Greatest Peaks series (Thinking Basketball/Ben Taylor)

[Snakebites]

I think the premise here is that, if you hypothetically have a player with a similar impact to Lebron who you CAN add a guy line Wade to without reducing the impact of either player, then said player is more valuable than Lebron.

I would agree with that, but no such player exists, and I’m not convinced such a player could exist.

I mean the arguments IRL come down to Russell and Duncan and maybe Kareem. And I can't really argue Duncan and Kareem have similar impact to Lebron and Russell is just so unique in how his impact is registered so yeah that player doesn't exist.

And I understand the argument, but that tie-breaker is never going to come into play with players this good. It comes into play with asking do I want Scottie Pippen, Kevin McHale, or Draymond Green perhaps.

Like take my current little Mavs--Luka would score extremely lowly on the portability scale. Okay. So what? If you have Luka, you are never thinking what I want to do is run you off staggered screens on the weak side, or maybe use you as the screener in the PNR or hey Luka go stand in the corner. So saying well Trae Young could be more useful doing those things so I'd rather have him because of portability is just silly.

I think a hypothetical player who was basically a stronger version of KG who could also shoot threes like Steph Curry does would be such a player- a player with similar impact to the GOAT level guys but more portability.

Until that player comes along though...

[bondom34]

I think some of the issue with the idea, at least on its surface is that it not only can't be measured but doesn't really work out exponentially well if that makes sense.

Like picturing a hypothetical player/team/league where you have 5 players all of who have infinite portability and are all Jordan/Kareem/Lebron level players, you're not going to infinitely improve. It's just not possible because the other team is trying too. Adding 2 of them might yield an extra +5 say (just pulling a number), but then a 3rd might only add another 1, then maybe 0.5, then 0.5. But the 4th isn't less portable than the 2nd, you just can't have an infinitely better performing team because you can't have an infinite point differential or offense/defense.

I get it's all conceptual as well but just seems to have way too many confounding factors to where it's something even measurable.

[Djoker]

Among those teams you mentione as being ATG, one of them seems to be led by a player who, on a surface level, had a similar style offensively to, especially later on in his career, Lebron: the player is Magic and 1980s Lakers.

What do you think Magic perhaps did to do a better job at maximising his team potential than Lebron offensively?

Edit: If ofcourse this is what you are saying.

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

Magic is in the same mold as Lebron and has similar strengths and weaknesses although there are definitely many differences as well. The same concerns I have with Lebron I have with Magic regarding portability. Guys who aren't play finishers wouldn't have much synergy with Magic. For instance I see Curry and Wade being a better duo than Magic and Wade. Wade needs the ball to play his game and Magic without the ball just doesn't offer that much value.

[falcolombardi]

i also question why we are so obfuscated in the axiom that great teams have multiple mvp or star level ball handlers/offensive engines?

if anythingh, teams who spend their money not in a third scoring star which overlaps a lot with their franchise player but on low usage guys to complement their high usage stara seem to be the ones with more succes

90's bulls were 2 high usage playmakers amd lots of specialists and low usage guys like kerr, horace or rodman

lakers in the early 2000's had kobe and shaq amd didnt need a third star but rather a bunch of shooters and defenders

dinasty celtics were not a scoring big 3, or even big 2 like baylor/west lakers

even warriors, the most stacked team of all time had 2 high usage guys like durant and curry and a couple of guys whose value came with low usage (klay and draymond)

[Djoker]

I think a few people in this thread are misunderstanding the argument myself and a few others are making.

I'm not saying that Lebron can't lead different rosters to championships including rosters with ball-dominant stars like Wade. I'm saying that Lebron doesn't maximize the potential of those rosters. It's possible to win titles and still not help your team reach their maximum potential. After all Lebron never being a part of an all-time great team like the 60's Celtics, 80's Lakers, 80's Celtics, 90's Bulls, early 00's Lakers, 10's Warriors is often used as an argument against him. Almost all other GOAT candidates were part of GOAT-level teams. Except Lebron... maybe that has a lot to do with his lack of ability to mesh with other on-ball superstars. Regardless of which term we use for that... portability, meshability, scalability whatever.

Note that I'm not saying that Lebron has no off-ball game. Of course he does. But not being an ultra quick decision maker (ala say Bird), great shooter, exceptional cutter, great screen setter etc. limits his off-ball value. Compared to a player like Bird or Curry or MJ (although I wouldn't even put Jordan in the same category as the other two), Lebron is very limited in his off-ball game compared to the greats in that department. I don't know how that can be debated still. It's a fact. And Lebron being good in transition or on defense has nothing to do with his offensive value when he doesn't have the ball in his hands. Some folks in these threads are deflecting my arguments. Perhaps I could expressed myself better but I definitely wasn't talking about some of the things people were responding with and the debate became around something I wasn't even intending to debate like Lebron's transition value...

Now of course one can say who cares if Lebron maximizes rosters as long as they win. I disagree because someone who doesn't maximize the potential of the roster needs more talent to win than someone that can make the most of the available talent.

I understand your point. I just disagree with the premise.

If I have Lebron I am building the team around him. Every time. Period. So I'm never trying to fit him into different teams. I'm trying to fit teams around him. And in the real world teams are allowed to make transactions in order to do so.

