kayess wrote:I'm going to preface this by saying I genuinely think you're one of the absolute best posters on the board, but I feel that some of your posts come off as "going against the grain just for the sake of it". I remember you being high on LBJ's offense before, and to come from that to him not being able to lead a GOAT offense / team is pretty interesting. Of course I always read your posts anyways because you always elaborate so well.
Definitely not something I do purposefully, but that's a fair criticism. I'll keep that in mind. Being a contrarian definitely has some temptation.
I was definitely much higher on LeBron's offense at one point, fair to point out. I've since learned a lot, and the combination of that and some weirdness from this particular LeBron season has caused me to hedge. The thing is, when we're talking about a player potentially leading a GOAT team/offense, it inherently means we're limiting ourselves to a very, very narrow spectrum of players. I don't think it should ever be assumed that a player can do such a thing until he actually does it, and moreover I think we should be skeptical, especially when the player has given us reason to doubt (I'll get to that later).
kayess wrote:I'd love to see those numbers because idk if the ones I looked up are accurate. 82games has this:
42.5% on corner threes at 118 ORTG (shouldn't it be 127.5 though? 42.5% on 3s means an EV of 1.275 PPP, and over 100 poss that's 127.5 - am I missing something here?),
38.8% on straightaway threes at 105 ORTG
*Curry is at 2.0/5.2 on pull-up 3s - that's 38.5% per game
I don't get why there's a 10 point ORTG difference with just a 4% difference, but I think if these hold we can definitively say it's not the same.
NBA.com now defaults to playoff numbers in the shots dashboard, so you're comparing whole-season league numbers to Curry's playoff numbers. FWIW, Curry is at 42.5% on pull-up 3s in the reg. season, exactly the same as the corner numbers you posted. Curry also shoots 47.9% on C&S 3s, which, like, my god.
You might object to this, but I'd honestly focus less on the specific numbers and more on the effect on a defense. Rather than a bunch of ball movement to set up the best possible shot, Curry can accept a screen and just pop one off the dribble with far less effort and potential for turnovers, etc. Even with the numbers you posted above, I'd put that as a win when Curry shoots 3% above league 3P% average on
pull-ups.kayess wrote:See, this is the kind of thing I'd absolutely 100% believe if I hadn't read SSB's posts on LeBron's evolution as an offensive player. Despite the fact that as time went on, Wade's playmaking abilities grew worse, LeBron played more and more off-ball - leading to the Heat breaking the EFG% record twice. Of the four factors taken into account by ORTG, they only lagged behind in OREB%, and again, that was a strategic move that took into account the limitations of their personnel, and the style of defense they wanted to play (which was similarly limited by the former).
Kyrie isn't on the same level as even Wade as a playmaker. If he could find LeBron on those off-ball cuts or hit the roll man 90% of the time on PNRs, I think it's valid to suppose that LeBron would recognize that letting Kyrie have the ball more is the correct move. Case-in-point, Wade might be a worse fit next to LeBron, but the Heat's best 2 man lineups was Wade-LeBron by a landslide, iirc. They could find each other on cuts when the other was holding the ball, make the correct decision on PNRs, etc. That was how Wade made up for his (relative to Kyrie) inferior shooting, among other things that made the fit worse.
I get your point that Curry turns the "hunt for the best possible 3" paradigm all on its head because his pull-up 3 is amazing. And seriously, that's awesome! I love watching Curry randomly pull-up from outside the gym while incredulous defenders do everything they can to bother the shot - only for Curry to swish that **** anyway. But I don't get why that's empirically superior to "attacking off the dribble all the damn time" if the latter creates even better looks.
So I want to emphasize here that my overall point was that the Heat were less than the sum of their parts. This is to be expected to some extent, but the Heat were drastically so. The Heat eFG% record thing gets brought up quite a bit, but when it's brought up it's used to explain why their overall ORTG's weren't very impressive in a historical context. Here's the thing: plenty of other teams have done similar things personnel-wise and still didn't see their ORTGs drop that much due to lack of ORB. The extreme example, of course, being the Phoenix Suns, but if you don't like that analogy we can simply compare the Current Warriors to those Heat teams.
2015 GSW: 24.1 ORB%
2013 MIA: 22.2%
2014 MIA: 20.6%
The Warriors are obviously worse, but compared to 2013 at least it's not super dramatic. Let's not forget that GSW also plays with a small-ball 4. The Dubs led the league in eFG% as well, and were about 1% lower than those Miami seasons. GSW is spectacularly less turnover prone than Miami's league-leading figure. The big difference between these two teams lies in the FTR, where Miami KILLS GSW. That's to be expected, though.
