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Speaker 1: welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume.
Speaker 1: Happy Monday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had
Speaker 1: a great weekend. We're getting into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 1: our top twenty five NBA players list. We did number
Speaker 1: five Luca dont yesterday. Today we'll be doing number four.
Speaker 1: You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight, all right, let's get
Speaker 1: into it. Number four, My personal favorite player of all time,
Speaker 1: Mr Lebron James. Now, you guys know the drill um
Speaker 1: we're gonna be do and strengths and weaknesses. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be doing the biggest hopes, biggest fears and then biggest
Speaker 1: what if of his career. Starting with strengths. So Lebron
Speaker 1: average thirty eight and six on six true shooting last year.
Speaker 1: That's obviously excellent, albeit in only fifty six games. He
Speaker 1: did not make it to the postseason. Obviously, but Lebron
Speaker 1: is in the rare class of people that you have
Speaker 1: to give a lot of leeway. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: Steph in the previous two seasons because you know, for
Speaker 1: a fact that what he does translates to the postseason,
Speaker 1: and that then missing the playoffs largely had to do
Speaker 1: with the roster and the available talent next to him.
Speaker 1: Kind of a weird parallels there throughout Lebron James and
Speaker 1: Steph's career. So when we're talking about Lebron strengths, there
Speaker 1: is no place we can start other than him attacking
Speaker 1: the basket spend the bread and butter of his entire
Speaker 1: NBA career, and even through nineteen seasons, it's still is
Speaker 1: what he does best, and he does it better than
Speaker 1: basically everybody in the league except for one guy. So
Speaker 1: if I asked you who led the league in restricted
Speaker 1: area makes last year, you'd probably say honest right, and
Speaker 1: you'd be right. He averaged six point six restricted area
Speaker 1: makes per game and finished them at seventy six point six. Now,
Speaker 1: those of you guys who have been listening to this
Speaker 1: entire list from five on, when I come to when
Speaker 1: it comes to bigger wings and big forwards, I've been
Speaker 1: looking for at least two makes per game and at
Speaker 1: least se and the good ones have been around three
Speaker 1: makes per game, right, and then the great ones are
Speaker 1: right around like four Nice is at almost seven per
Speaker 1: game and he's making almost seventy seven percent of him.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. But what if I asked you who number
Speaker 1: two on that list was, It's Lebron James. He averaged
Speaker 1: six point five restricted area makes per games, so only
Speaker 1: one fewer than Janice, and he made them at seventy
Speaker 1: five point three percent. So basically, Lebron James through nineteen seasons,
Speaker 1: with all the mileage on his body, with the horrific
Speaker 1: spacing that the Lakers had last year with Russell Westbrook
Speaker 1: on the court, the twenty two ranked three point efficiency
Speaker 1: team in the league, with all of those factors working
Speaker 1: against him, he was basically every bit as productive and
Speaker 1: efficient getting to the basket as Janice. That that's outrageous,
Speaker 1: and it just is the the latest example of just
Speaker 1: how much of an alien Lebron James is. Now. I
Speaker 1: wanted to take a second here to talk about the
Speaker 1: value of rim pressure because we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time over the postseason talking about Curry, Steph Curry and
Speaker 1: his gravity. Right, I have said that Lebron and Steph,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, are the two best offensive engines that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen, and I believe they are the two
Speaker 1: best offensive engines of all time, but the way they
Speaker 1: do it couldn't be more different, you know, like with
Speaker 1: Steph the uniqueness of his gravity. Because all stars generate attention,
Speaker 1: it goes without saying there's not a player on this
Speaker 1: list that game plans aren't dictating sending multiple defenders too,
Speaker 1: So there's no uniqueness in the double team. The uniqueness
Speaker 1: is in the way with which players send attention. Teams
Speaker 1: send attention to Lebron James and Steph Curry. Now with Steph,
Speaker 1: it's away from the basket. The panic that defenders have
Speaker 1: as they see Steph preparing to catch the basketball somewhere
Speaker 1: and with any light of day to shoot, drives defenders
Speaker 1: away from the basket. That opens up lots of four
Speaker 1: on three opportunities to finish around the rim, sometimes even
Speaker 1: one on o opportunities as a player breaks wide open
Speaker 1: underneath the basket because of a defensive mistake. That's the
Speaker 1: way that curries gravity manifest it's at the basket. With Lebron,
Speaker 1: it's been a more traditional format. He collapses the paint
Speaker 1: and is always kicking out two shooters. That's the proven
Speaker 1: Lebron James formula of the last decade. If you got
Speaker 1: Lebron James healthy on the basketball court, with shooting and
Speaker 1: guys that can play defense, you have a very good
Speaker 1: chance of winning an NBA championship. And at one point one,
Speaker 1: I believe four out of eight or something crazy like that,
Speaker 1: or four out of nine and something like that. But
Speaker 1: that's the way that Lebron's rim pressure manifest You think
Speaker 1: of it as like obviously getting to the basket almost
Speaker 1: seven times a game and making them that's offensive production there.
Speaker 1: There's obviously getting to the foul line. There's obviously the
Speaker 1: defense collapsing in him kicking out two shooters. But there
Speaker 1: are a couple of other elements there too. The value
Speaker 1: of impressure manifesting offensive rebounding. If Lebron James beats the
Speaker 1: defender to the basket and the rim protector has to
Speaker 1: step over to help, even if he misses a lamp
Speaker 1: which he misses one out of four of them, right,
Speaker 1: even if he misses a layup, chances are because the
Speaker 1: rim protector had to step over to help on Lebron,
Speaker 1: that's your big man is now unguarded underneath basket and
Speaker 1: in many cases, over the course of the last few
Speaker 1: years that's been Anthony Davis, and that's been an easy
Speaker 1: offensive rebound putback. The rim pressure just continually impacts winning
Speaker 1: on so many different levels. I always talked about I
Speaker 1: talked about this a lot last year in the playoff
Speaker 1: runt as it pertained to Janice, particularly with the Boston Celtics.