And I'm absolutely never playing Lebron off ball. And if the problem is I decide Wade can't play off ball either and so it doesn't work(though obviously it worked incredibly well) then bye bye Mr Wade, not bye bye Lebron.

And this is why portability should not be such a huge factor. Because if you are valuing a guy who is clearly a worse player more because he can do less valuable things better you are missing the forest for your favorite trees.

Now if we want to talk about Danny Green and how portable he is, absolutely he is and that's why he plays for contenders literally every single year.

But when we talk about franchise players, we aren't concerned with shoehorning them in. They are what make the winning possible and I'm not trying to make the 4-9th guys on the roster as good as possible, I'm trying to get those guys to complement my franchise.

Otherwise Steve Nash is probably the GOAT and we all know that to not be true.

That's fair but it's hard to build an all-time great team with one on-ball player and a bunch off-ball players like a pure heliocentric system as Ben calls it. Perhaps such a team can win a title but I don't see a team like that being the best of the best. Even from a fatigue standpoint. You can't expect even a perfect floor general to play and run the offense for 48 minutes.

Bottom line is

Magic had to co-exist with Kareem
Jordan had to coexist with Pippen
Shaq had to coexist with Kobe
Curry had to coexist with Durant

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

The only retort I can see here is "Lebron isn't the best off-ball player ever but neither is Jordan." And I can agree Jordan isn't the off-ball player that Bird or Curry are. Still Jordan's deadly midrange shooting makes him better off-ball than Lebron. It was actually a major part of MJ's game to come off picks and pull up for J's.

[Texas Chuck]

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

I mean if Lebron got to play with KD(GOAT level scorer), Draymond(GOAT level defender), Klay(near GOAT level 3&D guy), Iggy(high level glue guy), etc then we can talk about what's fair.

Lebron never played with anything close to that level of talent, but you are blaming him not having a GOAT-level team on portability instead of the actual story-talent.

Everyone wanted to credit Steve Kerr with solving basketball. No, he didn't. He just had a ridiculous collection of talent.

[falcolombardi]

I think a few people in this thread are misunderstanding the argument myself and a few others are making.

I'm not saying that Lebron can't lead different rosters to championships including rosters with ball-dominant stars like Wade. I'm saying that Lebron doesn't maximize the potential of those rosters. It's possible to win titles and still not help your team reach their maximum potential. After all Lebron never being a part of an all-time great team like the 60's Celtics, 80's Lakers, 80's Celtics, 90's Bulls, early 00's Lakers, 10's Warriors is often used as an argument against him. Almost all other GOAT candidates were part of GOAT-level teams. Except Lebron... maybe that has a lot to do with his lack of ability to mesh with other on-ball superstars. Regardless of which term we use for that... portability, meshability, scalability whatever.

Note that I'm not saying that Lebron has no off-ball game. Of course he does. But not being an ultra quick decision maker (ala say Bird), great shooter, exceptional cutter, great screen setter etc. limits his off-ball value. Compared to a player like Bird or Curry or MJ (although I wouldn't even put Jordan in the same category as the other two), Lebron is very limited in his off-ball game compared to the greats in that department. I don't know how that can be debated still. It's a fact. And Lebron being good in transition or on defense has nothing to do with his offensive value when he doesn't have the ball in his hands. Some folks in these threads are deflecting my arguments. Perhaps I could expressed myself better but I definitely wasn't talking about some of the things people were responding with and the debate became around something I wasn't even intending to debate like Lebron's transition value...

Now of course one can say who cares if Lebron maximizes rosters as long as they win. I disagree because someone who doesn't maximize the potential of the roster needs more talent to win than someone that can make the most of the available talent.

I understand your point. I just disagree with the premise.

If I have Lebron I am building the team around him. Every time. Period. So I'm never trying to fit him into different teams. I'm trying to fit teams around him. And in the real world teams are allowed to make transactions in order to do so.

And I'm absolutely never playing Lebron off ball. And if the problem is I decide Wade can't play off ball either and so it doesn't work(though obviously it worked incredibly well) then bye bye Mr Wade, not bye bye Lebron.

And this is why portability should not be such a huge factor. Because if you are valuing a guy who is clearly a worse player more because he can do less valuable things better you are missing the forest for your favorite trees.

Now if we want to talk about Danny Green and how portable he is, absolutely he is and that's why he plays for contenders literally every single year.

But when we talk about franchise players, we aren't concerned with shoehorning them in. They are what make the winning possible and I'm not trying to make the 4-9th guys on the roster as good as possible, I'm trying to get those guys to complement my franchise.

Otherwise Steve Nash is probably the GOAT and we all know that to not be true.

That's fair but it's hard to build an all-time great team with one on-ball player and a bunch off-ball players like a pure heliocentric system as Ben calls it. Perhaps such a team can win a title but I don't see a team like that being the best of the best. Even from a fatigue standpoint. You can't expect even a perfect floor general to play and run the offense for 48 minutes.

