Lebron deserves a lot of blame for the 2007 finals.

[StrongLurk]

If you considered Lebron to be a superstar in 2007, then you have to hold him to superstar expectations.

Lebron in the first three rounds of the playoffs: 26/8/8 on 43/31/77 splits, only 2.7 TOV per game. Not very efficient but still a good run.

Lebron in the 07 finals: 22/7/7 on 36/20/69 splits, 5.8 TOV per game (TOV more than doubled). 42.8 TS%, 83 ORTG, 10.6 game score.

Lebron is my favorite player, but there really is no logical defense for just how poorly he played in the finals. Cavs lost 0-4 in that series, but the Spurs only outscored the Cavs by 24 total points, or 6PPG. There is no way the Cavs should've been swept, if anything the series could very realistically been tied 2-2 going into game 5. People only look back at the OUTCOME of those finals and ignore how the outcome occured. I'm not saying Lebron/Cavs should have won those finals, but they should've been a little competitive. Lebron's play dropped a historical amount from the first 3 rounds of the playoff.


Does anyone have any rebuttals?

Rebuttal 1: "He had no help" - This doesn't work since he "wouldn't have help" in the first 3 rounds of the playoffs, but still made the finals.

Rebuttal 2: "His team sucked" - Well how did they make the finals again if they sucked? - "Lebron carried them" - So why couldn't he carry them in the finals? Logical conclusions must be either Lebron carried them like a true superstar, but then choked in the finals, OR, Lebron was very overrated in 07 and only managed to get to the finals by getting lucky/having a historically weak East in 07.

Basically I see a lot of stans try to have things "both ways" (i.e. Lebron gets all the credit for carrying "bums" to the finals but somehow deserves ZERO blame for getting swept even though his terrible play CAUSED the sweep to occur). The 07 finals is not the same as the 2018 Finals, because Lebron actually played incredible and was the best player in the finals.

[dankok8]

Yep Lebron had a terrible Finals...

[WhiteKyrie]

Yep Lebron had a terrible Finals...

Guarded by old, unathletic plumber Bruce Bowen too. And just dared to shoot wide open jumpers. He just wasn’t the best player in the game in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

[tpols]

Look into 2013 Finals games 1-6 or 2014 Finals.

Pops defense was like belichick where he cuts the head of the snake to win.

Carlisle mirrored him. Kerr employed an opposite strategy since the sniper talent was too heavy.

[Kblaze8855]

I'm not saying Lebron/Cavs should have won those finals, but they should've been a little competitive.

So a team you know should lose…lost…but you want to talk about who gets blamed? Generally blame is applied for situations that don’t go the way they should. Not for things going exactly as expected. Losing in five games would mean absolutely nothing. Would people be posting 4.5/10 if they took a game off the Spurs before defeat?

Of course not.

Nobody should really take blame for losing when they should lose. It’s just more 1/9 nonsense. People can say it but deep down they know it doesn’t actually make any kinda point. At least id like to think they do.

I could be wrong though. People passionate about these things repeat themselves so often maybe they start to believe it.

[WhiteKyrie]

Look into 2013 Finals games 1-6 or 2014 Finals.

Pops defense was like belichick where he cuts the head of the snake to win.

Carlisle mirrored him. Kerr employed an opposite strategy since the sniper talent was too heavy.

Correct. Spurs gave him the jumper. And he’s even admitted it had a terrible effect on him, shaking him, because deep down he’s never had confidence in his shooting ability. He said it was even there in the 2013 finals and that’s what people would consider his peak. Warriors did opposite and wanted him to drive and force him to be a scorer to beat them.

[StrongLurk]

So a team you know should lose…lost…but you want to talk about who gets blamed? Generally blame is applied for situations that don’t go the way they should. Not for things going exactly as expected. Losing in five games would mean absolutely nothing. Would people be posting 4.5/10 if they took a game off the Spurs before defeat?

Of course not.

Nobody should really take blame for losing when they should lose. It’s just more 1/9 nonsense. People can say it but deep down they know it doesn’t actually make any kinda point. At least id like to think they do.

I could be wrong though. People passionate about these things repeat themselves so often maybe they start to believe it.

I'm surprised at your response...it's not just "did you win/lose", but HOW did you win/lose.

1/9 MJ stuff is meaningless because, even though his teams lost, MJ was putting up 35-40ppg on insane efficiency and was the best player on the court. The Bulls did not lose because of MJ.

I even pointed out in my post that Lebron losing the 2007 finals (sweep) is very different than him losing the 2018 finals (sweep). The 2018 finals was a sweep even with Lebron playing incredible. The sweep did not occur BECAUSE of Lebron. However the sweep in 2007 occurred BECAUSE of Lebron completely shitting the bed. That is why I am saying Lebron deserves way more criticism for losing the 07 finals than what he actually gets.

