Is Jokic better than Lebron ever was ? Has he already peaked higher ? How long before he surpasses him all time?

[OhayoKD]

Even without "advantageous variance" at play, LeBron from, say, 2009-2020 was still better than he was in 2024. For example, LeBron shot 26% from 3 in the 2012 playoffs, and LeBron was, IMO, quite clearly "better" than in 2024, even with shooting on the colder side. I'm pretty happy to compare Jokic to prime LeBron without that variance too.

The bolded is what should be done. That’s my point. And if someone just takes how LeBron played in the series against Denver and then layers on the ways that prime LeBron was better without accounting for positive shooting variance LeBron had in the series (amongst other ways he was better than his general current baseline), then one is effectively comparing Jokic to LeBron with positive shooting variance added on (and doing so using a roundabout analogy). And then it becomes an unfair comparison. That’s been my whole point.

2 shots in 5 games is... 0.4 shots per game (which is 0.8 points). That's... not really a notable difference in terms of addressing the question "how good was LeBron?" Yes, individual shots/redistributions of shooting variance can be pivotal in deciding a series, but it shouldn't decide how good a player was holistically.

I disagree, and certainly disagree once we layer on some other variance that makes the number higher. A point or two here and there really is the difference between the impact of different tiers of players in the NBA.

It's more accurate to compare 2024 LeBron's "variance" to his own 2024, given that skillsets are not uniform over time, nor is LeBron's physical health post-2019ish.

That is right if we were trying to actually isolate out variance specifically. But that’s not the relevant inquiry here. Whether LeBron shot so well in this series because of actual variance or because he’s just a better shooter now than he was in his prime (or a combination of the two) is not really relevant. The relevant thing is just that he shot better than we’d expect prime LeBron to have shot, because we are assessing how prime LeBron probably would’ve performed compared to how current LeBron actually performed. The question of how we’d have expected current LeBron to have performed is not a relevant question.

In other words - as I postulated earlier, the variance in shooting percentage matters less than you're making out, because akin to how players can have a hot/cold jump shot, they can also vary in how astute their finishing is. After all, we've seen players miss open dunks many times, and that's a high percentage, defenseless shot, lol. There's evidence to believe that LeBron's positively inclined shooting may be somewhat offset, if not completely offset, by the variance in finishing.

Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.

Anyways, talk of shooting variance is largely just going down one specific rabbit hole. My point was a more general one—which was that LeBron was substantially better in this series than his current baseline. That’s corroborated by all sorts of data. And my point was just that, if we ignore that and act like prime LeBron would’ve been as much better in this series as he was better than LeBron’s current baseline, then it’s an unfair comparison.

Dude, are you really spending this much time arguing over 2 midrange jump shots in a 6 game series? Like, I'm sure you can make better arguments then this. It's common sense.

Narrator: they couldn't

[lessthanjake]

.

Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.

They weren't talking about prime LeBron
They were talking about 2024 LeBron
across the board

I hope you don't do contracts Mr Lawyer.

No, you are you inserting yourself into a discussion without following it or adequately reading what you are responding to. The discussion started a while back with an assertion that prime LeBron was a lot better than current LeBron and since current LeBron purportedly played similarly well to Jokic, that means prime LeBron would’ve significantly outplayed Jokic. And I pointed out that that ignores the fact that LeBron played better in this series than his current-LeBron baseline. In this particular part of the discussion, the other poster was saying LeBron finished worse at the rim that his current baseline, and I clearly noted that point when I said we’d expect prime LeBron to do better at the rim and that “maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series.”

As for the latter part of this, the uncontainable jealousy and/or inferiority complex that so often seems to permeate your posts towards me is just weird. Please try to contain it, as difficult as that may be for you. I don’t know if your bizarre commentary reflects you believing that certain personal facts I’ve revealed about myself are not believable, but if so I think that says a lot more about you than about me. Or perhaps you just have an idiosyncratic dislike/jealousy/anger/etc. towards people with personal backgrounds like mine for one reason or another, and if that’s the case then, again, try to contain it. Of course, it may just be that you are frustrated at how badly our discussions here typically go for you and are latching onto anything you possibly can to be annoying/unpleasant regardless of what it is. Whatever the explanation for your behavior is, just try to control yourself.

No way you're equating a point of scoring with a point of impact.

Idk why you use so many words to say everything. Don’t you know how to be concise. Also, take it easy on the exclamation marks, damn.

This is largely just a bait post. But to address the only substantive thing you said, scoring an extra point off the same number of shots is pretty akin to a point of impact

No, it's not. A teammate can potentially take and score that shot if the scorer isn't present. As is, scores are not actually generated by one player, but multiple, even though we semantically cheat a bit with the term "scorer".

PS: Maybe consider using the enter key? Blocks chalk full of filler words and clauses become annoying to work through after a while.