Bottom line is

Magic had to co-exist with Kareem
Jordan had to coexist with Pippen
Shaq had to coexist with Kobe
Curry had to coexist with Durant

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

The only retort I can see here is "Lebron isn't the best off-ball player ever but neither is Jordan." And I can agree Jordan isn't the off-ball player that Bird or Curry are. Still Jordan's deadly midrange shooting makes him better off-ball than Lebron. It was actually a major part of MJ's game to come off picks and pull up for J's.

you mention pippen, but he was a player with less usage and more offball value (cause defense) than wade or kyrie. and people like horace or rodman had less usage than lebron 3rd options like bosh and love

if anythingh i think playing in teams with more than 2 high usage players has too strong diminishing eeturns no matter who you are and the 90's bulls got this right compared to lebron teams

look how dominant a 35 year lebron with only 1 co star and a bunch of role players with high usage was last year and imagine if his 2010-2018 teams were built around big 2's instead of big 3's

why are we going with this hypothetical of fitting stars into teams with a bunch of high usage players?

what about fitting a star into a bunch of elite finisher/specialists which if anytgingh seems to me a better or at least easier team building goal that putting multiple overlapping offensive stars together?

on the topic of lebron not being part of a dinasty i would argue is only because his career is cut into 3 franchises
to copy myself


prime lebron (2009-2020) made 9 of 12 finals and won 4 rings

not much worse if at all than bird and the 80 celtics 3 rings and 5 finals. and if we go with lebron longer prime against him, he still won 3 rings and made 5 finals between 2012-2016 alone, still one year less than celtics took (81-86)

shaq won 4 rings and made 5 finals over a 7 year period, for his whole extendes prime (1994-2006 ~) is 4 rings, 6 finals over 12 years

duncan extended prime from 1997 to 2008 (roughly) had 4 rings too and reached a bunch of wcf (real finals some of those years)

warriors were dominant and won 3 rings in 5 finals over 5 years.... aka the same lebron did between 2012 and 2016

even magic looks similar enough, he came into the league a lot older than lebron and his career had 5 rings and 8 finals in 13 years, lebron is at 4 rings,9 finals in 12 years and may still get his 5th ring in a 13th year


is lebron really less succesful than them when you compare titles won/dinasties?

he only loses to russel and jordan in career success

and jordan actually played in teams with less scorers/ballhandlers than lebron so i dont see what low portability cause high usage would have to do with it

(remember jordan only had pippen as a high ish usage teamamte and his third best players were actually low usage guys like grant and rodman)

if anythingh jordan and the bulls seem to show great teams dont need to have multiple high usage guys around their offensive star to be great, which is a model i believe lebron teams should have imitated instead of putting scorer big 3's like miami and cavs did[/quote]

[Djoker]

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

I mean if Lebron got to play with KD(GOAT level scorer), Draymond(GOAT level defender), Klay(near GOAT level 3&D guy), Iggy(high level glue guy), etc then we can talk about what's fair.

Lebron never played with anything close to that level of talent, but you are blaming him not having a GOAT-level team on portability instead of the actual story-talent.

Everyone wanted to credit Steve Kerr with solving basketball. No, he didn't. He just had a ridiculous collection of talent.

I agree about more talent on the Warriors but we aren't comparing Lebron and Curry. We are comparing Lebron to the GOAT peak specifically MJ.

Jordan built several all-time great offensive teams with Pippen, Grant and Armstrong and then Pippen, Rodman and Kukoc. Those are all far from a historically stacked casts on offense and yet they posted comparable rORtg to the Warriors, Showtime Lakers etc. That's the standard I grade Lebron on. He never led a single team that dominant on offense despite having several more talented offensive supporting casts than what Jordan did.

And that's why myself and several others including Ben Taylor asked ourselves "Why?" and came to the conclusion that Lebron's ability to mesh with other on-ball talent limits the offensive ceiling of his teams.

[sansterre]

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

I mean if Lebron got to play with KD(GOAT level scorer), Draymond(GOAT level defender), Klay(near GOAT level 3&D guy), Iggy(high level glue guy), etc then we can talk about what's fair.

Lebron never played with anything close to that level of talent, but you are blaming him not having a GOAT-level team on portability instead of the actual story-talent.

Everyone wanted to credit Steve Kerr with solving basketball. No, he didn't. He just had a ridiculous collection of talent.

I agree about more talent on the Warriors but we aren't comparing Lebron and Curry. We are comparing Lebron to the GOAT peak specifically MJ.

Jordan built several all-time great offensive teams with Pippen, Grant and Armstrong and then Pippen, Rodman and Kukoc. Those are all far from a historically stacked casts on offense and yet they posted comparable rORtg to the Warriors, Showtime Lakers etc. That's the standard I grade Lebron on. He never led a single team that dominant on offense despite having several more talented offensive supporting casts than what Jordan did.

And that's why myself and several others including Ben Taylor asked ourselves "Why?" and came to the conclusion that Lebron's ability to mesh with other on-ball talent limits the offensive ceiling of his teams.

The only caution I'd have to that position is that you're mostly relying on regular season offense for this conclusion.

If we're looking at playoff offenses then things actually tilt fairly toward LeBron (playoff offenses, minimum +8, adjusted for opponent regular season defenses):

2017 Cavs: +13.17
2016 Cavs: +11.43
1991 Bulls: +10.98
1993 Bulls: +8.91
2012 Heat: +8.43
2013 Heat: +8.17

Obviously we have sample size problems with the playoffs, but I think you'll have to concede that Jordan offenses > LeBron offenses is a specifically regular season argument.

[Djoker]

I understand your point. I just disagree with the premise.

If I have Lebron I am building the team around him. Every time. Period. So I'm never trying to fit him into different teams. I'm trying to fit teams around him. And in the real world teams are allowed to make transactions in order to do so.

