LeBron shooting 1.6% worse than the best rim finisher of all time while attempting 767 more shots is the perfect stat to highlight the difference between longevity and sustained excellence.

Peak LeBron James wasn’t just the best perimeter defender in the league, he was arguably the best non-big help defender of all time. According to the Toronto Raptors’ analytics staff, he outperformed a computerized version of the perfect NBA defender.

If we’re just doing the 15 best players over the last 25 years, these are the teams: 1st Team • LeBron • Steph • Jokic • Kawhi • Durant 2nd Team • Shaq • Giannis • Duncan • Garnett • Kobe 3rd Team • Wade • Nash • Dirk • CP3 • Harden

The last time they matched up in the playoffs, Jimmy Butler allowed LeBron to win Finals MVP. Bron shot 56% from the field and 47% from three when guarded by Jimmy.

Kobe’s 3-year peak postseason scoring in each jersey number: #8 — 28.4 IA PTS/75 on +2.8% rTS #24 — 31.6 IA PTS/75 on +4.2% rTS

Travis knows ball.

Best post-merger NBA player at every position to never win an MVP: PG: Chris Paul SG: Dwyane Wade SF: Kawhi Leonard PF: Anthony Davis C: Dwight Howard

Inflation-Adjusted Postseason Peak Per 75 Possessions Wade: 29.8 pts 6.5 ast +5.8% rTS Harden: 29.2 pts 8.3 ast +6.8% rTS Harden created a bit more offense slightly more efficiently in an era much more conducive to perimeter play while being a significantly worse defender.

1. Kawhi 2. Wade 3. T-Mac 4. Melo

NBA teams take nearly the exact same number of jumpers as they did 25 years ago. The only thing that’s changed is role players have turned their long twos into threes, and if you say you yearn for the days when the 9th man was clanking 21-footers off the rim, you’re lying.

Very interested to see how the NBA handles this. Any punishment that doesn’t start with taking 1st round draft picks from the Clippers and a season-long suspension for Kawhi is only going to incentivize owners to do this even more. The fines aren’t big enough for them to care.

So LeBron gets worse?

This was arguably the best scoring postseason of LeBron’s career. He averaged 33.2 IA PTS/75 on a ridiculous +14.3% rTS over the course of the entire playoffs.

Imagine being worth $150 billion and being dumb enough to think Pablo didn’t have this smoking gun when he first reported the story. The fact that Ballmer voluntarily went on television to deny any wrongdoing less than a day after the Kawhi story was first published is insane.

When Pablo Torre 🕳️ first reported the Ballmer-Kawhi cap circumvention story, Adam Silver claimed he had never heard of Aspiration. Today after Pablo released documents proving Silver would have had to know about the Clippers’ deal with them, he backtracked and claimed he misspoke.

In 2010 LeBron was the only player in the entire NBA to average at least 15-5-5. This past season 21 players did it. Jokic is fantastic, but in the most offensively inflated era in the history of basketball using PRA to evaluate a player can actually overstate their impact.