LeBron's sick season

[Des Esseintes]

Of course there isn't proof, given that the NBA was even more blind to PED use in the 90's than MLB was. NBA athletes weren't tested for anything back then. So chalk my post up to disallowed rumor mongoring and delete it if it makes you feel better. Then ask yourself whether the most competitive athlete of all time, who took nealy two full years off from competition, then came back and dominated the league in his early-to-mid 30's while starting every game his team played, would not have sought every conceivable edge over his competition. I lived in Chicago in the 90's. As their careers progressed, MJ and Pippen became obsessed with strength training as a way to sustain their effectiveness - their workouts were legendary. If you want to believe they were fueling themselves with nothing but Gatorade, be my guest. In my book, the fact that they were able to achieve such a high level of performance at an advanced age suggests otherwise. Apply the Barry Bonds test if you want to - look at a picture of MJ at 32 years old (the Bulls 72-10 season) and compare it to his rookie year. See the difference?

My general advice would be - get over it. Almost every elite athlete from the 80's and 90's juiced, including the ones we want to believe were clean. Michael Jordan. Carl Lewis. Nolan Ryan. The list is endless. That's just the nature of high level athletic competition - every possible advantage will be utilized.

I pretty much agree. Sometime ago, there was a survey of Olympic athletes, and they were asked, "If there was a substance you could take that would kill you in 10 years but would make you an Olympic gold medalist, would you take it?" The answers came back overwhelmingly in the affirmative. If Michael Jordan was aware of steroids (indubitably) and convinced of their effectiveness (highly probable) I really see no way the guy forwent them. Michael Jordan would shoot you in the face to win at pinball. Taking a banned substance that no one cared about and barely tested for? It's a fait accompli.

There's also the uncomfortable fact that there is basically no evidence that taking steroids in a controlled manner under physician's oversight poses a health risk. The physician's oversight is a big caveat, obviously, but nevertheless it remains very unclear whether steroids are bad for you or at least any worse for you than a million legal substances.

[Des Esseintes]

Yup, I had totally forgotten about how this dude started passing the ball later in his career. This is a season waaaaay better than what Lebron is doing this year.

24.1 PPG
24.2 RPG
7.8 APG
68.3% FG

or, the very next year,

24.3 PPG
23.8 RPG
8.6 APG
59.5% FG

Those are the 1966-67 and 1967-68 seasons of Wilt the Stilt. After he got traded to Philly, he started passing a lot more and was able to put up assist numbers very similar to Lebron's. Of course, he was rebounding at a rate that Bron-Bron could not dream of achieving.

-Jason "how about that FG% for Wilt!!! Whew!" Evans

Those are amazing numbers, but you can't compare the NBA of 2013 and 1967 straight up. The game was vastly, vastly different. Chamberlain was an all-world athlete in a league that had nowhere near the density of great athletes that it has now. Each game had a million possessions, and the center put up a shot on almost every one of them. Holding that rebound total against LeBron is like saying Pedro Martinez sucks because Cy Young won 500 games and Pedro never even won 30 in a season. Or, conversely, that Johnny Unitas sucked because he never threw for a fraction as many TDs in a season as Brady and had a way lower completion percentage, too.

Somebody said the level of play has been watered down in recent years, but this could not be further from the truth. The NBA is drawing from a global talent pool now, and the system of player development, as much as people like to heap contempt on the American AAU complex, is far more robust than it used to be. As is the sophistication of NBA offense and defense. Seriously, go back and watch a Finals game from '91. If you think it's remotely as easy to score today as it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago, I don't know what to tell you.

[throatybeard]

After MJ's nastiness towards us in the ESPN Documentary after the Eve Carson disaster, I hate to defend the [expletive dude]. I used to like him until he was so vocally nasty towards Duke.

BUT.

Basketball is different, because finesse matters so much in shooting form. And MJ always looked lanky. And he wasn't hitting home runs at 41. His real career--throw out that Wizards stuff, ended at the not-unusual age of 35. And those last couple years, there were no 1980s-type drives to the basket, just expert, veteran crafty fadeaways.

