Are we sure LeBron James is still an NBA All-Star this season?

By any measure, LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game. He's had an incredible career, and even in his 22nd season, he's putting up numbers that would be the envy of most other players.

LeBron is still the most famous person in the league, and he still puts the proverbial butts in the proverbial seats, as his Christmas Day duel with Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors proved. That game was the most-watched NBA regular season game in the last five years, with over 7.7 million people tuning in to watch LeBron's Los Angeles Lakers pull out a thrilling 115-113 road victory.

LeBron has made the All-Star team every year of his career since his rookie season, and seeing as he finished ninth in the MVP voting in his first season in the league, he probably deserved inclusion then, as well.

A cursory glance of the stat sheet from this season shows that LeBron clearly has the numbers to again make the cut. He's averaging 23.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 9.0 assists per game (good for fourth in the league), while shooting just under 50 percent from the floor.

Anthony Davis has been the MVP of the Lakers in JJ Redick's first year as head coach, but that doesn't mean that LeBron has had a reduced workload. Quite the opposite is true, as LeBron has become the main initiator of the offense since D'Angelo Russell was sent to the bench in early November. He's also still playing 35 minutes per game, which is right in line with his average since coming to the Lakers in 2018, and he's only missed two of L.A.'s 30 games. He's also gotten his turnovers under control this month after a giveaway-happy November.

Is there any reason that LeBron shouldn't make the All-Star team?

It seems like a no-brainer that LBJ should be part of the ASG, but a closer look at the numbers paints a somewhat different picture. LeBron's counting stats are all great, that much is true. His on/off splits though, are ugly.

It could be argued that the team has been better when LeBron isn't on the court this season. Though the Lakers have a winning record, they have a -75 point differential for the year. They were -1 overall in the two games LeBron missed, but when LeBron has been on the court, he has the worst plus/minus of anyone on the team with a -103.

Plus/minus can sometimes be a misleading stat, but it's tough to argue that it doesn't have some merit in this case. Anthony Davis is a -30, which also isn't good for an MVP candidate, but it probably speaks more to having a weak roster around him. Austin Reaves is dead even in plus/minus, while D'Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura are both positive. Nobody is arguing that LeBron and AD are worse than those players, but it's worth pointing out.

A big factor in LeBron's bad advanced numbers is his near-total lack of defense. Cleaning the Glass ranks LeBron in the first percentile of defenders in terms of opponents' effective field goal percentage. That means that 99 percent of the league holds opponents to lower effective shooting numbers than LeBron, who's allowing opponents to shoot 6.9 percent higher than they do against anyone else.

The Lakers are a bad defensive team, and it starts with LeBron. We don't even need to see the advanced stats to know it, because the eye test proves it by itself. L.A. has held its opponents under 100 points just four times in 30 games. Two of those times occurred in the two games that LeBron missed.

LeBron is so bad defensively that it has brought his entire game down. Going back to Cleaning the Glass, the site ranks him as being in just the eighth percentile in overall efficiency differential, as the Lakers are 11.5 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the floor. For reference, he's been in the 95th or better percentile 13 times in his career, and even though age has started to take its toll on him, he was still in the 93rd percentile two years ago and the 88th percentile last year.

LeBron's final All-Star case

Despite the damning advanced stats, there's no way that LeBron gets left off the All-Star team, because the fans will vote him in no matter what. His counting stats are still eye-popping, and he's still the most famous and popular player in the game. Even though he's about to turn 40, he's still the face of the league, and you don't play the All-Star Game without the face of the league being involved. We'll be seeing him at the Chase Center in February for sure.