Yes, it was absolutely “largely just a bait post.” The post had four sentences, and three of those sentences were devoted to random critiques of my writing. Of course, you then dedicated about half of this response here to doing the same thing. It’s obvious bait, and at the very least from you seems probably related to what I spoke about above (especially in light of the fact that I revealed the personal facts about myself that you cannot stop referring to in the course of a prior discussion in which you…attempted to critique my writing).

In any event, on the substance of what you said, yes a teammate can potentially take and score the shot, but that's true of all shots the player takes (including ones he missed). Overall, the team would otherwise make X% of shots someone takes if they weren't there. A player has positive impact from their shooting if they make more than X%. And the amount of positive impact will be essentially the same as the number of points they scored above that baseline of what their team would otherwise do with those shots. For instance, let's say Player A takes 20 shots and scores 24 points from those shots. And let's say that without Player A, his team would instead score 22 points. His shooting has essentially had 2 points of impact. But if Player A instead scored 26 points off of those 20 shots, then his shooting would've essentially added 4 points of impact. As I said, it's a little more complicated than that, because on one hand there's not 0 expected points off of a missed shot (since the team can still get an offensive rebound and score) while on the other hand a missed shot tends to hurt the team's defense on the next possession, but it's going to be roughly right that the impact value of scoring an additional marginal point with the same number of shots will be about 1 more point of impact.

[Bad Gatorade]

Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.

Yes, I'd expect prime LeBron to finish better both on account of being a better finisher and because LeBron had negative finishing variance this series.

However...

I feel like you're much more content with stating that LeBron's jump shooting is inflated due to chance than you are to say that his finishing numbers are deflated due to chance. The quote was in reference to 2024 (as OhayoKD had noted), and returning to "yes, prime LeBron would have finished better" is non-sequitur to the point being made, and the idea that LeBron has to "overcome the drop in shooting percentage" is misleading, when if anything, his jump shooting percentage was an attempt to overcome his "unlucky" finishing. After all, it was interior shooting that had the higher magnitude of variance, not jump shooting.

That is right if we were trying to actually isolate out variance specifically. But that’s not the relevant inquiry here. Whether LeBron shot so well in this series because of actual variance or because he’s just a better shooter now than he was in his prime (or a combination of the two) is not really relevant. The relevant thing is just that he shot better than we’d expect prime LeBron to have shot, because we are assessing how prime LeBron probably would’ve performed compared to how current LeBron actually performed. The question of how we’d have expected current LeBron to have performed is not a relevant question.

Is prime LeBron really that much better than current LeBron? After all, for his career, LeBron is at 27.1/7.5/7.4 and has a TS% of 58.9. That's pretty similar to the 25.7/7.3/8.3 and 63.0 TS%, except that current LeBron is a clearly superior and more efficient scorer.

That is the sort of conclusion one would reach if they don't make allowance for changes in league environment. This is why belabouring the notion that LeBron's shooting should be compared to the environment in his prime, rather than the modern day, is highly misleading.

Either way, I believe your notion was refuting that the notion of LeBron playing Jokic to a standstill means that prime LeBron would have been significantly better. I would like to note:

So I get your point, but two additional shots made in the course of just a few games is really not nothing! That’s a notable difference (both statistically, and in a series this close).

The difference is less than 1 point a game...

Yes, and that’s significant!

Implying that 4 points in 5 games is a statistically significant difference, but trying to refute that prime LeBron would be "significantly" better than Jokic implies that you think prime playoff LeBron is less than one point better than the LeBron of the 2024 playoffs. Is this the case? Because if so, that is a fascinating take, and one that I'm not sure would hold up to scrutiny in the court of RealGM.

[AEnigma]

Implying that 4 points in 5 games is a statistically significant difference, but trying to refute that prime LeBron would be "significantly" better than Jokic implies that you think prime playoff LeBron is less than one point better than the LeBron of the 2024 playoffs. Is this the case? Because if so, that is a fascinating take, and one that I'm not sure would hold up to scrutiny in the court of RealGM.

Ironically, it is exactly the type of desperate argument that someone makes when frustrated at how badly their discussions typically go, latching onto anything they possibly can to be annoying/unpleasant regardless of what it is.

[lessthanjake]

Even without "advantageous variance" at play, LeBron from, say, 2009-2020 was still better than he was in 2024. For example, LeBron shot 26% from 3 in the 2012 playoffs, and LeBron was, IMO, quite clearly "better" than in 2024, even with shooting on the colder side. I'm pretty happy to compare Jokic to prime LeBron without that variance too.

The bolded is what should be done. That’s my point. And if someone just takes how LeBron played in the series against Denver and then layers on the ways that prime LeBron was better without accounting for positive shooting variance LeBron had in the series (amongst other ways he was better than his general current baseline), then one is effectively comparing Jokic to LeBron with positive shooting variance added on (and doing so using a roundabout analogy). And then it becomes an unfair comparison. That’s been my whole point.

2 shots in 5 games is... 0.4 shots per game (which is 0.8 points). That's... not really a notable difference in terms of addressing the question "how good was LeBron?" Yes, individual shots/redistributions of shooting variance can be pivotal in deciding a series, but it shouldn't decide how good a player was holistically.

