LeBron James: Owner of Best Playoff Season Ever?

There are a multitude of ways to find the best playoff seasons ever, and for most NBA fans it's a mixture of stats and subjective evaluation with one important criterion -- winning the title. However, when you look for the best individual seasons it's a fallacy to rely on the team result. Obviously, it's possible for a great player to lose early in the playoffs with a bad supporting cast, and as hard as it is to determine who the best player or performance is it's arguably even harder to evaluate the cast.

Instead of factoring in human judgement and championship prestige, it might be illuminating to just look at the objective stats. The most common way is to look at points per game, rebounds per game, etc. One of the problems with that is how the game differed in the past. The pace was higher, inflating per game stats, and league-wide shooting percentages didn't become stable until the eighties. The logical extension is to then use a metric like PER. (I assume most people reading this will know what PER is; I just had to explain why I chose it.)

Looking at the top playoff seasons by PER with an fairly arbitrary minutes cut-off of 400 minutes in the table below, there really aren't any surprises. Jordan and Shaq are on here three times each with appearances from Kareem, Duncan, Mikan, and Chris Paul. LeBron? I know many people consider him a playoff failure, but he does have the second highest career PER all-time, so it's not hard to imagine one of his playoff runs ranking that high. However, a PER of 37.4 is astronomical. It's not supposed to happen. There are only 12 seasons with a playoff PER of 30 and over in 400 minutes. There are 129 such seasons between 22.6 and 30 -- the same difference between 30 and LeBron's mark. But no, he did not win a championship or even reach the finals; he was defeated by Orlando.

Player	Year	Team	PPG	RPG	APG	TS%	Min.	Games	PER
LeBron James	2008-09	CLE	35.3	9.1	7.3	61.8	580	14	37.4
George Mikan*	1953-54	MNL	19.4	13.2	1.9	54.3	424	13	33.6
Kareem A.-Jabbar	1976-77	LAL	34.6	17.7	4.1	64.6	467	11	32.4
Michael Jordan*	1990-91	CHI	31.1	6.4	8.4	60.0	689	17	32
Michael Jordan	1989-90	CHI	36.7	7.2	6.8	59.2	674	16	31.7
Wilt Chamberlain	1963-64	SFW	34.7	25.2	3.3	54.3	558	12	31.3
Shaquille O'Neal	1997-98	LAL	30.5	10.2	2.9	60.4	501	13	31
Chris Paul	2007-08	NOH	24.1	4.9	11.3	56.5	486	12	30.7
Shaquille O'Neal	2002-03	LAL	27.0	14.8	3.7	57.0	481	12	30.6
Shaquille O'Neal*	1999-00	LAL	30.7	15.4	3.1	55.6	1000	23	30.5
Tim Duncan	2005-06	SAS	25.8	10.5	3.3	62.5	493	13	30.4
Michael Jordan*	1992-93	CHI	35.1	6.7	6.0	55.3	783	19	30.1

*Won championship

To say that LeBron under-performs in the playoffs is an exaggeration, and if you look at his career playoff numbers they're pretty consistent with how most superstars produce. There was nothing more LeBron could have done. The only playoffs that come close is one from Jordan in 1990 with averages of 36.7/7.2/6.8. James clearly beats him in rebounds and assists, and the points per game advantage is destroyed when you account for the different pace between the eras (as well as the other per game stats) -- not to mention the lead in TS%. It was by all measures an amazing playoff performance, and at one point LeBron was so gassed from giving it everything he had he actually collapsed on the court against Detroit.

Critics will point out that he missed a game winning shot in the conference finals, and gloss over the one he made in a game before, instead focusing on what he could have done. Say what you want of PER, but when it's 37 you can't be accused of not trying hard enough. He was famously called out for not congratulating the other team after being eliminated from the playoffs, but Jordan doing the same act would be praised. I imagine he was incredibly frustrated that despite all he did it wasn't good enough. I think it was at that point LeBron realized he couldn't win given his supporting cast and needed help. It was also the year of his first MVP, and rather than the beginning of a storied prime of one of the most dominating players ever it was the beginning of LeBron the Loser, known for disappearing in the fourth quarter (whether or not that's true) and closing games of a playoff series.

With Howard and Rose gone from the playoffs with injuries, the only way LeBron can legitimize a title this year if he dominates throughout the entire playoffs, and most importantly both he and his team need to decimate the representative western conference team. If LeBron doesn't clearly assert himself over the rest of the competition critics will argue that he would have never won if Rose was playing, even though the Heat comfortably beat them the previous year, and they'll stamp an asterisk next to his title.

By the way, if you don't trust PER an alternative is Win Shares, which attempts to capture both offense and defense well. In a table below you'll see that James has the same commanding lead over everyone else in Win Shares per minute except for Mikan in 1954, who was playing in a league fundamentally different from today's anyway. Not too many surprises here -- Jordan is on the list twice out of seven total spots. Both Kareem and Wilt are on too. Cliff Hagan? I'll save you some internet searching -- he's a wing player who in his second NBA season after graduating from Kentucky and spending two years in the air force won a championship with Bob Petitt on the St. Louis Hawks against Russell's Celtics. He's in the basketball hall-of-fame with averages of 17.7 points per game and 6.6 rebounds, and switched to the ABA in the first year of the league and became the first to play in all-star games in both leagues.

Player	Year	Team	PPG	RPG	APG	TS%	Min.	Games	WS/48	WS
LeBron James	2008-09	CLE	35.3	9.1	7.3	61.8	580	14	0.399	4.8
George Mikan*	1953-54	MNL	19.4	13.2	1.9	54.3	424	13	0.391	3.5
Michael Jordan*	1990-91	CHI	31.1	6.4	8.4	60.0	689	17	0.333	4.8
Kareem A-Jabbar	1976-77	LAL	34.6	17.7	4.1	64.6	467	11	0.332	3.2
Wilt Chamberlain	1963-64	SFW	34.7	25.2	3.3	54.3	558	12	0.323	3.8
Cliff Hagan*	1957-58	STL	27.7	10.5	3.4	57.6	418	11	0.312	2.7
Michael Jordan*	1995-96	CHI	30.7	4.9	4.1	56.4	733	18	0.306	4.7

*Won championship

Age 27 is usually the best year for a basketball player, and many professional athletes. All the stars are aligned in LeBron's favor, and his legacy is at stake. Whatever may be written about his mindset by an amateur psychologist has no bearing on what will happen. James has played exceedingly well in the playoffs before; he has that potential. Now we await the random, chaotic results of the 2012 title chase, and fair or not it may decide how we view him forever.