With the Miami Heat losing Game 1 of the NBA Finals, I feel as though most people are going to heap large amounts of hate and "He's not clutch," talk on LeBron James. Ok, if you want to be naive about the whole situation and bash him for that, fine. But at least take into account the fact that he has been playing with the equivalent of four high school girls for most of his career. Don't believe me? Read on.
Let's look at some of LeBron's greatest hits, some of his best playoff games and the supporting cast he had to put on his back and carry in those games. We'll analyze LeBron's accompanying starting 4 and their PERs (player efficiency rating, not a perfect stat by any means but one that takes into account most statistical factors including normalized numbers and rates players pretty reasonably in a single statistic) both for that individual season, and their career in order to gain context about whether players were past their prime or not (biggest outlier being Shaq).
Then I'll shoot out the average PER of some elite players' other four starting teammates for their respective great playoff runs.
PER guidelines:
Runaway MVP Candidate: 30.0
Weak MVP Candidate: 25.0
Borderline All-Star: 20.0
3rd Banana: 16.5
Pretty good player: 15.0
In the rotation: 13.0
Scrounging for minutes: 11.0
The Next Stop: DLeague 5.0
The Games
2007 Game 5 Eastern Conference Finals vs. Pistons
109-107 Win
48 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals, 0 blocks, 2 turnovers
Other starting four: Drew Gooden, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Shasha Pavlovic, Larry Hughes
season PER: 16.5, 18.0, 12.1, 12.1 Average: 14.68
career PER: 16.7, 18.5, 8.4, 14.9 Average: 14.63
2008 Game 7 Eastern Conference Semifinals vs. Celtics
97-92 Loss
45 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals, 0 blocks, 2 turnovers
Other starting four: Ben Wallace, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West
Season PER: 12.0, 18.7, 13.9, 14.1 Average: 14.68
Career PER: 15.5, 18.5, 16.0, 13.9 Average: 15.98
2010 Game 3 Eastern Conference Semifinal vs. Celtics
124-95 Win
38 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, 1 turnover
Other starting four: Antawn Jamison, Shaquille O'Neal, Mo Williams, Anthony Parker
Season PER: 17.3, 17.9, 16.1, 9.9 Average: 15.3
Career PER: 18.3, 26.4, 15.5, 12.2 Average: 18.1
2012 Game 6 Eastern Conference Finals vs. Celtics
98-79 Win
45 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 4 turnovers
Other starting four: Shane Battier, Udonis Haslem, Dwyane Wade, Mario Chalmers
Season PER: 9.7, 10.9, 26.3, 12.9 Average: 14.95*
Career PER: 13.0, 13.6, 25.7, 12.0 Average: 19.33
*The Chris Bosh injury should be taken into account. Therefore, a more likely scenario of starting players would mean an average PER of 17.25.
Conclusions
So, just to be thorough with the numbers, LeBron's starting counterparts averaged a PER of 14.9 (15.48 including Bosh but that's only for the last game cited) for their seasons (or at least the seasons when they were a part of a competitive playoff team). Meaning he was carrying teams full of average (at best) players. To put that final number into context:
Jordan's 1991 Championship: 15.93 average PER of teammates that season*
Shaq's 2000 Championship: 15.28
Wade's 2006 Championship: 17.98
Garnett's 2008 Championship: 15.75
Kobe's 2009 Championship: 17.28
Dirk's 2011 Championship: 16.43
Durant's 2012 current run team: 17.93
*teammates who started/played starters minutes in the playoffs
Jordan had Pippen, and an assortment of respectable role players surrounding him, granted two were aging wily veterans by the time 1990 rolled around. I'm not saying LeBron is better than his Airness because I don't believe that at all, just giving the numbers historical context.
Shaq had arguably the biggest load to carry and is probably the best comparison to what LeBron has done. But remember he had a youthful, more dunk friendly Kobe who improved in the next two seasons and several wily veterans as well.
Wade had two Hall of Famers in Shaq and Alonzo Mourning and a very respectable supporting cast including James Posey and Jason Williams.
Garnett had two fellow future Hall of Famers (and possibly three if Rondo continues to play the way he has the past two seasons). There's a reason they were called the Big Three. (Or as Scott Van Pelt named them, the Boston Three Party.)
Kobe's second championship spurt had a very good supporting cast including a Pau Gasol in his best two years, a semi-dominant Bynum when healthy, and two very good years from Lamar Odom.
And Dirk's supporting cast was actually extremely (and to most people, surprisingly) efficient even though the other future Hall of Famer on the team, Jason Kidd, was probably as much of a detriment as he was an asset at times.
Lastly, I love when people talk about how good Durant has been in the playoffs, even some mentioning that he is better than LBJ. All I can do is chuckle at those comments. Durant is basically playing on an All-Star team compared to LeBron's Cavs when he was that age. When James was 23, he was playing with Drew Gooden, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Shasha Pavlovic, and Larry Hughes. And he still took them to the Finals! Compare that to Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins, and James Harden, Durant's supporting cast. Wow. The names alone should be proof in the pudding that Durant doesn't quite have as much responsibility as LeBron did (and still does).
So the point is, in his greatest high stake playoff games, LeBron was consistently playing with one of the worst (if not THE worst) supporting casts on a championship contending team in the last 25 years of the league, especially that 2007 team he, literally, dragged kicking and screaming to the Finals.
I just thought people should know this before the next time they call him a choke artist or claim that he's never won anything.
I mean, could you win a title with four grown men on your back?
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