LeBron James’ Gravitational Pull On the Finals

Before Game 3 of the Finals, I took note of the extremes to which LeBron is monopolizing the ball in Cleveland’s offense. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he wasn’t able to sustain quite that level of control in Game 4[1. It’s a story for perhaps another time, but the Cav’s performance in Game 4 makes Games 2 and 3 more impressive retroactively, just in terms of the sheer discipline of their play on both ends of the floor. There was some slippage in Game 4, but the differences were much more playing “normal basketball” in terms of ball movement, shots and defensive reads rather than “bad basketball.” The attention to game plan detail was probably one of the things more affected by their collective fatigue in Game 4.]. Still he had the ball for around 10:45 of game action, which would still have led the NBA this season, while his 64.2% True Usage would have finished second to Russell Westbrook. It is only by comparison to his Atlas-like impact on Games 2 and 3 that he seemed somehow less involved for the Cavs.

The play of his teammates was a major factor in James’ apparent loss of effectiveness for much of the contest. He shot poorly, but he’s shot poorly all series. This has been almost by design, as LeBron squeezing the ball into a fine powder has made it difficult for the Warriors to get the fast break run outs and crossmatches upon which they thrive. More than merely inaccurate shooting, he couldn’t seem to “lift” his supporting cast, with only the Wun Wun-like Timo Mozgov offering much assistance. The rest of the Supporting Cast[5. Copyright Michael Jordan.] neither shot efficiently from LeBron’s passing out of double teams, nor finished especially effectively when they grabbed offensive rebounds off their own misses. Still, even the limited success from those avenues is better, by a wide margin, than the rest of the Cavs have been when left to their own devices.

On the first point, LeBron had 8 assists in Game 4. But he perhaps should have gotten several more. He recorded approximately[3. As noted frequently, single game SportVU stats are tough to derive from the public data available on NBA.com, as the numbers presented as per game averages to one decimal place, though over a playoff run, the range of the estimate is fairly narrow, as opposed to between games 70 and 71 of the regular season when the range might be plus or minus 10 assist chances in either direction!] 20 assist chances in the game.[4. In addition, he had three “hockey assists along with two “free throw assists”.] Of the 8 makes on LeBron’s assists, two were three pointers. Thus the rest of the Cavs had an Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%) of 45% on passes from LeBron. By comparison, through the first 3 games of the Finals, the Cavs were hitting at a clip of 69.8% eFG directly from LeBron’s passing after shooting just under 64% eFG during on LeBron’s setups during the season. On more or less average shooting by his teammates then, LeBron would have had 10 or 11 assists, and the Cavs would have scored around 7 more points.[5. All things being equal, public data isn’t granular enough to tell us to whom or to where the unconverted assist chances happened to go.] Further, the non-LeBron Cavaliers shot 33.7% eFG when not set up by LeBron.

In terms of offensive rebounding, this was always going to be one of Cleveland’s biggest strategic edges in the series. Especially after Game One established the viability of Tristan Thompson and Mozgov playing together for extended minutes, Mozgov’s bulk and Thompson’s relentlessness were going to be more than the smallball Warriors can handle. With both on the floor, Cleveland is rebounding 31.5% of their own misses, and if anything this underrepresents Cleveland’s dominance on the glass. Twenty-seven of the 40 team rebounds (generally loose ball fouls or balls knocked out of bounds) from Cleveland missed field goals have seen the ball return to the Cavs. Unfortunately for LeBron and Co., they haven’t really done that much with it.