I disagree, and certainly disagree once we layer on some other variance that makes the number higher. A point or two here and there really is the difference between the impact of different tiers of players in the NBA.

It's more accurate to compare 2024 LeBron's "variance" to his own 2024, given that skillsets are not uniform over time, nor is LeBron's physical health post-2019ish.

That is right if we were trying to actually isolate out variance specifically. But that’s not the relevant inquiry here. Whether LeBron shot so well in this series because of actual variance or because he’s just a better shooter now than he was in his prime (or a combination of the two) is not really relevant. The relevant thing is just that he shot better than we’d expect prime LeBron to have shot, because we are assessing how prime LeBron probably would’ve performed compared to how current LeBron actually performed. The question of how we’d have expected current LeBron to have performed is not a relevant question.

In other words - as I postulated earlier, the variance in shooting percentage matters less than you're making out, because akin to how players can have a hot/cold jump shot, they can also vary in how astute their finishing is. After all, we've seen players miss open dunks many times, and that's a high percentage, defenseless shot, lol. There's evidence to believe that LeBron's positively inclined shooting may be somewhat offset, if not completely offset, by the variance in finishing.

Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.

Anyways, talk of shooting variance is largely just going down one specific rabbit hole. My point was a more general one—which was that LeBron was substantially better in this series than his current baseline. That’s corroborated by all sorts of data. And my point was just that, if we ignore that and act like prime LeBron would’ve been as much better in this series as he was better than LeBron’s current baseline, then it’s an unfair comparison.

Dude, are you really spending this much time arguing over 2 midrange jump shots in a 6 game series? Like, I'm sure you can make better arguments than this. It's common sense.

Lol, it was a 5-game series, not a 6-game one. And yeah, in a 5-game series a couple shots actually makes a pretty big difference. It’s also not just that. LeBron also made an extra three-pointer than we would’ve expected from prime LeBron, and an extra shot or two from floater range. These things add up to a serious difference—around 2 points a game. For reference, that’s similar to the number of points you’d average saving per game if players scored shots Jokic contests within 6 feet only as often as they score such shots when Wemby contests them. It’s not a small thing. Acting like this is nothing betrays a real lack of understanding of basketball IMO, both in terms of the scale of player impact as well as just how much some shots here or there matter. That’s extra confusing to see in this particular discussion, since we’re talking about a series where most of the games were quite close, so obviously almost every shot was genuinely important.

[AEnigma]

Love to be lectured about basketball understanding by someone who claims to have watched prime Lebron yet cannot discern a real difference from current Lebron that would make up for two made baskets across five games.

[lessthanjake]

Yes, it’s very likely true prime LeBron would’ve finished better at the rim in this series, but I think we are essentially internalizing that when we talk about ways that we’d expect prime LeBron to be better. We’d expect prime LeBron to have finished better. Maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series, but it’s also just because LeBron was better at finishing back then. It’s one of the main ways he was better back then. And it’s one of the factors that I’d assume would go a long way to overcoming the drop we’d expect in jump shooting percentage.

Yes, I'd expect prime LeBron to finish better both on account of being a better finisher and because LeBron had negative finishing variance this series.

However...

I feel like you're much more content with stating that LeBron's jump shooting is inflated due to chance than you are to say that his finishing numbers are deflated due to chance. The quote was in reference to 2024 (as OhayoKD had noted), and returning to "yes, prime LeBron would have finished better" is non-sequitur to the point being made, and the idea that LeBron has to "overcome the drop in shooting percentage" is misleading, when if anything, his jump shooting percentage was an attempt to overcome his "unlucky" finishing. After all, it was interior shooting that had the higher magnitude of variance, not jump shooting.

Is your argument that LeBron wasn’t better in this series than his current baseline level? Like, I think that is pretty obvious and people arguing with me in this very discussion have readily acknowledged that he was (can’t remember off the top of my head if you were one of the people to do so). Positive shooting variance is just one possible reason I gave for what caused that. If you think that actually he didn’t have positive shooting variance overall, are you trying to say he wasn’t better than his current baseline, or are you saying that he was better than his current baseline but just for other reasons? If it’s the former, then it seems obviously not right, especially given the data I’ve set forth in this thread demonstrating that his numbers (I gave BPM as an example) in this series were a statistical outlier compared to what he’s done in recent years and looked pretty similar to prime LeBron’s numbers. And if you’re saying the latter, then I’m not sure it really matters, since I don’t really care about exactly *why* he was a lot better, but rather just that he was.

That is right if we were trying to actually isolate out variance specifically. But that’s not the relevant inquiry here. Whether LeBron shot so well in this series because of actual variance or because he’s just a better shooter now than he was in his prime (or a combination of the two) is not really relevant. The relevant thing is just that he shot better than we’d expect prime LeBron to have shot, because we are assessing how prime LeBron probably would’ve performed compared to how current LeBron actually performed. The question of how we’d have expected current LeBron to have performed is not a relevant question.