But circling back to my overall point, let's look at the LeBron/Wade combo since you brough them up.
2012: 109.9
2013: 113.9
2014: 109.0 (All were worse than the James/Bosh combo in those respective years)
So first thing to note is you're right: LeBron's improved game in 2013 very obviously helped the fit between he and Wade, and helped them run an elite offense together. 2014 Wade was limited, so that number is whatever. But look at the above numbers, and then look at this:
2015 James/J.R. Smith: 114.7, post All-Star 115.8
What. the. hell. Of all the stars LeBron has played with, the 2 man lineup that has produced the best offensive results is James/Smith?? It's better than any single 2 man lineup involving Bosh, Wade, Irving, or Love. Now if you're not willing to draw conclusions from this fine, but it points to something rather specific: playing with LeBron means that none of your skills are as important as the ability to shoot 3s off the catch. Again this ties into the ISO lebron thing I mentioned earlier: the dude is going to dominate the ball and push for his own points. This is great when he plays with weak supporting casts, and not so great when he plays with big-time offensive talents.
kayess wrote:Which teams did you think were more talented offensively? There's a similar narrative when viewing the Heat and the Warriors - people thinking they were these unbeatable juggernauts with epic supporting casts, but upon closer inspection, fell apart without their star - and I don't think that the talent gap is significant either way (if there is one). Give 2014 LeBron an upgraded version of 2009's supporting cast and it's not unthinkable that they do even better than the 9 SRS Cavs with Mo freaking Williams as the second best player.
The Heat from 2012-2014 were IMO very obviously more talented offensively than these Warriors, as well as the 2015 Cavs. You can disagree, but I think in such case our definitions of "talent" would be very, very different.
Your point about 2009's supporting cast, well, I'm not sure how to take that. I've always been of the position that LeBron can do more with less than any other single player in NBA history. The big problem I have with him is that he also does less with more.
kayess wrote:To conclude, I just thought the the past 2-3 seasons would've convinced anyone that LeBron's no "jack of all trades and master of none" when it came to adapting to teams. Everything you just said could've applied to 2009 LeBron, sure, but not 2013-onwards LeBron, who has consistently fine tuned his game to start living in the post, getting easy buckets off of cuts (which he isn't getting anymore because no one on the Cavs can find him on those), and working off the ball more. We've seen an immense amount of data/games played that has shown he's willing to adapt everything about his game and approach if necessary:
2012: Adjusts to decreased athleticism and the loss the previous year to get all his points "within the flow of the system" as IG2 would put it
2013: Plays more off-ball, improves his jumper, playmaking out of the post, etc. etc.
2014: Even more fine-tuning here. He's making well-timed off ball cuts and his jumper stayed wet until the Finals
It's not a question of adapting, though, it's that when LeBron is doing his thing to the fullest extent that other players become more limited.
kayess wrote:I just don't see where the evidence for the following is:
1) Him playing that way because that's what he wants
Admittedly not a ton of evidence for this, but if you follow Zach Lowe he's talked about this a bunch, especially in his most recent pod with Windhorst. Spo has also made comments to the effect of getting LeBron to play his role on the Heat was his hardest challenge as a coach. It's been said that a major motivator for LeBron going back to Cleveland was the control he could yield over the organization- and when we see LeBron suddenly abandon the skillset he's worked so hard for over the past years, what else can we conclude? I get that this isn't hard evidence- but there's a bunch of smoke here.
kayess wrote:2) The ceiling on his teams have been due to him
2013 Bosh/James/Wade: 112.3 ORTG
2015 James/Irving/Love (post All-Star, to give maximum benefit of the doubt): 111.4 ORTG
2015 Curry/Thompson/Draymond: 115.8
Honest question: when you look at the above numbers, how do you make sense of them? Like what is the explanation behind GSW's big 3 being so dramatically better than either of the two involving LeBron? It' certainly isn't Draymond Green, who is the worst offensive player listed above by quite a margin.
Now admittedly the Cavs starting 5 as a whole outperforms GSW offensively. The Warriors starting 5 with Iggy in place of Barnes, though, produces a 122.6 ORTG. Hell, the 2 man combination of Iggy and Steph produces 115.2 ORTG, and Steph/Livingston 114.6. Move Curry off the ball, and apparently the Warriors have a GOAT offense on their hands.
kayess wrote:I'll end by saying that absolutely none of this is to say LeBron is superior to Curry on O, though. This is more "why I think your criticisms of LeBron don't necessarily apply", rather than "why I think your criticisms of LeBron don't necessarily apply, thus LeBron > Curry on O"
Fair enough. I enjoyed your post, sorry I couldn't get to it for so long.
