Retro Player of the Year 2008-09 UPDATE — Lebron James

[AEnigma]

General Project Discussion Thread

Discussion and Results from the 2010 Project

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 players and the top 3 offensive and defensive players of 2008-09.

Player of the Year (POY)(5) — most accomplished overall player of that season
Offensive Player of the Year (OPOY)(3) — most accomplished offensive player of that season
Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY)(3) — most accomplished defensive player of that season

Voting will close sometime after 19:00PM EST on Friday, January 24th. I have no issue keeping it open so long as discussion is strong, but please try to vote within the first three days.

Valid ballots must provide an explanation for your choices that gives us a window into how you thought and why you came to the decisions you did. You can vote for any of the three awards — although they must be complete votes — but I will only tally votes for an award when there are at least five valid ballots submitted for it.

Remember, your votes must be based on THIS season. This is intended to give wide wiggle room for personal philosophies while still providing a boundary to make sure the award can be said to mean something. You can factor things like degree of difficulty as defined by you, but what you can't do is ignore how the player actually played on the floor this season in favor of what he might have done if only...

You may change your vote, but if you do, edit your original post rather than writing, "hey, ignore my last post, this is my real post until I change my mind again.” I similarly ask that ballots be kept in one post rather than making one post for Player of the Year, one post for Offensive Player of the Year, and/or one post for Defensive Player of the Year. If you want to provide your reasoning that way for the sake of discussion, fine, but please keep the official votes themselves in one aggregated post. Finally, for ease of tallying, I prefer for you to place your votes at the beginning of your balloting post, with some formatting that makes them stand out. I will not discount votes which fail to follow these requests, but I am certainly more likely to overlook them.

Contrarian votes can be and have been sincere, but they look a lot more sincere when you take the time to fully present your reasoning rather than transparently pretend nothing is amiss.

Vote sincerely. Do not move a player down in your voting to give another player an advantage. I would encourage every voter to give some explanations while they do their voting - but particularly if you have a top 5 that deviates strongly with the norm and you haven't expressed your thoughts on it earlier in the thread. If I'm not satisfied, I may ask you for more of an explanation - and it may come to actually booting people out of the project.

The rules here are that you've got to use the same type of thinking for all 5 votes. I understand putting more thought into #1 than #5, but I don't want PJ Brown votes. Voters do Brown type votes to give a guy an honorable mention. Makes sense if people only care about who finishes 1st, but I've been clear that I want to measure more than that. I've been trying to encourage literal "honorable mentions" to serve that purpose, and I'd ask that people use that as the way they honor guys who did something special but who aren't actually a top 5 guy that year.

There is a significant difference between a properly justified and internally consistent contrarian vote, and a vote whose purpose is to undermine the project itself. Ballots which threaten to do the latter and derail project discussion via blatant vote manipulation are liable to be tossed. If it happens twice, the offending poster will be removed from the project.

Current Voter List

Spoiler:

[trelos6]

OPOY

1.Lebron James. 30.6 pp75 on +4.7 rTS%. Team rOrtg of +4.1. Second best playmaker behind Chris Paul. Greatly improved as a passer. Playoffs, upped his scoring to a ridiculous 35.6 pp75 on +7.4 rTS%.

2.Chris Paul. Best playmaker in the league. 24.3 pp75 on +5.5 rTS%. Team rOrtg +0.4. Bad playoffs, though just 5 games, as he got locked up by Billups.

3.Dwayne Wade. Came down to Nash v Wade. And Nash isn’t the best playmaker anymore, whereas Wade was the leading volume scorer, 31.4 pp75 on +3 rTS%. Team rOrtg was -0.5. Kept volume and slight efficiency dip in 7 game series vs Hawks.



DPOY

1.Dwight Howard. Anchors the best defense in the league (-6.4 rDrtg). Led the leage in Drtg.

2.Lebron James. Cavs were 3rd defensively.

