Monday Musings
2016-11-21— It’s late November, and we’ve already got TWO LeBron mini-controversies! The “Posse” incident has been touched on on this site and by a lot of other folks, so I won’t get too deep into it here, but as someone with a certificate in sports law from one of the best sports law programs in the country, there are a lot of layers to how the player agency/management business is changing, a lot of anxiety about it, and LRMR are at the forefront of that.
— The second mini-controversy was the recent decision to rest LeBron James on a back half of the back-to-back in Indiana, which really got going when Bob Kravitz made himself into a bit of a strawman when he decided to turn the strength of his take up to 11. Thoughts on this:
— I do see Kravitz’s side here. Michael Jordan never, ever took a healthy game off. He played all 82 games 9 times, 81 games another, 80 games another, and 78 games another. And it’s not like those heavy regular-season loads ever kept him from stepping his game up when he made it to the NBA Finals.
Also, the players do, at a fundamental level, work for the fans who buy the tickets, and a sold-out Pacers crowd didn’t get to see the guy they bought the ticket to see. I got to see MJ live once when he came to my hometown as a kid, and I’ll never forget it. If MJ had rested that day, I’d have missed my one chance.
On the other hand, THIS IS AN INSANE CONTROVERSY. Dirk Nowitzki (38), Paul Pierce (39), Vince Carter (39), Joe Johnson (35), Jason Terry (39), and Andre Miller (40 and still unsigned) are the only active players in the league who have played more career regular-season minutes than LeBron. LeBron has already played more career regular-season minutes than Steve Nash, Dominique Wilkins, Allen Iverson, Jerry West, Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and David Robinson. Obviously, a lot of those careers were shortened by freak injuries or illnesses, but that’s not even all the Hall-of-Famers I could have named. He’s 38th on the all-time list!
Also, that’s just regular-season minutes — LeBron is already FOURTH in career playoff minutes played, behind Duncan, Kareem, and Kobe, and he’s less than 300 minutes away from passing Kobe. And he’s played on three olympic teams and two FIBA teams. He’s been to six finals in a row. If his body gives on him in the Finals this season and he says “well, I really should have rested more in the regular season,” the guys giving him guff now are not going to give him anything resembling quarter. This will happen even though going for the 73-game regular season record pretty clearly took something out of the Warriors in the late rounds of the playoffs (thanks, guys!).
I see two potential solutions to this. One, if you plan on giving a player DNP-rest, you should have to announce it at least 24-48 hours in advance, and ideally do it a week in advance. This is obviously a system that would be able to be gamed (how do you check for something like “DNP — sore left ankle”), but it’s at least a gesture in the right direction.
The second solution — STOP TALKING ABOUT LEBRON AND MJ. IT’S NOT A FLATTERING COMPARISON. LeBron is as guilty of this as anybody, but he’s not going to seriously be in that discussion until he brings in at least two more rings. Let him get the accomplishments first. If he hadn’t frozen up in the 2011 Finals, he’d be behind only MJ and Kareem on my list, and if he’d been able to pull out a championship on top of that by pulling off a miracle in 2015 or bringing it home in 2009 or 2010, he’d really be right up there. But for now, it’s best for everybody’s blood pressure to keep those names out of the same sentence. Then we can start talking about things like how every team LeBron has ever played on has been outscored when he was on the bench — even those Heat superteams were just barely outscored when LeBron sat. That’s insane.
Speaking of, the new batch of Real Plus-Minus is out! Real Plus-Minus is a stat I don’t particularly love because it’s kind of a “black box” stat — I don’t perfectly understand everything that goes into it, and it spits out one number. It’s not something like True Shooting, which is just a better way to convey scoring efficiency than FG%. Still, it’s fun when it lines up with what you’ve been looking at on the court, which the numbers for the Cavs have so far:
— LeBron is 5th in the league, behind CP3, Harden, Jimmy Butler, and Kawhi. Makes sense — LeBron is still really good. Butler’s the only name ahead of him that surprises me, but the Bulls are way better than they should be.
— 2nd on the team, 25th in the league, and 5th among power forwards is Kevin Love, which again makes sense. Given the looks he gets, he should REALLY be shooting better than 43%/31.6%, but he’s so well-rounded now and does all the little things on both sides of the floor. (Andrew Wiggins’ defense has him at 132nd right now, to soothe your Wiggins anxiety a bit. Still, he’s got Thibodeau coaching him and he is so smooth offensively now. Banners hang forever, though. No regrets.)
— 3rd on the team and 40th in the league is Channing Frye, who has been the not-so-secret weapon. Turns out 7-footers that don’t miss 3s help teams win.
— Next is J.R., who’s 45th in the league, ahead of D-Wade and Carmelo. Score one for Team Klutch against the Banana Boat crew!
— And all the way down at 146 is Kyrie, who has a negative real plus-minus. Again, it makes sense — he’s still mostly doing him out there. It’s not a coincidence that the team’s best game of the year was the Detroit game, when he was visited by three spirits the night before and came out whipping passes like a man possessed. My unified theory of Kyrie is coming soon, so I’ll hold off for now.
— MVP Race — CP3 is 1st in RPM by a good margin, 5th in PER, and is leading the best team on the league on both ends, but are 18, 8.6, and 5.4 really MVP numbers? At least get that assist number to a round 10, right? Right now I’d probably go with Harden — their ENTIRE offense is “have James Harden do everything,” they have the 4th-best offense in the league, and their defense hasn’t kept them out from having a solid record. Watch out for KD and his 68% True Shooting, though. LeBron and Kawhi will be in the hunt, but I’m not sure either of them will put up quite enough in terms of pure numbers — there are guys putting up video-game stat lines every night right now.
