Jun 15, 2014; San Antonio, TX, USA; Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) during the first quarter in game five of the 2014 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
In an instant, everything changed for the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James is back and all of a sudden their franchise trajectory is headed indisputably and drastically upwards. James brings with him a cornucopia of on-court skills and abilities, but none may be as important to the Cavaliers as his ability to make things easier for his teammates on the offensive end.
While helping Andrew Wiggins unleash his athletic gifts is a tantalizing proposition, there are more pressing matters for James. In Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters the Cavaliers have two incredibly talented backcourt players, both of whom have struggled to consistently turn offensive skill into offensive efficiency. Irving’s true shooting percentage has declined each season since his rookie campaign and Waiters’ field goal percentage grew significantly in his second season but still didn’t even sniff 45.0%. Both players spend a huge amount of time with the ball in their hands and both have displayed a disturbing propensity for inefficient pull-up jumpers. Combined they averaged 31.6 field goal attempts per game last season and, according to the NBA’s SportVU Player Tracking statistics, 14.0 of those were pull-up jumpers[1. On which they shot 40.0%].
A sacrifice will be required from each player — offensive possessions and shot attempts. Last season Irving used 28.2% of the Cavs’ possessions when he was on the floor, Waiters was at 26.9%. Put those numbers around James’ 31.0% and you have 86.1% of their offensive possessions tied up in three players. Obviously, they won’t always be on the floor together, but unless the Cavs plan on playing three-on-five offensively when they are, something has to give. However, there are two upsides to this. Moving offensive possessions from Irving and Waiters to James will be to the Cavs’ benefit as James is one of the most efficient players in the league. In addition, reducing their own loads should allow Waiters and Irving to be more selective, taking advantage of better opportunities and increasing their own efficiency.
Playing alongside James offers both players a chance to operate more off the ball and when they do have the ball, to work against a defense whose primary focus is elsewhere. It seems like a foregone conclusion that both players will be drastically more efficient when playing with James. The question is exactly how much more efficient they’ll be.
The tradeoff relationship between usage and efficiency has been thoroughly researched and established in the canon of basketball analytics, beginning with Dean Oliver’s book, Basketball on Paper. In general terms, as a player is asked to take on a bigger load, their efficiency decreases (and vice-versa) as they are forced into taking more difficult shots and receive more focus defensive from the defense. The exact statistical nature of the effect has been calculated to be between 0.6[1. By Oliver] and 1.25[2. By Eli Witus – http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008/03/06/diminishing-returns-for-scoring-usage-vs-efficiency/] points per 100 possessions for each 1% change in usage — that is, if a player with an ORTG[3. Points produced per 100 possessions.] of 100 and a usage rate of 25% reduced his usage to 24%, his ORTG would increase by between 0.6 and 1.25. The effect works the same way in the other direction.
Theoretically we could estimate how the usage rates of Irving and Waiters will change next season while playing with James, and calculate how that would effect their own individual rates of offensive efficiency. However, that process is messy and requires estimating the changes on a lot of moving parts. But a study by Eli Witus from a few years ago offers a different solution. Witus researched how the overall offensive efficiency of a five-man unit changed when that unit included players whose combined usage rates were higher or lower than 100% (meaning someone had to increase or decrease their usage). Using Witus’ work we can project what James’ effect would be on an entire unit, rather than trying to make individual projections about how each of the four other players’ usage rates would change.
For example, take the possible lineup of Irving, Waiters, James, Tristan Thompson and Anderson Varejao. Given their individual ORTGs from last season, weighted by their usage rates, we would expect this lineup to average 110.8 points per 100 possessions next season. Last season this group, with Jarrett Jack in place of James, averaged 108.3 points per 100 possessions. So by this simple projection, James’ offensive talents would be good for an additional 2.5 points per 100 possessions. But as you can see when we add the usage rates for this group together, they far exceed 100%. If this group were to play together someone would need to use fewer possessions which, in turn, would change the efficiency of the group.
In his study, Witus found: “In general, for every 1% that a lineup has to increase its usage, it’s efficiency decreases by 0.25 points per 100 possessions, and vice versa.” Since this lineup has so many high-usage scorers they would need to reduce their usage by 18.2%. That means we could expect their efficiency to increase by 4.55 points[2. 18.2 x 0.25 = 4.55]. That gives this lineup a projected ORTG of 115.4 and, by this model, projects that James’ presence would increase the efficiency of this unit by 7.05 points, both by his own offensive talents and the ways in which he makes things easier for his teammates.
I played around with this technique for a few different possible Cavaliers lineups for next year with results in the table below. You’ll notice that in each case that total usage rate of the lineup is well above 100%, which means efficiency is always being increased in the projection. The projected ORTG includes both the weighted average of ORTGs of each player and the adjustment for increased efficiency as different players reduce their usage. I’ve also separated out the adjustment for each lineup, labelled ORTG+.
The effect of James lightening the offensive responsibilities of his teammates ranges from 2.1 to 5.3 points per 100 possessions, a fairly significant quantity. The Irving, Waiters, James, Thompson, Varejao lineup we looked at originally still projects to be the most effective unit. However, swapping Matthew Dellavedova in for Waiters leads to a group nearly as effective.
In the end these are just rough calculations but they point to a fairly significant jump in efficiency for many of the Cavs lineups, above and beyond just the talent on the floor, simply by reducing the demands on players like Irving, Waiters and Anthony Bennett. Again, it’s all rough but it cuts right to the heart of what makes LeBron James so special — the Cavs won’t just have the best player in the NBA on their team next season, they’ll likely be getting better versions of everyone else on their roster.