The Lebron '20 Thread (Pt. 7)

[Mos_Heat]

If they can succesfully attack the zone, it's gonna be a relatively easy series. If not, Miami might even win

[MyUniBroDavis]

If they can succesfully attack the zone, it's gonna be a relatively easy series. If not, Miami might even win

Didnt we schmack the zone this year tho

[C0bR]

The Heat will be the worst offense the Lakers have faced these playoffs. They have absolutely no one to breakdown the Lakers defense and send them scrambling. With LeBron on Jimmy they have no iso options at all (unless the power of Jimmy's FTR prevails over LeBron never fouling). The Lakers can just play everything straight up and stay home on the shooters.

[xb3at band1tx]

I said it in the game thread, but this Heat team reminds me of the 2015 Hawks but with a better coach.

[Heej]

How do we know LeBron's not just built different mentally? Like I remember reading a biography about Larry Legend when I was young, and one of the things that has stuck with me my entire life is that when you look at where he was born and brought up and the situations he was raised in, there's almost no way that Larry could've grown up not being racist that can't get along with black people. But somehow he did. And from the authors point of view he was just made of sterner stuff than almost every other human. He was literally just built different mentally to be able to block out that kind of environment and truly see into who people are beyond the color of their skin.

There's just something different about LeBron's mental fortitude and constitution. The same way in the Jordan documentary The Last Dance one of the most profound points to me was that Jordan was a master of constantly being present in the moment. It just came naturally to him to not dwell in the past or ruminate about the future. He just existed in his flow state constantly. There are people who are naturally wired like that, I've heard stories of people that are extremely calm most of the time having tests run on them and finding that they naturally just have brainwave patterns similar to Buddhist monks.

LeBron might just be one of those mental anomalies. His durability must be partly born from extremely good stress management practices that minimize inflammation, and probably a great deal of natural visualization of his body state that he imprints on the world. His longevity and ability to improve the longer he goes, whether it be in a series or his career, is almost superhuman.

He's certainly a physical marvel but there's something else there about his mental state that we'll probably only get a real grasp of once the in-depth career retrospective comes out. There are insane stories of people doing stuff all around the world when they focus their mind on it, this guy must be an adept at controlling whatever energy or consciousness field effect is being manipulated, and then honed his techniques to a razor sharp precision on maximizing his basketball career. Maybe he's just the basketball Wym Hoff

Plus one on the Bird point. Bird's mindset was incredibly pure both on and off the court. Imagine telling your rival not to get too buddy buddy with you after introducing him to your mum. Revelling in his failure but still being the first to call him when he announced he had AIDS.

I think it applies less to Lebron though. We've seen him show incredible focus, but we've also kind of seen him get distracted in ways we can't imagine Bird (could be from lack of footage) and Jordan be.
With Lebron I think he actively built up his mental state to what you're talking about now, compared to what MJ, Kobe and Bird seemed to have from day 1.

I agree with that last line. But you know what that tells me? In RPG or anime terms, LeBron just has insane growth rate in that regard. So late career Lebrons just far outpaced all the other greats mentally

[Homer38]

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[Baski]

I agree with that last line. But you know what that tells me? In RPG or anime terms, LeBron just has insane growth rate in that regard. So late career Lebrons just far outpaced all the other greats mentally

Lebron's definitely entered GOAT mentality tier which says a lot about his growth rate. I'd still put him below a couple guys like MJ, Kobe, Russell and Bird. But these are the absolute cream of the cream of the crop so that's not saying much. He's above everyone else in the top tier currently.

Lebron with MJ's focus would be truly inhuman, but then again he might be the world's biggest **** so there's that.

[KTM_2813]

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I think that Nick Wright is a necessary check against some of the people at that network who have made their career by being anti-LeBron, but if we're being honest, some of the stuff he says is kind of ridiculous.

The main example from this video is "In his first healthy year in the West, he gentleman swept the entire conference." So not only are we just sweeping his first season under the rug, but we're also giving him full credit for his team's success, even though Davis was probably better against Portland and possibly better against Denver too.