Karl Anthony Towns is shooting better than Lebron and he’s seven feet tall. That man is a freaking beast. Watching him and Anthony Davis and Embiid, it reminds me how poorly we fared even though we “won” 4 number one over all picks. Kyrie – great pick at number one, but it actually wasn’t ours (Clippers). TT at four was ours. Missed out on Anthony Davis. (Waiters at four) Had the number one is a piss poor draft (Anthony Bennett. Should’ve taken…Oladipo?) Embiid got injured so we took Wiggins number one and traded him. Next year was Karl Anthony Towns.… Read more »
Why are we rating LeBron’s placement among the greats when he’s still playing? Was this a thing when MJ and others were balling?
Gotta do something to pass the time when they have 5 days off!
This is amazing. Especially if you know Hamilton
That was awesome. I got to see Hamilton in Chicago, and it’s a must see for fans of musical theater.
Oh also – Westbrook for MVP
I’m in that boat. His team is trash and he is playing out of his mind, like he has been for five years. I don’t know why he isn’t talked about more. Maybe because he’s so confrontational he makes people nervous, unlike KD, Steph, Kawhi, and even James. Westbrook is scary.
Westbrook is undoubtedly one phenomenal player. What perhaps will do him in for MVP is a pedestrian – relatively speaking – record for OKC. One thing for sure about Russ is that in all the games I have watched, I have never seen him in “chill mode.” That also speaks to LeBron’s off the charts talent as he can dominate at 80% effort.
LeBron is already third in many all time lists behind MJ and Kareem. Most lists have Magic and Wilt in the best five of all time mix, but typically behind James “Freezing up” in 2011 doesn’t push LeBron lower than third all time. Your judgment is a bit harsh, John, as even MJ didn’t do six finals (soon to be 7) in a row. And I think the MVP “race” given it’s only been 11-13 games for most teams is between LeBron and CP3 now. At year end, I think it’s Leonard vs James with Curry/Durant splitting too many votes.
I’d have him as undisputed #3 if he’d brought it home in 2011. As it is he’s in the mix with a few other guys, but there’s certainly a strong argument.
LeBron is already #2 all time, Sorry Kareem
Do your research on Kareem.
Agree. I know the NBA worships at the alter of Jordan, but in my mind Kareem is number one all time. He was unstoppable at a time when the league was pretty talented, and he was unstoppable from college through 20 years of the NBA. He wasn’t charismatic like Jordan, and didn’t fly like Jordan, and wasn’t a competitive psychopath like Jordan, so emotionally Jordan seemed more dominant. But Kareem was pretty effing amazing.
He was also a 19 time All-Star and a six time League MVP…
I always say that Jordan is the best NBA player ever while Kareem is the best basketball player ever.
Just did some reading, thanks for the encouragement. Impressive accomlishments. One thing that stands out tho – being paired with Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson is gonna help your career. LeBron has never had that caliber of wingman. I still feel like if I was drafting a team for to play for my life, Id draft LeBron over Kareem. In fairness, its hard to compare across eras
Until LBJ can equal this in his movie career… KAJ has him beat…
+1
Puh Leeze. LeBron will never be involved in anything half as cool as this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_nNdI1K6Q0
What is more important: the “most games played” trophy, or winning the NBA championship multiple times?
Bob Kravitz is obviously an idiot. I can say that without reading or listening to him, just like if someone shows me a blueprint for a perpetual motion machine, I know it won’t work without looking at the plan.
RPM is “based on xRAPM” which is RAPM that uses box scores and height as “priors”. http://nyloncalculus.com/2014/09/25/glossary-plus-minus-adjusted-plus-minus/ Basically, xRAPM is really good at predicting player value but I actually like this stuff better at empirical and not predictive analysis. RPM or any kind of RAPM is not a very good judge of individual contributions to winning until there have been a lot of possessions. any kind of RAPM is a gigantic system of equations with a very overdetermined matrix acting as the plays x players database. xRAPM and the like try to make informed smoothing using priors, anything from previous… Read more »
On side note, Delly guarded Curry other day, Curry goes 1-11 from 3, warriors escaped with a 2pt win against bucks on road. Refs surprisingly allowed all grabbing and let him be physical with Curry. Glad Delly is not with Cavs anymore :-)
He didn’t even play in the Finals because Irving was busy roasting the underserving MVP.
Should bench kyrie and start delly
Very good piece. Two things: 1) As Dominique was my favorite player: Wilkins. Not Wilkens. ‘Nique isn’t related to Lenny. 2) CP3: don’t get sucked into counting stats, the Clips are up large early and often. CP3 has sat a lot of 4ths. If he’d have played the whole game more often (Harden, Russ, even James), those #s would be higher. CP3 = 30.6 MPG. Harden at 36.7. If you want to compare per minute, CP3 is at: 21.5, 6.5, 10.3. Presto, over 10! Also, Clips = 11-2, Rockets 8-5. Edge CP3. Perhaps the weirdest MVP vote ever is illustrative.… Read more »
Oscar finished 4th that year. Check Elgin Baylor’s #s, and someone else had ridiculous numbers as well. #s for that era are so ludicrous.
I’m going to watch CP3 in person tonight at Staples against the Raps… I’ve been impressed by his numbers this year, but haven’t watched him play much. It’s hard to put too much stock in the Clips given their inconsistencies over the last few years…
About MVP so far, I think it should be between CP3 and Lebron with CP3 having slight edge because his team is leading the league in wins and also defense by a huge margin. Wins share may be a better and improved stat over RPM. As much as I hate clippers as warriors fan, think CP3 is the best player so far despite not so gaudy stats he is putting on by also averaging 3 steals per game. By season end though, it might come down to between Lebron, Kawahi and Durant or Curry, ultimately Lebron winning.