Doctor MJ wrote:MyUniBroDavis wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:
I think there's a real danger of essentially separating offense from defense like they don't effect each other. The finals were an extremely offensive series while the WCF was much more defensive. The WCF saw everyone on both sides utterly spent and putting up weaker numbers. The finals essentially was a stats bonanza.
If LeBron keeps playing like he did in Game 1 that's different, but LeBron's Game 2-4 performances? That defensive context looks pretty dang large to me there. Then you get into the general idiocy, the damage to vibe, and the fact that this is just a recurrence of what was going on all year with the soap opera that is LeBron now.
Oh I totally understand that, like I didn’t deny that hardens offense led to less fastbreak opportunities. I don’t understand what you mean from the game 2-4 performances though, he took some possessions off on D but he was good when called upon and I think the positives probably outweighed the negatives, and offensively he still performed. It wasn’t the best of lebron but I think he did fine.
LeBron scored 51 points in the first game. He averaged barely more than half of that over the rest of the series.
Not saying that was bad, but people are making the case that LeBron was clear-cut better than Harden in those 3 games, and I don't think it is so clear-cut.
My main thing is
I’m willing to concede that hardens defense was more important than lebrons in their respective series, because he was being targeted and generally stepped up which kinda killed the warriors game plan for the first 5-6 games, but not neccessarily better.
But my problem is that the lebrons style not only arguably does more in terms of trying to do what harden might be trying to do on offense more efficiently (allowing teammates to rest for defense). With the only gripe being that his long contested step backs might lead to less fast break opportunities for the warriors than lebrons mismatch drive or kick offense (which I don’t believe personally, and lebron generally carries a higher offensive load while having less live ball turnovers anyway) but it does this while attacking the warriors defense pretty well anyway.
Like, the cavs iirc had a comparable number of open and wide open three point shots to the rockets vs the warriors anyway. (And the rockets warriors games had a faster pace as well, and this is also taking into account the cavs inability to force live ball steals which lead to fast break opportunities which lead to more open break threes or open layups)
But the cavs managed to shoot 7% contested three pointers, and 31% on open three pointers. They only shot wide open three point shots well, and it was at 40%, which is expected for a three point shooting team for wide open shots
We know almost all of these open shots are generated by lebron, either by a secondary assist from his drives or when him driving in causes rotations and destroys the defense and lets loose an open three.
I mean a lot of people like to say “curry guarded lebron really well” but from what I saw, lebron could have easily scored more on curry but he didn’t because the defense has to hella rotate to stop that mismatch, leaving an open three. The problem is the open three keeps bricking.
In terms of assists for creation load, considering the cavs generally didn’t shoot contested shots (they attempted 9 contested jump shots per game in the last 3, 4.4 of these were threes) that means they must have gotten good shots (either paint shots or open jump shots, mostly threes) meaning that lebrons offense worked in terms of getting players good shots and his potential assists aren’t he throws it and player x has to shoot it and this is a potential assist for lebron even though he doesent deserve it
This is important because lebron averaged a whopping 25.7 potential assists per game for the last 3 games.
Paul and harden combined averaged 23.6 potential assists the entire series
I understand the box score vs impact argument when it comes to players that prevent an offense from getting good shots because of the way they play, but
If lebron scores far more efficiently (harden was woefully effecient), creates more efficiently (less turnovers on higher creation load) and the offense gets shots just as good, arguably better, performs better against the same team, while doing all the same things of the offense stopping the opposing offense but as good or better (limiting live ball turnovers to prevent fast breaks, three point shots to prevent fast breaks from drives which they didn’t really do against lebron drives anyw, allowing players to rest on offense for more available defensive intensity and stamina)
I mean we are talking about a cavs team where they have maybe 3 playoff level rotation players (korver, nance, hill) and the only other all star a stretch 4 with a broken thumb that seems to clearly have effected his shot, and lebron took this team to the finals, with a game 1 where his own teammates betrayed him and a game 3 where Durant finally Duranted (and when Durant Durant’s obviously nothing is gonna stop him).