Don't get me wrong, LeBron has been great, and this may go down as one of his best playoff runs, but we don't need to construct fragile narratives to prove it, IMO.

[nzahir]

If they can succesfully attack the zone, it's gonna be a relatively easy series. If not, Miami might even win

Didnt we schmack the zone this year tho

We did when Lebron was in, struggled when he was out.

Playoff rondo should help though

We haven't played Miami in a while though, we are both very different teams

I feel like Miami packs the paint and makes role guys hit open shots. I hope we are smart enough to keep cutting off ball (Caruso, Kuzma, etc).

KCP, DG, and Kieff will need to hit their 3s, they will get good looks. I hope Vogel looked at the tape and realized we should be setting more off ball screens when teams play zone or pack the paint.

I realized they start Bam at C now, so who is guarding AD? Bam? If so, does Crowder or Butler guard Dwight/Mcgee?

Or do they start Leonard/Kelly?

[nzahir]

All this talk about Miami having a better 3-8. How sure are we? Lakers have a bunch of very good 2-way 3&D role players. This is gonna be the ultimate test on my theory that being a jack of all trades with no weaknesses is better than a master of one. The Heat have 2 supremely exploitable role players in Robinson and Herro (who's a little better than Robinson imo) while the Lakers role players are serviceable on both ends. Dwight and Caruso are the weakest offensive role players but they contribute on the ORebs and Transition respectively. I think there's no one to truly exploit on the Lakers for the Heat the way Jokic had his pick of the litter to kill. The fact that the Heat have pronounced weak spots is gonna matter a lot more and I think our role players will come out looking much better in the 3-8 matchup than people think.

Tbf, their 3-8 is probably better than ours, no? Lets add a couple more guys to go 3-10 though

Dragic, Herro, Robinson, Iggy, Crowder, Nunn, and Olynk/Leonard vs KCP, Caruso, Dwight, Green, Rondo, Kuzma, and Kieff

They have the best player in Dragic and the best shooters

When we hit our 3s at a respectable rate, then I think our role guys are good enough to beat Miami easily, so around 5 games

AD and Bron>>>Bam and Butler though

I think in aggregate they got it. But people make it sound like Miami has players 3-8 in the series while we have 9-16. It's probably much more mixed than people think. Like KCP as a role player is probably better than everyone on Miami except for Dragic and maybe Herro you know what I mean? Like there's a lotta guys the Lakers have that are in the same tier. Dragic might be the only role player that completely outclasses our guys, and even rondo will have nights where he somewhat matches him.

Dragic is clearly ahead of all others, he may even be their most consistent offensive player

I rather have Robinson than KCP pretty easily and maybe Herro by a bit. But KCP is a better defender than both.

Lebron, AD, Butler, Bam, Dragic, Robinson, Herro, KCP

Then its a toss up with a lot of other guys. Iggy is maybe the most trustworthy guy next, but he has really declined and it may just be based on his reputation now

[Mos_Heat]

If they can succesfully attack the zone, it's gonna be a relatively easy series. If not, Miami might even win

Didnt we schmack the zone this year tho

Maybe, I don't know the numbers. That's the series where you can't afford 6/25 shooting nights. Danny Green better have one of those finals cuz he will have a lot of open looks

[Homer38]

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[RCM88x]

I think having Rondo engaged and playing well will really help them against the zone in non-Lebron minutes. But as it stands, Lebron is probably the best or one of the best zone busters in the league, especially against a small-ball based team like Miami.

This will be an ugly series but my guess is the Lakers will settle in and handle business.

[MyUniBroDavis]

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On vs miamis zone: we adjusted midway through and destroyed it but they clamped us at the start, then we got ad in the high post and schmyeeted them

On vs zones in general: that numbers actually pretty good. It doesnt look good but relative to other halfcourt offenses its pretty solid, its better than our offense against man

Synergy stats are different with team offenses compared to offensive rtg, for example the mavs have a ppp of 1.041, so we did pretty good

Even against miami thats not a great number but its not that bad, its better than our overall half court offense on synergy (which isnt bad according to synergy)

Essentially the number looks bad but it isnt actually bad, its act lretty good

We beat the zone through ad in the high post. If he can hit those open midrange jumpers (which like, i mean playoff ad) or make those easy zone reads that hes been able to do he'll be fine

Our roster is different though so itll be interesting. I really high on bams defense so i do hope ad scores through off ball action more this series.

