particular. I became a GSW fan because Andrew Bogut joined them, but he was also an unreliable commodity and they were better off with the 3 headed center who replaced him, although they would likely not have gotten too many center minutes from any alternative to KD at SF. A healthier Curry and Iguodala would have improved them as well. This was rather the rub, they thought at the time Curry was too frail for a dynasty to rest on his shoulders, and the actual pitch to KD was reputedly that they could win titles without him but could be a dynasty with him.

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

[michaelm]

I don't really see how. One of the reasons Cleveland managed to win in 2016 is that they managed to provide a decent amount of defensive resistance. That was pretty much out the window in 2017 as they were a really bad defensive team. They did have an outstanding offense, and on paper they were stacked across multiple positions, but they had chemistry issues.

Not to mention, 2017 Warriors are more than likely coming in with a lot of anger and bitterness after what happened in 2016. They aren't going to take that lying down. And then of course, we can't ignore the roster improvements that would've been made. Remember, this is a team that had the cap space to sign Durant as a free agent. As Steve Nash pointed out, if it wasn't Durant, it was going to be someone else. Either way, the Warriors were going to improve.

Agree, they didn’t need to replace Harrison Barnes with a top 5 player in the NBA to be considerably better than they were with him playing as he did in the 2015 play-offs, and the 2015 finals in particular. I became a GSW fan because Andrew Bogut joined them, but he was also an unreliable commodity and they were better off with the 3 headed center who replaced him, although they would likely not have gotten too many center minutes from any alternative to KD at SF. A healthier Curry and Iguodala would have improved them as well. This was rather the rub, they thought at the time Curry was too frail for a dynasty to rest on his shoulders, and the actual pitch to KD was reputedly that they could win titles without him but could be a dynasty with him.

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

I continue to be a huge KD fan and will forever treasure the memory of how good those KD GSW teams were, particularly the 2017 team. You may be correct, while imo they could have beaten most or all of the other teams with a more mundane SF in KD's place, he did make them totally invincible even by Lebron.

Given how things went down on the other thread I am currently not taking too much issue with reasonable posts by Lebron fans.

[Iwasawitness]

I don't really see how. One of the reasons Cleveland managed to win in 2016 is that they managed to provide a decent amount of defensive resistance. That was pretty much out the window in 2017 as they were a really bad defensive team. They did have an outstanding offense, and on paper they were stacked across multiple positions, but they had chemistry issues.

Not to mention, 2017 Warriors are more than likely coming in with a lot of anger and bitterness after what happened in 2016. They aren't going to take that lying down. And then of course, we can't ignore the roster improvements that would've been made. Remember, this is a team that had the cap space to sign Durant as a free agent. As Steve Nash pointed out, if it wasn't Durant, it was going to be someone else. Either way, the Warriors were going to improve.

Agree, they didn’t need to replace Harrison Barnes with a top 5 player in the NBA to be considerably better than they were with him playing as he did in the 2015 play-offs, and the 2015 finals in particular. I became a GSW fan because Andrew Bogut joined them, but he was also an unreliable commodity and they were better off with the 3 headed center who replaced him, although they would likely not have gotten too many center minutes from any alternative to KD at SF. A healthier Curry and Iguodala would have improved them as well. This was rather the rub, they thought at the time Curry was too frail for a dynasty to rest on his shoulders, and the actual pitch to KD was reputedly that they could win titles without him but could be a dynasty with him.

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

Okay, serious question: did you even watch either of those finals? Durant was tightly guarded? No, Curry was tightly guarded, in both series mind you. It's one of the reasons why Durant was so dominant in the first place. There were multiple (and I mean more than a dozen) instances where Durant was able to get easy open looks off of basic switches and offensive sets because Curry was generating so much attention. And when he wasn't getting that, he was getting basic one on one defense, and a lot of the time it was either pretty weak defensive coverage, or he would get past it via screen which Cleveland had trouble switching on due to the three point shooting of Golden State.

Durant pretty much had free reign to do whatever he wanted. Don't get me wrong, he was dominant, but it was about as easy of a situation as you could get. And most of it was due to Curry.