And I'm absolutely never playing Lebron off ball. And if the problem is I decide Wade can't play off ball either and so it doesn't work(though obviously it worked incredibly well) then bye bye Mr Wade, not bye bye Lebron.

And this is why portability should not be such a huge factor. Because if you are valuing a guy who is clearly a worse player more because he can do less valuable things better you are missing the forest for your favorite trees.

Now if we want to talk about Danny Green and how portable he is, absolutely he is and that's why he plays for contenders literally every single year.

But when we talk about franchise players, we aren't concerned with shoehorning them in. They are what make the winning possible and I'm not trying to make the 4-9th guys on the roster as good as possible, I'm trying to get those guys to complement my franchise.

Otherwise Steve Nash is probably the GOAT and we all know that to not be true.

That's fair but it's hard to build an all-time great team with one on-ball player and a bunch off-ball players like a pure heliocentric system as Ben calls it. Perhaps such a team can win a title but I don't see a team like that being the best of the best. Even from a fatigue standpoint. You can't expect even a perfect floor general to play and run the offense for 48 minutes.

Bottom line is

Magic had to co-exist with Kareem
Jordan had to coexist with Pippen
Shaq had to coexist with Kobe
Curry had to coexist with Durant

I am with you in a sense that I too thought previously that Ben held Lebron's teams to the standard of the 2017 Warriors or something which isn't fair but it is actually fair. When you're talking about the best player ever at their peaks then they should mesh into the best team ever, not just a championship team. The standards are higher.

The only retort I can see here is "Lebron isn't the best off-ball player ever but neither is Jordan." And I can agree Jordan isn't the off-ball player that Bird or Curry are. Still Jordan's deadly midrange shooting makes him better off-ball than Lebron. It was actually a major part of MJ's game to come off picks and pull up for J's.

you mention pippen, but he was a player with less usage and more offball value (cause defense) than wade or kyrie. and people like horace or rodman had less usage than lebron 3rd options like bosh and love

if anythingh i think playing in teams with more than 2 high usage players has too strong diminishing eeturns no matter who you are and the 90's bulls got this right compared to lebron teams

look how dominant a 35 year lebron with only 1 co star and a bunch of role players with high usage was last year and imagine if his 2010-2018 teams were built around big 2's instead of big 3's

why are we going with this hypothetical of fitting stars into teams with a bunch of high usage players?

what about fitting a star into a bunch of elite finisher/specialists which if anytgingh seems to me a better or at least easier team building goal that putting multiple overlapping offensive stars together?

on the topic of lebron not being part of a dinasty i would argue is only because his career is cut into 3 franchises
to copy myself


prime lebron (2009-2020) made 9 of 12 finals and won 4 rings

not much worse if at all than bird and the 80 celtics 3 rings and 5 finals. and if we go with lebron longer prime against him, he still won 3 rings and made 5 finals between 2012-2016 alone, still one year less than celtics took (81-86)

shaq won 4 rings and made 5 finals over a 7 year period, for his whole extendes prime (1994-2006 ~) is 4 rings, 6 finals over 12 years

duncan extended prime from 1997 to 2008 (roughly) had 4 rings too and reached a bunch of wcf (real finals some of those years)

warriors were dominant and won 3 rings in 5 finals over 5 years.... aka the same lebron did between 2012 and 2016

even magic looks similar enough, he came into the league a lot older than lebron and his career had 5 rings and 8 finals in 13 years, lebron is at 4 rings,9 finals in 12 years and may still get his 5th ring in a 13th year


is lebron really less succesful than them when you compare titles won/dinasties?

he only loses to russel and jordan in career success

and jordan actually played in teams with less scorers/ballhandlers than lebron so i dont see what low portability cause high usage would have to do with it

(remember jordan only had pippen as a high ish usage teamamte and his third best players were actually low usage guys like grant and rodman)

if anythingh jordan and the bulls seem to show great teams dont need to have multiple high usage guys around their offensive star to be great, which is a model i believe lebron teams should have imitated instead of putting scorer big 3's like miami and cavs did

We aren't talking about championship teams though but all-time great teams. Kareem, Magic, Bird, Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, Curry, Durant all played on all-time great teams specifically on the offensive end of the court. Lebron didn't... why? Jordan led four all-time great offensive teams (1991, 1992, 1996, 1997) and without another great offensive star.

[Texas Chuck]

I agree about more talent on the Warriors but we aren't comparing Lebron and Curry. We are comparing Lebron to the GOAT peak specifically MJ.

Jordan built several all-time great offensive teams with Pippen, Grant and Armstrong and then Pippen, Rodman and Kukoc. Those are all far from a historically stacked casts on offense and yet they posted comparable rORtg to the Warriors, Showtime Lakers etc. That's the standard I grade Lebron on. He never led a single team that dominant on offense despite having several more talented offensive supporting casts than what Jordan did.

And that's why myself and several others including Ben Taylor asked ourselves "Why?" and came to the conclusion that Lebron's ability to mesh with other on-ball talent limits the offensive ceiling of his teams.

I guess I'm less interested in building statistical giants than you. But I also don't really have a problem with the idea that Mike was a superior offensive anchor to Lebron. I think that's a reasonable view to hold outside of portability. I'm not 100% sure I agree with it, but its definitely not unreasonable.