Is prime LeBron really that much better than current LeBron? After all, for his career, LeBron is at 27.1/7.5/7.4 and has a TS% of 58.9. That's pretty similar to the 25.7/7.3/8.3 and 63.0 TS%, except that current LeBron is a clearly superior and more efficient scorer.

That is the sort of conclusion one would reach if they don't make allowance for changes in league environment. This is why belabouring the notion that LeBron's shooting should be compared to the environment in his prime, rather than the modern day, is highly misleading.

Yes, prime LeBron clearly is much better than current LeBron, and, as I’m sure you know, we can see that by looking at all kinds of data. For instance, I gave BPM data (both from BBREF and Thinking Basketball) earlier in this discussion that showed LeBron has fallen off quite a bit in his production now compared to his prime. But that same data also shows that his production in this series was an outlier compared to what he has done in recent seasons or playoffs and was quite similar to his prime production. My discussion of shooting variance was simply my attempt to get at one of the reasons for this outlier performance.

Either way, I believe your notion was refuting that the notion of LeBron playing Jokic to a standstill means that prime LeBron would have been significantly better. I would like to note:

So I get your point, but two additional shots made in the course of just a few games is really not nothing! That’s a notable difference (both statistically, and in a series this close).

The difference is less than 1 point a game...

Yes, and that’s significant!

Implying that 4 points in 5 games is a statistically significant difference, but trying to refute that prime LeBron would be "significantly" better than Jokic implies that you think prime playoff LeBron is less than one point better than the LeBron of the 2024 playoffs. Is this the case? Because if so, that is a fascinating take, and one that I'm not sure would hold up to scrutiny in the court of RealGM.

No, it doesn’t mean I’m saying that at all. I didn’t say that I think prime LeBron was only as good as LeBron was in the Denver series. If you go back and read through this discussion (which started before you came into it), you’ll see that I repeatedly said that prime LeBron wasn’t *that* much better than LeBron was in this series. I have kept saying variants of that again and again throughout this discussion, and I didn’t put any overall numerical value on the difference. My point isn’t that prime LeBron wouldn’t be any better than LeBron was in this series or to quantify exactly how much better he’d be, but rather that the difference would be a lot less than the difference between prime LeBron and current LeBron’s general baseline, because LeBron played a lot better in this series than his current baseline.

And, to perhaps get at what you’re saying more directly, since Jokic outplayed LeBron in this series (I don’t agree that LeBron played Jokic “to a standstill” and I don’t think most other people would either), then the analogy doesn’t really get you anywhere unless prime LeBron would just be *way* better overall than LeBron was in this series. (Of course, as I’ve also said, I think the analogy in general is unnecessary, since comparing prime LeBron to current LeBron in this series in order to then compare to Jokic just adds an unnecessary middleman, when we could instead just directly compare prime LeBron and Jokic).

[OhayoKD]

No, you are you inserting yourself into a discussion without following it or adequately reading what you are responding to. The discussion started a while back with an assertion that prime LeBron was a lot better than current LeBron and since current LeBron purportedly played similarly well to Jokic, that means prime LeBron would’ve significantly outplayed Jokic. And I pointed out that that ignores the fact that LeBron played better in this series than his current-LeBron baseline. In this particular part of the discussion, the other poster was saying LeBron finished worse at the rim that his current baseline, and I clearly noted that point when I said we’d expect prime LeBron to do better at the rim and that “maybe some of that is due to LeBron having had negative variance at the rim in the series.

I feel like you're much more content with stating that LeBron's jump shooting is inflated due to chance than you are to say that his finishing numbers are deflated due to chance. The quote was in reference to 2024 (as OhayoKD had noted)

Oops.

As for the latter part of this, the uncontainable jealousy and/or inferiority complex that so often seems to permeate your posts towards me is just weird

And this is absolutely right! I shouldn't be replying with envy-laden barbs! Talking about times your adverbs were "extraneous" is essentially exactly that. I realize I'm experiencing grandiloquence without peer, but even that is obviously challenging to completely appreciate when factoring in myriad negative emotions obviously creating a subset of fluctuations in my mood. For instance, there’s envy! There isn't much or any correlation between concision and skill, but that is hard to accept, and this is obviously true, when factoring my (self-inflicted) longing for a portion of your non-agenda motivated accomplishments. Nonetheless this is obviously unacceptable, and I owe you an apology. Good point Jake!

Yes, it was absolutely “largely just a bait post.”

