Just How Unconscionable Is Iguodala FMVP Over LeBron? (318 views)

[eric]

Worse than the 2011 Rose MVP.

.

LeBron James led all Finals players in points, rebounds, and assists. The NBA has held 66 Finals. This is the first time that happened.

.

LeBron James finished the Finals with per-game averages of 35.8 points / 13.3 rebounds / 8.8 assists. In NBA history, there have been 6 / 28 / 17 people to match a single category in a given Finals. The last time for each was 2002 (Shaq), 2009 (Dwight), 2002 (Kidd). Nobody in history has ever matched each category in their careers, let alone in a single Finals. Nobody has ever even done 35 points / 8 assists for a single Finals. Ever. E V E R.

Michael Jordan scored 35+ twice and assisted 8+ once, but never got so many rebounds.
Jerry West did so once each.
Larry Bird rebounded 13+ once and assisted 8+ once, but never got so many assists.
Elgin Baylor scored 35+ once and rebounded 13+ three times, including a double in 1962.
Shaquille O'Neal scored 35+ twice and rebounded 13+ twice, including a double in 2000.

You could say that LeBron's performance this year was like if Michael Jordan also rebounded like Shaq, or if Larry Bird also scored like West.

.

Not everything gets captured in the box score. Let's look beyond the box score.
LeBron made 78 field goals and was assisted on 19, or 24%.
Andre Iguodala made 37 field goals and was assisted on 30, or 81%.
Steph Curry made 54 field goals and was assisted on 19, or 35%.

Everyone loves Steph Curry's ability to make shots in isolation. LeBron did what Curry did and manufactured another 24 made baskets out of isolations.

.

LeBron played 52 more minutes than Iguodala, or 23% more. To say that Iguodala was the Finals Most Valuable Player, not Best Player, you have to say that Iguodala's rate of production was more than 23% better than LeBron's.

Iguodala shot so poorly in this series that the Cavaliers routinely "guarded" his three point shot from the paint, and Steve Kerr was forced to bench him in the fourth quarter of the deciding game 6.

.

.

LeBron's production has a lot of similarities with Bill Russell's, so it's fitting that like Russell his legacy will be littered with snubs, insults, and generally moronic behavior from the press. Rose MVP, Carmelo #1 vote, now this. Unlike previous years, this year we have a public record of who voted for whom. Even more incredible to me than the idiotic result is that there are a total of 11 FMVP voters.

USA Today, CBS.com, ESPN radio, one hometown paper each, Yahoo, ESPN.com
NBA.com, Bleacher Report, Grantland, ABC TV

I haven't heard of most of these guys, so I'm only disappointed in Hubie.

.

Later today I will calculate Win Shares to further illustrate this traveshamockery. My guess is that LeBron will set a record for most ever, Iguodala will finish behind Curry.

.

.

A quick thought on the Finals themselves:
The Cavaliers out rebounded, out free throwed, and were out turnovered by the Warriors.
The Warriors out shot the Cavs.
The Warriors won.

[Druce]

patiently awaiting the win shares stuff

[ANK1990]

What was LeBron's PER-USG% this series?

[IanBoyd]

and what's the square root of this apartment?

[eric]

Jun 17, 2015 15:13:23 GMT -6 Druce said:

patiently awaiting the win shares stuff

I was wrong. Iguodala led all players with .902, LeBron was second with .839. With that said, like Tyson Chandler, Ray Allen, and Tony Parker before him, I think it's clear that Iguodala was an overqualified third option rather than the main mover and shaker for the team. The rest of the leaderboard:
.774 Curry
.754 Green
.602 Tristan
.569 Mozgov
.449 Klay
.442 Barnes
.271 Livingston
.219 Lee
.196 Kyrie
.176 Ezeli
.172 Bogut
.157 Barbosa
.010 or lower everyone else

I think people would agree if you said Golden State had 3 of the 4 best players once Kyrie was out, I think people would be very skeptical if you said Cleveland had 3 of the best 6, and I think the metric showing Golden State had 10 of the best 13 is right on the money. Klay's disappearing act is to me very, very interesting. The Cleveland perimeter defense is not exactly scintillating, and I saw him beat on defense off the dribble quite a few times, which is shocking considering that Shumpert and JR hardly ever touched the ball to get a chance to beat him off the dribble. Six games is a small sample, but I think the people who will use this series as evidence that Golden State was right to balk at trading Klay for Love are over-reaching...

...especially considering that Draymond Green was already offered in the package for Love.

Jun 17, 2015 15:20:25 GMT -6 ANK1990 said:

What was LeBron's PER-USG% this series?

No clue, nobody online calculates PER by series or by game, but I bet it was okay. You only have to shoot 32% or something from the field for more attempts to mean more PER, and LeBron beat that and took a lot of attempts. His USG was 41% so PER-USG would be nothing spectacular, but I'm confident he reached -5.