Speaker 1: The idea of rim pressure fatigue on a defense. What
Speaker 1: happened in the first three games of the series, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, man, Grant Williams and Al Horford can
Speaker 1: guard your honest one on one. This is amazing. But
Speaker 1: then what happened is the series progressed. Even Al Horford
Speaker 1: and Grant Williams basically became tissue paper by game four,
Speaker 1: and you honest was getting wherever he wanted, and then
Speaker 1: his numbers took off from there. When you've got guys
Speaker 1: like Lebron who's six nine to seventy and Janice, who's
Speaker 1: like seven foot and I don't even know how much
Speaker 1: he weighs. Those guys when they drive at you, it's
Speaker 1: you can get in front of them one time, you
Speaker 1: can get in front of them two times. He might
Speaker 1: even be able to get in front of them three times,
Speaker 1: maybe more but there will be a point where he
Speaker 1: keeps coming at you and you will relent, and you
Speaker 1: will start to give ground, and he will start to
Speaker 1: finish at the rim. This is what makes Lebron such
Speaker 1: a like, such a dependable playoff player. In the battle
Speaker 1: of wills of trying to keep him from getting to
Speaker 1: the rim or him trying to get to the rim,
Speaker 1: he's the bigger, stronger, more resilient athlete and he's going
Speaker 1: to win nine times out of ten in that pursuit
Speaker 1: of getting to the basket. So when we're talking about
Speaker 1: Lebron strengths, that's the that's the only place that we
Speaker 1: can start attacking the basket. But Lebron James is absolutely
Speaker 1: one of the best three level scorers in basketball right now.
Speaker 1: Even through nineteen seasons, he shot on three point three
Speaker 1: mid range attempts per game. That's really good scoring from
Speaker 1: the mid range. On above the break threes, he took
Speaker 1: se even point four per game and made thirty six
Speaker 1: point four percent of them. That's really good. The best
Speaker 1: above the break three point shooters in the league are
Speaker 1: going to shoot around high volume ones, okay, So Lebron
Speaker 1: in terms of high volume three point shooting is about
Speaker 1: as efficient as you'll find from the good players in
Speaker 1: the league. He took seven pull up jumpers per game
Speaker 1: and made thirty seven point four percent of them. I
Speaker 1: think this is Lebron's biggest edition in the late phase
Speaker 1: of his career. Obviously, in two thousand thirteen he became
Speaker 1: a reliable jump shooter, but back then there was a
Speaker 1: lot of catch and shoot, a lot of face up
Speaker 1: jab steps, not a lot of off the dribble stuff.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a lot earlier in the list,
Speaker 1: but there's a certain amount of fluidity with the basketball
Speaker 1: that you're required to have to be a good off
Speaker 1: the dribble jump shooter. Transitioning from any dribble combination into
Speaker 1: your shooting shooting pocket with good energy transfer so that
Speaker 1: you flow up into a jump shot that you have
Speaker 1: a high percentage chance of making takes a great combination
Speaker 1: of ball handling a bill the in shooting ability that's
Speaker 1: been the best increase in Lebron's career. I started to
Speaker 1: notice that in the late phase of Lebron's career, should
Speaker 1: say I started to notice that right around two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: where I was like, oh, like Lebron's like straight up
Speaker 1: now a fluid pull up jump shooter in the same
Speaker 1: class as like a Paul George or Kevin Durant things
Speaker 1: along those lines. Doesn't quite have the same level of
Speaker 1: fluidity as those guys. But in terms of the result,
Speaker 1: you can't argue with the results. Like in NBA games
Speaker 1: facing NBA defenses, if you're taking seven pull up threes
Speaker 1: seven pull up jumpers a game and you're making over
Speaker 1: thirty percent of them, you're a good pull up jump shooter,
Speaker 1: but you can't argue with the results there. You guys
Speaker 1: might remember a game earlier this season, I think it
Speaker 1: was against the Warriors where Lebron had a monster score game.
Speaker 1: He might even had fifty. And if you guys remember
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant, he's either on Instagram or on Twitter, but
Speaker 1: shouted out Lebron for his shot making display in that
Speaker 1: particular game. So what what is shot making as opposed
Speaker 1: to any other type of made field goal? To me,
Speaker 1: shot making is about the improvisation, and it's been another
Speaker 1: thing that Lebron is added later in his career that
Speaker 1: has helped, especially in clutch situations and in some of
Speaker 1: the volume scoring away from the basket. So to me,
Speaker 1: if I was working with high school kids like I
Speaker 1: do every morning during the week, I would work on
Speaker 1: shots that would come within the flow of an offense.
Speaker 1: Right like we have a ball screen offense, and then
Speaker 1: we have a five out offense and the ball screen offense.
Speaker 1: I'll have them work on shooting jump shots as they
Speaker 1: come off of the ball screen, if the making a read,
Speaker 1: if the defender backs down, I build everything off of
Speaker 1: a high hesitation so that they can always flow into
Speaker 1: the next move. If you're in high hesitation, you can
Speaker 1: go to the rim, you can go left, you can
Speaker 1: go right, you can cross over, you can step back,
Speaker 1: you can straight up pull up. It's like the ultimate
Speaker 1: kind of like barrier movers, I should say like bridge
Speaker 1: move between all moves. Those are shots that come within
Speaker 1: the flow of the offense. Oh, he's way off of me.
Speaker 1: Let me raise up and knock this down. Shot making
Speaker 1: is about improvisation. Shot making is about like I don't
Speaker 1: have as much time on the shot clock, or I
Speaker 1: happen to find myself in an opening here, but my
Speaker 1: feet are somewhat unorthodox, Like I don't have my feet
Speaker 1: set normally. Maybe the ball is not in its normal
Speaker 1: spot in my shooting pocket. Maybe the defender is contesting
Speaker 1: in a different way, so I need to shoot higher
Speaker 1: over the top, or you know, whatever the whatever the
Speaker 1: specific parameters are, it's about cultivating a unique shot to
Speaker 1: fit your situation. When it comes to shot making, no
Speaker 1: two shots are alike. It's kind of just like I said, improvisational,
Speaker 1: and it specifically helps you in bailout possessions at the
Speaker 1: end of shot clocks and at the end of basketball games,
Speaker 1: when defenses are so locked in that you're in rhythm.