Look, I don't like the guy, but I'd eat my hat if he was juicing in 1995-98.

[Des Esseintes]

After MJ's nastiness towards us in the ESPN Documentary after the Eve Carson disaster, I hate to defend the [expletive dude]. I used to like him until he was so vocally nasty towards Duke.

BUT.

Basketball is different, because finesse matters so much in shooting form. And MJ always looked lanky. And he wasn't hitting home runs at 41. His real career--throw out that Wizards stuff, ended at the not-unusual age of 35. And those last couple years, there were no 1980s-type drives to the basket, just expert, veteran crafty fadeaways.

Look, I don't like the guy, but I'd eat my hat if he was juicing in 1995-98.

Sure, basketball is different from football and baseball, and Jordan always looked lanky. But cycling is also different from football and baseball, and post-cancer Lance Armstrong has always looked lanky. Performance enhancing drugs can help you to do more than get "all swole," to borrow a phrase from that great poet and steroid abstainee A. Iverson. Steroids help you work out harder and longer. Any hard-training athlete would dig that. Steroids help you recover faster. Also very useful. Steroids help build lean muscle mass. Jordan was famous for his 2% body fat, right? They help make you more explosive. Extremely useful, even for a player who drove less as he aged.

Further, Jordan's age-35 retirement doesn't mean much, because he left entirely on his own terms. In '96, he led the league in Win Shares. Did the same in '97. Slipped all the way to #2 in '98. The first two of those years production-wise are indistinguishable from his late 20s, normally a player's prime, and the third year was only a slight falling off. Maybe he didn't use steroids. But I have to ask: knowing what we do about the man's personality, knowing how prevalent were steroids in major sports at the time, knowing the laxity of testing, what would Occam's Razor suggest?

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Sure, basketball is different from football and baseball, and Jordan always looked lanky. But cycling is also different from football and baseball, and post-cancer Lance Armstrong has always looked lanky. Performance enhancing drugs can help you to do more than get "all swole," to borrow a phrase from that great poet and steroid abstainee A. Iverson. Steroids help you work out harder and longer. Any hard-training athlete would dig that. Steroids help you recover faster. Also very useful. Steroids help build lean muscle mass. Jordan was famous for his 2% body fat, right? They help make you more explosive. Extremely useful, even for a player who drove less as he aged.

Further, Jordan's age-35 retirement doesn't mean much, because he left entirely on his own terms. In '96, he led the league in Win Shares. Did the same in '97. Slipped all the way to #2 in '98. The first two of those years production-wise are indistinguishable from his late 20s, normally a player's prime, and the third year was only a slight falling off. Maybe he didn't use steroids. But I have to ask: knowing what we do about the man's personality, knowing how prevalent were steroids in major sports at the time, knowing the laxity of testing, what would Occam's Razor suggest?

I'm going to just flat out ignore the Jordan/steroids part of this thread, because at best it is wildly speculative, and at worst it is just mean-spirited.

As far as Lebron's season goes, it's flat out phenomenal. The fact that we are pointing towards similar seasons by the greatest ever to play the game 40 years ago shows how special it is. I'm not sure why there's this current cultural need to rank everything to determine what the best ever is. Why can't we just say "wow, Lebron is doing something really special." I guess it doesn't make for very exciting board posts.

I blame ESPN for their constant need to rank and evaluate everything (meaningless in-season "bracketology," best NCAA tourney players of all-time, Lebron v. Jordan, etc. etc.) It's an obvious ratings ploy, just to get 90's Bulls fans, Christian Laettner fans, Jimmy V fans - whoever - all riled up with phone calls and comments about how their team/player was so much better. Leaving aside that there's simply no way to gauge how players would fare across different eras (maybe Kobe wouldn't do well in the tiny shorts of the 70's! Perhaps Wilt would have been out-muscled in the paint by Dwight Howard. How much success would our late 90's Devils have against Miami's big veterans? It makes for somewhat interesting discussion I suppose, but it's really not much more than navel gazing talk radio fodder.

