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

[hardenASG13]

How do you go about quantifying better? I'm just wondering because we as humans need to use numbers to really do a scale. It's just how we work. But numbers are tough because our views are so emotional and subjective. But if we can't put numbers down, we can't actually believe ourselves. So can you do that? What are the numbers for you? How much better was Jokic this series vs 39 lebron vs peak lebron vs not at all the same opponents and rules so you're subjectively adjusting to do this?

And can you show some work so we can see how you did the math?

Haha no. That's not how people discuss basketball most of the time. They talk about what they saw. I just saw 39 year old play almost as well as prime jokic. I've also seen prime Lebron, alot. I know he was much better than he is now. You must know this too. So if he was much better than how he played in this series (which he was, consistently, for a lot of years), that would pretty easily have made him the best player in this series. He almost was at this stage! He was much better than his current version, which kind of went toe to toe vs. Prime Jokic. That gives evidence to the fact that in his prime he was on another level as player, no matter what stats you want to throw out there. Some people prefer to think/talk about basketball rather than just comparing numbers from (widely acknowledged) flawed ranking systems whose formulas they may or may not know or understand.

I just saw 39 year old Lebron not look remotely close to being as good as Jokic. See how useless that is? Sure it's what I saw. But I can put numbers to it. I can show that Jokic had a 14+ BPM for the series while Lebron had a 10.

You've got "I feel"

Wow. 4 more BPM! Awesome!

[DimesandKnicks]

You can't just compare Murray in 2024 to Ilgauskas in 2007 or Mo Williams in 2009 without starting with how much better the league is today vs then.

The league is better now and Murray’s numbers are his numbers. The league was worse than and Z and Mo William’s production was their production. They was still an inferior supporting cast when considering other contenders. What’s your point? That’s not a better roster than the Celtics, Pistons, Spurs or the Magic

Nuggets aren't making the playoffs without Jokic anymore than the Cavs would without Lebron.

No ones is making that argument

[DimesandKnicks]

Murray/Gordon/Porter Jr - Total All Star Appaerances = 0

Lebron first run Cavs had Shaq, Mo Williams, Big Z, Antawn Jamison - they all have at least 1 All Star appearence.

Murray is only getting a name now because of the playoffs last year. So what is he now Scottie Pippen HOF level? Jokic never won a title without Murray!

C'mon. That's like saying Jokic played with Millsap, who was a "4-time All Star".

And Murray's clearly All-star caliber, just happens to play in a stacked Western conference. He'll certainly have better career numbers in averages and counting stats than Mo Williams once he's retired. Jamal, at age 27 and despite missing 1.5 seasons due to injury, is already 2,000 points away from surpassing Mo's career point total.

I'd hope any guard today will pass similar level guards from the lowest scoring era post shot clock. But if you compare 2009 mo...he was about 30th in the league in points per game just like Murray this year. The biggest difference was he played 81 games and Murray played 59.

Are u arguing that Mo Williams and Jamal Murray are equal talents?

[dhsilv2]

C'mon. That's like saying Jokic played with Millsap, who was a "4-time All Star".

And Murray's clearly All-star caliber, just happens to play in a stacked Western conference. He'll certainly have better career numbers in averages and counting stats than Mo Williams once he's retired. Jamal, at age 27 and despite missing 1.5 seasons due to injury, is already 2,000 points away from surpassing Mo's career point total.

I'd hope any guard today will pass similar level guards from the lowest scoring era post shot clock. But if you compare 2009 mo...he was about 30th in the league in points per game just like Murray this year. The biggest difference was he played 81 games and Murray played 59.

Are u arguing that Mo Williams and Jamal Murray are equal talents?

I'm saying 2009 Mo was about as good as any season we've seen out of Murray relative to the league talent pool at guard. Murray's a massive disappointment in terms of his play vs his talent level.

[DimesandKnicks]

I'd hope any guard today will pass similar level guards from the lowest scoring era post shot clock. But if you compare 2009 mo...he was about 30th in the league in points per game just like Murray this year. The biggest difference was he played 81 games and Murray played 59.

Are u arguing that Mo Williams and Jamal Murray are equal talents?

I'm saying 2009 Mo was about as good as any season we've seen out of Murray relative to the league talent pool at guard. Murray's a massive disappointment in terms of his play vs his talent level.