(This isn't what the "no it's not" was referring to)

In any event, on the substance of what you said, yes a teammate can potentially take and score the shot, but that's true of all shots the player takes (including ones he missed). Overall, the team would otherwise make X% of shots someone takes if they weren't there. A player has positive impact from their shooting if they make more than X%. And the amount of positive impact will be essentially the same as the number of points they scored above that baseline of what their team would otherwise do with those shots. For instance, let's say Player A takes 20 shots and scores 24 points from those shots. And let's say that without Player A, his team would instead score 22 points. His shooting has essentially had 2 points of impact. But if Player A instead scored 26 points off of those 20 shots, then his shooting would've essentially added 4 points of impact. As I said, it's a little more complicated than that, because on one hand there's not 0 expected points off of a missed shot (since the team can still get an offensive rebound and score) while on the other hand a missed shot tends to hurt the team's defense on the next possession, but it's going to be roughly right that the impact value of scoring an additional marginal point with the same number of shots will be about 1 more point of impact.

Good point! In any event, on the substance of what has been said, a mutual friend wanted to chime in. Unfortunately, they were not able to control themselves, though it would obviously benefit them immensely to do, so to avoid unacceptable unpleasantness I have redacted the "rude" parts:

Spoiler:

Lebrons literal corpse averaged 28-9-7 shooting 63% inside the arc and 38.5% outside of it primarily letting AD cook Jokic (extremely succesfully) most of the time, and being the leading scorer on crazy high effeciency in the fourth quarter with a ton of criticism coming from his lack of finishing and stamina/aggressiveness, even though every time he went aggressively downhill he essentially got right to the rim and either it was a hilariously bad missed call or an easy opportunity right at the rim.

Anyone that thinks any version of Lebron pre Solomon hill doesn’t literally eviscerate them in 5 or 6 are REDACTED human beings who should have their eyes revoked, idk how yall get REDACTED every single time I get sent a message from this board. It’s as if every time I see a message I feel the collective REDACTED of this board can’t get lower and somehow it does.

Say I said this.

(I can indeed say they said this)

[Bad Gatorade]

Is your argument that LeBron wasn’t better in this series than his current baseline level? Like, I think that is pretty obvious and people arguing with me in this very discussion have readily acknowledged that he was (can’t remember off the top of my head if you were one of the people to do so). Positive shooting variance is just one possible reason I gave for what caused that. If you think that actually he didn’t have positive shooting variance overall, are you trying to say he wasn’t better than his current baseline, or are you saying that he was better than his current baseline but just for other reasons? If it’s the former, then it seems obviously not right, especially given the data I’ve set forth in this thread demonstrating that his numbers (I gave BPM as an example) in this series were a statistical outlier compared to what he’s done in recent years and looked pretty similar to prime LeBron’s numbers. And if you’re saying the latter, then I’m not sure it really matters, since I don’t really care about exactly *why* he was a lot better, but rather just that he was.

Yep, LeBron was better in the playoffs than his "baseline" level.

There is more to basketball variance than shooting from afar, and whilst that level of variance was a nice boon for LeBron, it goes hand in hand with the fact that shooting from close also has variance, and that was not in his favour.

I did give one reason already, and that reason was that LeBron managed to get to the hoop far more often - his percentage of shots at the hoop in the playoffs was at its highest ever (and slightly higher than his best regular season ever on this front), and Denver have given up more shots near the rim than any other team. Ergo, LeBron is taking shots from areas that are more likely to generate efficiency, rather than making shots using the same shot taking profile.

I did bring this point up multiple times, to the response of, "yes, prime LeBron would have likely gotten to the rim/finished better/this series" (i.e. defaulting to prime Bron, rather than simply accepting that current Bron got to the rim a lot).

That's not the only one - subjectively, I thought his passing was outstanding and that the raw assist numbers didn't do his passing justice.

Yes, prime LeBron clearly is much better than current LeBron, and, as I’m sure you know, we can see that by looking at all kinds of data. For instance, I gave BPM data (both from BBREF and Thinking Basketball) earlier in this discussion that showed LeBron has fallen off quite a bit in his production now compared to his prime. But that same data also shows that his production in this series was an outlier compared to what he has done in recent seasons or playoffs and was quite similar to his prime production. My discussion of shooting variance was simply my attempt to get at one of the reasons for this outlier performance.

It's funny that one would go to extreme lengths to compare LeBron's current data to data accumulated in LeBron's former league environment, which was notably less conducive to "putting up numbers" and be perfectly happy to use BPM, which explicitly indexes the calculations towards team rating for each individual season. In other words, the apprehension you had for indexing LeBron's numbers seemed to only apply when it was convenient.

FWIW, yes, LeBron has dropped off quite a bit relative to his prime, because his prime was that good. I do agree with that. I do think this postseason was somewhere "intermediate" between current regular season LeBron and prime LeBron, but prime LeBron, especially in the playoffs felt comfortably better to me.

No, it doesn’t mean I’m saying that at all. I didn’t say that I think prime LeBron was only as good as LeBron was in the Denver series. If you go back and read through this discussion (which started before you came into it), you’ll see that I repeatedly said that prime LeBron wasn’t *that* much better than LeBron was in this series.