3.Tim Duncan. Spurs were a top 5 defense. Would’ve given it to KG (well, KG would have been 1 or 2) if not for the injury.



POY

1.Lebron James. Candidate for greatest individual season of all time. No brainer #1. +6.57 OPIPM, +3.25 DPIPM, +9.83 PIPM. 27.49 Wins Added. Incredible playoff performance.


2.Dwayne Wade. There really needs to be a gap between 1 and 2. It wasn’t even close. But Wade had a pretty good regular season. +4.95 OPIPM, +1.32 DPIPM, +6.27 PIPM. 19.05 Wins Added

3.Chris Paul. Very close with Wade. Both good defensively. It’s really a toss up. +5.71 OPIPM, +1.59 DPIPM, +7.29 PIPM. 20.07 Wins Added.

4.Kobe Bryant. 28.4 pp75 on +1.7 rTS%. Team rOrtg +4.5. Slight increase in volume, efficiency remained in playoffs. Good defensively. +4.98 OPIPM, -0.15 DPIPM. +4.83 PIPM. 18.77 Wins Added.

5.Dwight Howard. 22.4 pp75 on +5.6 rTS%. Rim gravity allowed the 4 out playstyle. Anchored the best defense in the league, elite rim protection. +1.51 OPIPM, +3.08 DPIPM, +4.59 PIPM. 17.7 Wins Added. Really, KG should be somewhere here, but I can’t place him after the injury limited him to only 57 games, and he was out during the playoffs.

[One_and_Done]

This is the easiest vote in a while. Lebron should really be unanimous for 09 and 10.

Dwight and Wade loom large as candidates for runner up.

[eminence]

I would like to hear reasoning on why folks see '08-'10 LBJ/Cavs significantly differently than '94-'96 Robinson/Spurs.

[Homer38]

Lebron had one of the best season ever in 2009,regular season and playoffs......

[One_and_Done]

1) Lebron



2) Dwight
3) Wade
4) CP3

5) Kobe

#1 is easy. This was the start of Lebron’s true prime, and he was far and away the most dominant player in the league. That Lebron carried this nothing team to 66 wins may be one of the greatest carry jobs of all-time.

The debate begins at #2. Dwight is an afterthought for many people, but it’s too easily forgotten how impactful he was. For some years Dwight was regarded as maybe the 2nd best player in the NBA. He wasn’t pretty or graceful, and he said many cringe things, but in terms of impact it’s hard to argue. The Magic won an absurd 59 games this year, and it was driven by Dwight. Look at that team he had; Shard, Hedo, Jameer, and [insert random starter here]. That is not the support cast of a 59 win team who makes the finals. Shard was an underrated guy, but ultimately not more than a fringe all-star candidate at best. Hedo was a useful role player, but nothing special. He was an outright liability on D. Jameer was a BJ Armstrong all-star; a guy who makes it because the team was so good that “they have to get more than 1”. Jameer Nelson was not an all-star, and I’m not even sure I’d call him an above average starter. Then compare Dwight’s support cast to what Kobe had; Pau/Odom/Bynum/Ariza/Fisher/Radmanovic, with Walton and Farmer off the bench. Honestly, that Lakers support cast could have won 50+ games without Kobe.

Wade had maybe his best season this year. I don’t think there’s much question he was better than Kobe. Their per100 is particularly telling:

Wade: 42/7/10 on 574 TS%

Kobe: 38/7/7 on 561 TS%

Wade was also clearly the better defensive player in 09. Kobe had a nice playoffs, which is why I may put him over Dirk for #5, but he can’t be compared to Wade. Similarly, CP3 remained better than Kobe, he just had a much weaker support cast. His per 100 numbers are particularly impressive this year; 32/8/16 on 599 TS%, with a 124 Ortg, and justifiably finishing 6th in DPOY voting. If we took a simplistic approach, and assumed assists are worth 2.4 points each, then prima facie CP3 added 70+ pp100 to his team, compared to 54pp100 for Kobe. In reality CP3 was generating more points of course, because of hockey assists, because he’s scoring at better efficiency, because he’s putting his team mates in their sweet spots so they can shoot at better efficiency, etc, but even a flat numbers comp was CP3 waaayyy ahead. CP3 even rebounds more per 100 than Kobe. He looks better than Kobe in everything really.