Speaker 1: Shots don't really exist anywhere on the court. You're not
Speaker 1: going to come down with a minute left in the
Speaker 1: game or on a high pick and roll and get
Speaker 1: a wide open three out of it. That's what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It might involve you hitting an unorthodox triple combination to
Speaker 1: get to a specific spot on the floor where you
Speaker 1: see a little bit of an opening and the defenders
Speaker 1: still contests you really well, and you have to adjust
Speaker 1: your release, maybe shoot with more arc or whatever it
Speaker 1: is to get it over the top and to get
Speaker 1: into score. That is high end shot making. If I
Speaker 1: was describing the best shot maker that I had ever
Speaker 1: seen in NBA history, this is what Kobe Bryant was
Speaker 1: best at the improvisational scoring, the ability to adjust different
Speaker 1: elements of his skill set to fit really bizarre single scenarios,
Speaker 1: whether it's like three pump fakes before rising over the top,
Speaker 1: switching to his left hand in the lane to make
Speaker 1: a shot, the wild array of our the wild array
Speaker 1: of jump shots that he made in his career. That
Speaker 1: was what Kobe did better than anybody who ever did
Speaker 1: it was shot making. But that's another thing that Lebron
Speaker 1: added a lot towards the end, towards this phase of
Speaker 1: his career, And I thought it was cool that Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant pointed that out after that specifical and State Warriors game.
Speaker 1: Like I said, all those things that I just pointed
Speaker 1: out amounts to Lebron being as good of a three
Speaker 1: level score as we have in the league right now,
Speaker 1: even after nineteen years. He's the best post up wing
Speaker 1: in basketball. There are better post up players, but they're
Speaker 1: usually bigs. In all. Among all players who had at
Speaker 1: least three post up possessions per game this year, Lebron
Speaker 1: ranked fifth and points per possession per post up, and
Speaker 1: the four guys ahead of him were all centers and
Speaker 1: They're all names that you could guess your kitchen beat
Speaker 1: eight and so on and so forth. Lebron is the
Speaker 1: best wing at posting up that we have in the
Speaker 1: league that specifically helps him as a passer. We talked
Speaker 1: to yesterday a little bit about the difference between with Luca.
Speaker 1: We talked about the difference between high end playmaking and
Speaker 1: like kind of like regular making reads right, and I
Speaker 1: talked about how with the high end play playmaking, it's
Speaker 1: anticipatory it rather than reactive. It's not like you see
Speaker 1: an opening. You see a potential to create an opening,
Speaker 1: and then you manipulate the defense to get them where
Speaker 1: you need them to be for you to make that opening.
Speaker 1: Why are so many big bad passing out of the
Speaker 1: post because they actually see where the defense is at,
Speaker 1: but they don't see the opening because the defense is
Speaker 1: playing in a passing lane or something, and so they'll
Speaker 1: panic and they'll kick the ball out. Lebron will see
Speaker 1: that he'll be on the right block, right, and they'll
Speaker 1: be helping out of the week side corner, so left corner,
Speaker 1: and they might be positioned in a way where the
Speaker 1: opening is not there. But rather than panic and pass
Speaker 1: it out, he'll work a little bit deeper into the lane,
Speaker 1: or he'll attack the double team to get a little
Speaker 1: bit better of an angle to find that shooter in
Speaker 1: a spot where he can actually get him the basketball.
Speaker 1: I always talk about this when I'm talking to Anthony Davison.
Speaker 1: His passing, there's a huge there's a huge element of
Speaker 1: patients when it comes to attacking double teams. When you panic,
Speaker 1: you won't be able to make them pay. But if
Speaker 1: you're methodical and embrace the double team, you will be
Speaker 1: able to find the openings and make them pay for
Speaker 1: double teaming you. This is what makes Lebron such a
Speaker 1: devastate post up player. If you leave him on an
Speaker 1: island to score, he's gonna score better than any wing
Speaker 1: in all of basketball. If you send the double team,
Speaker 1: he's gonna methodically wait until he has an opening, and
Speaker 1: he's going to make you pay for doing it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: flowing kind of further into his his passing ability. We
Speaker 1: talked a lot about game management when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the Boston Celtics. If you guys remember um and
Speaker 1: their inability to understand the flow of a basketball game,
Speaker 1: like obviously, in an NBA game, you have like maybe
Speaker 1: a hundred possessions. As a player who plays a normal shift,
Speaker 1: a set of shifts you're gonna have maybe eighty possessions.
Speaker 1: You have to understand the value of all those eighty
Speaker 1: possessions together rather than one specific possession. Lebron, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is the best game manager in basketball. Nobody understands pace
Speaker 1: and flow more than him. Nobody understands rhythm more than him.
Speaker 1: Nobody understands role player confidence and how to feed guys
Speaker 1: and keep them feeling good about themselves. Lebron also has
Speaker 1: an amazing understanding of pivotal moments, like understanding the right
Speaker 1: time in the game to hit the gas versus the
Speaker 1: time to pull back and let things go there. It's
Speaker 1: a matter of conserving energy and understanding the different levels
Speaker 1: of impact for each basket. Two points is not just
Speaker 1: two points. Two points in a specific moment in a
Speaker 1: game can be lethal. My favorite example of this two eighteen,
Speaker 1: first round of the playoffs. Pacers are up two games
Speaker 1: to one, the Calves are on the road in Indiana.
