On behalf of NBA fans everywhere, I’d like to apologize to LeBron James
for the classless actions of one Golden State fan. I’m sure you know this but sometimes it needs
to be repeated when one person loses every shred of their perspective and
humanity and says things of that nature; she was not speaking for us all.
I’m not going to repeat what she said here but the video isn’t that
hard to find on the internet and the comment she made is very clear. Now, the burden shifts to the Golden State
Warriors. LeBron James did everything
right, staring down the woman before walking back to the locker room. He did not engage her verbally or
physically. He walked away from the
confrontation and despite what the primitive side of your brain might be
telling you right now with regards to his actions, he absolutely did the right
thing. Now it’s up to the Warriors. This fan was wearing a Warriors T-shirt and
like it or not, she was representing your fandom to the entire country. If the Warriors are a classy organization,
they will ban that woman from ever setting foot in their arena ever again. If they are a really classy organization, they will apologize to LeBron James on
her behalf.
THE GAMES
But let’s not let one incredibly stupid comment sour our enjoyment of
what has been a fantastic series thus far.
Last year gave us a show of just how beautiful basketball can be when
executed to perfection, brought to us by the San Antonio Spurs. This year, after Kyrie Irving went down with
an injured kneecap, the Cavaliers decided there was only one way they had a
chance in this series. They had to
channel their inner Bad Boys and take basketball back to the ‘80’s. On defense, they had to bump and grind and
throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machine that is the Warriors offense. Thus far, it has been working very well.
On offense, their philosophy has been ever simpler; give the ball to
the best player in the world and let him do his thing. The Cavaliers have decided that they are
going to win or lose on the playmaking abilities of a single player and thus
far, it’s working.
THE HATERS
It always surprises me how easy it is for haters to find something to
hate on and especially when it comes to arguably the most physically gifted
basketball player ever to step on the hardwood.
Some of the criticism is warranted but as time goes by and he checks
accomplishment after accomplishment off his career checklist, the whimpers of
the haters get more and more pathetic.
While this series has been no exception, I’ll let a legend express his
thoughts on LeBron’s series thus far, which happen to coincide with mine…
Even before finding this tweet from Magic, I had already begun to
wonder if we were seeing one of the greatest Finals performances of all
time. Seriously, the guy is thus far averaging 41 points, 12 rebounds, and
8.3 assists per game. Frankly, I don’t
care that he’s only shooting 40.2% from the floor and if you were watching the
games, you wouldn’t care either.
He’s taking a lot of shots that if Irving and Love were in the lineup
would be considered bad shots. He’s
taking some shots that are bad shots even with the cast of characters around
him but consider this… what better option do the Cavs have on offense right
now? JR Smith has been streaky, Dellavedova’s
jumper has been somewhere between functional and bad (despite his 20 points in
game 2, he’s shooting 37% from the floor and 25% from 3 point range), and James
Jones cannot create his own shot. In fact,
only two Cavaliers are shooting better than LeBron’s 40.2%... Kyrie Irving (45.5%)
and Timofey Mozgov (54.2%... and a good portion of that percentage has been due
to the attention that LeBron has taken away from the paint).
There, I’ve done it. I didn’t
want to try to defend him from the haters and alas, that’s what I just
did. The thing that a lot of people are
forgetting is that this was an incredibly good defensive team (the Warriors)
this year. Draymond Green was the runner
up for Defensive Player of the Year.
Andre Iguodala has twice been a member of the NBA All-Defensive team
(once on the 2nd team and once on the 1st). Andrew Bogut isn’t the typical center that
likes to shoot jumpers and stay away from the rim; he’s a true seven footer who
– partially due to several injuries in his past – lives to disrupt shots on the
defensive end. And most importantly of
all, the Warriors know that there is only one offensive threat on the other
team.
THE NUMBERS
How should we measure the greatness of an individual in the NBA
Finals? That is a very good
question. Raw totals are not the best
way to go because as flashy as they can be (and LeBron’s line this year is a
perfect example), they are without context and that is key when it comes to
comparing him to Mikan and Chamberlain and Bird and Magic and… Jordan.
