The Master wrote:Isn't pretty much circumstantial why LeBron didn't generate as great offenses as Magic?
The first time he played with a very good offensive supporting cast actually fitting his skillset really well - was in his 2nd stint with Cavs, but then he was in his 30s already. And you could criticize his RS effort in comparison to let's say Jordan 95-97, but not necessarily to Magic who himself had only one-two prime seasons in his 30s played.
Considering that Cavs were +4.8 rORTG in 15-18 period despite LeBron being 'only' at 6.7 OBPM (also: Kyrie being so-so in '16 and out in '18) - I don't think there's that much of a doubt that he could facilitate visibly better offenses (he was +8.3 OBPM in the 09-14 period and everyone knows he was a significantly better regular season performer). Especially taking into account how great Cavs were offensively in the 16-17 playoffs - it's not even giving benefit of the doubt here. Cavs 09-10 had +4 rORTG offenses with Mo Williams and Delonte West as the 2nd-3rd options, so the same story.
It's still pretty close here, don't get me wrong - but the whole 'more synergistic skillset' sounds pretty circumstantial. At the end of the day, Magic didn't play with a lesser version of himself (Wade) nor he played on as drought team talent wise as Cavs 07-10 - and yet we still know that his best seasons came out once Kareem regressed.
Is the team offense circumstantial? Absolutely. It's one of the data points, and probably one we shouldn't weight too heavily (or at least more heavily than the individual impact metrics), since they depend on teammates -- like we both say. It's part of the picture, but only one part.
But just to clarify, when I say Magic's skills are more synergistic, I mean both that they're more synergistic with teammates and more synergistic with each other.
-For the former, yes that does depend on the exact teammates, but it's also possible to do a skillset based analysis. There are trends in how different skills mesh with different types of teammates. This kind of skillset / chemistry analysis is really noisy, and people can disagree pretty heavily on this sort of stuff, so it's far from perfect, but it is part of the picture. It's absolutely true that Magic had substantially more offensive talent than 1st Cavs LeBron. I'm not too interested in getting into a scalability/LeBron discussion here (it's been overdone in the past), but suffice it to say, I think someone like Magic who monopolizes playmaking (with the greatest playmaking ever and some of the greatest offensive IQ ever) but shares scoring load (with better era relative spacing) fits a little better next to high-quality scorers and finishers (like Kareem, Worthy, Wade, Kyrie, Love, AD) than a guy like (younger?) Lebron who wants to monopolize both the playmaking (with all-time playmaking and offensive IQ, but not quite as good as Magic's) and monopolize more of the scoring too (with less spacing). So I like the synergy of Magic's skills with his teammates, based on the teammates yes, but also based on the skills and play styles themselves.
Now this comparison might be less fair when we get to older LeBron. As I insinuated in my first post, I'm open to discussions that as he got older the gap shrunk or even flipped in favor of LeBron. Late Miami LeBron and 2nd Cavs LeBron had improved passing, IQ, command of pace, and yes spacing/shooting/scoring counters, which I think helped these scalability issues. But unlike Magic, these evolutions came at a time when LeBron was older and the he had to (chose to?) coast in the regular season.
This coasting muddies the waters a little bit.... how much of the playoff offenses benefited from LeBron's motor and stamina, and would he have had this motor/stamina if he hadn't coasted? How much of 2017/2018's offensive brilliance comes from coasting more on the defensive end relative to his ability (which again is higher than Magic's), not just in the regular season, but in the playoffs as well? Since the peak team offensive brilliance came in small sample playoffs, how much are boosted by shooting luck? The answers are unclear, and people may rightly differ. If younger LeBron had developed some of the skills of older LeBron, I would be more comfortable taking him. But as is, I think Magic had the teamate-synergistic skills when he was younger and didn't need to coast, whereas LeBron developed the synergistic skills only after his athleticism and regular season effort began to fade. This prolonged his prime to incredible lengths, but decreased the heights of the offensive peak for me (or at least gives me wider uncertainty bars for the heights of the offensive peak).
-For the latter, I do think there's a synergy between a players skills. For one of the clearest cases, consider the difference between a static shooter, an off-ball motion player, and a motion shooter. The defense has a very different reaction to each of these players. The static shooter does pull at the defense gravitationally, but is much more predictable -- and that decreases the mental tax on the defender, and makes it easier for them to figure out when and how to help. The motion player does tug at the defense from different places, but can be more easily ignored on the perimeter -- they only become more of a threat if they're setting a good screen or cutting near the basket where their lack of range is less limiting. But the motion shooter tugs at the defense almost constantly throughout the possession, and is far more taxing on the defense's attention. That's the kind of synergy I mean. With Magic, I think there's a synergy between his size (specifically relative to his position -- since he played guard alongside other wings, that meant he more frequently had a clearer size advantage), post up ability, handle, and passing. This is akin to what jake was saying. I agree with jake that his post up scoring threat was highly effective against 80s defenses and smaller defenders (and didn't have issues like how to get the ball to the post given Magic's handle)... and frequently drew double teams, even though doubling Magic was perhaps one of the worst things a defense could do ever given his GOAT level passing. There's other synergies you could draw with his size and spacing, or his high defensive rebounding rates at the guard position alongside his speed and handle and transition passing (the Showtime Lakers wouldn't have been able to be the GOAT transition team if they hadn't had so many transition opportunities, and Magic's defensive rebounding and speed helped create more defense-to-offense opportunities).
Other may disagree, and I do think it's close. Overall, across all the evidence we have (team level, box level, possession-level or game-level impact metrics), I just think the defensive edge for LeBron is wider than the overall gap in their performance, which leaves me favoring Magic offense-only... again with enough uncertainty that it's totally reasonable to flip to LeBron.
)! Thank you, and may Christ bless you on your journey!