Speaker 1: Lebron is clearly tired. If you remember how this series progressed,
Speaker 1: Indiana was so much more athletic that Cleveland would pretty
Speaker 1: frequently get out to big starts, but then Indiana would
Speaker 1: creep back up at the end of each game, and
Speaker 1: then it became a dogfight at the end, even as
Speaker 1: the series progressed later on. But in this particular game,
Speaker 1: the same thing happened. Calves jumped out to a big start,
Speaker 1: Indiana came out like gangbusters end of the third quarter,
Speaker 1: early fourth, and the Calves were in some trouble and
Speaker 1: lebron you could tell what was running out of gas
Speaker 1: and he was being guarded by boy On Bogdanovitch. She
Speaker 1: was pretty good at guarding big forwards, like we talked
Speaker 1: about when we were talking about the potential Jazz Lakers
Speaker 1: trade earlier last week. But as that game was progressing,
Speaker 1: I think lebron knew that he only had a handful
Speaker 1: of explosive moves left in the gas tank, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering why he wasn't attacking boy On Bogdanovitch enough,
Speaker 1: Like I felt like there was some missed opportunity there.
Speaker 1: But then Kyle Korver hit a couple of threes, and
Speaker 1: when he hit the couple of three, suddenly the Calves
Speaker 1: were up by four with I think like two minutes
Speaker 1: left or something like that, and suddenly they get a
Speaker 1: stop and Lebron dribbles the ball up the right wing
Speaker 1: of the floor and I'll never forget it. He just
Speaker 1: no hesitation, didn't wait for the team to get into
Speaker 1: his set. He just did a hard right handed dribble
Speaker 1: into his left hand and then spun around boy On
Speaker 1: Bogdanovitch and finished at the rim. It's completely unstoppable. Boyan
Speaker 1: had no chance. All of a sudden, they're up six
Speaker 1: with two minutes left. That six with two minutes left
Speaker 1: feels kind of like the game is over. Suddenly the
Speaker 1: energy got sucked out of the Indiana Arena. Suddenly you
Speaker 1: could see all the young players on Indiana, like Victor Oladipo,
Speaker 1: get tight and struggle in that setting that was in.
Speaker 1: That was two points from Lebron that carried a massive
Speaker 1: amount of impact on the tenor and tone of the game.
Speaker 1: Those are little game management pieces. He could have hit
Speaker 1: that same move earlier in the fourth quarter when the
Speaker 1: game was tied, or when they were down by two
Speaker 1: or whatever it was, But if he did it then,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have had the same psychological impact and would
Speaker 1: have still drained his gas tank. The way those super
Speaker 1: aggressive moves to the rim do. That's that's game management.
Speaker 1: That's understanding the impact of each individual basket. That's understanding
Speaker 1: the flow of the game. I believe Lebron knew that
Speaker 1: he was gonna need his teammates to make some shots
Speaker 1: in order to have a chance to win that game.
Speaker 1: I think he believed that they would, and he was
Speaker 1: deliberately holding something in reserve because he knew he would
Speaker 1: need it at the end of the game. The best
Speaker 1: game manager in all of basketball. Last thing, on his passing.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit yesterday with Luca,
Speaker 1: but I talked about with the top tier playmakers with Luca, Lebron, Yokich,
Speaker 1: and Chris Paul. It's not just that they make advanced reads,
Speaker 1: it's that they are relentless in doing so. When you
Speaker 1: are relentless in making reads, it makes it so that
Speaker 1: teams are panicked to are terrified of actually sending help.
Speaker 1: That is what allows Lebron to be as he finished,
Speaker 1: as efficient and productive of a rim finisher. Is the
Speaker 1: honest Jane is many times the athlete that Lebron is
Speaker 1: at this point in his career. Yet Lebron is just
Speaker 1: as impactful getting to the rim. Why is that? It's
Speaker 1: literally because of his passing ability. This is why I
Speaker 1: always say with Joannice that the number one thing that
Speaker 1: I'm watching for his development is his asking ability. This
Speaker 1: is why I said in the Boston Celtics series that
Speaker 1: the reason why I'm all in on you honest now
Speaker 1: is I saw a lot of higher level playmaking from
Speaker 1: Janice there. Paranoying teams into thinking they cannot send help
Speaker 1: will allow you to operate on an island more frequently.
Speaker 1: And when you operate on an island and your Lebron James,
Speaker 1: you're going to get to the rim at will and
Speaker 1: you're going to finish. Obviously, everything Lebron James with that
Speaker 1: does with the basketball translates to the playoffs. I I
Speaker 1: would argue that Lebron is the most consistent playoff performer
Speaker 1: of all time. You know, MJ's my personal greatest player
Speaker 1: of all time. But MJ had some shooting volatility, right Like,
Speaker 1: if you caught him, you know, probably once or twice
Speaker 1: a series, he just wouldn't shoot well, and that would
Speaker 1: massively impact his overall massively massively limit his overall impact
Speaker 1: on the game. There is no player in the game
Speaker 1: of basketball that I've ever seen that if they were
Speaker 1: walking into a big game, I would feel more confident
Speaker 1: in their ability to come through for their team. Why
Speaker 1: is that all of the things that I have said
Speaker 1: that I value most about playoff basketball. He's strong, so
Speaker 1: he thrives in the physicality. He's versatile on both ends
Speaker 1: of the floor. On offense, he can attack you from
Speaker 1: literally any spot on the floor, and he's efficient from
Speaker 1: literally all of the spots. On defense, he can help
Speaker 1: you defensively and literally any spot on the floor and
Speaker 1: literally all against any type of player. He can guard
Speaker 1: Jamaal Murray, he can guard Nicola Yokich, he can help
Speaker 1: at the rim, he can make defensive rotations and close
Speaker 1: out on shooters. He can do absolutely anything defensively, and
Speaker 1: then he's got the high end playmaking to complement his
Speaker 1: offensive scoring ability. Those are all that's checking every box
Speaker 1: for playoff effect, for impacting winning in the playoffs, and
Speaker 1: that is why he is the most consistent playoff performer
Speaker 1: of all time in terms of you know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a lot about Lebron's leadership today, especially when we
Speaker 1: get to his weaknesses. Um, but there is no better
Speaker 1: leader you could have for a team with real championship potential,
Speaker 1: Like if you've got a team like the Lakers, where
Speaker 1: you've got a legitimate co star, really solid role players,
Speaker 1: good coach that fits the talent and and and healthy
Speaker 1: and everything kind of just comes together in that scenario,
Speaker 1: you could not have a better leader. Because Lebron understands
Speaker 1: the highs and the lows. He understands the bigger picture
Speaker 1: of the two game regular season and the sixteen wins
Speaker 1: that you need to win an NBA championship. In the playoffs,
Speaker 1: he understands playoff chess matches. I've done this before. I
Speaker 1: don't know the numbers off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: but Lebron James's record in late series games like Game five, six,
Speaker 1: and seven is insane. He falls behind and almost every
Speaker 1: playoff series he plays, it seems like but it's because
Speaker 1: he will feel things out. Like as he gets down
Speaker 1: one oh in a series, he doesn't panic. As he
Speaker 1: gets down to one in a series, he doesn't panic.