It then occurred to me that not only is LeBron’s performance amazing,
it’s doubly so considering that offensively, the Cavs don’t have another leg to
stand on. Therefore, I had to find a way
to account for the load that he has had to carry through these Finals.
I decided to measure it two different ways and then rank all the
players from the 1955 Finals to today (before 1955, the data gets a little
spotty). First, I measured the
percentage of a team’s points, rebounds, and assists that a player accrued,
totaled it, and ranked the players. Then
I took each of those percentages and assigned them all a percentile rank and
totaled them and ranked them again. I decided
to only look at those three metrics for a couple of reasons. First, it’s available (blocks and steals data
wasn’t available until the 1974 Finals).
Secondly, it requires less normalization.
This is what the total field goal percentage in the NBA Finals has done
over the past 61 years. Yes, there are
plenty of outliers and yes, the r-squared of that trendline isn’t very high but
it’s high enough to say that there is a correlation between the year the series
took place and how well the players shot the ball. Had I used something like field goal
percentage in my analysis, I would have had to normalize for the era and that’s
without even considering the introduction of the three point line.
It is interesting to note from that graph that the 2014 and 2015 Finals
are, so far, wild outliers on opposite ends of the trendline… food for thought.
Anyway, back to the numbers!
LeBron James is averaging 41, 12, and 8.3 in the Finals. Only three players have ever averaged better
than 40 points per game over an entire series; Elgin Baylor in 1962 (284 points
in 7 games), Rick Barry in 1967 (245 points in six games), and Michael Jordan
in 1993 (246 points in six games). Of those
three, only Baylor rebounded more and nobody assisted more than James.
However, the scoring averages of those four teams were: 113.6 for the
1962 Lakers (Baylor), 117.8 for the 1967 Warriors (Barry), 106.7 for the 1993
Bulls (Jordan), and thus far, 97.0 for this year’s Cavaliers. LeBron has scored 42.3% of the Cavaliers’
points in these finals, several percentage points ahead of second place (Jordan
in 1993 at 38.4%).
James has also grabbed 25.2% of the Cavaliers total rebounds and while
that is not in the upper echelon like his scoring numbers, it’s still the 81st
best rank in Finals history… out of 1,357 individual player series. Lastly, James has taken on the role of
playmaker in addition to scoring and has accumulated 52.1% of his team’s assists,
the third highest mark in Finals history, behind Magic Johnson in 1988 (54.8%)
and Magic Johnson in 1981 (64.6%).
What have been the best Finals performance in these three statistical
categories?
After looking through these numbers, my analysis is skewed towards a
point guard that always handled the ball for his team. However, to dismiss Magic’s performances
because of that is to miss the fact that his lines were as follows:
1987: 26.2-8.0-13.0
1988: 21.1-5.7-13.0
1991: 18.6-8.0-12.4
Here’s the thing; if you add LeBron James 41.0-12.0-8.3 into the above
tables, he nestles in at the top by quite a wide margin.
Whether you like it or not, LeBron James is one of the greatest players
to play the game and he is having one of the best Finals ever. Without him, the Warriors would sweep the
Cavs and win each game easily. Instead,
the Warriors face a must-win game four on the road to take back home-court
advantage. If they don’t, they face a
win-or-go-home game at home where they’ve already lost in this series just to
go on the road again in a do-or-die game 6 where you know the Cavs will come
out gunning to avoid a game 7 on the road.
The Warriors are used to playing a free-flowing, open style of ball
that few teams can hang with, let alone beat.
The Cavaliers are taking it away from them on defense and playing
isolation ball on offense, negating the Warriors athleticism and versatility on
defense. And all of it centers on one
player, perhaps the only player in league history that could make this
ugly-ball strategy work.
My prediction for game 4: Golden State makes more flashy buckets,
Cleveland does the unheralded dirty work and takes a 3-1 series lead.
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