Copy

[Gregoire]

Lebron has the stats - nobody can take those away from him. But he's never been the heart and soul of a team, or the clear go to guy. It's pretty clear he gets rattled under pressure. He'll mean mug when the team is up, but sulk when they are down. The true warriors of the game just battled until the outcome was decided - he doesn't have that. And that's okay - I don't have any ploblem with him personally. But if you want to say he's GOAT and has ultra fire and passion and competitivenss - nope I will disagree with you there. What Lebron has never had is a true dynasty. Other players had little confidence going up against those peak Steph, Kobe/Shaq and Jordan teams. LBJ just got stomped by other HOF'ers more than he won - and realisticly he could have easily have lost 2 more.

If you watched game 5, towards the end of the game, LBJ commits a foul on Joker and later the camera shows LBJ making a funny face and the announcers saying he's criticizing the call. But there is a video floating around - and it's actually Lebron playing games with a female fan who is less than half his weight. He stomps towards her to try and scare her. Then the funny face was to reproduce her reaction. It's the NBA playoffs, the game is in the balance, the season is on the line. And where is his focus - it's clearly not on competing and winning. LBJ has a lot of things, but he doesn't that it factor.

Being more harsh and short: he is loser.

[xchange55]

C'mon. That's like saying Jokic played with Millsap, who was a "4-time All Star".

And Murray's clearly All-star caliber, just happens to play in a stacked Western conference. He'll certainly have better career numbers in averages and counting stats than Mo Williams once he's retired. Jamal, at age 27 and despite missing 1.5 seasons due to injury, is already 2,000 points away from surpassing Mo's career point total.

I'd hope any guard today will pass similar level guards from the lowest scoring era post shot clock. But if you compare 2009 mo...he was about 30th in the league in points per game just like Murray this year. The biggest difference was he played 81 games and Murray played 59.

Are u arguing that Mo Williams and Jamal Murray are equal talents?

Nope - everyone is missing my main point. Comment I replied to was saying Joker could not carry the late 2000's Cavs but Lebron could. Cavs roster back then was not trash - it had decent, dependable peformers who made all star teams -that's more accolades then DEN players - I'm not arguing they are better or worse. But when those guys made all star teams, you can't call them trash. In DEN, Joker has the same type of supporting cast - he doesn't have regular all stars or all nba teammates. All of the main guys, including Murray, would not be talked about on these formus if not having Joker to carry them to glory. In truth, everyone is "overrating" Gordan/MPJ/Murray now. It's the same way Klay is overrated. Let's be honest here, when did people talk about Murray here before last year's playoffs?

[NBD23]

I'd hope any guard today will pass similar level guards from the lowest scoring era post shot clock. But if you compare 2009 mo...he was about 30th in the league in points per game just like Murray this year. The biggest difference was he played 81 games and Murray played 59.

Are u arguing that Mo Williams and Jamal Murray are equal talents?

Nope - everyone is missing my main point. Comment I replied to was saying Joker could not carry the late 2000's Cavs but Lebron could. Cavs roster back then was not trash - it had decent, dependable peformers who made all star teams -that's more accolades then DEN players - I'm not arguing they are better or worse. But when those guys made all star teams, you can't call them trash. In DEN, Joker has the same type of supporting cast - he doesn't have regular all stars or all nba teammates. All of the main guys, including Murray, would not be talked about on these formus if not having Joker to carry them to glory. In truth, everyone is "overrating" Gordan/MPJ/Murray now. It's the same way Klay is overrated. Let's be honest here, when did people talk about Murray here before last year's playoffs?

And Joker doesn't win a title without Murray. Joker is amazing and the best player in basketball currently. That being said I am not sure how we are putting him in the pantheon before he gets multiple rings. I fully expect him to get there but it needs to play out.

To your main point, I 100 percent agree. It is stupid to argue that Jokic couldn't win with the talent in Cleveland. There were decent players there and as always with any center you will have to have a guard to balance him out down the stretch.