The Cavs are 12-37 from the floor, including 1-9 from three, on shots immediately following a offensive rebound. This 33.8% eFG[4. And approximately .7 points per possession, factoring in ensuing turnovers and shooting fouls drawn.] blunts the impact of the offensive rebounding more than a little. Obviously, that’s extremely poor efficiency in putback situations. Leaguewide, teams shot 53.8% in this scenario. Cleveland however, was one of the least effective teams in the NBA after offensive rebounds. Per Synergy Sports data, Cleveland was, by a decent margin, the least efficient squad on plays where the rebounder immediately tried to score himself, shooting 47%. No other team shot below 50% on putback chances.  Still, chasing down misses is always a decent source of scoring for the Cavs – poor production on follow shots is still better than not getting those opportunities in the first place. It’s a little like a player who gets fouled extremely often, but shoots a mediocre percentage in the mid 60s at the line – still helpful, but could be so much better.

Back to the Finals specifically, the Cavs have live-ball rebounded 24 of LeBron’s misses[6. Against 38 defensive rebounds, 9 Cavs team rebounds and 8 Warriors’ team rebounds.] leading to 18 shot attempts, 2 shooting fouls, 3 turnovers and a timeout. They’ve only scored 15 points on those 18 second-shot attempts, though this is influenced by LeBron himself being 1-5 on shots directly following offensive rebounds of his own misses. In all the Cavs have 13 points on the 13 non-LeBron shots in this set.

Add it all up, and 58.9% of Cleveland’s field goal attempts have come more or less directly from LeBron. Ignoring the few minutes he’s rested, and this rises to over 64%. Lest that sound like LeBron is not letting anyone else play with his toys, on the 143 not-LeBron-created attempts, the Cavs have 92 points. That’s an eFG% of 32.2%. For a comparison of how overmatched the non-LeBron Cavs are when left to fend for themselves against Golden State’s defense, Hampton had an eFG of 32.2%[5. A slightly better 32.2%.] in their first round loss to the Kentucky Pre-Rookies in this past March’s NCAA Tournament.

So while LeBron’s own shooting has been brutal, he’s held the ball seemingly for entire possessions at a time and it has been what Zach Lowe has taken to calling “caveman basketball,” this might be the only way the non-Kyrie, non-Love Cavaliers can hope to compete.[6. I haven’t even factored in the fouls drawn off of James’ passes or missed shots, or the secondary assists he’s tallied. Per SportVU, he’s recorded 5 secondary assists and an additional 6 free throw assists over the four games. However, since there is no way of measuring the attempts from which those positive plays were drawn, there’s no real way to factor them in.] All in all the “LeBroffense” has produced shots at an eFG of 49.5%, which ain’t half bad, and in fact is slightly better than the 48.8% eFG Golden State has managed this series. Unfortunately, even James can’t do literally everything. A decent chunk of plays end up with the ball in elsewhere. That third of possessions he hasn’t been able to directly influence while in the game, as well as the complete collapse when he goes to the bench[6. Cleveland has a 21.7% eFG with LeBron on the bench and it somehow feels even lower.], are more than enough to sink the offense overall.

As a final illustration of how vital LeBron’s role has been, I used the same methodology to look at the differences between Russ Being Russ possessions[8. Only for the games Westbrook actually played.] and the rest for OKC on Westbrook’s way to his own top-of-the-NBA mark in True Usage:

The above shows Westbrook might have been at or possible even past the point of doing too much. For Cleveland to win what is now best-of-three series, the Cavs might need LeBron to do even more than what has to be considered one of the most dominant series performances of all time.[8. It might not be the best, as that will depend largely on your definition, but in terms of having fingerprints on everything good that happens for his team, no player competing at the championship level of done anything like this is recent memory.]

Edit: Went back and estimated what the results of a similar exercise performed on the 2007 Cavs’ playoff run would be. It’s not a pretty comparison for the bunch currently on the floor:

Since SportVU didn’t exist back in the day, I had to make an educated guess at the number of field goals attempted from LeBron’s assist chances. The better passers in the league record about 1 assist per 1.9 assist chances, so I simply multiplied his 159 assists in the 2007 playoffs by 1.9 and then rounded down to an even 300. This is possibly a slight uncerount of his assist chances, which would inch the “non-LeBron’ shooting percentage up a tick, but only a tick.