I don't fully agree - I wouldn't use BPM as "proof" of that, and it's not because of "shooting variance" or anything like that, but rather that BPM itself is only going to capture some of the differences in play and uses positional adjustments. LeBron could play at the same level, accumulate different stats (that are arguably just as impressive), but stats that aren't quite what BPM likes. It's akin to how Jokic can put up the highest BPM in the league, and the 3rd highest BPM ever, but he appears worse in EPM (5th on the season), potentially due to Jokic's poor rim protection numbers. Different accumulation stats like different things.

I have kept saying variants of that again and again throughout this discussion, and I didn’t put any overall numerical value on the difference. My point isn’t that prime LeBron wouldn’t be any better than LeBron was in this series or to quantify exactly how much better he’d be, but rather that the difference would be a lot less than the difference between prime LeBron and current LeBron’s general baseline, because LeBron played a lot better in this series than his current baseline.

When framed like this, that's a very reasonable conclusion.

And, to perhaps get at what you’re saying more directly, since Jokic outplayed LeBron in this series (I don’t agree that LeBron played Jokic “to a standstill” and I don’t think most other people would either), then the analogy doesn’t really get you anywhere unless prime LeBron would just be *way* better overall than LeBron was in this series. (Of course, as I’ve also said, I think the analogy in general is unnecessary, since comparing prime LeBron to current LeBron in this series in order to then compare to Jokic just adds an unnecessary middleman, when we could instead just directly compare prime LeBron and Jokic).

I think that they were pretty similar on the whole due to gaps in the box score - for example, Jokic having a DBPM of 5.0 after that series is a mockery of what a stat with the word "defensive" in the title should be returning.

[lessthanjake]

Yes, prime LeBron clearly is much better than current LeBron, and, as I’m sure you know, we can see that by looking at all kinds of data. For instance, I gave BPM data (both from BBREF and Thinking Basketball) earlier in this discussion that showed LeBron has fallen off quite a bit in his production now compared to his prime. But that same data also shows that his production in this series was an outlier compared to what he has done in recent seasons or playoffs and was quite similar to his prime production. My discussion of shooting variance was simply my attempt to get at one of the reasons for this outlier performance.

It's funny that one would go to extreme lengths to compare LeBron's current data to data accumulated in LeBron's former league environment, which was notably less conducive to "putting up numbers" and be perfectly happy to use BPM, which explicitly indexes the calculations towards team rating for each individual season. In other words, the apprehension you had for indexing LeBron's numbers seemed to only apply when it was convenient.

I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. I never had any “apprehension for indexing LeBron’s numbers.” We had a brief discussion about mid-range shooting getting better in recent years and I simply noted that some portion of that is because the players in the league are better shooters now. I then was perfectly happy to go with your shorthand of LeBron going 8/14 instead of 6/14, even though 6/14 is a higher percentage than prime LeBron put up in mid-range shooting, precisely because that seemed a reasonable way to also approximate in mid-range shooting actually being a bit easier now.

Anyways, none of this really matters, given that you’ve said the following things, which basically ultimately agree with the crux of what I’ve been saying:

Yep, LeBron was better in the playoffs than his "baseline" level.

I have kept saying variants of that again and again throughout this discussion, and I didn’t put any overall numerical value on the difference. My point isn’t that prime LeBron wouldn’t be any better than LeBron was in this series or to quantify exactly how much better he’d be, but rather that the difference would be a lot less than the difference between prime LeBron and current LeBron’s general baseline, because LeBron played a lot better in this series than his current baseline.

When framed like this, that's a very reasonable conclusion.

It strikes me as a little frustrating, because that’s essentially the same as how I framed what I was saying from the beginning of this discussion. To be fair to you, you came into the discussion after it started, though. Here’s a relevant portion of my post that spawned this discussion:

Spoiler:

This weird attenuated argument that current LeBron was purportedly close to peak Jokic in a series and peak LeBron was much better than current LeBron and therefore peak LeBron was much better than peak Jokic is just overly complicated nonsense. Even leaving aside that Jokic was a lot better than LeBron in this past series, a single series is a tiny sample size where there’s tons of variance in how well someone plays, and LeBron played a lot better than his average current level. So yeah, current LeBron is not as good as peak LeBron, but current LeBron playing well above his normal level (as he was in that series) may not be *that* much behind peak LeBron.

So I feel like you don’t really think the crux of what I’m saying is at all unreasonable, but rather are just quibbling around the edges on the precise reasons I offered as to why LeBron was better in the playoffs than his current baseline level. But if you agree that LeBron was better than his current baseline level (which you explicitly do), then it really just doesn’t matter to me at all for these purposes what you see the reasons for that as being. I was just aiming to offer an example of one reason for it, but the precise reason(s) really don’t matter to the point I was making, and you agree with the important point that LeBron played better than his current baseline level. Meanwhile, you say that it’s “a very reasonable conclusion” to say that LeBron playing better than his current baseline level means that the difference between prime LeBron and LeBron in that series is a lot less than the difference between prime LeBron and current LeBron’s general baseline. So, at that point, you’re not disagreeing with the core premise of what I’ve said. The only disagreement you seem to have is just in the related question of whether Jokic outplayed LeBron in this series (a little more on that below). While related, that’s a separate question from what you and I have been discussing so far, and I feel like it’s clear you ultimately agree with me on the crux of what I was saying on the stuff we were discussing, and you simply disagree with in-the-weeds details/explanations that I don’t so much care about and that don’t really matter for purposes of the overarching point I’m making. Which makes me think there’s little point in us continuing to spend time going down unnecessary rabbit holes.

