Djoker wrote:You didn't post any actual numbers. The overwhelming memory of 2020 Lebron defensively is Jimmy Butler beating him off the dribble over and over again in the Finals. When Lebron was on Butler it was a disaster. I also remember Lebron's complete unwillingness to guard the opposition's best player in general. When you make 1 block per game, have plenty of breakdowns and have low defensive usage always guarding role players you really can't be considered an elite defender. Not blaming Lebron because at his age he's got to save energy but it annoys me when people pretend like current Lebron (or really any version since the 2016-2017 season) is an elite defender because he's far from it. Even the defensive boards Lebron grabs which generally bring some value are largely uncontested. He doesn't often box out.
Huh? That’s literally every single defensive impact metrics, I could post the raw numbers for most of them but it hardly would mean anything
More than that Lebron switched on to butler in game 6 after they were able to get AD off of him with screens and stuff, and on to Murray in games 4 and 5. They generally ran a weird catch hedge defense on butler early on instead of dropping
Butler torched Bron game 1 but outside of that he was scoring on other players. AD guarded him better but bron played pretty great D on him in game 6. The majority of butlers points on bron were off of ball screens. I mean there were literally articles about how lebron went and requested to guard them lol
Even rewatching nearly all of the points butler scored on bron were off of ball screens. Guarding someone on those actions is a multiple player effort because it’s a multiple player play, and a bunch of them Howard was no mans land
On the rest, that’s pretty much just subjective stuff anyone can disagree with. He didn’t have nearly as breakdowns defensively as for example 2018, and his positioning in general is at a peak level and he breaks up more actions with that.
He does get more uncontested rebounds than other players because that’s how the lakers play (him getting transition opportunities for AD), but it’s not a Westbrook situation, he gets about as many contested rebounds as a good amount of centers in the league do
I don’t understand what you mean when you said I didn’t show any stats
Does me saying “oh lebrons defensive pipm in the playoffs was 2.3, which ranks third in the nba and barely behind AD who lead the league at 2.4” mean anything? No because we were talking about his ranking
I’m going to be very honest here and you seem like a chill guy
You’re arguments for bron being a neutral defender have essentially come down to, his blocks per game, all defensive teams, and eye test
Now, on all defensive teams, keep in mind that it’s hardly proof considering we see Lillard and harden and Doncic if getting a random vote here and there.
Even beyond that Lebron ranked 9th out of all forwards (including those selected). Keep in mind Giannis, AD, and Bam are all considered forwards
Out of the forwards listed that actually play on the perimeter he only ranked below Kawhi, butler, Tatum, and siakam, so that hardly supports him being a slight positive
Let’s make this very clear though
While I agree impact metrics aren’t perfect for a variety of reasons, they’re going to do a
much better job than any other metric we have like blocks or steals. Defensive tracking data is hardly reliable too, and doesn’t take into account a huge amount of factors that go into it
To be blunt pretty much all impact metrics unanimously paint Lebron as having
one of the best defensive seasons of his career since he left Cleveland the first time
I don’t personally agree with that obviously
But there’s flat out no evidence he’s only a small positive on defense.
On eye test. This is obviously a your word vs mine (and I guess most of the people here lol) but to be frank the majority of butlers points on bron were off of ball screens
Some of those were lebrons fault, the majority was the big or the coverage they ran allowing it
We saw something kind of similar to an extent happen to AD on butler in game 5, and obviously AD was fantastic on Butler defensively
Harden put up dramatically better numbers than Lebron last year and was probably a plus defender as well on a team that played at a 50-win pace. I don't see how Lebron was better than Harden last year unless we're talking intangibles but that's a slippery slope and those discussions tend to lead nowhere.
We could get into situation and all that but like literally it’s the defense lol
Yea well better offenses or worse defenses it's the same thing because it still allows for better numbers. If Bird played in today's "optimized offense" with more spacing he would put up much better numbers. It's easier to pile up assists in today's game as well not just score. When you constantly have guys open on the perimeter it's easy to just give them the ball for an open shot. Peak Bird put up numbers very comparable to peak Lebron in a more defensive era. I have no reason to believe he wouldn't put up better numbers than 2020 Lebron in this NBA especially with having 4 months rest before the playoffs. Whatever the difficulties with the bubble were the affected all players. The rest was still a huge boon to older players like Lebron.
In 1984 8 players averaged over 8 assists, 4 more than 10
In 2020 6 averaged 8 or more (had to do 8 or more since 2 guys averaged 8)
Their numbers aren’t really comparable when you consider brons numbers are deflated because he averaged 30 minutes in blowouts and bird averaged 40 minutes in blowouts.
Bron in non blowout games (I’m doing this off memory in my earlier post ) averaged like 30-12-9 on unchanged effeciency, birds numbers were basically the same as his averages, a point lower
Also keep in mind that what you’re saying is there’s a substantial difference in team wide effeciency because a team can score 6 more points now than before in 100 possessions, so a hypothetical overtime game. Considering advancements in optimization how much of that trickles down to stars? We know there were factors that influenced it the other way until like the early 2000s where it was genuinely really hard to score efficiently in the half court
What we have essentially is that when you take out blowouts, which keep in mind it’s not that bird was substantially better he just played more, (unless we are blaming brin for sitting fourth quarters up 30) and look at how they did in close games
Lebrons numbers shoot up to
30/12/9 on unchanged effeciency
Birds numbers are
26/11/6
Relative to league average Lebron has drastically higher effeciency and comparisons like that inherently favor older players because the advent of more optimized limited roles and low efficiency chuckers not being tolerated are what increased league wide TS more than anything else
On defense
The argument against lebron having great impact on defense is essentially you’re eye test + him only averaging a block a game (which is more than he averaged in his Miami championship runs) and that the media voted him 10th on a forward list, and since 3/10 forwards are big men, they basically ranked him as the 5th best perimeter defender listed as forward, behind Kawhi/Tatum/siakam/butler
The argument for lebron is
Literally every defensive impact metric we haveLike I don’t wanna list out stats and there are caveats to them, but when the weight of the evidence is the fact that he averaged his career average in blocks in the playoffs and defensive team voting put him as the 5th best defensive perimeter forward, that’s hardly any evidence at all, especially when the majority opinion here is lebron was elite on defense, and that EVERY impact metric rates him out as elite on defense
I don’t get what you mean by I didn’t give you stats I gave you his ranking in like 8 of them. I don’t think saying the amount matters. It’s not as if me saying he ranked third in defensive rpm at 3.81 means anything, although rpm is booty
To be clear, I’m going off my eye test more than the data. The data basically says lebrons one of the top 5 defenders in the league regardless of position but I don’t really agree with that because that’s too high imo
But the thing is if all the data points THAT Aheavily towards one way, at the very least the idea that he’s not a huge positive on that end needs a lot of evidence
The fact that he didn’t block as many shots in an era where shot blocking is down and the lakers led the league in blocks, or that the media has him as the 5th best defensive perimeter forward, isn’t enough evidence
So then the only thing it could be is if my eye test is dumb as hell and yours is the right one, and obviously that’s just gonna be us yelling our points over and over again lol, although I will say that there are articles of lebron asking to be switched on to Murray and Butler near the end of the series, they ran hard blitz vs Lillard and a team wide coverage vs harden (a weird on off switch 2-3 zone) that didn’t hinder his effeciency but his teams
It’s been posted here several times—LeBron had a DPOYish type season as a primary offense initiator in 2016. He was a plus defender in 2015, and 2017 and 2019. 2018, he was surrounded by an incredibly inept defensive team so basically played no defense trying to win games offensively.