I’ll ponder Dirk vs Kobe some more. I generally see Dirk as a superior player, but just for this year Kobe may have had the better season. Sadly Nash was sabotaged by his own FO and coach, which utilised him poorly this year by trying to run everything through old Shaq.

[AEnigma]

I would like to hear reasoning on why folks see '08-'10 LBJ/Cavs significantly differently than '94-'96 Robinson/Spurs.

1. As regular seasons the comparison is fine, although I think 2009 and 2010 were more impressive based on a similar supporting cast.

2. In the postseason, Robinson lost to less relevant teams and lost much less competitively.

3. In the postseason, Robinson was consistently less effective as a scorer, as a playmaker (mostly applicable to 1994 by role), and as a defender, whereas Lebron was only less effective as a scorer in one specific matchup (with injury context the second time).

4. In contrast, this postseason decline follows a career-long pattern for Robinson; it was not merely one tough matchup, nor do I recall any notable injury context to provide a partial justification.

5. In an RPoY sense, 2008 Garnett and 2009/10 Kobe is much weaker competition than 1994/95 Hakeem and 1996 Jordan (and 1995 Shaq).

6. Lebron comes across as the overall best performer against the Celtics even with his scoring struggles. Robinson more regularly looks like one of the weakest performers against his competition, and certainly worse than the actual winners.

7. Relatedly, it is difficult to argue against Lebron being the best player in every one of his series, whereas Robinson can more easily be argued as being a worse performing player than Malone in those Jazz series — to say nothing of the head-to-head with Hakeem. To see anything analogous with Lebron, we need to wait for the 2011 Finals and then again twelve years later in the 2023 conference finals.

[One_and_Done]

I would like to hear reasoning on why folks see '08-'10 LBJ/Cavs significantly differently than '94-'96 Robinson/Spurs.

09 and 10. Don't just tack 08 onto it, when Bron wasn't at the same level.

In 09 and 10 the Cavs played at a 66 win pace in games Lebron played, and were 1-6 in games he missed. They had an SRS of 8.68 and 6.17 in the RS, and their record vs Western teams was even stronger than vs East teams. The support cast was bad, even worse than what D.Rob had, and they fell off to be a sub 20 win team without Lebron in 2011 (including an 8-32 start before they threw the towel in).

The 94-96 Spurs won 55, 62 and 59 games. Their SRS was lower, their support cast not as bad. Their playoffs performances more disappointing. The foes who beat them not nearly as strong as say the KG Celtics.

Lebron also just played better, at GOAT type levels that only he himself exceeded in later years.

[eminence]

I would like to hear reasoning on why folks see '08-'10 LBJ/Cavs significantly differently than '94-'96 Robinson/Spurs.

1. As regular seasons the comparison is fine, although I think 2009 and 2010 were more impressive based on a similar supporting cast.

2. In the postseason, Robinson lost to less relevant teams and lost much less competitively.

3. In the postseason, Robinson was consistently less effective as a scorer, as a playmaker (mostly applicable to 1994 by role), and as a defender, whereas Lebron was only less effective as a scorer in one specific matchup (with injury context the second time).

4. In contrast, this postseason decline follows a career-long pattern for Robinson; it was not merely one tough matchup, nor do I recall any notable injury context to provide a partial justification.

5. In an RPoY sense, 2008 Garnett and 2009/10 Kobe is much weaker competition than 1994/95 Hakeem and 1996 Jordan (and 1995 Shaq).

6. Lebron comes across as the overall best performer against the Celtics even with his scoring struggles. Robinson more regularly looks like one of the weakest performers against his competition, and certainly worse than the actual winners.

