The Historic Case of LeBron James

Tonight LeBron James has a chance at reaching both 20,000 points and 5000 assists. For his age, this is unprecedented. Kobe was 29 when he hit 20,000, and LeBron is still 28. Everyone will focus on his scoring tonight, which is undoubtedly impressive, but what's most impressive are his assists and rebounds.

Who holds the record for most assists by a non-point guard? Scottie Pippen with ... 6135. Given that LeBron regularly collects seasons of plus 500 assists, this won't stand very long. We're used to this, but averaging around 27-7-7 as he does every year, especially taking into account the slower pace of the modern game, is astounding. That is not supposed to be your standard; that's supposed to be your fluke, peak year. Outside of one season with 8 assists, Jordan's top per game number is 6.1. Who has the most seasons with 25 points, 6 assists and 6 rebounds? LeBron ... tied with Oscar Robertson, who played in an era where you could average 15 rebounds and still be second on your team. Larry Bird is third with four such seasons. Given his durability and the fact that he came into the league out of high school, he has a chance to put up career totals in assists like no one has given his position -- and to think he's starting to play more power forward. He has as many career assists as Deron Williams and he's a whisker behind Chris Paul and Tony Parker. Let that fact sink in. Those are point guards roughly the same age known for racking up a ton of assists.

What makes LeBron special, however, is how he's able to do this while rebounding like a power forward. If he stays healthy, he has a decent shot at 10,000 rebounds, which is a hallowed number previously reserved for interior players, not someone who shoots long jumpers, guards the perimeter and leads the team in assists. Oh and he's also the leading scorer. And he has a great shot at over 2000 steals, which only 11 other players have done.

This is more common in baseball, but you can mark exclusive groups with career stats. There are arbitrary cut-offs (people like round numbers), but it's a quick way to sort out the amazing careers. Let's choose 20,000 points, 5000 assists and 5000 rebounds. Who's there?

	1st season	Last season	Games	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists
Jerry West	1961	1974	932	36571	25192	5366	6238
Oscar Robertson	1961	1974	1040	43886	26710	7804	9887
John Havlicek	1963	1978	1270	46471	26395	8007	6114
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	1970	1989	1560	57446	38387	17440	5660
Larry Bird	1980	1992	897	34443	21791	8974	5695
Clyde Drexler	1984	1998	1086	37537	22195	6677	6125
Michael Jordan	1985	2003	1072	41011	32292	6672	5633
Karl Malone	1986	2004	1476	54852	36928	14968	5248
Gary Payton	1991	2007	1335	47117	21813	5269	8966
Kevin Garnett	1996	2013	1292	46872	24809	13576	5146
Kobe Bryant	1997	2013	1199	43845	30619	6330	5602

The group has only 11 members (12 very soon counting Lebron) and it's a storied group of tough point guards, super skilled or athletic wings and multi-faceted frontcourt players. Drexler is probably the biggest surprise, but he was an extremely good shooting guard who was overshadowed by someone named Jordan. If you look at the minutes here, most guys need exceptionally long careers to reach these marks with the exception of West and Bird. LeBron, however, is about to enter this group with under 29,000 minutes in his career.

You can make the group more "elite" by moving the filter up to 6000 rebounds and assists, and then it's only Robertson, Havlicek and Drexler. Robertson was a huge point guard known for averaging a triple double; Havlicek played super-human minutes and huge numbers of games; and Drexler was a better passer than people remember. Only Robertson makes for the "7000 group". You can also disqualify Drexler with a 25,000 points barrier.

Why does this matter? Is this just screwing around too much with numbers? Partially, but given LeBron's ironman reputation, his clean history of health, size and wealth of skills, if he does well in his 30's he could put together career totals that are singular and ridiculously amazing. Using John Hollinger's method of projecting career stats adapted from Bill James' favorite toy, you can estimate where LeBron's stats will end up and what chances he has of reaching certain milestones.

Given his age, height and expected level of output from his recent seasons, LeBron's on pace for 35,379 points, 9887 rebounds and 8897 assists. As you can surmise from the table, no one is even close to those numbers. If you include Kobe, only three players are in the 35,000 point range, only frontcourt players collect 10,000 rebounds and few point guards will have collected that many assists. In fact, Steve Nash was only the fifth guy to reach 10,000 assists, and LeBron (according to this method) has a 26% chance of reaching that group.

And Kareem's points records? He has a 33% chance of breaking that. No, it's not a remote possibility; it's one in three. There's actually a decent chance LeBron could break Kareem's record while netting 10,000 rebounds and assisting, carving out a niche that no one in history can even approach. Oscar Robertson is the closest, but given the insane pace of the 60's, meaning each game has more opportunities for picking up stats, his numbers are deflated. So essentially, LeBron is some accelerated version of Oscar Robertson, except that he plays defense and appears to have the body of Karl Malone. He's going to reach 20,000 points at a younger age than anyone else did, but it's the breadth of his career that's truly stunning.