People want to act like it was IMPOSSIBLE for the Cavs to even win a game, when in reality that 07 series was very close. Cavs easily would've won at least 2 games if Lebron played like he should have and the series would be 2-2 or 3-2 at some point...which means anything could have happened there.

[ShawkFactory]

Yea I'm with Blaze here. We can certainly talk about how he didn't play well if you like. He didn't.

But that doesn't really translate to "blame" for losing that series. Lets say he does score an extra 5-6 points a game and shoots better (maybe 44% instead of 36%). I don't like to say that that automatically translates to more wins. Because if that happens, then that changes everything else that happens too. Maybe the Spurs play with a little more urgency offensively. Maybe Duncan looks to take over more or something.

You can't just say "well they lost by 5, so if Lebron scores 6 more points then they win". The world doesn't work that way.

The Spurs were far better.

[Kblaze8855]

I’m not sure anyone to ever play deserves a lot more criticism than they get. We are in a society where people feel a need to counter the acknowledgment of greatness with equal and opposite hate but it’s never really a worthwhile pursuit to me.

Lebron is likely the most critiqued player in the history of the sport now that we have the media age and internet so intertwined. There are people who have made tens of million of dollars getting up at 4am and hating on him full time on tv or social media till bed time.

I don’t see how what number of games you lose an inevitability lost series need to push itself to the top of the pile of already overly broken down and rehashed criticism that makes up like 70% of all discussion of the game.

If you just need to pile on unnecessary hate I feel like there are better options. He shot like 2/18 with 10-11 turnovers one close loss to the 08 Celtics and that went to game 7.

Compared to that I don’t know why a series even his biggest(honest) detractors know shouldn’t have been won(considering literally everyone to ever win had a better team than that) even needs to be mentioned.

I watched a bit of one of those games a while back when it was on nba tv. Think I made a topic on it. That matchup was some ugly ass ball played between a team that mastered that ugly ball and one of the most “Meh” ass squads ever on that stage. The “Well how did they make it if they weren’t good?” argument is just disregarding a lot of history and our own eyes. “Meh” teams win a series or two more than they should at times. Doesn’t mean every finals team seriously should have been competitive because they made it there.

The Nets made the finals. Doesn’t mean they were good relative to the lakers. They were within a shot or two in the last minute of 3 of the 4 games doesn’t mean they were supposed to win a game or two.

Youre outclassed or you aren’t. 07 Cavs didn’t belong there talent, experience, coaching, or execution wise wise no matter how scrappy they were.

It just isn’t a series that justifies much of a deep dive. And god knows everything about that guy worth two looks gets one for the last two decades.

I think we can do without an extra subject to run into the ground.

[SouBeachTalents]

I’m not sure anyone to ever play deserves a lot more criticism than they get. We are in a society where people feel a need to counter the acknowledgment of greatness with equal and opposite hate but it’s never really a worthwhile pursuit to me.

Lebron is likely the most critiqued player in the history of the sport now that we have the media age and internet so intertwined. There are people who have made tens of million of dollars getting up at 4am and hating on him full time on tv or social media till bed time.

I don’t see how what number of games you lose an inevitability lost series need to push itself to the top of the pile of already overly broken down and rehashed criticism that makes up like 70% of all discussion of the game.

If you just need to pile on unnecessary hate I feel like there are better options. He shot like 2/18 with 10-11 turnovers one close loss to the 08 Celtics and that went to game 7.

Compared to that I don’t know why a series even his biggest(honest) detractors know shouldn’t have been won(considering literally everyone to ever win had a better team than that) even needs to be mentioned.

I watched a bit of one of those games a while back when it was on nba tv. Think I made a topic on it. That matchup was some ugly ass ball played between a team that mastered that ugly ball and one of the most “Meh” ass squads ever on that stage. The “Well how did they make it if they weren’t good?” argument is just disregarding a lot of history and our own eyes. “Meh” teams win a series or two more than they should at times. Doesn’t mean every finals team seriously should have been competitive because they made it there.

The Nets made the finals. Doesn’t mean they were good relative to the lakers. They were within a shot or two in the last minute of 3 of the 4 games doesn’t mean they were supposed to win a game or two.

Youre outclassed or you aren’t. 07 Cavs didn’t belong there talent, experience, coaching, or execution wise wise no matter how scrappy they were.

It just isn’t a series that justifies much of a deep dive. And god knows everything about that guy worth two looks gets one for the last two decades.

I think we can do without an extra subject to run into the ground.

I will say though for as incessantly as the guy is talked about here, the one series I have literally never, even seen brought up here, even by 3ball, is the '06 Pistons one.

[ShawkFactory]

I will say though for as incessantly as the guy is talked about here, the one series I have literally never, even seen brought up here, even by 3ball, is the '06 Pistons one.