[lessthanjake]

Haha no. That's not how people discuss basketball most of the time. They talk about what they saw. I just saw 39 year old play almost as well as prime jokic. I've also seen prime Lebron, alot. I know he was much better than he is now. You must know this too. So if he was much better than how he played in this series (which he was, consistently, for a lot of years), that would pretty easily have made him the best player in this series. He almost was at this stage! He was much better than his current version, which kind of went toe to toe vs. Prime Jokic. That gives evidence to the fact that in his prime he was on another level as player, no matter what stats you want to throw out there. Some people prefer to think/talk about basketball rather than just comparing numbers from (widely acknowledged) flawed ranking systems whose formulas they may or may not know or understand.

I just saw 39 year old Lebron not look remotely close to being as good as Jokic. See how useless that is? Sure it's what I saw. But I can put numbers to it. I can show that Jokic had a 14+ BPM for the series while Lebron had a 10.

You've got "I feel"

Wow. 4 more BPM! Awesome!

Um, 4 BPM actually is quite a lot. That’s like the difference between Steph Curry’s career BPM and Mike Conley’s career BPM. Or LeBron’s career BPM and Dame’s. Or Michael Jordan’s and Clyde Drexler’s. It’s not a small difference.

Granted, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in stats like this in such tiny samples. But that flaw goes more to the argument it seems like you’re making. 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.

Like, for reference on this, LeBron’s Thinking Basketball BPM in these playoffs was 7.8. Meanwhile, he was rocking a 5.8 BPM during the regular season, and last year he had a 4.8 BPM in the regular season and a 5.22 BPM in the playoffs, while it was 5.1 in the 2022 regular season, and 5.6 in the 2021 regular season and 4.22 in the 2021 playoffs. So this performance was a clear outlier from what current LeBron generally is. Which isn’t super surprising to see, since 5 games is a tiny sample, so you’d expect a lot of variance—someone can play a lot better or worse than normal over 5 games. So how does this outlier performance compare to LeBron in his younger years? Well, a 7.8 BPM is above every regular season LeBron has had except 2009, 2010, and 2013! And, in terms of playoff BPM, it’s towards the bottom compared to the rest of his prime years, but it’s ahead of some of them (2007, 2008, 2011, and 2015) and clustered within 0.6 of 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018. Only the 2009 and 2016 playoffs are more than 1.6 ahead. If we instead look at Basketball-Reference’s BPM, we see a very similar story. LeBron has a 7.0 BBREF BPM in the last 4 seasons (and 6.5 in this season specifically). But his BPM in the playoffs this year was 10.6. Compared to his prime regular seasons, that is only below the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 regular seasons (and only below 2008 and 2012 by a tiny amount). And in terms of playoffs in his prime, it is only below 2009, 2010, 2016, and 2018 (and only 2009 is ahead by more than 2). So, basically, I think the better reading here is that old LeBron is generally pretty far off from prime LeBron, but that in the course of a tiny five-game sample, old LeBron managed to play pretty similar to (or at least not that far below) the level he did in his prime. And that makes the entire logic chain that you’re pushing break down.

[hardenASG13]

I just saw 39 year old Lebron not look remotely close to being as good as Jokic. See how useless that is? Sure it's what I saw. But I can put numbers to it. I can show that Jokic had a 14+ BPM for the series while Lebron had a 10.

You've got "I feel"

Wow. 4 more BPM! Awesome!

Um, 4 BPM actually is quite a lot. That’s like the difference between Steph Curry’s career BPM and Mike Conley’s career BPM. Or LeBron’s career BPM and Dame’s. Or Michael Jordan’s and Clyde Drexler’s. It’s not a small difference.

Granted, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in stats like this in such tiny samples. But that flaw goes more to the argument it seems like you’re making. 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.