[Rust_Cohle]

Agree, they didn’t need to replace Harrison Barnes with a top 5 player in the NBA to be considerably better than they were with him playing as he did in the 2015 play-offs, and the 2015 finals in particular. I became a GSW fan because Andrew Bogut joined them, but he was also an unreliable commodity and they were better off with the 3 headed center who replaced him, although they would likely not have gotten too many center minutes from any alternative to KD at SF. A healthier Curry and Iguodala would have improved them as well. This was rather the rub, they thought at the time Curry was too frail for a dynasty to rest on his shoulders, and the actual pitch to KD was reputedly that they could win titles without him but could be a dynasty with him.

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

Okay, serious question: did you even watch either of those finals? Durant was tightly guarded? No, Curry was tightly guarded, in both series mind you. It's one of the reasons why Durant was so dominant in the first place. There were multiple (and I mean more than a dozen) instances where Durant was able to get easy open looks off of basic switches and offensive sets because Curry was generating so much attention. And when he wasn't getting that, he was getting basic one on one defense, and a lot of the time it was either pretty weak defensive coverage, or he would get past it via screen which Cleveland had trouble switching on due to the three point shooting of Golden State.

Durant pretty much had free reign to do whatever he wanted. Don't get me wrong, he was dominant, but it was about as easy of a situation as you could get. And most of it was due to Curry.

Yes, many times. And the metrics show he was the mostly tightly guarded. Does Curry help? Of course, but it also helps Curry to have opposing teams worry about Durant as well.

Durant actually got the fewest open or wide open looks of any player in the Finals by a considerable margin.

Only 27.8% of Durant's shot attempts were considered open(no defender within 4 feet). Other notables include 38.7% Kyrie, 49.6% LeBron, 48.3% Curry, 55.7% Thompson, 47.8% Love, and 52.8% Green He also got less total open looks per game(6.0 of 21.6 FGA) than Kyrie(9.4 of 24.6), LeBron(11.6 of 23.4), Curry(8.8 of 18.2), Thompson(7.8 of 14.0 FGA), Love(6.4 of 13.4 FGA) and only slightly more than Green(5.8 of 11.0 FGA).

He was actually contested on 15.6 of his 21.6 FGA/game, he just shot an outrageous 66.9 eFG% on contested shots including 59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals.. He shot 52.9 eFG% with a defender 0-2 feet away(super tight) and 69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away(tight).

59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals

52.9 eFG% with defender 2 feet or closer

69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away

James ways right: Durant is the difference-maker of this robust Warriors squad. Teaming up with three All-Stars has made life miserable for James, the four-time Finals MVP.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19576144/nba-playoffs-2017-how-kevin-durant-pushed-cavs-breaking-point

[Iwasawitness]

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

Okay, serious question: did you even watch either of those finals? Durant was tightly guarded? No, Curry was tightly guarded, in both series mind you. It's one of the reasons why Durant was so dominant in the first place. There were multiple (and I mean more than a dozen) instances where Durant was able to get easy open looks off of basic switches and offensive sets because Curry was generating so much attention. And when he wasn't getting that, he was getting basic one on one defense, and a lot of the time it was either pretty weak defensive coverage, or he would get past it via screen which Cleveland had trouble switching on due to the three point shooting of Golden State.

Durant pretty much had free reign to do whatever he wanted. Don't get me wrong, he was dominant, but it was about as easy of a situation as you could get. And most of it was due to Curry.

Yes, many times. And the metrics show he was the mostly tightly guarded. Does Curry help? Of course, but it also helps Curry to have opposing teams worry about Durant as well.

Durant actually got the fewest open or wide open looks of any player in the Finals by a considerable margin.

Only 27.8% of Durant's shot attempts were considered open(no defender within 4 feet). Other notables include 38.7% Kyrie, 49.6% LeBron, 48.3% Curry, 55.7% Thompson, 47.8% Love, and 52.8% Green He also got less total open looks per game(6.0 of 21.6 FGA) than Kyrie(9.4 of 24.6), LeBron(11.6 of 23.4), Curry(8.8 of 18.2), Thompson(7.8 of 14.0 FGA), Love(6.4 of 13.4 FGA) and only slightly more than Green(5.8 of 11.0 FGA).