/gets off soap box
//LeBron is having a phenomenal season by any standard

Go Duke!

[moonpie23]

After MJ's nastiness towards us in the ESPN Documentary after the Eve Carson disaster,

i missed that....what did he say?

[Billy Dat]

The last hurdle LeBron faces is whether he's willing to go on the juice in his 30's the way Jordan did

First off, cptnflash, thanks for starting my day with a huge laugh (no sarcasm). This statement was completely unexpected and caught me off guard. Classic.

Performance enhancing drugs can help you to do more than get "all swole," to borrow a phrase from that great poet and steroid abstainee A. Iverson.

I also have to praise Des' use of "swole" as I believe it is the first time I have read it on DBR. Well done, sir. To comment on both points, history is showing us that we'll never know whether or not any jock took PEDs. Granted, flash has no tangible evidence, but the points he and Des and others have made about steroids, let alone HGH which is a real rapid-recovery agent, are not completely apocryphal. I have heard a lot of recent chatter about Tiger Woods transformation from skinny teen to swole 22 year old. Yes it's rumor mongering, but I think the evolution from the Sosa/McGwire/Bonds PED scandals to the Lance Armstrong scandal is rapidly closing the gap between recognized physical transformation and questions about PED use. Ray Lewis' recent amazing comeback from injury is a classic example, people started to question it nearly as soon as he stepped back on the field.

Honest question: how much do championships matter in this discussion (or do they matter at all)?

I am in the "they are essential to the debate" camp. Basketball is one of the few team sports where an individual can really carry a team. It can't be done alone, but the greatest players can often get mediocre supporting casts to the finals, as Lebron did with the Cavs. I think winning titles and MVPs are the two big chips. Lebron is closing in on his 4th, he's been to the Finals 3 times and won once. In years when you don't win the MVP, you need to make first team All NBA to show consistency (at some point, like Jordan, he's not going to win MVPs simply because people will start taking his performance for granted) I think he needs to get to that 4+ titles range to have a real GOAT discussion - but he's on the path. As Tiger Woods has shown with the Nicklaus majors chase, we can't assume he'll get there until he gets there. I think there is a 3rd intangible that works against Shaq and works for Kobe. People want the greatest players to have that fire in the belly - to get every ounce out of their talent and burn only to win, win, win. Russell had it, Bird and Magic did, Jordan did, Kobe does. Shaq did not - at least at the level of the other greats. The knock on Lebron "pre 'Decision'" was that he didn't either. But I think the post-Decision crucible and his under-performance in the 2011 Finals really changed him. He slayed those demons in last year's run to the title, picked up some Team USA seasoning throughout the process and has now entered, as K said in the SI Sportsman of the Year Lebron profile, "A Level of Mastery". Another piece of it is the desire to see these guys achieve an intangible "playing the game the right way" - which is maximizing their individual talents while elevating the play of those around them. Kobe and Jordan are sort of on the wrong side of this equation from trust of teammates perspective - but Jordan inspired such fear in his teammates that they raised their level of play just to avoid his scorn and ridicule. Kobe spent most of his career as a maniacal ballhog. Interesting that it took Big Chief Triangle, Phil Jackson, to try and tame them both which made sense because Kobe basically modeled his entire career - style of play and demeanor - on MJ. But we want our greats to make those around them better by great sharing of the ball, etc. Finally, I think we also want our greats to have a sense of the moment, to play their best on the biggest stage, to make those memorable plays or have epic performances that help win titles - Jordan's steal on Malone and jumper over Russell, Bird's stealing the in bounds pass from Zeke and hitting DJ for the layup, Magic's baby sky hook over the Celtics front line, etc. If you repeatedly shrink in the huge moment, you can't be an all-timer.

And as for the comparisons with players from other eras, I think Des made some great points that I agree with. Also, if we add defense to the equation, which is 50% of the game, I think Lebron/Russell/Jordan/Kobe get elevated further.