Ads gonna be key breaking down the zone lebron will be key scoring wise id say

[Slava]

AD is as good a zone busting big as there is in the league with the leaps he's made in his passing. Otherwise I'd even invert a lot of ball handling duties and have AD or a shooter pass into LeBron in the middle of the zone and let LeBron pick it apart from there.

[MyUniBroDavis]

AD is as good a zone busting big as there is in the league with the leaps he's made in his passing. Otherwise I'd even invert a lot of ball handling duties and have AD or a shooter pass into LeBron in the middle of the zone and let LeBron pick it apart from there.

Honestly i dont see why the heat would run zone all too much, i feel we suck at mismatch hunting and jimmy/iggy are two top 5 bron defenders, while bam is prolly as good as anyone at guarding AD

[xb3at band1tx]

They use the zone to hide Herro and Robinson, I expect LeBron to hunt them down

[Slava]

AD is as good a zone busting big as there is in the league with the leaps he's made in his passing. Otherwise I'd even invert a lot of ball handling duties and have AD or a shooter pass into LeBron in the middle of the zone and let LeBron pick it apart from there.

Honestly i dont see why the heat would run zone all too much, i feel we suck at mismatch hunting and jimmy/iggy are two top 5 bron defenders, while bam is prolly as good as anyone at guarding AD

I don't think Heat can play Butler, Iguodola and Bam in the same line up for too long as it mucks up their own spacing on offense. So they got to play zone to give Robinson, Dragic and Herro defensive protection from LeBron picking his screens.

[Mos_Heat]

AD is as good a zone busting big as there is in the league with the leaps he's made in his passing. Otherwise I'd even invert a lot of ball handling duties and have AD or a shooter pass into LeBron in the middle of the zone and let LeBron pick it apart from there.

Honestly i dont see why the heat would run zone all too much, i feel we suck at mismatch hunting and jimmy/iggy are two top 5 bron defenders, while bam is prolly as good as anyone at guarding AD

Because you wanna hide Dragic, Herro and Robinson. Plus that keeps Bam around the basket which is crucial for a small team like Miami

[O_6]

I'm very interested in seeing LeBron's mindset going into a Finals where he's a bigger favorite than he's ever been before, and a favorite for the first time since 2013. As much as people respect the hell out of the Miami Heat, this is clearly being built up as a title that LeBron and the Lakers shouldn't lose barring injury. Going up against his ex-team with Spoelstra and Pat Riley which has to add a little something to the mix in LeBron's eyes. Obviously the bubble has had an impact, but this is a distinctly different vibe to a Finals involving LeBron than any I can remember feeling. Even when he choked in '11, the Mavs and Dirk were on such a ridiculous run that they got much more respect than the Heat are currently getting.

This is a must-win series for LeBron, if there are no injuries involved. He cannot lose to "Pat the Rat" and a Miami Heat team in a Finals that he is heavily favored to win. A Finals where the hands down 2nd best player on the court also plays on his team.

Didn't have to go through Kawhi/PG Clippers (because they choked). Didn't have to go through Curry/Klay/Dray Warriors (because they were hurt). Didn't have to go through the Giannis Bucks (because they choked). Didn't have to go through the KD/Kyrie Nets (because they were hurt). Going up against a 5th seed Miami Heat team with a pro-rated 49 win record. He'll never have a better chance to win a ring than this.

I saw people mention Federer and tennis earlier, well this is about LeBron just needing to hold serve. He needs to take care of business. Take control of the series, enjoy winning in front of Riley's face, and set yourself up as the favorite to repeat. Losing this series to go to 3-7 in the Finals would be rough. He cannot let that happen.

I'm hoping he delivers a 2018 Toronto type of performance to get that 4th Finals MVP. The end of Game 5 vs. the Nuggets really brought back memories of LeBronto. But Finals MVP or not, all that matters is he gets his 4th ring.