Speaker 1: He just makes reads on what's happening. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: where they're killing us. These are where areas of opportunities
Speaker 1: are areas of opportunity are I'm gonna outlast this guy physically.
Speaker 1: You know, if I can just win this game and
Speaker 1: get us back home, we might be able to steal
Speaker 1: this series. That That is the thing that Lebron James
Speaker 1: does best. He understands the flow of those playoffs series.
Speaker 1: He's as good a playoff chess master master that we
Speaker 1: have in the game. All of this amounts to, as
Speaker 1: we get to the end of his strengths here, he's
Speaker 1: still a top two offensive engine in all of basketball
Speaker 1: when healthy, in my opinion, him and staff. Now, Yokis
Speaker 1: fans were all over my case yesterday as the volume
Speaker 1: tweeted out our ten through six and and look, guys
Speaker 1: like you should know in advance. This is the way
Speaker 1: I do player evaluations. I'm always going to give Creed
Speaker 1: instant leeway to the guys who've been there longer. And
Speaker 1: here it goes both ways. Ten years from now, if
Speaker 1: Yokich is still in the conversation for the best player
Speaker 1: in the world, I will be advocating for him when
Speaker 1: everyone else is trying to push the next young guy
Speaker 1: to the top of the list. This is just the
Speaker 1: way that I'm gonna error on the side of giving
Speaker 1: additional leeway to the guys who have been there and
Speaker 1: done that so many times before. So as good as
Speaker 1: I think Yokich is. If it's a if it's a
Speaker 1: playoff series where I've got two good basketball teams that
Speaker 1: are pretty equal in talent, and I've got Yoki leading
Speaker 1: one team and I've got a healthy Lebron James leading
Speaker 1: the other, I'm picking Lebron James. I don't think that's crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's disrespectful to Yokich. I think that's
Speaker 1: just the reality of the way that I see the
Speaker 1: game and the things that I value um defensively. Last
Speaker 1: note for Lebron on the positives. When he's engaged, he's
Speaker 1: an all defense level defender. When he's engaged. He struggles
Speaker 1: with dribble contain a lot more than he used to
Speaker 1: as he's lost a little bit of foot speed, but
Speaker 1: he's also gotten a lot better as a back line defender,
Speaker 1: particularly as a communicator and quarterback of the defense. Had
Speaker 1: a lot of good games like that this year, few
Speaker 1: and far between as a result of his lack of
Speaker 1: defensive effort overall. But we're gonna get to that and
Speaker 1: the weaknesses, all right, Lebron's weaknesses. I tried really hard
Speaker 1: to come up with some some a list here, because
Speaker 1: he's a player that doesn't really have a lot of weaknesses,
Speaker 1: and even his weaknesses are more like weak relative to
Speaker 1: his strengths rather than weak relative to the rest of
Speaker 1: the league. So, for instance, Lebron's health is on on
Speaker 1: his list of weaknesses. We would argue that Lebron started
Speaker 1: to show some examples of unreliable health this year, right,
Speaker 1: and he still played fifty six games. Like a down
Speaker 1: year for Lebron for health resulted in him playing a
Speaker 1: lot more than the vast majority of players who have
Speaker 1: had injury problems throughout their career. The big one that
Speaker 1: concerned me this year was the nie swelling at the
Speaker 1: end of the year. You know, there's a difference between like, oh,
Speaker 1: I sprained my ankle, you know, like last year when
Speaker 1: someone fell into his ankle, like there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot you can do about that, and then literally you're
Speaker 1: just playing basketball and one day your nie swells up.
Speaker 1: Like that was concerning Lebron literally towards the end of
Speaker 1: the year year last year, his knee just swelled up,
Speaker 1: swelled up, and he had to stop playing for a
Speaker 1: little while. That sounds like an old man injury. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely some some concern on the health front with Lebron.
Speaker 1: Ankle sprains also seemed to be lasting longer. Lebron used
Speaker 1: to sprain his ankle and be fine before the game
Speaker 1: was over. Many times he'd stay in the game right
Speaker 1: after the sprain, but it just seemed like when he
Speaker 1: would sprain his ankle this last year, he'd missed time.
Speaker 1: That's very unusual compared to the way Lebron is. Health
Speaker 1: is absolutely weakness at this point in Lebron's career. This one,
Speaker 1: this is probably Lebron's biggest weakness right now, and I
Speaker 1: understand it, but it can be some of the most
Speaker 1: frustrating things. It could be the it's one of the
Speaker 1: most frustrating things about watching him though. He just goes
Speaker 1: through these extended stretches of regular season malaise, and that
Speaker 1: specifically manifests on the defensive end of the floor. You
Speaker 1: know what, one of the most one of the debates
Speaker 1: that we have all the time on Twitter is is
Speaker 1: Lebron James a good defensive player? And that's a loaded
Speaker 1: question because when he's trying, he's an all defense level defender.
Speaker 1: But last year he wasn't trying on about of nights.