I don't understand though seeing that Lebron didn't mesh as well with on-ball players as Mike did with off-ball players and reaching the conclusion that Mike is more portable. Maybe Mike is, maybe Mike isn't, but we can't know because he never found himself in that situation.

Which goes back to my original point. Portability is used to prop up players we can't otherwise justify having over other players because well we want them to be better so this is how we are going to achieve that end result. Mike/Lebron KG/everyone. And the crazy thing is despite his clear versatility, KG is one of the least portable superstars we've ever seen. He needed very specific teammates to achieve high-level team success yet he's used as the poster child as opposed to players who succeeded regardless of teammates.

It's just bizarre to me that we've collectively enabled this.

[VanWest82]

The issue with guys like this is even if you assume their way of playing is better than any system could replicate, if you can't reproduce it when they're not on the court then you're left with nothing in those mins. That's not just a Lebron problem but something we saw with Nash and Magic (post Dirk and Kareem) who I assume are both probably lower on the portability scale.

I'm curious as to why you consider this a LeBron-related problem though? I've seen this said before as well, but it comes off as odd criticism to me when...pretty much all offenses fall off a cliff when their elite offensive lead leaves the floor lol. I'm not sure if the idea is that coaches just don't practice offense that doesn't involve LeBron/LeBron-ball, or that LeBron's presence somehow prevents a team from signing ball handlers that can run the offense without him.

Spoiler:

I would contend that the simplest answer is the correct answer: there are just worse players on the court when LeBron is not on, so you see varying degrees of worse offense. To take it to an extreme example, just look at Curry this year. Kerr clearly has a system built around ball movement that capitalizes on spacing and off-ball play, so when Curry is on the court the Warriors look just about decent but when he leaves they are abysmal. Is that supposed to be an indictment on Curry, who's arguably the most portable player of all time? To see how this is possible on even contending teams you can look at 15 Curry, with him on the Warriors are about a +10 offense, but without him they are a bottom 5 offense. We can even go back to 98 Miller, another figurehead of portability, and see how bad the Pacers offense is without him and great they were with him.

Anyway on to the topic of LeBron's portability in general, I think much of this perception comes from those Miami years, where he was paired with one of the least portable ATGs in history. From 2011 to 2014, Wade shot 1.5 3pa/g at a disgusting 29% clip. LeBron is at a much more respectable 3.4 3pa/g at 37%. For comparison, Pippen from 91 to 94 (right before they shortened the line) shot 1.4 3pa/g at a 28% clip in an era where the 3 was emphasized much less. And his lack of shooting was exposed by none other than the cerebral, defensively elite Spurs teams they met in the Finals, which almost cost them a championship in 2013 (though that's not too fair, that series could have been flipped by the smallest thing lol).

11-14 Heat, RS+PS
LeBron on, Wade off (5390 min): 112.3 ORTG
Wade on, LeBron off (2416 min): 107 ORTG
LeBron and Wade on (9407 min): 113.1 ORTG

Now simple on/off stats are not perfect, there's a ton of context missing, but what these numbers seem to suggest are LeBron lifts Wade only lineups massively, but Wade lifts LeBron only lineups by a smidgen (someone can correct me if my conclusion is wrong here). And I'm also not saying that all of these portability issues are Wade's fault, but you'd have to wonder if Wade could shoot the 3 at even LeBron's volume+clip (let alone an actual shooter) that we even have this conversation. This is pure speculation, but I'd be willing to wager that you'd see a similar phenomenon in Jordan/Pippen lineups if we had that data.

I definitely have my own criticisms of LeBron's portability, he's a pretty bad off-ball screener when there's a scramble, he sometimes unnecessarily stands several feet behind the 3pt line (this is particularly noticeable on his run with the Lakers since he's the PG up top often), but he also has strengths like being the GOAT transition off-ball target, being an excellent cutter, and knowing where to fill in the gaps against a zone defense (more recent versions of him anyway). If I recall correctly, Taylor has him at negative portability for a few years which just doesn't make sense to me, he's neutral at worst.

I would say it's a genius initiator problem which Lebron suffers from because he is one. So too was Steve Nash. D'Antoni figured out right away that giving Nash the reigns and letting him feel the game out and make decisions on the fly produced better results than any rigid collection of plays or philosophy he could come up with. But the flip side to that was that Suns had a really hard time functioning on offense when Nash hit the bench because no one else could replicate what he did.

I hear what you're saying about offenses struggling when great players sit but we've seen multiple examples over the years of benches functioning at high levels within a system minus a hub (see 2018 Raptors). I might even categorize the entire 13 and 14 Spurs teams as examples of this. It's important not to conflate an ineffective sub submarining a line up with an effective collection of players unable to achieve success because they're left with no guiding principle for offense.

I disagree that Lebron's Miami years were the main/only case against his portability. Why were the Love/Kyrie Cavs teams never able to achieve any meaningful level of competence minus Lebron? Although neither of them were world class play makers both were capable enough to function within a system. I believe the answer is because they didn't prioritize a way of playing that didn't include Lebron which makes sense because when Lebron is on your team you're going to spend most of your time ironing out the details of how to best fit around him given he's the best player in the league. In other words, they perfected a Lebron system not a Cavs system, which is a characteristic of all Lebron-led teams.