Like, for reference on this, LeBron’s Thinking Basketball BPM in these playoffs was 7.8. Meanwhile, he was rocking a 5.8 BPM during the regular season, and last year he had a 4.8 BPM in the regular season and a 5.22 BPM in the playoffs, while it was 5.1 in the 2022 regular season, and 5.6 in the 2021 regular season and 4.22 in the 2021 playoffs. So this performance was a clear outlier from what current LeBron generally is. Which isn’t super surprising to see, since 5 games is a tiny sample, so you’d expect a lot of variance—someone can play a lot better or worse than normal over 5 games. So how does this outlier performance compare to LeBron in his younger years? Well, a 7.8 BPM is above every regular season LeBron has had except 2009, 2010, and 2013! And, in terms of playoff BPM, it’s towards the bottom compared to the rest of his prime years, but it’s ahead of some of them (2007, 2008, 2011, and 2015) and clustered within 0.6 of 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018. Only the 2009 and 2016 playoffs are more than 1.6 ahead. If we instead look at Basketball-Reference’s BPM, we see a very similar story. LeBron has a 7.0 BBREF BPM in the last 4 seasons (and 6.5 in this season specifically). But his BPM in the playoffs this year was 10.6. Compared to his prime regular seasons, that is only below the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 regular seasons (and only below 2008 and 2012 by a tiny amount). And in terms of playoffs in his prime, it is only below 2009, 2010, 2016, and 2018 (and only 2009 is ahead by more than 2). And, of course, LeBron was doing this in these playoffs while facing better than the average playoff opponent—which you’d expect to skew his output downwards. So, basically, I think the better reading here is that old LeBron is generally pretty far off from prime LeBron, but that in the course of a tiny five-game sample, old LeBron managed to play pretty similar to the level he did in his prime. And that makes the entire logic chain that you’re pushing break down.

You nailed it.....using BPM in a 5 game series isn't some amazing way to evaluate anything. Yes lebron played really well in this series compared to his current baseline. It doesn't mean he played like prime lebron though, and the evidence is having seen prime lebron play, the energy he had. He doesn't have that energy anymore, to take over a game/series like he used to on both ends, breaking down the defense and covering everything. No stats or math needed to see that. I consider prime lebron much better than current lebron, and think based on how well current lebron played in the series, that prime Lebron would've comfortably been the best player in the series. I'm not sure why "math" is needed like dhsilv2 to form an opinion like that. It's OK to have opinions based on logic and not blindly follow formulas made by strangers, especially when talking about the top players, to form all opinions.

Do you think prime Lebron wouldve been significantly better in this series for the Lakers than current lebron? I do, by a pretty wide margin, which is my point. I really don't care about the BPMs, because I saw the games. Current lebron wasn't far off from being the best player in that series, he just ran out of gas and had to pick his spots alot more than he did in his prime. Is anyone on this board capable of talking hoops rather than posting numbers from whatever the hot advanced stats formula is?

[lessthanjake]

Wow. 4 more BPM! Awesome!

Um, 4 BPM actually is quite a lot. That’s like the difference between Steph Curry’s career BPM and Mike Conley’s career BPM. Or LeBron’s career BPM and Dame’s. Or Michael Jordan’s and Clyde Drexler’s. It’s not a small difference.

Granted, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in stats like this in such tiny samples. But that flaw goes more to the argument it seems like you’re making. 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.

Like, for reference on this, LeBron’s Thinking Basketball BPM in these playoffs was 7.8. Meanwhile, he was rocking a 5.8 BPM during the regular season, and last year he had a 4.8 BPM in the regular season and a 5.22 BPM in the playoffs, while it was 5.1 in the 2022 regular season, and 5.6 in the 2021 regular season and 4.22 in the 2021 playoffs. So this performance was a clear outlier from what current LeBron generally is. Which isn’t super surprising to see, since 5 games is a tiny sample, so you’d expect a lot of variance—someone can play a lot better or worse than normal over 5 games. So how does this outlier performance compare to LeBron in his younger years? Well, a 7.8 BPM is above every regular season LeBron has had except 2009, 2010, and 2013! And, in terms of playoff BPM, it’s towards the bottom compared to the rest of his prime years, but it’s ahead of some of them (2007, 2008, 2011, and 2015) and clustered within 0.6 of 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018. Only the 2009 and 2016 playoffs are more than 1.6 ahead. If we instead look at Basketball-Reference’s BPM, we see a very similar story. LeBron has a 7.0 BBREF BPM in the last 4 seasons (and 6.5 in this season specifically). But his BPM in the playoffs this year was 10.6. Compared to his prime regular seasons, that is only below the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 regular seasons (and only below 2008 and 2012 by a tiny amount). And in terms of playoffs in his prime, it is only below 2009, 2010, 2016, and 2018 (and only 2009 is ahead by more than 2). And, of course, LeBron was doing this in these playoffs while facing better than the average playoff opponent—which you’d expect to skew his output downwards. So, basically, I think the better reading here is that old LeBron is generally pretty far off from prime LeBron, but that in the course of a tiny five-game sample, old LeBron managed to play pretty similar to the level he did in his prime. And that makes the entire logic chain that you’re pushing break down.