Speaker 1: So I think that means you're a bad defensive player
Speaker 1: in the regular season, like unless Lebron shows us differently
Speaker 1: this year. If we're trying to project the level of
Speaker 1: defensive impact Lebron will have on the Lakers this year,
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be a negative because of what
Speaker 1: we saw last year with his super inconsistent defensive effort. Now,
Speaker 1: he did say in that um excuse me and that
Speaker 1: Chris Haynes piece, he did say that he believes that
Speaker 1: the night and night out consistent effort is a legit
Speaker 1: area of opportunity for the this year's Lakers team. So
Speaker 1: maybe he will recapture what he was in. But I
Speaker 1: would argue that's Lebron's biggest weakness right now, night in
Speaker 1: night out in the regular season. He doesn't care enough
Speaker 1: to try on the defensive end of the floor, and
Speaker 1: there's a good reason for that. I think he gets
Speaker 1: bored in the two game regular season. I think he
Speaker 1: sees the bigger picture almost too well. I think he's
Speaker 1: played in thousands of NBA basketball games and doesn't get
Speaker 1: adrenaline anymore. I think there are a bunch of reasons why,
Speaker 1: but the reality is is he doesn't try hard enough,
Speaker 1: consistently enough on the defensive end of the floor. This
Speaker 1: is where I have to get into his leadership again,
Speaker 1: because I believe that Lebron's inconsistent defensive effort last year
Speaker 1: actually was a huge driving force behind the rest of
Speaker 1: the team not defending, because if you're Carmelo Anthony and
Speaker 1: you're trying to decide whether or not to really lock
Speaker 1: in on a defensive possession and your buddy Lebron is not,
Speaker 1: you're probably not going too Even good defensive players like
Speaker 1: Avery Bradley from this year was a bad defensive player
Speaker 1: for the Lakers. I would argue that has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with Lebron James and the example that he
Speaker 1: set from the top down, Anthony Davis stopped making extra
Speaker 1: effort plays that he made. I believe a lot of
Speaker 1: that has to do with Lebron James. As the leader,
Speaker 1: it is your job to set the tone so that
Speaker 1: your teammates follow and then as a team you can
Speaker 1: be a great defensive unit. This is this is where
Speaker 1: we have to get into his leadership because, like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Lebron is probably the best leader you could
Speaker 1: have on a team that actually has championship capability, But
Speaker 1: he's probably the worst leader you can have on a
Speaker 1: team that doesn't have championship capability. If Lebron James does
Speaker 1: not believe his team can win, you can absolutely guarantee
Speaker 1: a handful of things are gonna happen, and there's a
Speaker 1: good chance some other things are going to happen. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's what we can guarantee is going to happen. If
Speaker 1: he's on a team that he doesn't believe in, he
Speaker 1: will let the defensive rope, he will have really bad
Speaker 1: body language and appeared to be blaming his teammates for
Speaker 1: a lot of things that take place over the course
Speaker 1: of the game, even things that are his fault from
Speaker 1: time to time. Those are facts. And then there's also
Speaker 1: some possibility for passive aggressiveness and pouting. Now, he did
Speaker 1: not do that last year, to his credit. That was
Speaker 1: more of an earlier Lebron James problem, particularly when he
Speaker 1: was in Cleveland the second time. But when Lebron doesn't
Speaker 1: believe in his team, you can count on him letting
Speaker 1: go of the defensive rope. You can count on him
Speaker 1: having bad body language, and he might resort to some
Speaker 1: pouting and passive aggressiveness. That means you're a bad leader
Speaker 1: for that specific situation. I've always called Lebron a fair
Speaker 1: weather leader and and and I think again, the way
Speaker 1: Lebron would probably describe it to you as like who
Speaker 1: cares we didn't have a chance to win that year?
Speaker 1: And you know what, he's not wrong, But there are
Speaker 1: going to be people that are turned off by that
Speaker 1: because they would prefer the co me Brian approach, approach
Speaker 1: where he goes down with the ship, meaning like, even
Speaker 1: if he doesn't believe in his team, he just is
Speaker 1: gonna try like hell to win every single game, because
Speaker 1: that's just what his character is. But I've talked to
Speaker 1: many Lakers fans who have told me that they wish
Speaker 1: they could go on a time machine and go back
Speaker 1: to two thousand thirteen and tell Kobe to stop and
Speaker 1: to give up because his body broke trying to save
Speaker 1: that sinking ship. So again, different types of leadership styles.
Speaker 1: But like Lebron is the kind of guy when the
Speaker 1: going gets really tough, like unsalvageably tough. He's not a
Speaker 1: foxhole guy. That's just kind of the reality. We talked
Speaker 1: about this earlier, but on defense, he can start to
Speaker 1: he's at this phase of his career he struggles to
Speaker 1: contain quicker players off the dribble, and then you know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting pretty nippicky here. But he's a below average
Speaker 1: free throw shooter. Last year he actually did get up
Speaker 1: to seventy from three from the free throw line, which
Speaker 1: is a nice little sign of improvement. But he was
Speaker 1: on three consecutive seasons in the sixties before that. It's
Speaker 1: funny people would always tell me, like, oh, Lebron is
Speaker 1: not clutch. Look at he missed that clutch free throw,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, it's not a clutch thing, it's
Speaker 1: a bad free throw shooting thing. Like Lebron is one
Speaker 1: of the both the best clutch basketball players of all time.
Speaker 1: Why would he be not scared in any clutch situation
Speaker 1: but then be terrified at the free throw line. That's
Speaker 1: not the case. He's just he's a sixties six percent
Speaker 1: free throw shooter during those years, and so if you're
Speaker 1: taking two free throws, there's a very good chance he's
Speaker 1: gonna miss one statistically, because that's just what that that
Speaker 1: you're gonna miss literally, uh, you know what, what is
Speaker 1: that thirty three out of every hundred free throws, Like,
Speaker 1: that's just that's just what's gonna happen. And then and last,
Speaker 1: but not least again really nitpicky, but his end of
Speaker 1: the game shot selection, he can be a little bit
Speaker 1: like Lebron will pound the air out of the basketball
Speaker 1: at the end of games, work to clock down and
Speaker 1: take a step back three Now, I I think that
Speaker 1: it disrupts the flow of his own offense a little bit.