Jun 17, 2015 16:25:45 GMT -6 IanBoyd said:

and what's the square root of this apartment?

Let's see, Minnesota is a city in the Des Moines Territories so the declination adjustment is 5º East and the square root of 5 is equal to one plus four times the sine of pi on ten, carry your mom, and I'm going to go with 13,005.2 kilohectares.

[eric]

I calculated LeBron's PER for the Finals at 28, but that's relative to only people who played in the Finals, so you'd expect it to be bumped compared to the playoffs as a whole. Next highest were Kyrie 27, David Lee 24. PER-USG went LeBron -13, Mozgov +2, Tristan +4, Curry -8, Iggy +1, Draymond -2, Klay -7... Kendrick Perkins and Mo Speights tied at -35.

I also calculated the number of points generated by a player by doing Points - Points on Field Goals Assisted by Others + Points on Assists of Others' Field Goals, then dividing that figure into the team's total points. This can only be done back to 2001, but the results were pretty interesting. First of all it's important to note that this is NOT a measure of efficiency in any way. It is only a measure of how much a player does for his team's offense, nothing of what he takes away. Second, like all metrics it doesn't capture everything. Take the 2008 Celtics.

1. Rajon Rondo brings the ball up (in less than 9 seconds) and stands at the top of the key dribbling.
2. Kendrick Perkins sets a screen under the basket for Ray Allen.
3. Ray Allen sprints from the right corner to the left, then vice versa, then up the right sideline where...
4. Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett set a stagger screen for the already beleaguered defender.
5. Rondo passes to the thoroughly open Ray Allen, who stops on a dime and drills a three.

This metric gives Rondo the credit for that basket, even though all he did was stand there while literally everyone else did something. That's just the way it's going to be. Another issue is free throws: assists can't be recorded on free throws, so they are always credited to the player taking them. For James Harden type players this is mostly appropriate, for Tyson Chandler types not so much. That's also just the way it's going to be.

.

13 of the 15 champions in this sample had at least one player generate 27% or more of their points. Obviously the 2014 Spurs were one who did not, but I think a lot of people would guess the 2015 Warriors were the other. In fact, Steph Curry generated 31.8% of their points, slightly above the 15 year average of 31.7%. The other egalitarian-ideal team was the 2011 Mavericks, although their idea of egalitarianism was everyone getting to isolate about as much as everyone else.

.

Here is the top ten for players:

pct year name
0.529 2015 James
0.461 2009 Kobe
0.409 2006 Wade
0.404 2012 Westbrook
0.401 2007 James
0.400 2012 James
0.372 2003 Kidd
0.351 2002 Kidd
0.347 2014 James
0.347 2011 Wade
Surprising no one, LeBron this year shattered the record. I expected Kobe to be high, but his 2009 was a lot higher than I thought it would be.

.

Some interesting team dynamics were also illustrated, some of which we can see in the Points Generated percentages for champions:
hi w name
0.304 kobe
0.292 kobe
0.326 duncan
0.313 billups
0.276 ginobili
0.409 wade
0.309 parker
0.269 pierce
0.461 kobe
0.320 kobe
0.213 dirk
0.400 james
0.340 james
0.205 parker
0.318 curry
Not a lot of surprises here in the names except Ginobili, but I think the number values especially for early Kobe and pre-2014 Spurs are surprisingly high. Drilling deeper...

2008 Pierce .269, Garnett .160, Rondo .219
2010 Pierce .218, Garnett .154, Rondo .272

2011 Wade .347, James .287
2012 Wade .300, James .400 (only team on record with two .300+)

2012 Westbrook .404, Durant .235 (yikes)

2013 Parker .304, Ginobili .181, Leonard .099
2014 Parker .205, Ginobili .174, Leonard .125
A lot of the 2014 Spurs coverage couched their ball-sharing as philosophically or heroically motivated, but I think it was more practical than that. Parker was never that good to start with, and as he declined the team had to take the ball out of his hands but didn't have any other single person to give it to, because they were all either decrepit (Duncan, Ginobili) or not that good (Leonard, Green, Splitter). This puts a very different light on the 2015 Spurs. They fell off because their approach was unsustainable, rather than bad luck or lack of hunger or etc.

And here are the FMVPs, see if you can spot the guys who stand out:

fmvp name
0.266 shaq
0.255 shaq
0.326 duncan
0.313 billups
0.205 duncan
0.409 wade
0.309 parker
0.269 pierce
0.461 kobe
0.320 kobe
0.213 dirk
0.400 james
0.340 james
0.125 leonard
0.131 iguodala
It's a disgrace. You can at least give 2005 Duncan a pass for anchoring an elite defense. These last two are just smh.