[JasonEvans]

Those are amazing numbers, but you can't compare the NBA of 2013 and 1967 straight up.

I agree and you make great points about the global reach of NBA basketball today. I merely put up the historical figures to reply to the person who started the thread by posting Lebron's numbers and saying "no one" had ever had a season like that. It took me a matter of minutes to find several statistically comparable and superior seasons, albeit from some of the true greats of the game.

Lebron is amazing and putting himself into the "greatest ever" conversation, but the notion that we have never seen someone have the kind of season he is having is misguided. Heck, Grant Hill was doing darn near the same thing much of his early career in Detroit... he just didn't have Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and a cast of great role players next to him to help lead the team all the way to the NBA finals.

-Jason "I too am staying out of the Jordan PED debate, as I think it is quite unseemly to discuss without any evidence whatsoever" Evans

[nocilla]

no one....


26.7 PPG
8.10 RPG
7.1 APG
56.2 FG%
40.4 3PT FG %


i guess we ARE all witnessing...

I know this wasn't intended to start the Jordan vs Lebron debate, but it seems to be inevitable. (and I didn't get to discuss it around MJ's birthday)
If Lebron can continue the path he is on it would diminish the argument that Jordan used PEDs, unless Lebron uses them as well. In my opinion, if Lebron continues to play like this for another 6-7 years then he will surpass MJ, although health concerns and mental aspects could prevent that. Considering the following;
Lebron is 28 years old. MJ turned 28 during the 90-91 season. When that season ended MJ had his first ring along with a finals mvp and his second league mvp. The current season is not over yet and Lebron already has one ring, a finals mvp and 3 league mvps. It wouldn't be a stretch to think he adds another ring and mvp this season. Which puts him ahead of Jordan's pace age wise. Jordan did start his career 2 years older than Lebron so maybe it is closer to being even. But that goes into whether you consider Lebron's first 2 years as time he would have been learning the game in college like MJ or that the extra games will lead to an earlier decline in his abilities. The other argument is that when MJ retired the second time he was still close to top form, so how many more rings would he have won in those 3 off years and the baseball year.

MJ's '91 season:
31.5 PPG
6.0 RPG
5.5 APG
53.9 FG%
31.2 3pt FG%

[COYS]

OK, wait though. Yeah Oscar got a lot more rebounds because there were a ton of missed shots floating around. The generally terrible shot selection and shooting percentages that made up 1960s basketball generated a load of opportunities for rebounds. Again using basketball-reference's numbers, the average team missed 64 field goals in 1961, vs. 45 today, or a decrease of nearly a third!

I know some people don't dig advanced stats (I don't think you're among them), but this is exactly why you need them, or at least eyeball-adjust for pace--it seems clearly wrong to ding LeBron just because his contemporaries aren't the brick machines that Oscar's were, relatively speaking.

Vick, you're right on here. While I agree with Jason that going on raw statistics alone it is impossible to beat someone like Wilt in his best years. However, the NBA has changed so much over the decades that comparing Wilt's stats to Lebron's this season is similar to comparing pitching stats from the dead ball era in baseball to stats from the live ball era. It takes sports a long time to evolve. Baseball began to become semi-professional as early as the 1840's and then became well organized at the professional and semi-pro level by the 1870's. By the time Babe Ruth came around and the dead-ball era was put to bed, forever, the sport had been around for 75+ years, already, with 30+ years of professional baseball. The NBA has been around since 1946, which really isn't that long when compared to baseball. Obviously, it's gone through a lot of changes since then. In some ways, Jordan is the Babe Ruth of the NBA. He became the biggest superstar right as the sport was transforming itself into its modern form. Wilt's numbers are unbelievable and likely will stand as unbreakable records (I don't see Lebron averaging much above 30 ppg, much less 44.8). However, he played in an entirely different era. I'm not saying that Wilt's stats aren't as impressive, of course. However, I DO think it is possible to compare Lebron's accomplishments to Wilt's (and Russell's, Bird's, Magic's, Jordan's, and Robinson's) and to claim that no one in the modern era of the NBA has put up similar numbers (although, I point to some of Jordan's seasons in the late 80's and early 90's as a counter-argument).