Speaker 1: Lebron would probably counter that it disrupts their offense as well,
Speaker 1: and he's right. When you strangle the pace of the game,
Speaker 1: it affects the rhythm of every player on the floor.
Speaker 1: But there are times where I wish he didn't settle
Speaker 1: so much for tough step back three point shots at
Speaker 1: the end of games. That's all really nitpicky, Like look,
Speaker 1: I mean, look at that. We just went through Lebron's weaknesses,
Speaker 1: and it's health. He was only able to play fifties
Speaker 1: six games last year regular season. Malaise happens to just
Speaker 1: about every veteran player and consider inconsistent leader unlimited teams.
Speaker 1: The teams are limited anyway, he struggles to dribble contained,
Speaker 1: but he's a good defensive player when he's locked in.
Speaker 1: He's a below average free throw shooter, but he seems
Speaker 1: to have fixed it last year, and he can be
Speaker 1: a little tricky with any game shot selection. Lebron's weaknesses,
Speaker 1: they're all small weaknesses. It's just a reality, and that's
Speaker 1: why he's a top five player in this league. Alright.
Speaker 1: Greatest hopes, I would, I sincerely hope that Lebron is
Speaker 1: able to stay healthy for you more years, because I
Speaker 1: do believe We talked about this before, but I believe
Speaker 1: he has the potential for a really productive post prime
Speaker 1: because of his ability to pass the basketball and because
Speaker 1: of his size and strength, he can become a twenty
Speaker 1: point per game point forward that is a super productive
Speaker 1: top fIF team player in this league and capable of
Speaker 1: being the second best player on a championship team. Which
Speaker 1: brings us to Anthony Davis, because obviously the ideal outcome
Speaker 1: for Lebron as he wins a couple more championships as
Speaker 1: a Laker, but that does not happen without Anthony Davis.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean Anthony Davis just in general. I
Speaker 1: mean the version of Anthony Davis He is the key
Speaker 1: to the end of Lebron James career. No player, not
Speaker 1: even the greatest stars in NBA history, can consistently win
Speaker 1: without great talent surrounding them, and the Lakers do not
Speaker 1: have great supporting talent, so they need Anthony Davis to
Speaker 1: be the top five player he was in the bubble
Speaker 1: for Lebron to be able to have enough talent around
Speaker 1: him for him to be able to win championships as
Speaker 1: he gets into closer to his forties. And then obviously
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving would help. I was thinking about this a
Speaker 1: lot earlier today as I was diving into Lebron's numbers.
Speaker 1: You know, some of that late game shot selection stuff.
Speaker 1: He can have Kyrie help in those situations. There's there's
Speaker 1: skill sets compliment each other so well, like we saw
Speaker 1: from Cleveland, what what an What an excellent addition to
Speaker 1: potentially help Lebron age more gracefully. And then obviously, if
Speaker 1: Lebron gets a couple more titles, he has a legitimate
Speaker 1: goat case. Lebron's case has always been longevity in the
Speaker 1: variety of his success, but MG's got this dominance factor.
Speaker 1: It's like six titles in eight years that's ridiculous, And
Speaker 1: the only other player has ever mentioned that that conversation
Speaker 1: is Kareem who has six titles, but towards the end,
Speaker 1: he wasn't the best player on those teams, and in
Speaker 1: many cases wasn't even really a star. He was just
Speaker 1: kind of like a role player. Right. Well, if le
Speaker 1: Bron James gets two more championships as a legitimate bona
Speaker 1: fide star and is receiving finals MVP votes, maybe even
Speaker 1: winning Finals MVP, that could be what gets him to
Speaker 1: the point where he can match MJ's dominance and have
Speaker 1: the longevity that puts him over the top. My greatest
Speaker 1: fear with Lebron is the Lakers incompetence. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: the Lakers have a responsibility to them first, and I'm
Speaker 1: a big team overplayer guy just in general, because I
Speaker 1: don't think you can win unless you have that approach. However,
Speaker 1: I don't think you could pick a worse group of
Speaker 1: individuals to oversee the end of Lebron James's career than
Speaker 1: Rob Polink and Jeannie Buss. And that's really unfortunate because
Speaker 1: everything that I just talked about involving this potential post
Speaker 1: prime where Lebron wins a couple more championships that relies
Speaker 1: on competence, that depends on savvy moves being made, and
Speaker 1: I just I just don't see a universe where those
Speaker 1: moves are made. And that's and that's really unfortunate. But
Speaker 1: but who knows. Maybe maybe this Kyrie Irving thing will
Speaker 1: allow Rob Blinky, Rob Blink and Jennie Bust to fall
Speaker 1: asked backwards into a good basketball team and Lebron, Kyrie
Speaker 1: and a D will be able to cover up all
Speaker 1: the flaws. Again, I guess we'll see. The other big
Speaker 1: one is a d s lack of motivation. Like I
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, they need Anthony Davis to be a
Speaker 1: top tier superstar in order to win championships. A D
Speaker 1: hasn't cared much since the bubble. That's what it caused
Speaker 1: him to show up in camp out of shape two
Speaker 1: years in a row. You don't shoot eighteen percent from
Speaker 1: three over the course of the season unless you're not
Speaker 1: working hard enough on your jump shot, and that's clearly
Speaker 1: what is going on with Anthony Davis. Obviously, injuries play
Speaker 1: a role, but if he was more diligent with his work,
Speaker 1: he would be a better three point shooter. That's just
Speaker 1: that's just the reality, and so a d S lack
Speaker 1: of motivation is one of my greatest fears for the
Speaker 1: end of Lebron James career. And lastly, injuries. Obviously, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if any of these things go right if
Speaker 1: in your twenty Lebron has some sort of season ending injury,
Speaker 1: and obviously all it takes is one of those to
Speaker 1: disrupt the health of the body enough to end someone's career,
Speaker 1: just like it happened with Kobe Bryant. All right. Lastly,
Speaker 1: the biggest what if of Lebron's career, Now, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, like, for instance, what if Dwyane Wade
Speaker 1: stayed healthy, then he probably never leaves Miami and they
Speaker 1: probably win more. What if Katie doesn't go to Golden State,
Speaker 1: Calves probably win in two thousand seventeen, at least maybe twoeen.
