Midway through the third quarter of Friday's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic forward Tobias Harris made a big mistake: He got into it with Cavaliers star LeBron James, drawing double technical fouls. James admitted after the game the confrontation changed his approach.
"The words he said got me going," James told reporters. "I was actually in chill mode tonight, but chill mode was deactivated after he said that."
At the time of the double technical, the Magic held a 64-62 lead and James had scored just 11 points in 23 minutes. Over the final 17 and a half minutes, Cleveland outscored Orlando 36-25 behind 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting from James.
There's a lesson here for opponents: Don't poke the bear and get James out of "chill mode." At the same time, it's fair to suggest chill mode is partially responsible for the Cavaliers' up-and-down performance this season.
Quantifying chill mode
James' 2014-15 statistics display an interesting split. He's been more effective against better opponents than weaker ones. Unlike last season, when James denied coasting to Insider's Tom Haberstroh, this doesn't necessarily show up in terms of his defensive stats -- those are about the same either way. But James is shooting the ball much more accurately against good teams.
Specifically, I split his numbers by whether the game was above average or below average in terms of difficulty, factoring in opponent performance this season and location. The Magic game, by this measure, was somewhat easier than average: A neutral opponent would be expected to beat Orlando by 2.9 points on the road.
LeBron James' performance by game difficulty, 2014-15 season
James has shot much more accurately on both 2-point and 3-point attempts in the more challenging games, leading to an increase in points per 36 minutes and a dramatic increase in true shooting percentage. Something similar is true of James' accuracy depending on the score of the game. He's making 56.2 percent of his 2-point attempts when Cleveland is trailing and just 52.3 percent when the Cavaliers have the lead, via NBA StatsCube.
Of course, this is counterintuitive. Most players perform better against weaker opponents -- that's how those opponents got to be weak statistically, after all. And the same factor explains why players generally shoot better when their team is leading. That James doesn't follow the trend suggests his effort level increases as needed.
Last season, when James was playing for the Miami Heat, he also averaged more points per 36 minutes against stronger opposition, but because he ramped up his usage rather than shooting more accurately.
LeBron James' performance by game difficulty, 2013-14 season
How chill mode hurts the Cavaliers
If it seems Cleveland's first two months of the season have been unusually bumpy, it's not just the media scrutiny focused on the team. In terms of the standard deviation of point differential from game to game, no NBA team has been more inconsistent than the Cavaliers. Cleveland has five wins by 20-plus points, as many as the West-leading Golden State Warriors (the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers have six each), but it also has two losses by 20-plus points -- more than those other three teams combined.
Most inconsistent teams, 2014-15 season
The overall inconsistency masks an even more interesting pattern. Game-to-game variation in point differential is a product of two factors: A team's own inconsistent performance and changing opponent quality. A perfectly consistent team that played at the same level every game would still see its results differ along with the schedule.
When we instead measure the variability in game-to-game ratings adjusted for location and opponent, the Cavaliers become far and away the league's most inconsistent team, with a standard deviation more than 1.6 points higher than anyone else's. This suggests that Cleveland is playing to the level of its competition more than most teams. (Just three teams see their inconsistency drop less when schedule is factored in.) A look at the Cavaliers' adjusted ratings by the level of opposition confirms this fact.
In games with above-average difficulty, Cleveland has rated 4.0 points per game better than average, slightly better than the Atlanta Hawks and Chicago Bulls (plus-3.8) over the course of the season. In games easier than average, the Cavaliers rate just 1.0 point per game better than an average team, the same rating as the New Orleans Pelicans. That's translated into home losses to the likes of the Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets.
Last season's Miami Heat showed an even more extreme version of this split. In their toughest games, rated at least five points more difficult than average, Miami played 11.6 points per game better than average, better than anyone in the league over the full season. The Heat went 10-4 in those games, 13 of which were on the road. In its 15 easiest games, 12 of them at home, Miami went just 11-4 and rated as a below-average team.
Coping mechanism?
It's probably not a coincidence that James was in chill mode on Friday in Orlando. Cleveland was on the second game of a back-to-back, and James had played 40 minutes in the Cavaliers' Christmas Day loss to the Heat. Over a long season, with James having put on so much mileage and still logging 37.5 minutes per game as he reaches age 30, chill mode may be a necessary survival tactic.
In Miami, James could get away with chill mode. The Heat were good enough to turn their effort level on and off as needed and still win 54 games while finishing second in the Eastern Conference. That may no longer be the case in Cleveland. Not only have the Cavaliers struggled in the first two months, but the top of the East has performed better than expected. Suddenly, Cleveland finds itself 3.5 games out of having home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
It's unclear what the solution is for coach David Blatt. With the Cavaliers playing smaller to replace the injured Anderson Varejao, it will be even more difficult to get James more rest in the near future. But Cleveland can't rely on a dust-up with opponents to get James out of chill mode and the Cavaliers victories against lesser foes.
News and notes
Most consistent teams, 2014-15 season
• So which NBA teams have been consistent this season? The table at right shows the opposite end of the rankings. Fans have been conditioned to see consistency as a positive and inconsistency as a problem, but that list should offer a reminder it's not always so simple.
As Dean Oliver of the Sacramento Kings has explored, inconsistency is generally good for below-average teams, but bad for above-average ones. A good, consistent team like the Memphis Grizzlies -- which have just one win by 20-plus points -- will outperform its point differential. (The Grizzlies also rank second in playing to the level of opposition, which isn't a bad thing when it leads to close wins.) A bad, consistent team like the Knicks just suffers a series of frustrating close losses.
• The Pistons won their third consecutive game Tuesday, beating the Orlando Magic 109-86. It's tempting to credit the turnaround entirely to last week's move to release forward Josh Smith, but it's worth noting there are a couple of other reasons Detroit could have expected to play better, even with Smith. The first is simple regression to the mean. The Pistons were playing far worse than even the most pessimistic projections for their 2014-15 performance, and were likely to improve. This is the same effect that makes midseason coaching changes appear more effective than they really were: Unlucky coaches are the most likely to get replaced.
Beyond that, this isn't the same Detroit team that started 3-18 because of the return of Jodie Meeks. Meeks' barrage of 3-pointers helped the Pistons break Tuesday's game open in the second quarter, when he made all six of his attempts from beyond the arc. (He finished 9-of-11, scoring 34 points.) On a team so desperate for shooting, Meeks has been an enormous help.
• Grantland's Zach Lowe highlighted Milwaukee Bucks forward Jared Dudley's resurgence by choosing Dudley as one of his Luke Walton All-Stars. It's also worth considering the big-picture implications for Milwaukee. Remember, the Bucks got a first-round pick from the Clippers to effectively take on Dudley's 2015-16 salary. (They were already paying Carlos Delfino and Miroslav Raduljica, who went to the Clippers in the trade, a similar amount this season.)
With Dudley playing so well (he's hit 16 of his last 30 3-pointers), it's conceivable Milwaukee could flip him to another team for additional draft picks -- if the Bucks are willing to give him up, since Dudley is a key part of their rotation without injured rookie Jabari Parker. That move was most successfully accomplished by Sam Presti in Seattle before the team's move to Oklahoma City. Presti got two first-round picks to take on Kurt Thomas' salary from the Phoenix Suns, who avoided the luxury tax and then traded Thomas to the San Antonio Spurs for another first-round pick at midseason. Presti ended up taking Serge Ibaka with one of the picks acquired from Phoenix.
Ironically, the Clippers are now one of the teams that could use Dudley in a reserve role.
Follow Kevin Pelton on Twitter @kpelton.