Is the “King” declining?
The NBA 15/16 season is just around the corner. Until then let’s take a look at one of the game’s best basketball players, if not the best: Lebron James.
Lebron theoretically would make every team he plays for improve their season win/loss record. But apart from this amazing fact, it seems that he was shooting less efficiently last season (14/15) than he did in other years.
Here you can see Lebron’s shot location and effectiveness from the 2010/11–2014/15 seasons.
Better days
This chart below shows how James performed over the last few seasons in the different shot zones, compared to the 14/15 NBA season.
Each of the shots tells a similar story; Lebron has been better at shooting in past years. In the 13/14 season, he was 18% better at shooting from the corner than last season. On outside shots, Lebron actually got closer to his best again. But all in all, “King” James was better in the past.(12–13/13–14)
If you compare his shot locations and effectiveness per season, you can see that his percentages have dropped off a lot at the rim. Compared to the 2013/14 season, his Rim% dropped with 9.4 percentage points. And since 2010/11, this is the first time his % at the rim dropped below 70%.
So, it’s not that he’s just taking more threes or outside shots, he has just gotten less efficient. For some reason, he has lost his effectiveness at finishing at the rim.
But why could it be that Lebron is less efficient? Is it because of his age(30), becoming less flexible? Or has his reaction time gone down. A recent study found that reaction times start to slow down at age 24. Or could it be that his weight loss in the off season has effected his performance? Or does he still need to adapt to his new teammates and vice versa?
Because of Lebron’s decline at effectiveness at the rim, his FG% has also suffered a lot.
As the table illustrates, last season was the first time in 5 seasons that Lebron dropped below the 50% mark, continuing a trend since joining Cleveand in 2003. In 7/8 year with Cleveland, his FG% has been under 50%.
Lebron won 2 NBA championships in 12 seasons. One in the 11/12 season and the other in the 12/13 season. In both seasons he had an FG% above 53% showing that he was rather unlucky in the 13/14 season, with all due respect for the Spurs of course.
So, if Lebron wants to continue to put himself in the position to win more titles, he will have to figure out a way to buck the trend of <50% Field Goal percentages, and see to it that he improves his Rim% by more or less 5% next season.
But as the graph shows, Rim% and FG% go hand in hand.(R^2 – 0.832) Lebron will have to find a way to get that Rim% up again.
Is Lebron done?
Don’t count Lebron James out yet, even though his level has dropped. If we see the Lebron of old show up next season, we can be sure he will improve his FG%. Because in 9 of 11 seasons, he was able to improve his FG% compared to the year before.
It would be too early to think that he can’t win another Championship. He can do it, but he will have to find new motivation to turn around his declining trend.
“If you enjoyed this piece, you might also like: Bouncing the ball more, does it really count for your end result?← P R E V I O U S