7. Relatedly, it is difficult to argue against Lebron being the best player in every one of series, whereas Robinson can more easily be argued as being a worse performing player than Malone in those Jazz series — to say nothing of the head-to-head with Hakeem. To see anything analogous with Lebron, we need to wait for the 2011 Finals and then again twelve years later in the 2023 conference finals.

To OneNDone - '08 was included as LeBron just won the POY vote there, but '11 might make for the better comparison (higher achieving team regular season, more notable PO underperformance).

Aenigma - I generally agree with the truth to the majority of your points, but find them marginal in collective value to wind up with the takes on each player to diverge so much (Robinson seen as an alltime PO failure who only got the #2 slots due to such strong regular seasons, while LeBron in early returns for '09/'10 seems to be viewed as an unassailable #1).

1) Agreed, though I have the margin as slight (including '08 or '11 makes either 3 year RS stretch close to equal for me).

2) Agreed, and again marginal, they both lost to 1 champion ('95 Rockets/'08 Celtics), the '09 Magic/'10 Celtics do not feel notably more relevant than the 90s Jazz post-Hornacek, though I see leaning their way. The Cavs have the edge for competitiveness in the losses certainly. Neither beat any teams worth a damn during these stretches.

3) First point I'd qualify as disagreement - I see more problems with Brons play than just one scoring matchups. LeBron was well below his normal defensive impact vs Orlando in '09. And struggled in more areas offensively than just scoring vs the Celtics (TOV issues, and as the far and away primary ballhandler, it's at least partially on him if none of the rest of the team gets going - his playmaking was more limited than Robinsons ever was - in terms of percent of impact). Injury context is an explanation for why poor play occurs, it doesn't (at least for me) change anything in evaluating that play itself.

4) Robinson portion agreed, he was a (relatively) poor PO performer across matchups in prime (I like his later stuff playing off Duncan). But I don't have the same LeBron characterization - he also seemed to struggle across (meaningful) matchups at this point. LeBron succeeds later - absolutely - but for this stretch of his career, I don't see some immortal PO performer, better than Robinson sure, but not particularly strong.

5) '96 MJ leading an all-time dominant team, sure, and I can see folks taking issue with '08 KG. But Hakeem was putting out outright lackluster regular seasons by POY standards. He has great PO runs, but I don't see a justification for Hakeem '94/'95 to have a significant lead over '09/'10 Kobe overall (I would personally lean Kobe but have them in the same tier). '95 Shaq I don't find particularly notable in terms of a POY #1 contender - prefer Howard from '09.

6. By what measures do you feel this way? I don't rate him looking significantly better than Kobe vs the same opponents in the '08-'10 stretch. I'm not sure which other players we'd directly compare him with.

7. Career wise there are others I think range from arguable to outright preferring, but most relevant to this thread it's perfectly reasonable to prefer Dwight in '09. Rashard is good, but that Magic cast is not so solid that that outcome should've been any sort of given. Dwight hitting his FTs at 70% is a weapon. Hedo/Skip/Lee/Pietrus 3-6 is not a particularly inspiring group.

I guess on review I'm more bothered by my perception of the gap than anyone preferring the LeBron stretch. To me LeBron feels like an arguable #1 who I wouldn't wind up picking for any of these seasons (KG or Kobe in '08, Kobe in '09/'10), but that diverges pretty strongly from the early posts here which would indicate this version of Bron as a true top tier POY peak.

[One_and_Done]

There is an enormous gap. Kobe had a team that would win 55-ish games without him. Dwight had a plausible support cast around him. Lebron had a bunch of sucks who would have been competing for the worst team in the league without him.

[capfan33]

1. Lebron- one of the greatest seasons ever, in a pure impact sense might be the greatest season ever although I prefer the later more polished versions of Bron.