[slower]

I'm going to just flat out ignore the Jordan/steroids part of this thread, because at best it is wildly speculative, and at worst it is just mean-spirited

Mean-spirited? To Jordan? Who cares? He's a complete d-bag.

[IBleedBlue]

When Heat won the championship last season, Lebron made a comment that was more accurate and I felt he has turned the corner. He mentioned to one of the tv analyst that difference between previous season and this season was he started playing for the love of the game rather than the for the expectations, criticism and playing angry. And as soon as he made that switch, he felt more at peace and his production went up. I watched that interview and thought he made good remarks but he is saying what everyone says after winning something.
I kept following his interviews on and off through out this season and i think he really meant it. He now talks very positively in every interview, coming off as being very humble and it is clear that he is playing for the game he loves rather than with the sole goal of standing up to some one else's expectations. When someone turns that corner, things like the season we are seeing will inevitably happen!!

[JasonEvans]

no one in the modern era of the NBA has put up similar numbers (although, I point to some of Jordan's seasons in the late 80's and early 90's as a counter-argument).

What about Bird, Magic, and Grant Hill each of whom had several somewhat similar statistical seasons to what Lebron is doing right now?

-JE

[roywhite]

When Heat won the championship last season, Lebron made a comment that was more accurate and I felt he has turned the corner. He mentioned to one of the tv analyst that difference between previous season and this season was he started playing for the love of the game rather than the for the expectations, criticism and playing angry. And as soon as he made that switch, he felt more at peace and his production went up. I watched that interview and thought he made good remarks but he is saying what everyone says after winning something.
I kept following his interviews on and off through out this season and i think he really meant it. He now talks very positively in every interview, coming off as being very humble and it is clear that he is playing for the game he loves rather than with the sole goal of standing up to some one else's expectations. When someone turns that corner, things like the season we are seeing will inevitably happen!!

There's somebody we know who has been very helpful and important in LeBron's maturation and development --- Mike Krzyzewski.

[jv001]

There's somebody we know who has been very helpful and important in LeBron's maturation and development --- Mike Krzyzewski.

System would not let me give you a like, roy. So great point as I'm sure that Coach K has had a great impact on Labron and several other NBA stars. We are truly blessed. GoDuke!

[mgtr]

I am about the only one who brings up Rick Barry around here. Of course, he messed himself up with the switch to the ABA for his 3rd season (which he had to sit out). However, he put up some pretty good numbers in 1966-67, his second and last year in the NBA (pre-consolidation).

35.6 PPG
9.1 RPG
3.6 APG
45.1% FG%
88.4% FT%

He was also league MVP and All-star game MVP that year.

There was no 3 point shot in the NBA then, and all fouls on an offensive player resulted in free throws. Since Barry drove to the basket a lot (with some remarkable twisting underhand shots), he got a lot of free throw attempts. Early in MJs career, I thought of him as a black Rick Barry, but obviously he made far more of his talent than Barry.

I lived outside SF at the time, and saw him play in person a good bit. I believe he also had three 57 point games that same year.

[toooskies]

Better year than Lebron?

32.0 ppg
53.1 FG%
34.4 3FG%
14.6 RPG
1.7 SPG

Who could it be? It's... Shavlik Randolph for Foshan LL in China this year!

[hurleyfor3]

OK, no more discussion of unsubstantiated rumors about Jordan. I lived in Chicago in the 1990s and heard all the rumors too, but that wasn't one of them. Other documented aspects of his personality (gambling, treatment of certain media members) are fair game. Topic is LeBron vs. Michael. Carry on.

[vick]

What about Bird, Magic, and Grant Hill each of whom had several somewhat similar statistical seasons to what Lebron is doing right now?