You nailed it.....using BPM in a 5 game series isn't some amazing way to evaluate anything. Yes lebron played really well in this series compared to his current baseline. It doesn't mean he played like prime lebron though, and the evidence is having seen prime lebron play, the energy he had. He doesn't have that energy anymore, to take over a game/series like he used to on both ends, breaking down the defense and covering everything. No stats or math needed to see that. I consider prime lebron much better than current lebron, and think based on how well current lebron played in the series, that prime Lebron would've comfortably been the best player in the series. I'm not sure why "math" is needed like dhsilv2 to form an opinion like that. It's OK to have opinions based on logic and not blindly follow formulas made by strangers, especially when talking about the top players, to form all opinions.

Do you think prime Lebron wouldve been significantly better in this series for the Lakers than current lebron? I do, by a pretty wide margin, which is my point. I really don't care about the BPMs, because I saw the games. Current lebron wasn't far off from being the best player in that series, he just ran out of gas and had to pick his spots alot more than he did in his prime. Is anyone on this board capable of talking hoops rather than posting numbers from whatever the hot advanced stats formula is?

There’s certainly some ways that prime LeBron would be better than LeBron was in this current series. As you said, for instance, he had more energy back then. And that’s a big deal! But, at the same time, there are reasons that LeBron in this series put up the kinds of numbers that he did such that they were competitive with prime LeBron numbers—specifically, there were things that he happened to do even better than prime LeBron generally did (again, largely just because it’s a tiny sample). For instance, in this series, LeBron shot 39% from three, 50% on shots from 16 feet to the three-point line, and 60% on shots between 10-16 feet from the basket. In other words, LeBron’s jump shooting overall was way better than normal. We would expect prime LeBron to shoot notably worse than that. So yeah, if you put prime LeBron in this series, there’s definitely things he’d do notably better, but there’s also things he’d almost certainly do notably worse. Which is why the stats from this series look pretty competitive with prime LeBron. We can’t just assume that you’d get all the advantages of prime LeBron while *also* having the same random positive variance that made this an outlier series for current LeBron. Or at least, if we did assume that, then we’d be comparing Jokic to prime LeBron *plus* favorable variance—which obviously isn’t a fair thing to compare to Jokic.

The bottom line is that once we accept the fact that LeBron played substantially better in this series than his current baseline (which you explicitly agreed with), then it really makes no sense to make some analogy that ignores that. The analogy is attenuated anyways, but if you’re going to entertain it, the question is not how much better prime LeBron was than current LeBron, but rather how much better prime LeBron was than LeBron in this particular series (including any advantageous variance he had). And again, I think that’s a much closer call (and statistics generally agree with that), and Jokic was still clearly the better player in the series, so it’s not an analogy that I think fairly leads to the conclusion you’re pushing for.

[hardenASG13]

Um, 4 BPM actually is quite a lot. That’s like the difference between Steph Curry’s career BPM and Mike Conley’s career BPM. Or LeBron’s career BPM and Dame’s. Or Michael Jordan’s and Clyde Drexler’s. It’s not a small difference.

Granted, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in stats like this in such tiny samples. But that flaw goes more to the argument it seems like you’re making. 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.