He was actually contested on 15.6 of his 21.6 FGA/game, he just shot an outrageous 66.9 eFG% on contested shots including 59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals.. He shot 52.9 eFG% with a defender 0-2 feet away(super tight) and 69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away(tight).

59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals

52.9 eFG% with defender 2 feet or closer

69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away

James ways right: Durant is the difference-maker of this robust Warriors squad. Teaming up with three All-Stars has made life miserable for James, the four-time Finals MVP.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19576144/nba-playoffs-2017-how-kevin-durant-pushed-cavs-breaking-point

Okay so you didn't watch the series, got it. Not sure why I bothered after the debacle that was your Irving comment.

[Rust_Cohle]

Okay, serious question: did you even watch either of those finals? Durant was tightly guarded? No, Curry was tightly guarded, in both series mind you. It's one of the reasons why Durant was so dominant in the first place. There were multiple (and I mean more than a dozen) instances where Durant was able to get easy open looks off of basic switches and offensive sets because Curry was generating so much attention. And when he wasn't getting that, he was getting basic one on one defense, and a lot of the time it was either pretty weak defensive coverage, or he would get past it via screen which Cleveland had trouble switching on due to the three point shooting of Golden State.

Durant pretty much had free reign to do whatever he wanted. Don't get me wrong, he was dominant, but it was about as easy of a situation as you could get. And most of it was due to Curry.

Yes, many times. And the metrics show he was the mostly tightly guarded. Does Curry help? Of course, but it also helps Curry to have opposing teams worry about Durant as well.

Durant actually got the fewest open or wide open looks of any player in the Finals by a considerable margin.

Only 27.8% of Durant's shot attempts were considered open(no defender within 4 feet). Other notables include 38.7% Kyrie, 49.6% LeBron, 48.3% Curry, 55.7% Thompson, 47.8% Love, and 52.8% Green He also got less total open looks per game(6.0 of 21.6 FGA) than Kyrie(9.4 of 24.6), LeBron(11.6 of 23.4), Curry(8.8 of 18.2), Thompson(7.8 of 14.0 FGA), Love(6.4 of 13.4 FGA) and only slightly more than Green(5.8 of 11.0 FGA).

He was actually contested on 15.6 of his 21.6 FGA/game, he just shot an outrageous 66.9 eFG% on contested shots including 59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals.. He shot 52.9 eFG% with a defender 0-2 feet away(super tight) and 69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away(tight).

59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals

52.9 eFG% with defender 2 feet or closer

69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away

James ways right: Durant is the difference-maker of this robust Warriors squad. Teaming up with three All-Stars has made life miserable for James, the four-time Finals MVP.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19576144/nba-playoffs-2017-how-kevin-durant-pushed-cavs-breaking-point

Okay so you didn't watch the series, got it. Not sure why I bothered after the debacle that was your Irving comment.

I provide stat after stat after stat, but you make up an alternate reality, so because you say so, Durant had it extremely easy despite having less open shots than any other player. He had an all time historical level finals. Does curry’s Center of gravity help? Of course, but you act like Durant was guarded like lebron on outside shots in the 2007 finals. The only debacle here is your memory of what you think happened in the 2017 finals.

https://www.si.com/nba/2017/06/02/nba-finals-game-1-kevin-durant-warriors-cavaliers-defense-lebron-james

[Yank3525]

It always amazes me how often some of these people pick apart Lebrons accomplishments yet never apply to same level of attention or critique to other players.

Is this a joke? Kobe had 3 championships and people still held it against him because he won with Shaq. People actually try to poke holes at Michael F'n Jordan's resume. People are always picking apart Kevin Durant. Even lesser stars like Melo and Westbrook had to deal with the nitpicking.

LeBron is nothing special in this regard.

People really trying to devalue stocktons opinion because it disagrees with the narrative they’ve built in their head

The hilarious thing is I am sure John isn't the only former or current player who thinks this.

[Iwasawitness]

Yes, many times. And the metrics show he was the mostly tightly guarded. Does Curry help? Of course, but it also helps Curry to have opposing teams worry about Durant as well.

