Is LeBron James putting up the best NBA Finals performance ever by an individual player?
Have any of the NBA's biggest stars, from Michael Jordan to Wilt Chamberlain, shined this brightly on the biggest stage?
After James put together another 41-point double-double to help his Cleveland Cavaliers force a deciding Game 7 on Sunday, it's worth considering how his Finals compares with the best in NBA history. James is now averaging 30.2 points, 11.0 rebounds and 8.5 assists per game and leads the Finals in all three categories -- plus steals and blocks, too.
Ranking LeBron's Finals by points, rebounds and assists
If we're looking for the best Finals ever, we have to start with basic player stats. After all, throughout the Finals careers of Chamberlain and Bill Russell, the NBA merely tracked points, rebounds and assists by players. For that matter, we don't even have assists before 1960, so I used that as my cutoff.
It doesn't make sense to just use raw points, rebounds and assists per game because that doesn't take into account the decline in pace since the high-scoring 1960s. When Elgin Baylor averaged 40.6 points per game in the 1962 Finals, he accounted for a lower percentage of the total points in the series (17.5 percent) than James did in averaging 35.8 points last year (18.5 percent).
I used similar measures (the percentage of series totals for both teams) for rebounds and assists. Surprisingly, adding those three percentages yields a top 10 made up exclusively of post-1978 Finals and headlined by James' last two.
The best pre-merger Finals by this performance were Russell in 1962 and 1963, at .448 and .441, respectively. Those are followed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1974 (.427) and a pair of Chamberlain Finals six years apart (.425 in 1964 with San Francisco and .414 with the L.A. Lakers in 1970).
If James' 2016 Finals can be said to be better than any before 1978, that allows us to use more advanced measures to rank how he has played. After all, while he certainly carried a heavier load than anyone else a year ago, it's hard to call James' 2015 Finals the best ever when he had a .477 true shooting percentage. James has been much more efficient with more help this time around.
Ranking LeBron's Finals since 1978
Using advanced stats, it's possible to compare James' Finals effort to other players since 1978, the first year the NBA tracked individual turnovers. Since then, James' 2.18 wins above replacement player (WARP) by my metric rank second, behind Tim Duncan in the San Antonio Spurs' 2003 win over the New Jersey Nets. Meanwhile, James' 2015 Finals comes in 18th.
With another big effort, James could surpass Duncan for the most WARP in a Finals. Of course, he'll have the advantage of playing seven games. The other three players among the top four on the list all saw their teams win in six games, and shouldn't be punished for taking care of business earlier. The better measure is WARP per Finals game, which yields a slightly different list.
This version appropriately gets Michael Jordan on the list -- he has three others in the top 20 -- and shows just how dominant Shaquille O'Neal was during the Lakers' five-game win over the Philadelphia 76ers in 2001 and their sweep of the Nets the following year.
James doesn't fare quite as well here, but the series hasn't concluded yet, giving him the opportunity to move up. He's been getting stronger over the course of the Finals, with his best two performances coming in the last two games. According to Basketball-Reference.com, in Game 6 James had the best game score (invented by former ESPN Insider John Hollinger to summarize box-score contributions in a single game) in its Finals database, which dates back to 1984. And that came after James' Game 5 performance, which rated third by the same measure.
Even if James isn't having the best modern Finals, he's surely having the most versatile one. Consider that since 1978, 482 players have seen at least 100 minutes of action in a Finals series. Of them, James ranks in the top 20 in assists (9.4, 20th) and steals (3.3, 16th) per 100 team plays, blocks (5.4, 16th) per 100 opponent 2-point attempts and usage rate (.336, 15th).
LeBron the MVP, win or lose
After exploring the history of MVPs on losing teams, I made the case before Game 6 of last year's Finals that James should be the MVP no matter the outcome. Remarkably, his case is even stronger this year. Not only has James played better, no Warriors player has been as good this year as Stephen Curry and 2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala (who beat James 7-4 in balloting among 11 voters) were in last year's Finals.
In the event the Cavaliers come up short, James' current edge over the second-best player in WARP would be the largest ever for a player on the losing team.
Moreover, the No. 2 player in WARP in this series is Cleveland teammate Kyrie Irving (1.05). The top Golden State player by this metric is Curry at 0.70 WARP. So regardless of what happens in Game 7, I think James is again the MVP of this series.
As for best Finals, that's going to require another huge outing from James on Sunday night. The one thing missing from his 2016 Finals résumé is a strong clutch performance. James hasn't even really had an opportunity to play well in the clutch since every game has been decided by double figures. If Game 7 is close and James stamps his imprint on the fourth quarter to lead the Cavaliers back from a 3-1 deficit in the series, he'll be able to make a strong case for the best Finals performance ever.