Like, for reference on this, LeBron’s Thinking Basketball BPM in these playoffs was 7.8. Meanwhile, he was rocking a 5.8 BPM during the regular season, and last year he had a 4.8 BPM in the regular season and a 5.22 BPM in the playoffs, while it was 5.1 in the 2022 regular season, and 5.6 in the 2021 regular season and 4.22 in the 2021 playoffs. So this performance was a clear outlier from what current LeBron generally is. Which isn’t super surprising to see, since 5 games is a tiny sample, so you’d expect a lot of variance—someone can play a lot better or worse than normal over 5 games. So how does this outlier performance compare to LeBron in his younger years? Well, a 7.8 BPM is above every regular season LeBron has had except 2009, 2010, and 2013! And, in terms of playoff BPM, it’s towards the bottom compared to the rest of his prime years, but it’s ahead of some of them (2007, 2008, 2011, and 2015) and clustered within 0.6 of 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018. Only the 2009 and 2016 playoffs are more than 1.6 ahead. If we instead look at Basketball-Reference’s BPM, we see a very similar story. LeBron has a 7.0 BBREF BPM in the last 4 seasons (and 6.5 in this season specifically). But his BPM in the playoffs this year was 10.6. Compared to his prime regular seasons, that is only below the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 regular seasons (and only below 2008 and 2012 by a tiny amount). And in terms of playoffs in his prime, it is only below 2009, 2010, 2016, and 2018 (and only 2009 is ahead by more than 2). And, of course, LeBron was doing this in these playoffs while facing better than the average playoff opponent—which you’d expect to skew his output downwards. So, basically, I think the better reading here is that old LeBron is generally pretty far off from prime LeBron, but that in the course of a tiny five-game sample, old LeBron managed to play pretty similar to the level he did in his prime. And that makes the entire logic chain that you’re pushing break down.

You nailed it.....using BPM in a 5 game series isn't some amazing way to evaluate anything. Yes lebron played really well in this series compared to his current baseline. It doesn't mean he played like prime lebron though, and the evidence is having seen prime lebron play, the energy he had. He doesn't have that energy anymore, to take over a game/series like he used to on both ends, breaking down the defense and covering everything. No stats or math needed to see that. I consider prime lebron much better than current lebron, and think based on how well current lebron played in the series, that prime Lebron would've comfortably been the best player in the series. I'm not sure why "math" is needed like dhsilv2 to form an opinion like that. It's OK to have opinions based on logic and not blindly follow formulas made by strangers, especially when talking about the top players, to form all opinions.

Do you think prime Lebron wouldve been significantly better in this series for the Lakers than current lebron? I do, by a pretty wide margin, which is my point. I really don't care about the BPMs, because I saw the games. Current lebron wasn't far off from being the best player in that series, he just ran out of gas and had to pick his spots alot more than he did in his prime. Is anyone on this board capable of talking hoops rather than posting numbers from whatever the hot advanced stats formula is?

There’s certainly some ways that prime LeBron would be better than LeBron was in this current series. As you said, for instance, he had more energy back then. And that’s a big deal! But, at the same time, there are reasons that LeBron in this series put up the kinds of numbers that he did such that they were competitive with prime LeBron numbers—specifically, there were things that he happened to do even better than prime LeBron generally did (again, largely just because it’s a tiny sample). For instance, in this series, LeBron shot 39% from three, 50% on shots from 16 feet to the three-point line, and 60% on shots between 10-16 feet from the basket. In other words, LeBron’s jump shooting overall was way better than normal. We would expect prime LeBron to shoot notably worse than that. So yeah, if you put prime LeBron in this series, there’s definitely things he’d do notably better, but there’s also things he’d almost certainly do notably worse. Which is why the stats from this series look pretty competitive with prime LeBron. We can’t just assume that you’d get all the advantages of prime LeBron while *also* having the same random positive variance that made this an outlier series for current LeBron. Or at least, if we did assume that, then we’d be comparing Jokic to prime LeBron *plus* favorable variance—which obviously isn’t a fair thing to compare to Jokic.

The bottom line is that once we accept the fact that LeBron played substantially better in this series than his current baseline (which you explicitly agreed with), then it really makes no sense to make some analogy that ignores that. The analogy is attenuated anyways, but if you’re going to entertain it, the question is not how much better prime LeBron was than current LeBron, but rather how much better prime LeBron was than LeBron in this particular series (including any advantageous variance he had). And again, I think that’s a much closer call (and statistics generally agree with that), and Jokic was still clearly the better player in the series, so it’s not an analogy that I think fairly leads to the conclusion you’re pushing for.

His shooting has improved out of necessity, because he doesn't have the energy to play like he did at his peak. In his peak, the percentages you referenced, if they were lower, didn't hold him back at all, as a scorer or offensive player. He was better overall then, despite being a better shooter now. And that's what matters, is how much better he was at both ends in his prime. Which I think is significantly, despite the shooting percentages from different zones this year.