One way to combat this dilemma is to find another offensive maestro to bring off the bench which the Lakers did last year with Rondo, and which not-so-coincidentally produced the best results (in the playoffs as that was the only time Rondo was in shape or tried hard) of any bench line ups of a Lebron-led team. But without another genius level decision maker to organize the offense it doesn't work.

Your Curry and Miller analogies aren't as convincing to me because even if you can't find other elite off ball shooters/scorers which your offense is based upon you can still find reasonable, albeit lesser, facsimiles that at least allow you maintain the integrity of your offense which might then allow for the next best guys to take on an increased role within the offense for which they are most familiar as appose to having to switch and do something completely different every time the best player hits the bench. I recognize this is a little theoretical in nature, and there are countless examples of that concept not working, but fundamentally one would think it should produce a greater chance of success assuming the roster is constructed around the principles of the coach's system (big assumption, and not always true).

[sansterre]

Which goes back to my original point. Portability is used to prop up players we can't otherwise justify having over other players because well we want them to be better so this is how we are going to achieve that end result. Mike/Lebron KG/everyone. And the crazy thing is despite his clear versatility, KG is one of the least portable superstars we've ever seen. He needed very specific teammates to achieve high-level team success yet he's used as the poster child as opposed to players who succeeded regardless of teammates.

It's just bizarre to me that we've collectively enabled this.

Portability is basically a question of how much of a player's value he retains when added to an already high-level team (50+ wins). Teams of that sort generally already have the "very specific teammates necessary to achieve high level team success".

[Snakebites]

KG is less portable?

What is the basis for that assertion? That he didn’t win it all with Sam Cassell and post-prime Latrell? Or is it that you think Wally Sczcetbiak was the second banana he should have meshed better with?

[Texas Chuck]

Which goes back to my original point. Portability is used to prop up players we can't otherwise justify having over other players because well we want them to be better so this is how we are going to achieve that end result. Mike/Lebron KG/everyone. And the crazy thing is despite his clear versatility, KG is one of the least portable superstars we've ever seen. He needed very specific teammates to achieve high-level team success yet he's used as the poster child as opposed to players who succeeded regardless of teammates.

It's just bizarre to me that we've collectively enabled this.

Portability is basically a question of how much of a player's value he retains when added to an already high-level team (50+ wins). Teams of that sort generally already have the "very specific teammates necessary to achieve high level team success".

Fair enough I guess if that's the intended definition of portability, but why are sub 50 win teams not important when discussing portability. For instance if a player can elevate a sub 50 win team into a contender or even champion isn't that valuable as well? And if you can't, shouldn't that be a knock on your portability? Because again, just to me, this sounds like double counting versatility rather than introducing another area of impact.

KG is one of the most versatile players of all-time so regardless of team construction, if you are already an elite team he's absolutely going to be additive. But if you can't also raise the floor nearly as well as your peers, then for me you are less portable.

[Djoker]

I mean if Lebron got to play with KD(GOAT level scorer), Draymond(GOAT level defender), Klay(near GOAT level 3&D guy), Iggy(high level glue guy), etc then we can talk about what's fair.

Lebron never played with anything close to that level of talent, but you are blaming him not having a GOAT-level team on portability instead of the actual story-talent.

Everyone wanted to credit Steve Kerr with solving basketball. No, he didn't. He just had a ridiculous collection of talent.

I agree about more talent on the Warriors but we aren't comparing Lebron and Curry. We are comparing Lebron to the GOAT peak specifically MJ.

Jordan built several all-time great offensive teams with Pippen, Grant and Armstrong and then Pippen, Rodman and Kukoc. Those are all far from a historically stacked casts on offense and yet they posted comparable rORtg to the Warriors, Showtime Lakers etc. That's the standard I grade Lebron on. He never led a single team that dominant on offense despite having several more talented offensive supporting casts than what Jordan did.

And that's why myself and several others including Ben Taylor asked ourselves "Why?" and came to the conclusion that Lebron's ability to mesh with other on-ball talent limits the offensive ceiling of his teams.

The only caution I'd have to that position is that you're mostly relying on regular season offense for this conclusion.

If we're looking at playoff offenses then things actually tilt fairly toward LeBron (playoff offenses, minimum +8, adjusted for opponent regular season defenses):

2017 Cavs: +13.17
2016 Cavs: +11.43
1991 Bulls: +10.98
1993 Bulls: +8.91
2012 Heat: +8.43
2013 Heat: +8.17

Obviously we have sample size problems with the playoffs, but I think you'll have to concede that Jordan offenses > LeBron offenses is a specifically regular season argument.

There is no playoff argument though. The sample sizes are too small.

Even a single regular season campaign has a significant amount of noise let alone a stretch of 20ish games.

[Texas Chuck]

KG is less portable?

What is the basis for that assertion? That he didn’t win it all with Sam Cassell and post-prime Latrell? Or is it that you think Wally Sczcetbiak was the second banana he should have meshed better with?

I understand my takes on KG are unpopular(and quite possibly really really wrong). But cmon now. You know this isn't what I'm saying.

I've said it 100x or more on this board but I'll say it again here -- the 04 Wolves are a testament to KG's greatness. I'm really high on Sam Cassell. I hate hate hate hate that 80% of the time his name is posted on this board, its preceded by "35 year old" in an effort to diminish him and I am so grateful you put no disclaimers on him here. He was fantastic not only that season--clearly the best of his career, but also as a young player on those Rocket champions, in LA and with the Bucks--all teams who not coincidentally had their best success in forever with him.