Speaker 1: What if Kyrie and Kevin Love stay healthy in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, I think Calves win that championship if they do.
Speaker 1: Those are there's a lot of what ifs there. Lebron
Speaker 1: has had a long career and he's won a lot
Speaker 1: of basketball games, so there's obviously gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of what IL is, but I wanted to go. It
Speaker 1: was something that we haven't already talked about at length,
Speaker 1: uh in some other capacity else we're on the show.
Speaker 1: So here's my greatest one. If if I was Lebron,
Speaker 1: what if Cleveland got him a legit co star early on?
Speaker 1: You know when when when we're comparing Kobe and Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan and step and Lebron, too often people will say
Speaker 1: things like, well, Lebron's mercenary. All he wants to do
Speaker 1: is go from one team to the next. Every time
Speaker 1: things don't go right, he wants to shuffle the deck.
Speaker 1: You probably all heard that in some capacity before, obviously
Speaker 1: glossing over the simple fact that m J got Scottie
Speaker 1: Pippen right away, well not right away, but pretty quickly
Speaker 1: when he got into Chicago, and he always was playing
Speaker 1: alongside a bona fide star, so he had no reason
Speaker 1: to want to go elsewhere. He always had enough talent
Speaker 1: to win. Kobe Bryant literally played next to Shaquille O'Neal.
Speaker 1: Then when he lost Shock, he went on sports radio
Speaker 1: like every day demanding a trade. And then he got
Speaker 1: Palla Gasol and one again and he was happy. So
Speaker 1: would Kobe have been a mercenary too if he didn't
Speaker 1: have Shack or would he actually have been if they
Speaker 1: didn't get pau Gasol, And then looking at Steph Curry,
Speaker 1: obviously they're one of the most well run organized organizations
Speaker 1: in the NBA, arguably the most well run organization. And
Speaker 1: he has consistently been at a talent advantage throughout his career.
Speaker 1: This last year was one of the few seasons in
Speaker 1: his career where he kind of overcame a talent disadvantage
Speaker 1: two steps credit. That's why he's a top six player
Speaker 1: of all time. But the point is is Lebron was
Speaker 1: a victim of his circumstance in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: They did not get him a Scottie Pippen, or at
Speaker 1: Clay Thompson and Dremond Green, or Shaquille O'Neil, or a
Speaker 1: Pau Gasol early on. He did not have that, and
Speaker 1: he wasted seven years of his career trying to float
Speaker 1: way overmatched rosters, two lofty goals of trying to win
Speaker 1: a championship. And I believe that that actually led to
Speaker 1: Lebron's mistrust in organizations that caused him to behave the
Speaker 1: way he did over the course of the next a decade,
Speaker 1: being mistrust full of pat Riley and wanting to leave
Speaker 1: because he wanted to cut Mike Miller, for instance, or
Speaker 1: doing one and once the entire time he was in
Speaker 1: Cleveland except for the end, or even now with him
Speaker 1: withholding his extension potentially to try to leverage the Lakers
Speaker 1: into making moves. I believe that the Calves being so
Speaker 1: incompetent early led to Lebron mistrusting organizations and then feeling
Speaker 1: like he had to do it himself, feeling like he
Speaker 1: had to be the one to communicate with Dwayne Wade,
Speaker 1: to communicate with Anthony Davis, to communicate with Kevin Love,
Speaker 1: to communicate with Kyrie Irving. He felt like he had
Speaker 1: to be the g M. And so even though Lebron's
Speaker 1: had a remarkably successful career with that strategy, I think
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting what if. What if Lebron got
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis in his third season and played his entire
Speaker 1: career alongside Anthony Davis. He probably never leaves Cleveland. He
Speaker 1: probably still wins at least four championships, and the entire
Speaker 1: kind of like aura of his career as a different
Speaker 1: vibe than the one it has now. I think it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting one if he's one of the few
Speaker 1: players that's if we if we're going at the if
Speaker 1: we're going down the list of the best players of
Speaker 1: all time, all of them were drafted alongside all time
Speaker 1: great players MJ with Scottie Pippen, right like Magic Johnson
Speaker 1: with Kareem Larry Bird, with everybody that was playing for
Speaker 1: the Celtics. You know, Kobe Bryant was shock. Lebron's the
Speaker 1: odd one out there. Lebron is the one that spent
Speaker 1: the first near decade of his career playing alongside very
Speaker 1: limited talent, and it would be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: where his career is right now if that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: Last note on Lebron. You know, when when it comes
Speaker 1: to these player rankings, it's really difficult to do because
Speaker 1: everyone's so crazy. Like Lebron fans still think he's the
Speaker 1: best player in the world, most of them, and that's crazy.
Speaker 1: He is going to be in his twentieth season and
Speaker 1: honest is just better than him right now, you know.
Speaker 1: But then Lebron detractors don't even think he's top five,
Speaker 1: which is a massive disrespect to what he can still
Speaker 1: do on the basketball court when he's healthy. I feel
Speaker 1: like four is safe for me. What I'm trying to
Speaker 1: accomplish there by by putting him at four is expressing
Speaker 1: the obvious fact that he's not the best player in
Speaker 1: the world anymore. But on any given night, if he's
Speaker 1: got the pieces, he can be better than the best guy.
Speaker 1: And if your team is going against Lebron James with
Speaker 1: talent in a playoff series, you're you're you're scared to
Speaker 1: death because you know what he's capable of. And I
Speaker 1: don't think he can be any lower then where he's at,
Speaker 1: and I believe that that's a that's a fair place
Speaker 1: to put him. All right, guys, that's all I have
Speaker 1: for today. We'll be back tomorrow at number three. The
Speaker 1: volume