The Shrine

Saw in the random stats that this is the first time where a team has a guy on the All NBA team (Golden State, Steph Curry) that played every team that has every other member of the all-NBA team. You got New Orleans (Anthony Davis), Memphis (Marc Gasol), Houston (James Harden), and Cleveland (LeBron James). I mean, that's almost like the plot of Kuroko's Basket here. You even have King James so he already has the right nickname for the final boss! Sure, Harden the Beard probably doesn't make much of a fictional villian, but this is real life after all.

You realize that with Love out and Irving hurt most of the playoffs and the roster made up of a bunch of non-starters that if the Cleveland LeBrons win, he will be nearly deified, yes?

Yeah, like I said it's got the making of a perfect script here. LeBron should come on a throne like he did in one year in the ESPY and wear a cape, and just tear it off for no reason. Golden State has a better script if not for the fact that they're like the highest rated team ever by advanced metrics (not very surprising since they're like the only team that's ever been #1 in offense/defense at the same time besides the Bulls 72-10 season maybe). The Warriors are actually pretty boring to watch IMO. It's like they can score whenever they want, and you can't score on them. There's usually no suspense because usually a team can only do one of those two but they do both of them at the same time.

It seems ridiculous that the NBA has that much parity in the skill of its players. What i mean is, LaBron is still surrounded by professional basketball players, i bet anyone of those guys can be a star if they had the chance and shot 35 shots a game. People keep saying how much the Cavaliers suck besides LaBron, but c'mon, these are still professionals that play basketball for a living are they not?

Just because you're a pro and would spank any normal guy doesn't mean there can't be a wide disparity amongst pros. In tennis whoever is ranked #20 generally has practically no chance at beating someone in the top 5 and that's the 20th best player in the world! So it's fine to say LeBron's cast suck even if they'd be all-stars in a lesser league, because they're not in a lesser league. They're in the NBA.

Flip wrote:It seems ridiculous that the NBA has that much parity in the skill of its players. What i mean is, LaBron is still surrounded by professional basketball players, i bet anyone of those guys can be a star if they had the chance and shot 35 shots a game. People keep saying how much the Cavaliers suck besides LaBron, but c'mon, these are still professionals that play basketball for a living are they not?

Power Levels IRL are not bullshit!

One thing I noticed is that they're literally inventing new advanced stats for LeBron to do well in this playoff because the traditional advanced stats all focus around the idea that if I miraculously made 2 out of 2 shots in NBA because nobody is ever going to guard me then the correct way to play the game is to have me take every shot on my team because I'm shooting at 100%. LeBron hasn't had a very good shooting % in this playoff and especially in this finals so they're suddenly having a lot of advanced stats that I've never heard of that does not account for FG%/TS%. This is pretty much the same thing as what the advanced stats used to nail Kobe Bryant on because he totally should've let someone like Kwame Brown who shoots 60% take 300 shots even though that 60% is 3 out of 5 and nobody ever guarded him. I guess even the advanced stats guy know that if they put stuff like "LeBron should let Mozgov take 25 shots because he's shooting 50% better than him in TS%" nobody would ever take them seriously again.

And it turns out that I was wrong about LeBron, as he does know that when your teammates suck you got to take all shots. I guess all that talk about playing by efficiency was only because when he had guys like Dwayne Wade to pass to so he knows that was a good idea and it made a good soundbite.

Another funny thing I noticed is that the stat guys are saying about how LeBron is playing unbelievable minutes as if it's something that validates his greatness, except the whole point of having advanced stats is to manage your minutes because it is fairly well known that, like pitch count, if you play more than a certain amount your performance declines greatly so the correct 'advanced stat' line would be 'LeBron is playing too many minutes and not trusting his teammates enough and killing his team'. Sure I know the moment he sits down Cavs lose at least 10 points but remembered advanced stats is all about assuming that all excellence is individual and that just because LeBron is drawing a triple team on every play has no impact on making anyone else around him better so his teammates that are literally nobodies should continue to play at the same rate when LeBron is on the bench.