Durant actually got the fewest open or wide open looks of any player in the Finals by a considerable margin.

Only 27.8% of Durant's shot attempts were considered open(no defender within 4 feet). Other notables include 38.7% Kyrie, 49.6% LeBron, 48.3% Curry, 55.7% Thompson, 47.8% Love, and 52.8% Green He also got less total open looks per game(6.0 of 21.6 FGA) than Kyrie(9.4 of 24.6), LeBron(11.6 of 23.4), Curry(8.8 of 18.2), Thompson(7.8 of 14.0 FGA), Love(6.4 of 13.4 FGA) and only slightly more than Green(5.8 of 11.0 FGA).

He was actually contested on 15.6 of his 21.6 FGA/game, he just shot an outrageous 66.9 eFG% on contested shots including 59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals.. He shot 52.9 eFG% with a defender 0-2 feet away(super tight) and 69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away(tight).

59.1% on contested 3's, which made up 73% of his 3's in the Finals

52.9 eFG% with defender 2 feet or closer

69.8 eFG% with a defender 2-4 feet away

James ways right: Durant is the difference-maker of this robust Warriors squad. Teaming up with three All-Stars has made life miserable for James, the four-time Finals MVP.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19576144/nba-playoffs-2017-how-kevin-durant-pushed-cavs-breaking-point

Okay so you didn't watch the series, got it. Not sure why I bothered after the debacle that was your Irving comment.

I provide stat after stat after stat, but you make up an alternate reality, so because you say so, Durant had it extremely easy despite having less open shots than any other player. He had an all time historical level finals. Does curry’s Center of gravity help? Of course, but you act like Durant was guarded like lebron on outside shots in the 2007 finals. The only debacle here is your memory of what you think happened in the 2017 finals.

Your stats are factoring in situations where Durant was guarded by people who had no impact on his shot due to his height and length, aka a great majority of his shots. Those are being considered "tightly guarded", even though they had no possible way of bothering Durant's shot. Next time, watch the series instead of using faulty statistics and relying on them blindly with no context and wasting everyone's time having to read it.

[Rust_Cohle]

Okay so you didn't watch the series, got it. Not sure why I bothered after the debacle that was your Irving comment.

I provide stat after stat after stat, but you make up an alternate reality, so because you say so, Durant had it extremely easy despite having less open shots than any other player. He had an all time historical level finals. Does curry’s Center of gravity help? Of course, but you act like Durant was guarded like lebron on outside shots in the 2007 finals. The only debacle here is your memory of what you think happened in the 2017 finals.

Your stats are factoring in situations where Durant was guarded by people who had no impact on his shot due to his height and length, aka a great majority of his shots. Those are being considered "tightly guarded", even though they had no possible way of bothering Durant's shot. Next time, watch the series instead of using faulty statistics and relying on them blindly with no context and wasting everyone's time having to read it.

Oh jfc, so even when Durant is guarded it can’t count due to his height. You’re better than this man. It’s almost trump like where you ignore the facts and just stubbornly. With that logic no defender can guard Durant so he must be the goat.

But we will have to just take your blind fanboy word that Durant had the easiest job in finals history, despite getting less open shots than any other player during that finals, including LeBron. It’s even ridiculous to try and have this convo if you’re just going cover your ears and go lalalala despite every metric slapping you in the face.

Durant was god like in those finals, and not because he was being guarded by a JJ barea type. He was on fire and for the millionth had a historic level of offense. The cavs absolutely tried to gameplan for him. I would agree curry was game-planned for more but Durant ate LeBron alive when LeBron was guarding him, but hey if one of the “greatest defenders ever” can’t even limit Durant than maybe he is the goat.

Absolutely ridiculous

[Sweet Meat Lew]

So what is the bar? Why does Lebron's chips only matter if he can win it buy himself? We saw Boston collapse four guys on him. There is no player in history that you could substitute Bron for on those early Cle teams that could win. Pair him with a prime top 50 player like Malone and he builds a dynasty there.

