LukaTheGOAT wrote:
In terms of Lebron's plays with the 2nd stint Cavs, Taylor actually believes he became more portable by then. He writes about this in his Backpicks writeup, as from 2016 to now, he has come out at neutral portability. He writes this..."The above graph also jibes with the scouting report; as LeBron’s passing steadily improved and his shot selection grew more judicious, he synthesized with better talent, correlating with larger and larger scoreboard shifts after a nadir in 2012. This was a two-way street: As LeBron’s more efficient passing helped the talent around him — Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love posted career-best marks in scaled APM in 2017 — his improved 3-point shooting allowed him to finish more plays setup by his teammates. (Notice in the previous charts how LeBron’s efficiency improved alongside Irving."
Better passing? I don't know. Maybe. Better 3 point shooting. Have to disagree there. His three point shooting peaked in 2013. His mid range was very strong that year as well. It tapered off in the playoffs and almost cost them the title, but he talked about how he in the middle of the series reminded himself he was a strong shooter and decided to take the shots the Spurs gave him. His scoring turned around and they won the series.
The Cavs roster was a better roster for spacing. Irving is superior to Wade as an outside shooter by a significant margin and Love is much better than Bosh there as well. Then there was JR to give additional spacing. Three strong outside shooters in the starting lineup all better than James from three. With the Heat only Mario Chalmers was superior to James from outside and then only slightly.
So was James suddenly more portable, or did the Cavs just have a more balanced offensive roster making James look more portable?
Isn't the real issue offensive redundancies. You don't need 5 players who are dominant at the basket, but terrible outside. Defense collapses and can guard all of them at once. The opposite, five dead eye shooters with no ability to penetrate, isn't too useful either. Defenders can fan out along the three point line and challenge every shot. You need a balance. Players who exert pressure inside and players who can exert pressure on the perimeter. A player who can do both is very valuable.
It's more useful to have 3 guys who exert perimeter pressure than 3 guys who exert interior pressure because the former forces the defense to cover more space. One defender can more realistically cover three guys inside all at once, than three guys spaced on the perimeter at once. (I realize both are unrealistic against quality players, but just trying to illustrate the principle in a simplified way.)
One player cannot provide all the perimeter spacing on his own. That's a task for two or three players at least, and even four perimeter spacers has minimal redundancy. Take the "portable" perimeter spacer guy and put him on a team that has weak perimeter spacing otherwise and he'll help no doubt, but that team is going to have issues with clogged paint making things difficult for the other guys. The shooter might occupy one or two defenders, but the others can camp in the driving lanes because there isn't enough outside shooting.
This isn't a flaw in the shooter's portability, it's a flaw in the roster construction. There's a hole that one guy simply can't fix. He may be a transcendent enough player to have a good even great offense despite the holes, but the full potential of an offense with this player will never be realized without other shooters on the floor.
An elite offense can fall apart because of a small flaw. We saw that with the Warriors in the 2016 finals. The Cavaliers conceded open shots to Barnes, he couldn't convert and the series changed. They had a beautiful system, highly portable Curry, and the offense seized up, because one player couldn't hit an open shot.
Why did the Warriors go from merely very good to otherworldly when they went with their death lineup? Everyone in that lineup could shoot decently, run the floor, push the ball on the dribble, make quick smart reads and passes, they were young enough (or with Iggy played few enough minutes) to play with high energy. Take any of that away and you don't reach the same heights.
Why do so few teams manage elite motion offenses? Everyone seems to think that's the ideal, but it's rarely realized. One inadequate player with bad hands or slow decision making can gum the whole thing up.
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How would high portability guys fit on those Heat teams. Let's port Curry into the 2013 Heat. You're probably not running a Chalmers/Curry/Wade lineup very often. Curry is probably pushing Chalmers out of the rotation. Bring in a average Small Forward who is a decent defender and decent shooter for the position. Obviously you three point shooting at the PG position has improved, but now the three point shooting at SF has probably gotten worse. Instead of two 40% three point shooters in the starting lineup, you have one. Spacing might be worse in this lineup despite Curry being significantly better than James as a shooter.
Even if the offense gets better, defense is now in big trouble. James was the Heart of the Miami defense and now that's been downgraded. Miami can try to go small with something like Curry/Wade/Allen/Battier/Bosh, but without the James/Green small ball forward who can be a defensive anchor, that lineup won't have the tools to deal with size.
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So let's port in Jordan instead of James onto that 2013 Heat team. He's certainly a better midrange shooter, but you're still dealing with lineups that have four guys operating in the midrange or closer and one guy spacing. Going small will work better than with Curry, but Jordan isn't defending troublesome fours and fives as well as James. He wasn't a deadly three point shooter that forced defenders out to the perimeter.
You don't want him ceding shots to Wade and Bosh, he's better at that than they are. They probably end up taking even fewer shots than they did with James. Wade had four of his five best Fg% and eFG% years playing next to James. What is Jordan doing that improves that? I'm not seeing it. The flaws in the Heat offense remain even with portable Jordan added, and the defensive weaknesses are exacerbated because Jordan doesn't cover the lack of interior defense as well as James.
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I'm interested in the Mechanics of how the offense improves with the more portable guys. (It's also important to look at the defensive changes as well.) How does teammates' offense improve? Are they getting more shots, better looks? Why? Are the portable guys converting less effective scoring by a teammate into more effective scoring by the portable guy by taking touches away from the teammates. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a fairly simple explanation. But most of the time it doesn't seem like this is what people are talking about. It's more of a mysterious process where teammates are better, but the how of them scoring with greater volume and/or efficiency isn't really adequately explained.
Only 7 Players in NBA history have 21,000 points, 5,750 assists and 5,750 rebounds. LeBron has double those numbers.
Weird.
