You've seen Tom Haberstroh write here in Per Diem about how LeBron James has become a deadeye shooter. You may have read Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry's story on how James broadened his offensive game to improve his efficiency. You've also likely viewed James' video-game shooting numbers -- 56 percent accuracy from the field and 40.4 percent from beyond the arc.
LEBRON JAMES' ADVANCED STATS
So you might be surprised to check out his advanced stats and see one category in which James isn't setting a new career high: player efficiency rating (PER). No April Foolin'. James is still a few tenths of a point behind the 2008-09 performance that earned him his first MVP trophy. Win percentage, the per-minute measure of my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric, and win shares per 48 minutes tell a similar story. Incredible as he has been, the James of 2012-13 still falls short of the 2008-09 incarnation in terms of value.
Explaining why touches on some important truths of basketball analysis, and also gives reasons to appreciate James' ability to be great in two very different ways.
Carrying a lighter load
Like so much of basketball analysis, the James conundrum ultimately boils down to the question of usage versus efficiency. The other side of James' 2012-13 season is that he is responsible for ending 30.2 percent of Miami's plays with either a shot attempt, a trip to the free throw line or a turnover. And while that's still a hefty chunk -- James is one of just four players in the league with a usage rate north of 30 percent -- it's also his lowest usage rate since 2004-05, when he was 20 and the Cleveland Cavaliers missed the playoffs.
James' usage rate peaked in -- you guessed it -- 2008-09, when he accounted for more than a third of the Cavaliers' plays (33.8 percent, to be exact). After posting usage rates of 33.5 percent or more in each of his past three years in Cleveland, James' involvement dropped by 2 percent when he joined up with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. And after bouncing back last season, when he and Wade were on the floor together less often, it's gone down nearly another 2 percent this season in large part because of the addition of Ray Allen, who is a bigger part of the offense than any player besides James, Wade and Bosh during the Big Three era.
The relationship between scoring and efficiency for James and other players is best understood visually. Check out a graph of usage and true shooting percentage (adjusted for league average, mostly because scoring was down after the lockout) over the past five seasons, with James highlighted:
In general, it's hard to show the tradeoff between usage and efficiency because the best players tend to take the most shots. So their advantage on role players shows up just in usage rate, not in true shooting percentage (TS%). However, that relationship breaks down at the extremes.
The very best scorers are at the upper right of the graph -- above average in both usage and TS%. A close look shows that they form a line that matches our research about usage and efficiency; as elite players take more shots, they do in fact score less efficiently. Researcher Evan Zamir originally found this same trend among high scorers from the past three decades, showing its staying power.
Returning to LeBron, we see that four of his past five seasons match up along the leading edge, with only 2010-11 as an exception (more on that in a bit). As a scorer, James has been about equally valuable in all four seasons, moving up and down the usage/efficiency curve based on his team's needs.
So while LeBron's efficiency this season is a testament to his hard work and improvement, it's also a story of his increased ability to pick his spots -- a luxury he never had in Cleveland.
The man in Cleveland
Let's be clear that I come not to demean LeBron circa 2012-13, but to praise the 2008-09 version. With the benefit of hindsight, the Cavaliers' success that season is all the more improbable.
Go check out Cleveland's 2008-09 roster. (I'll wait.) Of the eight players besides James who logged at least 1,000 minutes of action, four are no longer in the league. (Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Ben Wallace have both retired, Wally Szczerbiak didn't get an offer to his liking the next year and Delonte West is working to try to get back to the NBA.) Two more (Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic) are reserve role players. That leaves two players, injured Anderson Varejao and Mo Williams, who are still starters in this league. Williams owes James a big thanks for his one and only All-Star appearance in 2009. Some four years later, he's a journeyman now playing in Utah.
We haven't even mentioned the Cavaliers' coaching staff. While Mike Malone remains a respected assistant at Golden State, assistant coach John Kuester (Cleveland's "offensive coordinator") flamed out when his Detroit teams struggled to score. And I trust you've heard what happened to coach Mike Brown during his next job with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Now check out the Cavaliers' record in 2008-09. That team, which ultimately lost to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference finals (despite James' averages of 38.5 points, 8.3 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game), won a league-high 66 games. Miami, 26-game winning streak and all, three stars and all, will have to go 8-1 the rest of the season just to match that total.
Changing to fit his circumstances
When James helped lead the Heat to his first NBA championship last June, part of the narrative was that he had to grow as a player to become a champion. Aside from the 2010 playoffs, I think his track record in Cleveland suggests James was already at that level, but the team around him was not. Instead, the impetus for change was adapting to an entirely different situation in Miami, which took time.
The reason James' first season with the Heat was inarguably his worst in the past five years (and, barring a huge upset in a few weeks, his only campaign in that span that did not earn him MVP honors) was his inability to turn a smaller role in the Miami offense into better efficiency. As the chart shows, James' true shooting percentage was worse relative to league average in 2010-11 than during his final season in Cleveland. James had a tough time as a spot-up shooter when Wade ran the offense, limiting his effectiveness.
Fortunately for the Heat, and unfortunately for the rest of the league, James has since broadened his skills for his new role, and Miami coach Erik Spoelstra has developed an offense that better utilizes both James and Wade simultaneously. As he told Goldsberry, James has embraced the importance of efficiency and honed his shot selection to the point where he almost never forces an attempt. The results, as we've seen, are historic in nature.
The argument for 2012-13 LeBron over his younger predecessor is that, if need be, he could revert back to a volume mentality at any point, showing flexibility the 2008-09 LeBron did not yet have. Still, when it comes to sheer value to his team, James set a standard in 2008-09 that will be challenging for him or anyone else to top.