2. Kobe- finally puts it all together to win his first title without Shaq. While I think Wade and potentially even Paul were better in a vacuum they didn’t accomplish enough to warrant being over Kobe.

3. Dwight- somehow forgot to include him in my post, the one season he really put it all together and had good luck with the roster around him, reached an impressive two way level of impact along with a respectable finals performance.

4. Wade- ludicrous season only overshadowed by an even greater season by LeBron. However, relatively underwhelming playoffs losing to the Hawks in the 2nd round, and his individual performance wasn’t anything special either, although his team was absolutely terrible.

5. Dirk- returns to form with another sublime regular season and then has one of his best playoff series ever torching Denver despite losing in 5 games. At this point had developed better scoring resiliency, solving the last few gaps in his game. CP3 might have been better in the reg season but his lackluster playoff series makes Dirk a relatively easy choice over him.

[OhayoKD]

[
3) First point I'd qualify as disagreement - I see more problems with Brons play than just one scoring matchups. LeBron was well below his normal defensive impact vs Orlando in '09.

I thought Lebron played excellent defensively vs Orlando. This might be worth doing tracking for. The series does showcase the impact limitations of non-bigs though in certain matchups. Cavs probably win of Ben Wallace isn't injured half-way and washed. By that same token though, 08 was excellent from a defensive impact standpoint.

Very strong disagree that Lebron's playmaking was why the offense didn't get going. Worth tracking potentially too i guess


Anyway, 2009 is the only year Lebron is conceivably going to be unanimous. 2008 was contested and some will vote kobe or wade for 2010 I'm pretty sure. And for 2009 I don't think there's much of anything to criticize play-wise besides Lebron not being 7 feet tall.

[capfan33]

When Colts18 did his tracking of the Magic series I believe he said that LeBron would lock down whoever he was assigned to but the prob was that someone was always open on the perimeter due to having to double Dwight. So in essence they had to play wack a mole on the perimeter because even if LeBron smothered one guy they would just swing it to whoever was open. And they all happened to get hot that series.

[Djoker]

Some thoughts...

This is a Lebron vs. Kobe year I feel. Lebron's RS and PS are more impressive individually and honestly I don't hold it much against him that the Cavs were upset by the Magic. And it was an upset alright especially considering the Magic were without Jameer Nelson who made the all-star game and was replaced by the very average Rafer Alston. And Lebron can be attacked for the Cavs' defensive collapse in that series (+4.4 rDRtg) but it doesn't hold water for me when he put up 38.5/8.3/8.0 on +8.3 rTS with 4.2 topg. He was incredibly dominant. You can't expect a guy who did THAT to do much more. Kobe did win the title and played very well in the last two rounds against Denver and Orlando when it counted but I can't have him over Lebron. This Lebron season is the best season of his career. I've argued that it is a statistical outlier considering Lebron's far worse PS production in surrounding years and that he isn't as refined of a player but this is a Player of the Year Project. Emphasis on year. And Lebron in this one year is by far the best in the world that I can't even put Kobe over him despite winning the ring. The gap is that big individually. In 2010, the Cavs got worse as a team and Lebron struggled in the PS against Boston. That year I will likely take Kobe and Wade over him but in 2009, there is nothing major to nitpick. Cavs had 64-win pace (+8.68 SRS) and the Lakers had a 61-win pace (+7.11 SRS) so the Cavs were a bit worse than their 66-16 record but still the best team in the league. I don't think that Cavs cast is bad or even subpar but that high of an SRS is freaking impressive.

The Magic had a 59-win pace (+6.49 SRS) led by Dwight Howard who was the best defensive player in the league by some margin. They were strong with a #1 defense (-6.4 rDRtg) and only a competent offense and for whatever reason the Cavs big frontline was completely helpless defending Dwight and it didn't help that the Magic 3pt shooters got very very hot. They then in turn got completely steamrolled by the Lakers in the Finals and Dwight didn't have a good series. Still his body of work is strong taking the whole year into consideration.

