Has LeBron James underperformed in his NBA Finals appearances?
Last week Jerry West made headlines by defending LeBron James’ NBA Finals record. West said the following in response to James’ critics:
That’s the most ridiculous thing. If I were him, I’d probably want to strangle [detractors],” West said. “He’s carried teams on his shoulders. He’s been to the Finals six straight times. How many times has he been the favorite? None. Zero. Grossly unfair to him.
While it’s true that James has been to the NBA Finals 6 times in a row (7 times total) — a feat that is incredibly impressive in itself — he has only garnered 2 victories to date, earning him a record of 2–4.
Many LeBron fans have similar opinions as West — LeBron carried many of his teams to the finals, so it’s unfair to fault him for not winning them all with what were in many cases clearly inferior teams.
But was Jerry West’s statement correct? To find out, and hopefully verify his claim, I went to the data.
The goal was to show that LeBron James-led teams’ performance in the NBA Finals to date has not been subpar. On the contrary, it has fallen in line with expectations given that his teams were underdogs the majority of the time. To do this analysis, I pulled the pre-series odds for each of the NBA Finals LeBron has played in.
Converting these odds to their equivalent win probabilities and adding them together leads to the ‘expected value’ of championships that LeBron should have by now. Assuming Jerry West was correct in saying that LeBron-led teams have not underperformed, the expected value should be at or below the 2 championships his teams have won. See the results below:
As you can see, expected value shows that LeBron-led teams should have approximately 2.8 championships as of now, nearly a full championship more than he currently has. This analysis suggests that his teams have indeed underperformed, though perhaps not as significantly as many critics would like you to think.
In theory, the betting odds represent an efficient market, and thus reflect the ‘true probability’ that these past James-led teams had of winning a their respective NBA Finals without the bias that comes with analyst predictions. However, in hindsight it is clear that some odds were wildly off base (e.g., 2013 Spurs matchup).
Overall, this data shows that LeBron-led teams have underperformed to date, but that he is not quite worthy of all the hate he’s been getting for the past few years.
…At least not yet. If the Cavs fall to the Warriors in this years final LeBron’s expected to actual championships ratio will fall to 3.2:2.0, further fueling the idea that he can’t deliver when it matters.
Because data is meaningless in a vacuum, here’s a quick summary of how a similar analysis of some other all-time greats might come out:
- Michael Jordan — Undoubtedly MJ’s analysis would show that he out performed expectations. At 6–0 in the finals, no matter how high his odds of winning were (they were never 100%), he still exceeded them.
- Kareem Abdul Jabbar — At 6–4 it’s unclear if Kareem over or under performed. My guess is he’s roughly in the expected range.
- Larry Bird, Magic Johnson — Similar situations as Kareem with records of 3–5 and 5–4 respectively.
- Kobe Bryant — Likely outperformed with NBA Finals record of 5–2. However, Bryant was a part of the 2004 Lakers team that lost to the Pistons while heavily favored (84.62% win probability), so that likely hurts him a bit.
If anyone can get the odds from pre-2004, I’d welcome more robust analysis.
So, have LeBron-led teams underperformed in the finals? Maybe a little… but let the man live.