And, to perhaps get at what you’re saying more directly, since Jokic outplayed LeBron in this series (I don’t agree that LeBron played Jokic “to a standstill” and I don’t think most other people would either), then the analogy doesn’t really get you anywhere unless prime LeBron would just be *way* better overall than LeBron was in this series. (Of course, as I’ve also said, I think the analogy in general is unnecessary, since comparing prime LeBron to current LeBron in this series in order to then compare to Jokic just adds an unnecessary middleman, when we could instead just directly compare prime LeBron and Jokic).

I think that they were pretty similar on the whole due to gaps in the box score - for example, Jokic having a DBPM of 5.0 after that series is a mockery of what a stat with the word "defensive" in the title should be returning.

Here I definitely disagree with you. Granted, I think it’s in large part an eye test thing (though FWIW I think stats do also support my position on this), but I do think that most somewhat neutral observers would agree with me that Jokic was meaningfully better than LeBron in this series. You are, however, free to disagree with that, of course.

[TheGOATRises007]

No Jokic isn't better than LeBron ever was.

But that's not an indictment on Jokic.

[AEnigma]

Lebrons literal corpse averaged 28-9-7 shooting 63% inside the arc and 38.5% outside of it primarily letting AD cook Jokic (extremely succesfully) most of the time, and being the leading scorer on crazy high effeciency in the fourth quarter with a ton of criticism coming from his lack of finishing and stamina/aggressiveness, even though every time he went aggressively downhill he essentially got right to the rim and either it was a hilariously bad missed call or an easy opportunity right at the rim.

Anyone that thinks any version of Lebron pre Solomon hill doesn’t literally eviscerate them in 5 or 6 are REDACTED human beings who should have their eyes revoked, idk how yall get REDACTED every single time I get sent a message from this board. It’s as if every time I see a message I feel the collective REDACTED of this board can’t get lower and somehow it does.

Say I said this.

Have you considered that it may actually be a sign of bias to perceive how easily Jokic is targeted on defence? No, it is probably just random variance that the most efficient series of Anthony Davis’s career was against Jokic. And that the most efficient and highest scoring series of Damian Lillard’s career was against Jokic. And that the most efficient and highest scoring series of Chris Paul’s career was against Jokic. And that the most efficient and highest scoring series of Donovan Mitchell’s career was against Jokic.


Sad part is not even the GB regulars in the thread are willing to be this shameless. Seems we finally found the bar, but problem is there is always at least one person committed to diving beneath it.

[dhsilv2]

You are discussing the utility of BPM in the context of a larger conversation of what 40 year old Lebron vs Jokic would inform us about peak Lebron vs Jokic.

No, I'm not actually doing that. I'm discussing building an argument on feelings vs starting from ANY set of data (PER, WS/48, BPM, GMSc, PIE, RAPM, LEBRON, DARKO, APM, raw +/-, WOWY, or anything else can all be used and are all completely equal in this context). I used this topic to bring it up as it's a problem in ALL sports discussion. If you wanted to join into THAT discussion, by all means come along. But instead you're off ranting about wowy and whatever version of RAPM you like that paints whatever in whatever way you want. If you want to make a post about Lebron vs Jokic from impact metrics just do that and don't quote me.

Seriously, post up the impact metrics. Put up good reliable sources so at least we're comparing apples to apples and by all means, have at it. It would be an interesting read as the only RAPM based metric I have handy is LEBRON and it only goes back to 2010...and it paints their peaks are basically impossible to distinguish. But again, that wasn't the actual discussion being had.

[DimesandKnicks]

Jokic ain’t winning MVP this year - BRUNSON BABYYYY!!!!

I know you are kidding obviously and congrats to the Knicks but Jokic has that mvp locked up

I honestly doubt it. Voter fatigue plus the two or three legitimate candidates and there narratives might rob him of another.

[lessthanjake]

Peak Jokic & Peak LeBron in Impact Data and Impact-Correlated Box Data

There has been some talk about comparing impact metrics between peak Jokic and peak LeBron. In the past, I’ve noted that their league rankings in their peak timeframes in various metrics has been very similar (i.e. often leading the league in a season and sometimes by a lot, but not always leading in all metrics but always near the top). The response has often been that we should look at the actual values in the metrics. It’s something I’ve resisted because doing that can run into scaling issues, but let’s just go for it and see what we find.