[One_and_Done]

There are people on this board who have flat out told me that their approach to rating players doesn't require them to watch games. They just need the advanced stats. That's very sad, and we're seeing that undercurrent here. Jokic is not close to peak Lebron. Not. Close.

[lessthanjake]

You nailed it.....using BPM in a 5 game series isn't some amazing way to evaluate anything. Yes lebron played really well in this series compared to his current baseline. It doesn't mean he played like prime lebron though, and the evidence is having seen prime lebron play, the energy he had. He doesn't have that energy anymore, to take over a game/series like he used to on both ends, breaking down the defense and covering everything. No stats or math needed to see that. I consider prime lebron much better than current lebron, and think based on how well current lebron played in the series, that prime Lebron would've comfortably been the best player in the series. I'm not sure why "math" is needed like dhsilv2 to form an opinion like that. It's OK to have opinions based on logic and not blindly follow formulas made by strangers, especially when talking about the top players, to form all opinions.

Do you think prime Lebron wouldve been significantly better in this series for the Lakers than current lebron? I do, by a pretty wide margin, which is my point. I really don't care about the BPMs, because I saw the games. Current lebron wasn't far off from being the best player in that series, he just ran out of gas and had to pick his spots alot more than he did in his prime. Is anyone on this board capable of talking hoops rather than posting numbers from whatever the hot advanced stats formula is?

There’s certainly some ways that prime LeBron would be better than LeBron was in this current series. As you said, for instance, he had more energy back then. And that’s a big deal! But, at the same time, there are reasons that LeBron in this series put up the kinds of numbers that he did such that they were competitive with prime LeBron numbers—specifically, there were things that he happened to do even better than prime LeBron generally did (again, largely just because it’s a tiny sample). For instance, in this series, LeBron shot 39% from three, 50% on shots from 16 feet to the three-point line, and 60% on shots between 10-16 feet from the basket. In other words, LeBron’s jump shooting overall was way better than normal. We would expect prime LeBron to shoot notably worse than that. So yeah, if you put prime LeBron in this series, there’s definitely things he’d do notably better, but there’s also things he’d almost certainly do notably worse. Which is why the stats from this series look pretty competitive with prime LeBron. We can’t just assume that you’d get all the advantages of prime LeBron while *also* having the same random positive variance that made this an outlier series for current LeBron. Or at least, if we did assume that, then we’d be comparing Jokic to prime LeBron *plus* favorable variance—which obviously isn’t a fair thing to compare to Jokic.

The bottom line is that once we accept the fact that LeBron played substantially better in this series than his current baseline (which you explicitly agreed with), then it really makes no sense to make some analogy that ignores that. The analogy is attenuated anyways, but if you’re going to entertain it, the question is not how much better prime LeBron was than current LeBron, but rather how much better prime LeBron was than LeBron in this particular series (including any advantageous variance he had). And again, I think that’s a much closer call (and statistics generally agree with that), and Jokic was still clearly the better player in the series, so it’s not an analogy that I think fairly leads to the conclusion you’re pushing for.

His shooting has improved out of necessity, because he doesn't have the energy to play like he did at his peak. In his peak, the percentages you referenced, if they were lower, didn't hold him back at all, as a scorer or offensive player. He was better overall then, despite being a better shooter now. And that's what matters, is how much better he was at both ends in his prime. Which I think is significantly, despite the shooting percentages from different zones this year.

As an initial matter, you’re just handwaving away an improvement in his game. If you only think about the ways he was better in the past and don’t consider the ways he was worse, then you’re obviously going to get a distorted picture of exactly how much better he was in the past. In any event, though, this isn’t really just a matter of his shooting being better nowadays. If it was, then LeBron wouldn’t have done much better in this series than his current baseline. For instance, LeBron doesn’t normally shoot 50% from 16 feet to the three-point line and 60% from 10-16 feet. He shot 37% and 31% respectively from those distances in the regular season (and it’s 39% and 35% over the last four years). This was an outlier by the standards of any era of his career, while the three-point-shooting was perhaps not an outlier for LeBron right now but was definitely better than you’d expect from prime LeBron. And that’s not even getting into the shots from short midrange (3-10 feet), which LeBron also made in this series at a rate far above the rate that he makes them now or in his prime. LeBron was just on a heater in general in those 5 games, and if you replace him with prime LeBron you’d get a player who is substantially better in many ways but would presumably not be on the same kind of shooting hot streak. Again, it’s not so clear that the result would be a lot better, and stats don’t really indicate it would be that much better.