(Durant? He actually has a lower chance at breaking the record, but that's probably because the method is conservative with young players. Kobe's even lower, but he's still at 28%. What this means is that the race to break Kareem's record could be crowded.)

Addendum: well, he did it. It's pretty amazing to consider he hit these marks in his prime, and he accomplished these in the same game. That's a big coincidence. It's a game for history.

Why Carmelo Can Never Be MVP as Long as LeBron Exists

There's a campaign out there to peg Carmelo with an MVP. It's a writer's award, and as such the storyline is the primary criterion. One of the worst MVP winners in modern history was Derrick Rose. The Bulls improved their record from a 0.500 record in 2010 to an impressive 62 wins. The consensus was to give the credit to Rose, even though he was on the team the year before and he's primarily a scorer and distributor on a team made elite by its defense ranked second in the league at 100.3 for a defensive rating. Rose did make progress, but there was another change: the team went from arguably the worst coach in the league, Vinny del Negro, to arguably the best coach of the year, Thibodeau. They also inherited Brewer and Asik, who could combine with Gibson to form a Cerberus defensive-beast off the bench. Rose would prove his value the next season when he missed two-thirds of the season, only to have his team tie for the best record in the league.

Again, Rose's primary value is his scoring, but in his MVP year he averaged an impressive but not earth-shattering 25 a game, which was eclipsed by several people including LeBron and Carmelo. Since Rose averaged 25 with a pleasant but not great TS% of 55, at the very most you could say compared to LeBron they're tied for value attached to scoring, and that's extremely generous. The only real advantage Rose has is that he's a point guard, but he averaged 7.7 assists, which is something that even as a small forward LeBron can do. In fact, that year he averaged 7 assists. I waved off LeBron's superior shooting efficiency, and maybe you could argue Rose has more of a burden, but LeBron scored more points at better efficiency and with the same amount of assists with a paltry staff in Cleveland. It's hard to argue Rose is better offensively in objective terms. Add in defense, where LeBron is a terror thanks to his versatility in strength, size and speed, and there's no contest. That's the logical end to their comparisons. LeBron is the benchmark for all MVPs, and as long as he's healthy you have to prove you're more valuable. The only thing Rose had was his team's better win-loss record, which is a team result, not an individual one ... except that Miami had a better point differential, which is a better indication of a team's strength. So the entire edifice, the only objective MVP criterion for Rose's status as MVP, is destroyed -- and Miami got the last laugh by beating them in the playoffs with LeBron guarding Rose for long strenghts, and then the next year with a title.

Carmelo has to clear the same hurdle. Carmelo derives nearly all of his value from scoring with a hidden elite skill in rebounding, which LeBron eclipses anyway. And Carmelo's increased defensive value and focus? It'd be bizarre to call it nothing less than significantly worse than LeBron's. However, this is the first year since perhaps their rookie year since Carmelo's scoring is arguably superior. King James is actually being outscored, and although his shooting efficiency is still superior the gap is small.

The point here is to prove that with scoring Carmelo and LeBron are at least tied, because once taking into account the other factors of the game Carmelo has no chance at being more valuable. Let's skip forward to tables 2 and 3 and analyze how Carmelo is scoring so well and how it compares with James.

Table 1: Overall statistics comparison

LeBron James								Carmelo Anthony
Year	Pts / game	Pts/36 mins	Asts	Rebs	Reb %	PER	WS	Year	Pts / game	Pts/36 mins	Asts	Rebs	Reb %	PER	WS
2007	27.3	24.1	6	6.7	9.6	24.5	13.7	2007	28.9	27.2	3.8	6	8.9	22.1	7.3
2008	30	26.8	7.2	7.9	11.1	29.1	15.2	2008	25.7	25.4	3.4	7.4	11	21.1	8.2
2009	28.4	27.2	7.2	7.6	11.9	31.7	20.3	2009	22.8	23.8	3.4	6.8	11.5	19	5
2010	29.7	27.4	8.6	7.3	11.1	31.1	18.5	2010	28.2	26.6	3.2	6.6	9.9	22.2	7.9
2011	26.7	24.8	7	7.5	11.4	27.3	15.6	11:DEN	25.2	25.5	2.8	7.6	12.4	21.2	4.7
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	11:NYK	26.3	26.2	3	6.7	10.6	22.8	3.2
2012	27.1	26	6.2	7.9	12.6	30.7	14.5	2012	22.6	23.9	3.6	6.3	10.6	21.1	6.2
2013	25.9	24.6	6.9	8.5	13.5	29.8	6.1	2013	28.5	28.2	1.9	6.2	9.9	25.8	3.7

Carmelo is shooting much more often with a usage % of 34, meaning he's using over one-third of his team's plays when he's on the court. Throughout the last few years, the two have basically been even with LeBron usually possessing the significantly better TS%. However, Carmelo is having a career year in usage and efficiency, which is quite rare. In fact, a closer look at how Carmelo is shooting at various spots on the floor reveals the rarity might be brief: he also has career highs in outside shooting percentages. He's taking 6 three's a game, for example, and hitting them at an elite rate of 43.4. LeBron is also having a career year in three-point percentage, but he relies on them less and there's something weird about his long-range 2-pointers. Knick fans may think I'm nitpicking with labeling Carmelo's outside shooting as a fluke, but there's a short list of people who have taken at least 6 three's a game with a percentage of 42 or higher, and looking at the list they're snipers known for three-point shooting: does Carmelo belong there? If he had been shooting at a modest percentage of 35, which is still above his career percentage, he drops 1.5 points per game and his TS% down to 58.