But Sam Cassell was maybe the 8-12th best player in the league that year. Spreewell was more name than game to use a Smitty saying. They had some solid role players, but basically all KG needed was a high level perimeter offensive threat and suddenly the Wolves were one of the best 3 or 4 teams in the entire league.

My argument has never been that KG needs overwhelming talent to win with, though I do think he needs more than some of the players he is consistently viewed as an equal to or superior to. Dirk for instance never played with a single player as good as 04 Sam Cassell in his entire career. Duncan won a title the year before KG's deep run with less talent.

But KG wasn't anchoring elite defenses in Minnesota and he wasn't good enough as a scorer to steal series in the playoffs offensively. I think those players who were anchoring an elite unit on either end make it easier to build contenders around--thus in my definition of portability they are more portable even as they are less versatile. Because having the anchor is the hardest piece to find.

[falcolombardi]

The issue with guys like this is even if you assume their way of playing is better than any system could replicate, if you can't reproduce it when they're not on the court then you're left with nothing in those mins. That's not just a Lebron problem but something we saw with Nash and Magic (post Dirk and Kareem) who I assume are both probably lower on the portability scale.

I'm curious as to why you consider this a LeBron-related problem though? I've seen this said before as well, but it comes off as odd criticism to me when...pretty much all offenses fall off a cliff when their elite offensive lead leaves the floor lol. I'm not sure if the idea is that coaches just don't practice offense that doesn't involve LeBron/LeBron-ball, or that LeBron's presence somehow prevents a team from signing ball handlers that can run the offense without him.

Spoiler:

I would contend that the simplest answer is the correct answer: there are just worse players on the court when LeBron is not on, so you see varying degrees of worse offense. To take it to an extreme example, just look at Curry this year. Kerr clearly has a system built around ball movement that capitalizes on spacing and off-ball play, so when Curry is on the court the Warriors look just about decent but when he leaves they are abysmal. Is that supposed to be an indictment on Curry, who's arguably the most portable player of all time? To see how this is possible on even contending teams you can look at 15 Curry, with him on the Warriors are about a +10 offense, but without him they are a bottom 5 offense. We can even go back to 98 Miller, another figurehead of portability, and see how bad the Pacers offense is without him and great they were with him.

Anyway on to the topic of LeBron's portability in general, I think much of this perception comes from those Miami years, where he was paired with one of the least portable ATGs in history. From 2011 to 2014, Wade shot 1.5 3pa/g at a disgusting 29% clip. LeBron is at a much more respectable 3.4 3pa/g at 37%. For comparison, Pippen from 91 to 94 (right before they shortened the line) shot 1.4 3pa/g at a 28% clip in an era where the 3 was emphasized much less. And his lack of shooting was exposed by none other than the cerebral, defensively elite Spurs teams they met in the Finals, which almost cost them a championship in 2013 (though that's not too fair, that series could have been flipped by the smallest thing lol).

11-14 Heat, RS+PS
LeBron on, Wade off (5390 min): 112.3 ORTG
Wade on, LeBron off (2416 min): 107 ORTG
LeBron and Wade on (9407 min): 113.1 ORTG

Now simple on/off stats are not perfect, there's a ton of context missing, but what these numbers seem to suggest are LeBron lifts Wade only lineups massively, but Wade lifts LeBron only lineups by a smidgen (someone can correct me if my conclusion is wrong here). And I'm also not saying that all of these portability issues are Wade's fault, but you'd have to wonder if Wade could shoot the 3 at even LeBron's volume+clip (let alone an actual shooter) that we even have this conversation. This is pure speculation, but I'd be willing to wager that you'd see a similar phenomenon in Jordan/Pippen lineups if we had that data.

I definitely have my own criticisms of LeBron's portability, he's a pretty bad off-ball screener when there's a scramble, he sometimes unnecessarily stands several feet behind the 3pt line (this is particularly noticeable on his run with the Lakers since he's the PG up top often), but he also has strengths like being the GOAT transition off-ball target, being an excellent cutter, and knowing where to fill in the gaps against a zone defense (more recent versions of him anyway). If I recall correctly, Taylor has him at negative portability for a few years which just doesn't make sense to me, he's neutral at worst.

I would say it's a genius initiator problem which Lebron suffers from because he is one. So too was Steve Nash. D'Antoni figured out right away that giving Nash the reigns and letting him feel the game out and make decisions on the fly produced better results than any rigid collection of plays he could come up with. But the flip side to that was that Suns had a really hard time functioning on offense when Nash hit the bench because no one else could replicate what he did.

I hear what you're saying about offenses struggling when great players sit but we've seen multiple examples over the years of benches functioning at high levels within a system minus a hub (see 2018 Raptors). I might even categorize the entire 13 and 14 Spurs teams as examples of this. It's important not to conflate an ineffective sub submarining a line up with an effective collection of players unable to achieve success because they're left with no guiding principle for offense.

I disagree that Lebron's Miami years were the main/only case against his portability. Why were the Love/Kyrie Cavs teams never able to achieve any meaningful level of competence minus Lebron? Although neither of them were world class play makers both were capable enough to function within a system. I believe the answer is because they didn't prioritize a way of playing that didn't include Lebron which makes sense because when Lebron is on your team you're going to spend most of your time ironing out the details of how to best fit around him given he's the best player in the league. In other words, they perfected a Lebron system not a Cavs system.