And by the way, it’s definitely incorrect to say LeBron’s shooting “didn’t hold him back at all” in his prime. It absolutely did. It was probably the thing that held him back the most his entire career—and I’m sure even LeBron himself would acknowledge that. You seem to be suggesting that prime LeBron just had the energy to go to the hoop all the time. But that’s really not what happened. LeBron has always had to take a lot of jump shots. In fact, from 2006-2020, LeBron took 51.6% of his field goal attempts from 10+ feet (and it was 50.6% in the playoffs), while it has been 50.3% in the last four years. Jump shots have always been about half his FG attempts (the shift in recent years has just been to make more of those jump shots be threes). Granted, I suspect with today’s spacing prime LeBron could get the percent of his shots that are jump shots down a little bit, but it’d still be a really major part of his offensive game. And if you take away the positive shooting variance he had in this series, he genuinely needs to be substantially better in other ways just to make up for that. I do think prime LeBron *would* be enough better in other ways to make up for it, but I don’t know that it’d be *that* much better—nor do stats suggest it necessarily would be. And, again, Jokic was clearly better in this series, so I don’t think the analogy is all that favorable for LeBron when we actually dig into it.

Of course, I also just think it’s an unnecessary analogy in general. Like, this comparison of LeBron in this series to prime LeBron just seems like a needless middleman. If we’re going to be comparing prime LeBron directly to something else, we might as well just cut out the middleman and compare that directly to Jokic.

[lessthanjake]

There are people on this board who gave flat out told me that their approach to rating players doesn't require them to watch games. They just need the advanced stats. That's very sad, and we're seeing that undercurrent here. Jokic is not close to peak Lebron. Not. Close.

Yeah, that’s really not me. As I’ve said many times, my view of Jokic is actually first and foremost derived from what my eye test tells me, with data regarding him merely being information that validates that eye test for me.

[Mr Loggins]

Sure, I mean who was peaking in the NBA during 2011-2014. Roy Hibbert? Luol Deng? Lol.

Kobe, KD, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard were the other members of the 1st team all nba (along with LeBron)

Very well could beat this years 1st team all nba….

[bledredwine]

If Jokic wins this year, he'll be able to do something Lebron never was able to - repeat.

And he will have done it with a significantly worse supporting cast than any of Lebron's championships.

It's a debate. That's for sure.

[Mephariel]

If Jokic wins this year, he'll be able to do something Lebron never was able to - repeat.

And he will have done it with a significantly worse supporting cast than any of Lebron's championships.

It's a debate. That's for sure.

No it is not. Why would it be a debate? Hakeem won 2 championship in a roll and he is not even in the conversation. Neither is Shaq and he won 3 in a roll.

[bledredwine]

If Jokic wins this year, he'll be able to do something Lebron never was able to - repeat.

And he will have done it with a significantly worse supporting cast than any of Lebron's championships.

It's a debate. That's for sure.

No it is not. Why would it be a debate? Hakeem won 2 championship in a roll and he is not even in the conversation. Neither is Shaq and he won 3 in a roll.

He is absolutely in the conversation, if you care about defense.

And yes, Jokic will have done that, and will have put up better stats. I don't know what else to tell you.

[art_tatum]

If Jokic wins this year, he'll be able to do something Lebron never was able to - repeat.

And he will have done it with a significantly worse supporting cast than any of Lebron's championships.

It's a debate. That's for sure.

Lebron repeated 12 and 13 with the heatles superteam

Sure, I mean who was peaking in the NBA during 2011-2014. Roy Hibbert? Luol Deng? Lol.

Kobe, KD, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard were the other members of the 1st team all nba (along with LeBron)

Very well could beat this years 1st team all nba….

Kobe was past his prime 11-14. Kd only started hitting his prime around 13/14
Cp3 and Howard yea
Rose but he was young.
Duncan was out of his prime too. And dirk . Can't think of anyone else.
Maybe bosh, and wade 11 and 12 lol