Andre Iguodala: LeBron stopper?

There are many huge storylines surrounding this year’s NBA Finals. We get a rematch of last year’s Finals, pitting the current two-time MVP against the man that had previously been considered to be the best in the game. We get to see if the Warriors can back up their 73-win season with a validating championship, or if alternatively Cleveland can win a championship in a major sport for the first time sense black-and-white TVs were the new innovation.

One of the storylines that has gotten traction is the idea that the Warriors have a secret weapon to use against LeBron James. Andre Iguodala was named the 2015 Finals MVP in large part because he was credited as a “LeBron Stopper”, a defender that could stymie the best player in the world. This was a capital-letters BIG story at the time, and it has carried over into this year as well. On Tuesday’s Sportscenter I heard Iguodala referred to more than once as the LeBron Stopper, and on Wednesday evening ESPN was running a ticker across the bottom of the screen on continuous loop that stated: Andre Iguodala held LeBron James to 35.1 FG% in the 2015 Finals.

I noted immediately, though, that the last was very carefully stated. While they gave LeBron’s field goal percentage while guarded by Iguodala, they didn’t give a corresponding percentage when he WASN’T guarded by Iguodala as a control. Also, field goal percentage is a somewhat limited way to look at scoring efficiency because it doesn’t account for either 3-pointers made or free throws. Finally, while scoring is a large part of LeBron’s game, he is also a primary team offense initiator so I wondered what effect Iguodala had on his playmaking. So, I decided to take a closer look to see how much effect Iguodala’s presence really had on LeBron’s offensive output during the 2015 Finals.

To begin, I used the game flows from PopcornMachine.net and tabulated LeBron’s offensive boxscore stats when Iguodala was on the court vs. when he was off during the 2015 Finals. This is what I found:

Translated to the 42.2 minutes per game that LeBron played for the entire playoffs and comparing to his entire playoffs run, LeBron’s numbers look like:

A few notes of interest jump out at me:

Iguodala’s presence on the court did correspond with a drop in LeBron’s scoring volume and true shooting percentage, with a corresponding increase in turnovers within the series. However…

LeBron’s production against Golden State, with Iguodala on the court, compared very favorably to LeBron’s overall production across the entire 2015 playoffs. LeBron’s scoring volume, scoring efficiency, assists and turnovers were all similar against Golden State with Iguodala on the court as compared to what he did on average against the rest of his playoff opponents.

3While it’s true that LeBron’s field goal percentage was lower in-series with Iguodala on the court, this was somewhat countered by LeBron drawing fouls at a much higher rate with Iguodala on the court (11.4 FTA/42.2 min) than with him off (7.0 FTA/42.2 min). In fact, had LeBron made his free throws at the same percentage when Iguodala was on the court (66% FT) as when he was off the court (81.8% FT) his overall true shooting percentage would not have changed much with or without Iguodala.

When I look at those numbers as a whole, it would appear to me that yes, Iguodala did help to slow LeBron a bit compared to how LeBron otherwise performed against the Warriors. However, even then, Iguodala was not a LeBron Stopper, because all he did was slow LeBron to the pace that he otherwise maintained against everyone else in those playoffs.