LeBron is might be better now than ever before ...

[LostCause]

I have a question, will they do as good without LeBron as they did with LeBron?




Like the 94 Bulls won the same amount of games with MJ as without

Those Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr and Wennington losing no one of note aside the man himself. Let's plug in similar players to the Cavs

Kukoc had a PER of 15.9 his rookie year (Jumped to 19, then 20 and 20 again the 3 seasons after that to put his talent into perspective). TS% of .497, then jumped to .575 and stayed above .550 during the span listed above). Lets just say Chandler Parsons = Kukoc, although Kukoc had better numbers pretty much across the board it's hard to find a good match for him

Kerr = Doug McDermott. Wennington = Trevor Booker.

So adding Parsons, McDermott and Booker to

Kyrie
Shumpert
Smith
Love
Thompson
Dellevadova
Jefferson
Mozgov
Williams
etc

Can't win 50+ games?

(Most of them were quick player matches, if anyone has any better ones feel free)

A lineup of
Kyrie
McDermott
Parsons
Love
Thompson

Looks dangerous to me

[CTbasketball92]

Those Bulls added Kukoc, Kerr and Wennington losing no one of note aside the man himself. Let's plug in similar players to the Cavs

Kukoc had a PER of 15.9 his rookie year (Jumped to 19, then 20 and 20 again the 3 seasons after that to put his talent into perspective). TS% of .497, then jumped to .575 and stayed above .550 during the span listed above). Lets just say Chandler Parsons = Kukoc, although Kukoc had better numbers pretty much across the board it's hard to find a good match for him

Kerr = Doug McDermott. Wennington = Trevor Booker.

So adding Parsons, McDermott and Booker to

Kyrie
Shumpert
Smith
Love
Thompson
Dellevadova
Jefferson
Mozgov
Williams
etc

Can't win 50+ games?

(Most of them were quick player matches, if anyone has any better ones feel free)

A lineup of
Kyrie
McDermott
Parsons
Love
Thompson

Looks dangerous to me

That looks pretty good to me. I'd love to see how that team would perform. Wonder what the stats would look like.

[JebronLames]

Not this year. Cavs without LeBron in this year's East could still get to the Finals.

Without LeBron ...

Miami could still get to the Finals in 2011. Would just be a much greater struggle against Boston and Chicago.

2012, with no Bosh or LeBron, Wade can't even get past that rather loaded for a low seed New York Knicks team.

And in 2013 would've went down to the wire against Indiana, but they still could've potentially got there.

Cavs lose to the Pistons, Hawks, and raptors without LeBron

Heat lose to the Celtics, Bulls in 2011 without LeBron

Heat get destroyed by the pacers in 2013 without LeBron.

I can't believe you're actually serious. Wow.

[RunWithThePack3]

Im new to the forum. Very glad to see there are intelligent basketball fans here that actually realize how lucky we are to witness this dude play the game we love at such a d*mn high level.

Full disclosure: I'm not a huge lebron guy by any means. Not even close to one of my personal favorite players in the league. But his talent and dominance is unmatched.

[Hey Yo]

Lebron's 2015 NBA Finals is so overrated. Typical. He dominated every possession so of course he posted high numbers in everything. It was the perfect setup for him. Once Kyrie went down there was no pressure on him because no one expected him to win. So he could rack up stats to distract his people from remembering he shot 20% from the floor.

Kind of sounds like MJ's situation in 1986, huh?

He wasn't expected to beat the Celtics and had no pressure, so why not shoot like crazy and rack up the stats??



Considering it was James' 5th straight Finals appearance and 4th straight postseason leading his team in MP, pts, rebounds and assists.....he could have easily done the opposite and mailed it in while just going through the motions.

Instead he lead his team to a 2-1 series lead, to only peter out as the series went on.

[Hey Yo]

Not this year. Cavs without LeBron in this year's East could still get to the Finals.

Without LeBron ...

Miami could still get to the Finals in 2011. Would just be a much greater struggle against Boston and Chicago.

2012, with no Bosh or LeBron, Wade can't even get past that rather loaded for a low seed New York Knicks team.

And in 2013 would've went down to the wire against Indiana, but they still could've potentially got there.

With Bibby and Joel Anthony still starting???

NO CHANCE of that happening. The so-called "super team" lost 24 games and was a 2 seed WITH James.

[egokiller]

Kind of sounds like MJ's situation in 1986, huh?

He wasn't expected to beat the Celtics and had no pressure, so why not shoot like crazy and rack up the stats??

Considering it was James' 5th straight Finals appearance and 4th straight postseason leading his team in MP, pts, rebounds and assists.....he could have easily done the opposite and mailed it in while just going through the motions.

Instead he lead his team to a 2-1 series lead, to only peter out as the series went on.