Wade could have been in the conversation but after a dominant RS statistically, he had a pretty ho-hum PS and got eliminated in the 1st round. He's probably getting in at 4th place.

Boston was a 61-win team (+7.44 SRS) but with KG out for the PS, they never really had a shot. They barely survived a series against a merely good Bulls team (so many overtimes!) before losing to the Magic.

My #5 player could be CP3, Dirk, KG, or Duncan. Will still think it through some.

[One_and_Done]

'Dominant' Lebron in the 09 RS per 100: 41/11/10 on 591 TS%.

'Not dominant' Lebron in 2010 per 100: 40-10-12 on 601 TS%.

What's the difference? Lebron's 09 playoffs was more epic than 2010, but his 2010 #'s per100 are still 36-12-10 on 607 TS%. Looks better than Kobe, who had 39/8/7 on 567 TS% while being a vastly worse defensive player.

[OhayoKD]

Lebron had one of the best season ever in 2009,regular season and playoffs......

*best

(excluding russell and possibly 74 kareem)

[One_and_Done]

Lebron had one of the best season ever in 2009,regular season and playoffs......

*best

(excluding russell and possibly 74 kareem)

No, vastly better than those guys. I'd say it can only be compared to other Lebron seasons, like 2012 Lebron.

[eminence]

[
3) First point I'd qualify as disagreement - I see more problems with Brons play than just one scoring matchups. LeBron was well below his normal defensive impact vs Orlando in '09.

I thought Lebron played excellent defensively vs Orlando. This might be worth doing tracking for. The series does showcase the impact limitations of non-bigs though in certain matchups. Cavs probably win of Ben Wallace isn't injured half-way and washed. By that same token though, 08 was excellent from a defensive impact standpoint.

Very strong disagree that Lebron's playmaking was why the offense didn't get going. Worth tracking potentially too i guess


Anyway, 2009 is the only year Lebron is conceivably going to be unanimous. 2008 was contested and some will vote kobe or wade for 2010 I'm pretty sure. And for 2009 I don't think there's much of anything to criticize play-wise besides Lebron not being 7 feet tall.

Playmaking was in reference to Boston series - particularly '10. No meaningful criticism of his O vs Orlando.

I agree that it's a role thing - he played 'excellent' defense on players that didn't matter to the Orlando offense. It's virtually impossible to have meaningful impact on defense if you're covering 4th/5th men and aren't primarily protecting the paint. But it doesn't really change the result, he didn't meaningfully bother Orlandos offense. Though raw offensive ratings will overstate it (Orlando/Cleveland didn't magically turn into two of the best offenses/worst defenses ever in that series) - series each tend towards their own flavor and that particular one ran up some high scores instead of grinding down.

Don't agree it's a size thing (Bron is just as big as 'Big' Ben, and Howard is only marginally larger). Partially a practiced skill thing (LeBron has never and certainly not at that point been a primary rim protector) and partially a motor thing, it's impossible for even LeBron to put out that level of effort on both ends.

[lessthanjake]

It’s not *entirely* clear to me that the answer here actually is LeBron. LeBron was *definitely* the NBA’s best player that year, so if that’s someone’s criteria, then he’s easily the POY. But we do also have Kobe being one of the best few players in the NBA, leading his team to a 65-win season, and then winning a championship, while having a good playoffs individually. For purposes of Player of the Year (as opposed to the “best player” label), I find that kind of situation to be an extremely strong case. When there’s been somewhat similar scenarios, I’ve often said it would take something truly extraordinary to overcome it. Here, of course, we arguably do have that—with LeBron putting up his best regular season and a fantastic playoff performance (albeit losing in the conference finals). Is that enough? Perhaps! If it’s not then it’d be hard to see what could possibly overcome the type of case Kobe brings to the table, except perhaps if LeBron had lost in the Finals instead while playing just as well (which I think would make this easier). So it mostly comes down to a question of exactly how much we value the POY case of a guy who is one of the best players in the NBA and leads his team to a fantastic regular season followed by playing well in a title run. Is that enough to overcome one of the best regular seasons ever and a fantastic playoff performance, which nevertheless ends in a loss before the Finals? I think people are treating that as a more straightforward question than it is.