MJ's front office brought him the right pieces at the right time. During his title runs, he walked in as the odds on favorite by a large margin. The bar is now that you your legacy is tied to the actions of your front office? You have to stay committed to an organization that has no idea how to build a contender? Bron walked away from a stacked team to bring a title to Cle.

[Rust_Cohle]

So what is the bar? Why does Lebron's chips only matter if he can win it buy himself? We saw Boston collapse four guys on him. There is no player in history that you could substitute Bron for on those early Cle teams that could win. Pair him with a prime top 50 player like Malone and he builds a dynasty there.

MJ's front office brought him the right pieces at the right time. During his title runs, he walked in as the odds on favorite by a large margin. The bar is now that you your legacy is tied to the actions of your front office? You have to stay committed to an organization that has no idea how to build a contender? Bron walked away from a stacked team to bring a title to Cle.

Lebron has lost 4 series with home court advantage, MJ zero. Doesn’t mean that metric makes MJ better, but people act like MJ just swept everyone on the way to titles. They were down 0-2 to the Knicks, went 7 games against Indy and down 15 in the fourth, Utah and Phoenix were favoured heading into game 6 of ‘93 and ‘98 finals respectively.

The concept that lebron titles mean less I don’t agree with, but the Miami collusion will always be incredibly lame. 2016 was amazing of course.

[michaelm]

If Lebron did what KD did with the Warriors then I would agree....but Lebron never joined a team that was already capable of winning a championship before AND after him joining/leaving.

Let's not revise history; it was LeBron who started the super team era.

Lebron brought a knife to a fist fight while KD took out a gun...there's a difference.

Lebron started the superteam stuff but he never joined an established championship caliber team like KD did.....and we've seen the success KD has had starting his own superteams with the Nets and Suns...didn't work out too great.

I see it more as LeBron bringing a gun to a knife fight and KD then bringing a bigger gun.

[JujitsuFlip]

Let's not revise history; it was LeBron who started the super team era.

No he didn't lol

This gets dispelled every single time the MJ vs LBJ debate gets brought up yet people are still stuck on the narrative.

If the Boston BIG 3 [4] are never formed, LeBron never goes to Miami.

[ball_takes23]

Agree, they didn’t need to replace Harrison Barnes with a top 5 player in the NBA to be considerably better than they were with him playing as he did in the 2015 play-offs, and the 2015 finals in particular. I became a GSW fan because Andrew Bogut joined them, but he was also an unreliable commodity and they were better off with the 3 headed center who replaced him, although they would likely not have gotten too many center minutes from any alternative to KD at SF. A healthier Curry and Iguodala would have improved them as well. This was rather the rub, they thought at the time Curry was too frail for a dynasty to rest on his shoulders, and the actual pitch to KD was reputedly that they could win titles without him but could be a dynasty with him.

I may disagree there as Durant had one of the greatest finals performances in history, averaging 35, 8 and 5 on a whopping 70% true shooting percentage. And this is all while mostly being very tightly guarded. 2 of the 5 game series were decided by 9 points or less. Without Durant that’s a 7 game series where anything can happen as we saw in 2016. Put Durant on 2016 warriors and it obviously wouldn’t be a contest.

This chart includes 2018 so maybe not the best example, but Durant was easily the best player in both finals for the warriors while being guards very tightly:

Okay, serious question: did you even watch either of those finals? Durant was tightly guarded? No, Curry was tightly guarded, in both series mind you. It's one of the reasons why Durant was so dominant in the first place. There were multiple (and I mean more than a dozen) instances where Durant was able to get easy open looks off of basic switches and offensive sets because Curry was generating so much attention. And when he wasn't getting that, he was getting basic one on one defense, and a lot of the time it was either pretty weak defensive coverage, or he would get past it via screen which Cleveland had trouble switching on due to the three point shooting of Golden State.

Durant pretty much had free reign to do whatever he wanted. Don't get me wrong, he was dominant, but it was about as easy of a situation as you could get. And most of it was due to Curry.

It really sucks that Cleveland didn’t have an elite versatile defender with size that played the same position as KD. Sounds like they could have used one.

[Johnny Bball]

The shot charts literally show Durant was the focus of the defense and got Curry more open looks. But sure... opposite.