Actually MJ in 86 was nothing like Lebron in 2015. A 2nd year MJ shot 50.5% and scored 43.7 ppg in 3 games. A 12th year lebron shot 39.8% and scored 35.8 ppg in 6 games. No where close to MJ's averages.

[Hey Yo]

Actually MJ in 86 was nothing like Lebron in 2015. A 2nd year MJ shot 50.5% and scored 43.7 ppg in 3 games. A 12th year lebron shot 39.8% and scored 35.8 ppg in 6 games. No where close to MJ's averages.

You couldn't clearly see I was referring to their situations??

If not, get your GED, Chico.

[egokiller]

You couldn't clearly see I was referring to their situations??

If not, get your GED, Chico.

Cool story bro. You tried to pull something out of your ass to justify Lebron's high volume shooting on shitty efficiency and it didn't work. In fact, all you did was enable facts to be presented that made what MJ did as a 2nd year player all that more impressive.

[LostCause]

Cool story bro. You tried to pull something out of your ass to justify Lebron's high volume shooting on shitty efficiency and it didn't work. In fact, all you did was enable facts to be presented that made what MJ did as a 2nd year player all that more impressive.

Damn

[Hey Yo]

Cool story bro. You tried to pull something out of your ass to justify Lebron's high volume shooting on shitty efficiency and it didn't work. In fact, all you did was enable facts to be presented that made what MJ did as a 2nd year player all that more impressive.

Except for the part where LeBron's high volume shooting led to winning games and a series lead at one point.

MJ's volume shooting led to a 0-3 first round exit

[egokiller]

Except for the part where LeBron's high volume shooting led to winning games and a series lead at one point.

MJ's volume shooting led to a 0-3 first round exit

Why even bother to respond if all you are going to do is further make Lebron look bad? You aren't doing him any favors whatsoever every time you attempt to defend him.

Lebron shooting less ppg on lower efficiency results in winning 2 games, while MJ shooting more ppg on higher efficiency resulted in not winning a single game.

All that does is provide us with the evidence that Lebron had better teammates than what MJ had. That's the deciding factor as to why the Cavs were able to win 2 games.

Do you not understand that if you put MJ in Lebron's shoes on that Cavs team that MJ still shoots around 43 ppg on around 50% and the Cavs win the series?

All you are telling us is that a 12th year LeBron caused his team the loss while a 2nd year MJ on that team would have caused his team to win the entire series?

I think that is exactly what you are trying to say, so why not just come out and say it.

[LostCause]

Except for the part where LeBron's high volume shooting led to winning games and a series lead at one point.

MJ's volume shooting led to a 0-3 first round exit

Yeah this is a bad point overall

How does it make any sense in the world to say a guy who scores less and is inefficient is helping his team win through his high volume shooting whereas a guy who scores more and is way more efficient doesn't. I guarantee if you flip that and cite Lebron as the high efficiency guy and Kobe as the inefficient guy you absolutely won't support this idea

When you have a situation like that it's painfully obvious it points toward other factors resulting in the W's, not inferior high volume shooting is somehow more congruent to winning

[Da_Realist]

Kind of sounds like MJ's situation in 1986, huh?

He wasn't expected to beat the Celtics and had no pressure, so why not shoot like crazy and rack up the stats??



Considering it was James' 5th straight Finals appearance and 4th straight postseason leading his team in MP, pts, rebounds and assists.....he could have easily done the opposite and mailed it in while just going through the motions.

Instead he lead his team to a 2-1 series lead, to only peter out as the series went on.

Just watch the games. Numbers don't mean everything. Seeing a guy struggle to get his shot off against Iguodala in isolation and clanking shots to the tune of 31% is UGLY. I don't care how many rebounds he pulled in. Today's numbers-obsessed society exalts his 2015 Finals production but I think it's misleading. It was ugly basketball.

No one will ever watch the series and come away impressed unless they go to basketball-ref and see his numbers. MJ in 86 was impressive cause he balled his ass off against the best team ever. He did it against a great defensive player (DJ) and a great frontline that included a top 5 player playing at his absolute peak (Bird). It wasn't just iso, clank, iso, clank, iso, clank. It was real basketball.

The last 3 games of the 2016 Finals were great. 2015 is overrated.

[egokiller]

The last 3 games of the 2016 Finals were great.

I feel that this statement needs some context applied to it. Would not it have been better if GSW wasn't injured similar to how Cavs were injured in 2015? We've been cheated as viewers these last 2 finals, but a lebron fan will try and have one believe that GSW was 100% and that Cavs came back down from 3-1 against a team that was firing on all cylinders. This was not the case.

Curry and Iggy playing while injured, Bogut out after game 5, Dray suspended a game and unable to bounce back to normal form after it....

http://www.foxsports.com/nba/story/s...n-james-081016