-JE

I'd probably only really consider Jordan's best season on par with LeBron 2013. I grabbed what I thought are the five best seasons for each of these players (86 Bird, 87 Magic, 91 Jordan, 97 Grant, 13 LeBron--you could find a similar season for each but I don't think the analysis would change). LeBron detaches himself from the group with his unreal efficiency--he has the highest "raw" field goal percentage despite the fact that he has the highest percentage of three point attempts of any of the five, which gives him a massive advantage in eFG% (5%--roughly the gap between the most efficient shooting team in the league this year, the Heat, and the 13th best, the Celtics). Jordan tightens, and possibly overcomes, the gap by getting to the line frequently and shooting a high percentage there, as well as his extremely high usage rate (lets others be more efficient), not turning the ball over, and with steals (both are/were great "non-statistical" defenders). But the others...they had great seasons, but not on the same level, IMO.

[COYS]

What about Bird, Magic, and Grant Hill each of whom had several somewhat similar statistical seasons to what Lebron is doing right now?

-JE

For this response, I'm going to use Basketball-Reference's database on single season PER: http://www.basketball-reference.com/...er_season.html

Grant's best season was awesome, but still short of what Lebron is doing right now or what Jordan did in '88 or '90 based on both raw numbers and PER. Larry Bird's best season by PER (and granted, I recognize that PER is not a perfect statistic, but it is a good way to control for pace) was the '87-'88 season, which was also when he scored his career best 29.9 points per game. However, his ridiculously good PER of 27.7 that season is still below that of Lebron's this year (so far) and five other of Lebron's best years. PER gets less reliable the farther back you go but as of now, the top 10 best seasons by PER (according basketball-reference) are all held by either Lebron, Wilt, or Jordan. Grant's best season ranks only 130th all time in PER. Magic's best season comes in at only 76th. I will concede a few caveats. I feel that PER makes it a little bit easier for big men to rise high in the rankings, since a guard can be sensational and still not grab rebounds at a particularly high rate. Also, it is also debatable whether or not PER is the best statistic to decide a player's "best" season. Since, as I believe I understand, PER is re-calibrated each season so that 15 is the league average, the best season by any single player in PER means only that it is that player's best season relative to the league that year. If the NBA was in fact far better in terms of talent level in the late 80's, then it is possible that Lebron would have a lower PER this year. On the other hand, the fact that Jordan posted higher PERs as a contemporary of Bird would indicate that Jordan was probably better, even as good as Larry Legend was.

However, despite these shortcomings, PER is still useful to differentiate between performances when raw statistics are so close. If Magic, Grant, and Bird were all closely ranked with Lebron in PER or if we were comparing them to Wilt, who played in an era where stat-keeping was incomplete making PER ratings far more suspect, I'd be more likely to say that those guys can also challenge Lebron, Jordan, and Wilt for best individual season ever honors. However, there is quite a disparity, which makes me less likely to think that Grant, Bird, and Magic can really challenge for the top spot. Those guys were great and I think convincing arguments can be made that some of their seasons were about as good as Lebron's this year or Jordan's in his best years. But, if you think PER and other advanced stats carry much weight, it still seems that Lebron this year (and actually his '09 season was even better by PER), Jordan, and Wilt had years that were a cut above.

I know this kind of tanks some of my previous arguments, but as a side note, this debate about best seasons is really interesting because I do think that point guards are a little undervalued by advanced stats and even by raw numbers. Most of the time, the point guard is the least likely to crash the glass as he's the most likely to be back to prevent the other team from getting out in transition. There are obvious exceptions, such as Magic and Jason Kidd. However, to me, Magic's career 24.11 PER (13th all time) is probably more impressive than it appears because he was able to earn those numbers playing a position that does not often lead to good rebound numbers. What is even more stunning is that the much smaller Chris Paul has a career PER of 25.51, good for 7th ALL TIME! We all know Chris Paul has been good, but is it possible he's actually the best point guard ever and one of the best individual players of all time?

As a side note,