Table 2: LeBron James' shooting statistics

Year	Usage %	TS%	Rim FGA	Rim FG%	3-9 ft. FGA	3-9 ft. FG%	10-15 ft FGA	10-15 ft FG%	16-23 FGA	16-23 FG%	3PT FGA	3PT%
2007	31	55.2	6.7	72	2.2	44	1.9	36	5.6	34	3.5	31.9
2008	33.5	56.8	8	71	1.8	44	1.5	32	5.6	37	4.3	31.5
2009	33.8	59.1	7	72	1.8	49	1.4	25	5.9	40	4.5	34.4
2010	33.5	60.4	6.9	73.3	1.5	53.5	1.2	32.2	5.6	40	4.7	33.3
2011	31.5	59.4	6.1	72.1	2.4	44.4	1.6	44.7	5.5	45	3.3	33
2012	32	60.5	7.1	75.4	2.2	47.3	2.3	47	6	39	2.3	36.2
2013	29.9	61.2	7.3	77.2	1.8	55.6	1.5	41.4	4.5	40	3.1	43.3

Table 3: Carmelo Anthony's shooting statistics 

Year	Usage %	TS%	Rim FGA	Rim FG%	3-9 ft. FGA	3-9 ft. FG%	10-15 ft FGA	10-15 ft FG%	16-23 FGA	16-23 FG%	3PT FGA	3PT%
2007	33.4	55.2	9.9	63	1.7	43	1.7	29	7.2	39	2.3	26.8
2008	30.2	56.8	8	66	1.4	32	2.5	33	6.5	44	2.1	35.4
2009	31.5	53.2	7.5	57	1.6	43	2.3	33	6.8	39	2.6	37.1
2010	33.4	54.8	8.3	59.6	1.9	33.1	2.3	42.7	7.4	40	2.7	31.6
2011:DEN	32.5	54.7	8.2	55.6	1.5	32.3	2	37.9	7.3	43	2.5	33.3
2011:NYK	31	57.5	5.9	66.2	1.9	26.1	2.3	36.8	6.6	40	4.6	42.4
2012	31.8	52.5	6.8	59.9	1.6	31.5	2.6	42.3	6.6	35	3.7	33.5
2013	34	59.2	7.5	53.7	1.4	24	2	42.9	5.2	48	6	43.4

Carmelo is actually slumping near the basket: his rim percentage is abnormally low; however, he's overachieving with his 16-23 foot jump shots, so it's hard to give him leeway there. When Carmelo inevitably declines, a case can still be made that his scoring has more value this season, but he's one-dimensional. He's averaging a pitiful 1.9 assists while LeBron is near 7. LeBron has an edge in shooting efficiency with more sustainable percentages, Carmelo has a slightly larger lead in volume, but his foe destroys him on passing -- offensively, it's not a clear case Carmelo is better, and once you factor in defense it'd be silly to argue Carmelo as the MVP over LeBron. The advanced stats -- WS and PER -- take into account everything on the box score, and Carmelo is destroyed there. What's worse is that the problems with relying on box score stats only help LeBron's position: it's an inaccurate way to measure defense.

Right now the media has him as the storyline of the year, and although his combination of elite efficiency and volume is impressive, it's something LeBron has done for many years. In fact, the fabled team record to which catapults Carmelo into the discussion is also on uneasy ground: they're 2nd in offensive efficiency thanks to a deadly three-point assault, but Kidd, Carmelo and others are having career highs in three-point percentage. If Miami holds the lead in the standings at the end of the season, Carmelo will have no credible argument -- and now that LeBron has a ring, his resume is sterling, and a player has to have a historic season to match him.

As an addendum, one problem with the MVP is voter fatigue. It was boring for people to keep voting for Jordan, and it's boring to keep voting for LeBron. However, I think that necessitates an Offensive Player of the Year award. With only a DPOTY award, it implies the MVP is the offensive equivalent and defense is more for specialists. With their being an offensive and defensive award, perhaps it would make people realize a most valuable "player" counts on both sides of the court. It could also be used to award players who do something incredible on one side of the court like Nash.

It would lead to really interesting discussions during some seasons. This year, for example, LeBron is LeBron, Chris Paul is a wizard with the ball and steers the offense while remaining a sharp-shooter, and Durant is combining efficiency and volume in a way that's only happened three times in the history of basketball. Add in the ancient Kobe leading the league in scoring and Carmelo on the Knicks, the OPOTY trophy would be an interesting race -- and one with hopefully more sensible results than some previous MVP awards.