One way to combat this dilemma is to find another offensive maestro to bring off the bench which the Lakers did last year with Rondo, and which not-so-coincidentally produced the best results (in the playoffs as that was the only time Rondo was in shape or tried hard) of any bench line ups of a Lebron-led team. But without another genius level decision maker to organize the offense it doesn't work.

Your Curry and Miller analogies aren't as convincing to me because even if you can't find other elite off ball shooters/scorers which your offense is based upon you can still find reasonable, albeit lesser, facsimiles that at least allow you maintain the integrity of your offense which might then allow for the next best guys to take on an increased role within the offense for which they are most familiar as appose to having to switch and do something completely different every time the best player hits the bench. I recognize this is a little theoretical in nature, and there are countless examples of that concept not working, but fundamentally one would think it should produce a greater chance of success assuming the roster is constructed around the principles of the coach's system (big assumption, and not always true).

i have a hard time following why players should be penalized for how their teams play WITHOUT them

if players cannot find a way to work without their star on court maybe is because they are not that good or they only cam be good im secondary roles? how is that the fault of the guy who is not in the court?

[sansterre]

Which goes back to my original point. Portability is used to prop up players we can't otherwise justify having over other players because well we want them to be better so this is how we are going to achieve that end result. Mike/Lebron KG/everyone. And the crazy thing is despite his clear versatility, KG is one of the least portable superstars we've ever seen. He needed very specific teammates to achieve high-level team success yet he's used as the poster child as opposed to players who succeeded regardless of teammates.

It's just bizarre to me that we've collectively enabled this.

Portability is basically a question of how much of a player's value he retains when added to an already high-level team (50+ wins). Teams of that sort generally already have the "very specific teammates necessary to achieve high level team success".

Fair enough I guess if that's the intended definition of portability, but why are sub 50 win teams not important when discussing portability. For instance if a player can elevate a sub 50 win team into a contender or even champion isn't that valuable as well? And if you can't, shouldn't that be a knock on your portability? Because again, just to me, this sounds like double counting versatility rather than introducing another area of impact.

KG is one of the most versatile players of all-time so regardless of team construction, if you are already an elite team he's absolutely going to be additive. But if you can't also raise the floor nearly as well as your peers, then for me you are less portable.

Fair, and we're clearly into a semantic area.

My understanding of Ben's concept of portability is that it's purely premised on "how likely is a player like this to be on a championship-level team?"

Some players are so good that they'd be amazing additions no matter what (because they'd simply replace the system and it would always be an upgrade). But there aren't a ton of those.

For everyone else you have to have some kind of synergy with strong rosters, because if you don't then you have pretty low odds of being on a championship team. '17 Westbrook and '01 Iverson are two fantastic examples of low-portability players. They're both really fantastic at taking weak rosters and making them playoff-worthy, but adding them to a roster that's already playoff-worthy probably gets nowhere near the same return on their minutes.

Let us imagine comparing '17 Westbrook to '04 Garnett. Put them each on a garbage roster and they'd each probably carry the team to the playoffs or close to it. But if you were to add Garnett to a 50-win team they're pretty much instant championship contenders/favorites, while adding Westbrook to a 50-win team doesn't have the same yield.

Put another way, I read Ben's "portability" as a "ceiling-raising" skill, while what you're talking about is floor-raising.

I think the reason that Ben likes portability so much is that to be championship-probable, a low-portability player needs to be on an ATG-level. But a high-portability player can be more championship-probable than a comparable low-portability player, because he can synergize better with good teammates. Or so the theory goes.

I think hand-wringing about portability for Jordan/LeBron/Nash/Magic-level players is kind of ridiculous, because you *want* those guys running things. But other players have value because they'd work anywhere. Look at Bill Walton. Which decent team wouldn't explode when you have an efficient-scoring (but not high usage) big, that passes well, and with ATG rebounding and defense? Imagine swapping KG in for Kareem on the '71 Bucks, or in for Shaq on the '00 to '04 Lakers (you'd probably have to swap Grant/Horry for a comparable center with slightly higher usage). I'm not at all convinced that either would be much of a downgrade for that team. Pair KG with a #1 option (Kobe) or on a deep offensive roster (Oscar/McGlocklin/Dandridge/Smith) and he's money. Hell, imagine a universe where KG shows up on the '80 Lakers and they run Nixon at the point and have Kareem and KG in the frontcourt. Are we entirely convinced that this wouldn't have worked? Yeah, their offense would have been worse, but their defense would've been pretty sick.

But as a Jordanesque-player, who can floor-raise so hard that he can take a team of limited scorers to the promised land, KG definitely falls short.

[sansterre]

There is no playoff argument though. The sample sizes are too small.

Even a single regular season campaign has a significant amount of noise let alone a stretch of 20ish games.

Of course, we are looking at a pattern over multiple postseasons, which between them constitute 80+ games pretty easily, longer than the length of a season.

Then again, if you're arguing that the 2001 Lakers weren't that good, that Jordan was pretty lucky to win six Finals and that championships are a ridiculous standard for evaluating players in any way, I can totally see that.

The sample sizes for playoffs are, after all, too small.