Ultimately, I think I probably do lean LeBron here though. One thing that moves me here is that Kobe’s case is weakened by the playoff run being pretty fortunate in terms of opponents. The Jazz were good for a first round opponent, but were still just a first-round opponent. The Rockets were a pretty good team, but McGrady was out in the playoffs and Yao missed most of the series, so that was not a difficult team. Meanwhile, the Nuggets were pretty weak as conference finals opponents go IMO. The Western Conference just had a bit of a down year that year. Meanwhile, the Magic were a good team, but Jameer Nelson was very much not healthy in that series. Overall, I regard this title run as one of the easiest runs to a title. Of course, the Lakers could only beat what was in front of them, and they were good enough that I suspect they could’ve won against a tougher slate of opponents (indeed, they did so the next year), but the fact remains that this particular run in this year was not as difficult as the vast majority of title runs. Which I think should probably affect the assessment of the POY case for a guy whose case relies in large part on winning the title. I very highly value the POY case for any player that was one of the NBA’s best players and led his team to the title while playing well in the playoffs, but the value of that case has to go down a little when the playoff run is abnormally easy and the player was good in the playoffs but not historically good.

[OhayoKD]

I thought Lebron played excellent defensively vs Orlando. This might be worth doing tracking for. The series does showcase the impact limitations of non-bigs though in certain matchups. Cavs probably win of Ben Wallace isn't injured half-way and washed. By that same token though, 08 was excellent from a defensive impact standpoint.

Very strong disagree that Lebron's playmaking was why the offense didn't get going. Worth tracking potentially too i guess


Anyway, 2009 is the only year Lebron is conceivably going to be unanimous. 2008 was contested and some will vote kobe or wade for 2010 I'm pretty sure. And for 2009 I don't think there's much of anything to criticize play-wise besides Lebron not being 7 feet tall.

Playmaking was in reference to Boston series - particularly '10. No meaningful criticism of his O vs Orlando.

Yeah, I got that. I just think Lebron created far more than anyone else vs Boston and fwiw I'd bet he racked up significantly more PPs (possessions as a primary paint-protector) in the 2010 and 2008 defeats than 2009.

I agree that it's a role thing - he played 'excellent' defense on players that didn't matter to the Orlando offense. It's virtually impossible to have meaningful impact on defense if you're covering 4th/5th men and aren't primarily protecting the paint.

Disagree on that. Help defense is a thing, defensive quarterbacking is a thing, and Lebron offered plenty of secondary or tertiary paint-protection. But Dwight Howard is Dwight howard and Ben wallace was the one Cleveland big who can jump. I'd still be shocked if Lebron wasn't the cavs most used perimiter defender (ppds) by a comfortable margin.

You can obviously tell a mirror story about the offense if you use the offensive rating this series. Either way I don't think it adds up to Lebron not being far far better than Kobe vs a common opponent.

Don't agree it's a size thing (Bron is just as big as 'Big' Ben, and Howard is only marginally larger). Partially a practiced skill thing (LeBron has never and certainly not at that point been a primary rim protector) and partially a motor thing, it's impossible for even LeBron to put out that level of effort on both ends.

Lebron was already spending sigificant amount of possessions as a backline big in 2007 and was probably a teritiary or secondary paint-protector (ontop of the Spurs just aggressively going out of their way to avoid driving on him) while being matched up with tony parker, and I'm pretty sure he was the cavs primary paint-protector in 2016. I think the surrounding personell and opponent have more do with it, unless you're differentiating between a rim-protector and overall paint-protection.

Ben Wallace is more skilled at it, but if you swap the two I doubt ben wallace ends up being much more effective in the paint without Lebron as support.