To begin with, we have to define what the peak timeframe of these players is. For Jokic, I think it’s obvious that his peak started in 2020-2021 and goes to the present. For LeBron, the question is perhaps tougher. But I think the obvious answer is to take the 2009-2013 time period. This is the obvious reference point, since it spans the two years that are most commonly considered LeBron’s best individual seasons, and also spans all his MVP-winning years. And this is generally corroborated as LeBron’s peak timeframe by posters here—for instance, I just responded to a post in another thread, in which LukaTheGOAT specifically said “the heart of Lebron's prime was from 09-13.” So we will use that. Granted, this means we are using a 4-year timeframe for Jokic and a 5-year timeframe for LeBron, but because 2009 and 2013 are pretty consistently amongst LeBron’s very best years in the data, using a 5-year timeframe for him is typically better than if we took a 4-year peak instead (not to mention that Jokic’s peak isn’t over so it’s not like he actually has a demonstrably shorter peak).

Now, let’s go through impact data and compare the values the two have put up. For simplicity, what I will do is, for regular season or regular season + playoff data, I will just report their average value in those timeframes. For playoffs, since different playoffs can (and did) have wildly different number of minutes played, I’ll report out minutes-weighted averages. For data on Basketball-Reference, I obviously just use the feature on the website to look at the value over a certain timespan, rather than averaging. And I’ll report out data in metrics where we have all or the vast majority of these peak years for both players. I will also report out box-based metrics that have specifically been formulated to correlate with impact. Let’s see what we get!

RAPTOR RS + Playoffs

Jokic (2021-2023) average: +12.33

LeBron (2009-2013) average: +10.24

NOTE: For prior to 2013-2014, RAPTOR doesn’t have tracking data, so LeBron’s values here are for “approximate RAPTOR,” which does include some different inputs. And, FWIW, LeBron’s best season after RAPTOR started using tracking data was only 8.2. The metric also doesn’t exist for this season, so Jokic’s data misses this season (but note that even LeBron’s best three years combined would be below Jokic, at 11.33).

Estimated Plus Minus

Jokic (2021-2024) average: +8.05

LeBron (2009-2013) average: +8.82

NOTE: For prior to 2013-2014, EPM doesn’t have tracking data, so again this is comparing apples to oranges to some extent. As I understand it, EPM only uses tracking data for defense, so that’s where the two measures being reported here are different. It is worth noting that if we just looked at average O-EPM (i.e. comparing the things that are actually apples to apples and not based on different inputs), Jokic has an average of +7.48 compared to LeBron’s average of +7.22.

LEBRON

Jokic (2021-2024) average: +7.13

LeBron (2010-2013) average: +7.20

NOTE: This metric doesn’t go back earlier than 2009-2010, so it misses a year for LeBron. If we assumed that the 2009 season would be similar to the 2010 season (which is often roughly true in other data), then we’d be looking at about a +7.5 average for LeBron, but obviously that’s just extrapolation. Also, LEBRON appears to only have data for a bit over half of the 2023-2024 season, rather than all of it (the minutes played that’s listed are not players’ full-season minutes played).

Real Plus Minus

Jokic (2021-2023) average: +8.08

LeBron (2009-2013) average: +8.03

NOTE: This metric does not exist for this season, so Jokic’s data doesn’t include this season.

Augmented Plus Minus per game - RS

Jokic (2021-2024) average: +6.55

LeBron (2009-2013) average: +6.48

Augmented Plus Minus per game - Playoffs

Jokic (2021-2024) minutes-weighted average: +6.40

LeBron (2009-2013) minutes-weighted average: +6.08

NOTE: Presumably because there is a minimum minutes threshold in the metric, there’s no data here for Jokic’s 2022 playoffs. Given his on-off in the series, it’d likely pull the average down, though not by a lot since the number of minutes was so small.

Basketball-Reference BPM - RS

Jokic (2021-2024): 13.0

LeBron (2009-2013): 11.1

Basketball-Reference BPM - Playoffs

Jokic (2021-2024): 12.0

LeBron (2009-2013): 10.8

Thinking Basketball BPM - RS

Jokic (2021-2024) average: 8.85

LeBron (2009-2013) average: 7.98

Thinking Basketball BPM - Playoffs

Jokic (2021-2024) minutes-weighted average: 8.58

LeBron (2009-2013) minutes-weighted average: 8.53

WOWY SRS Impact (excluding end-of-season missed games)

Jokic (2021-2024):

With SRS: +4.39
Without SRS: -4.54
WOWY SRS On-Off: +8.93

LeBron (2009-2013):

With SRS: +7.47
Without SRS: -1.25
WOWY SRS On-Off: +8.72

NOTE: As stated above, I excluded games that these guys sat at the ends of seasons, since those are basically just meaningless garbage data points where the team isn’t particularly concerned with what happens.

_____________________________

Overall, the picture we have is one that looks very close. On balance, I’d say this tilts slightly in Jokic’s favor, though obviously there are a couple measures that LeBron is slightly ahead in and everything is very close, so it’s not clear-cut. What is completely clear-cut, though, is that the claim that has been made here that “Lebron's peak statistically decimates Jokic's” is pretty obviously incorrect.