Not sure why anyone would. The 06 Pistons were a wagon, particularly on defense, and the undermanned Cavs with 21-year-old Lebron fought admirably. Particularly when Hughes went out.

[Kblaze8855]

Having thought about it for a minute I’m not sure there is a single player of note who should get more criticism than they get. It might be the only thing in our society doled out in either appropriate or excessive amounts, in every single case.

[StrongLurk]

Yea I'm with Blaze here. We can certainly talk about how he didn't play well if you like. He didn't.

But that doesn't really translate to "blame" for losing that series. Lets say he does score an extra 5-6 points a game and shoots better (maybe 44% instead of 36%). I don't like to say that that automatically translates to more wins. Because if that happens, then that changes everything else that happens too. Maybe the Spurs play with a little more urgency offensively. Maybe Duncan looks to take over more or something.

You can't just say "well they lost by 5, so if Lebron scores 6 more points then they win". The world doesn't work that way.

The Spurs were far better.

The bolded was debunked in my first post. The Spurs only won each game by an average of 6 points. Cavs lost game 3 by 3 points and game 4 by 1 point. And this is WITH Lebron playing horribly. So it's really not true that the Spurs were far better. It's funny you say "if Lebron scores 5-6 points extra"...because that literally would've been enough to WIN THE GAMES.

You can't just hand waive Lebron himself playing horribly...was he a superstar or not? I'm seeing quite a lot of long posts here that are really dancing around the issue, which is the 07 finals would absolutely been competitive if Lebron played up to his standards. The numbers are below, and they are BAD.

Lebron in the 07 finals: 22/7/7 on 36/20/69 splits, 5.8 TOV per game (TOV more than doubled). 42.8 TS%, 83 ORTG, 10.6 game score.

Also I can't stand the "Cavs didn't belong there". Okay??? Then if you think that, then you need to go further and explain that Lebron/Cavs only made those finals as a fluke/lucky run with horrible comp, and therefore should Lebron making the 07 finals really be celebrated as much as it is? A lot of people literally classify that LeBron 07 run as "legendary" and he gets a ton of credit...but should he really based off some of the responses here? Again, I am a huge Lebron fan and the 07 run is one of my personal favorites (game 5 vs Pistons had me stunned), but I also acknowledge Lebron crapped the bed when it mattered most in the finals. I mean, we literally saw him do it again in the 2011 finals...it's pretty clear Lebron had some issues with the finals pressure and for sure choked away his first two finals.

[Kblaze8855]

I will say though for as incessantly as the guy is talked about here, the one series I have literally never, even seen brought up here, even by 3ball, is the '06 Pistons one.

I’ve wondered about that too. Some things are just totally ignored like they don’t even get sick of talking about the same things. 08 and 06 are almost totally ignored. Which is fine because as I’ve said we never need more hate on anyone. But if you must…at least shake it up a bit.

[ShawkFactory]

The bolded was debunked in my first post. The Spurs only won each game by an average of 6 points. Cavs lost game 3 by 3 points and game 4 by 1 point. And this is WITH Lebron playing horribly. So it's really not true that the Spurs were far better. It's funny you say "if Lebron scores 5-6 points extra"...because that literally would've been enough to WIN THE GAMES.

You can't just hand waive Lebron himself playing horribly...was he a superstar or not? I'm seeing quite a lot of long posts here that are really dancing around the issue, which is the 07 finals would absolutely been competitive if Lebron played up to his standards. The numbers are below, and they are BAD.

Lebron in the 07 finals: 22/7/7 on 36/20/69 splits, 5.8 TOV per game (TOV more than doubled). 42.8 TS%, 83 ORTG, 10.6 game score.

Also I can't stand the "Cavs didn't belong there". Okay??? Then if you think that, then you need to go further and explain that Lebron/Cavs only made those finals as a fluke/lucky run with horrible comp, and therefore should Lebron making the 07 finals really be celebrated as much as it is? A lot of people literally classify that LeBron 07 run as "legendary" and he gets a ton of credit...but should he really based off some of the responses here? Again, I am a huge Lebron fan and the 07 run is one of my personal favorites (game 5 vs Pistons had me stunned), but I also acknowledge Lebron crapped the bed when it mattered most in the finals. I mean, we literally saw him do it again in the 2011 finals...it's pretty clear Lebron had some issues with the finals pressure and for sure choked away his first two finals.

I feel like everything you've said here has already been addressed. The Spurs were the best team in the league.

The could muck it up with scrappy teams like the Cavs, or they could score in bunches against the Suns. If the Cavs score more then I don't doubt that the Spurs could too. They proved their versatility and ability to pull out games regardless of style over many years.

Again, changing one thing about the series (Lebron shooting better) changes other things about it as well. Especially with a championship pedigree team that led the league in SRS, Net rating, etc.