LeBron James: the New Steve Nash!

But your evidence for his greatness isn’t that strong. For one thing, Hughes and Gooden were both perfectly serviceable players in their primes. As I wrote above, championship teams aren’t filled with all-stars. They usually have at least two, but you also need guys to play meat & potatoes roles. There’s only one ball, you know. Some guys have to focus on getting the ball to the scoring specialists—as well as on defending, setting picks—all that “unglamorous” stuff.

Oh, and another point: the Eastern Conference was remarkably weak the year LeBron and those guys made it to the Finals.

But the “Big Three” are well past their primes. Back in the day, those three wouldn’t have been effective together.

Let me try this again. “All Star” players generally were the stars of their AAU, high school, and college teams. They always were “the man,” the player whose job it was to put the ball thru the hoop. If you get more than a couple of those guys, in their prime, on the same NBA team, it doesn’t usually go well. That’s true even if they aren’t egomaniacs. There’s still the problem that these players never learned how to set good picks, to go all-out on defense, etc. They weren’t expected to do those things; others had those jobs.

This is why (to go back to something I mentioned above) actual All-Star teams—like the USA Olympic team—struggle to win against far inferior talent like the Spanish national team. Even if guys like LeBron, Wade, and Kobe are willing to let others score the points while they do the dirty work, they don’t really know HOW. That was painfully apparent vs the Spaniards.

This is a bit of a digression, though. The point is that basketball is a game of efficiency—of getting lots of possessions and scoring on a high percentage of those while limiting the possessions and conversion percentage of the other team. (Paint scoring and getting to the line help in both instances.) In order to be efficient against determined, focused, playoff-style defenses, you need diversity and ball & man movement—not one guy pounding the ball. (Think Brandon Roy as well as LeBron.)

Wilt Chamberlain once AVERAGED 50 points, but his team went nowhere. The next season, he radically changed his approach, and he won. It’s simple math: if LeBron gets 30 ppg and 10 assists, that translates to around 55 points. Very impressive, but if he’s dominating the ball in the process, that’s not winning basketball. The defense can zero in on LeBron, create some turnovers, draw some charges, and reduce his shooting percentage a little.

That’s all it takes to make the Cavs offense less efficient than the opponent’s. Game over. And stat watchers will conclude that LeBron played great and his teammates (who never were able to get a rhythm or gain confidence) tanked. Like I said, stats can be deceiving—very much so. Your Akron hero has feet of clay. Not that I expect you or the legions of other LeBron worshippers to ever accept that. They say to never argue politics or religion…