VanWest82 wrote: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 think this is why some people would say that the portability discussion really just comes off as a reason to knock intelligent on-ball playmakers. It shouldn't be Nash's fault that no one is as smart as him. I mean, do we think had Nash went off-ball more (thereby decreasing the the Suns' ORTG while he was on the court) for the sake of increasing the team's ORTG for the 10 minutes he was on the bench, that the Suns as a whole would have a better ORTG? I seriously doubt that. I see what you are saying about there being a tradeoff, it's simply a tradeoff worth having.
Another point worth mentioning is that in the playoffs, guys like LeBron is sitting for 6 minutes anyway! What's the point in maximizing those 6 minutes (mostly against bench units too probably) when his teams have elite and ATG results while he's on the court (better than what guys like Bird have mustered)?
VanWest82 wrote: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.
Yea I don't mean to take a knock on more egalitarian offenses, though I wouldn't really throw the 2018 Raptors in the tier of elite offenses because the playoffs matter as well. Those Spurs teams were more the outlier than the norm though I'd say, the 2014 was arguably the deepest team in history.
VanWest82 wrote: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.
Honestly I think you answered your own question, I'd classify neither as even "great" playmakers in their time in Cleveland lol and that's pretty important. Kyrie was just starting to play winning basketball and he's always been the type of player to prefer those Kobe-esque contested shots and was a mediocre passer in general. And iirc, Love actually lost a good amount of weight between his time in Minny and Cleveland because of a modeling side career he wanted to pick up, so that's why when the Cavs always tried setting him up early in games, he couldn't work in the post like he used to. I'm sure part of that decision was also because he knew he needed to space the floor for LeBron so less post-ups were required anyway and he didn't need all that weight, which comes back to the tradeoff I mentioned earlier. Is the Cavs offense without LeBron on a little worse than it would be if Love still had that bulk, sure, but we also wouldn't get the historic results they had when LeBron was on (including defense). I guess we may just be far apart on how good they really were as players.
VanWest82 wrote: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.
I was actually going to bring up Rondo in my original post but forgot. To me, last year was the perfect example of the bare minimum one would need to keep the offense going when LeBron was not on the court! Don't get me wrong, you won't find a FA that's smarter than Rondo and probably not one that's a better passer, but I think it's a stretch to call him an offensive maestro. He was pretty turnover prone relative to his usage, shot well as a whole but was inconsistent, and his shooting is a bit inflated by the fact that he was open for many of his 3s. He kills spacing but made his shots so it didn't matter. If the Lakers had signed, say, Seth Curry for 7m a year, that's great value for a ball handler that can hold up an offense while LeBron's on the bench (like he did for Luka in last year's playoffs).
VanWest82 wrote: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).
Yea I just disagree here since there are many examples like you mentioned where it doesn't work. Again, not to pick the lowest hanging fruit, but this is what Kerr tries to do with Wiggins as the lead when Steph leaves, and it just doesn't work, not that all secondary leads are Wiggins level bad but yeah. Besides, I don't think LeBron-ball is particularly complex anyway, you just need a playmaker that can spam PnRs, penetrate, make basic kick passes, and take advantage of a very well spaced floor. I know it sounds like a lot, but funnily enough, the new+young Warriors this year struggled (they still do) in Kerr's system because they have no idea what to do off-ball or where/how to pass haha.
