LeBron James is putting up one of the best individual seasons of his career in his 15th season. James is averaging 28.6 points, 8.5 assists, and 8.1 rebounds per game through 20 games, with career-best shooting efficiency with a 57.7 field goal percentage and 42.3 three-point percentage.
In short, James, at age 32, is showing no signs of slowing down and might, somehow, be getting better. There are valid points to be made about his incredible offensive season coming at the expense of his defense, but after an eight-game winning streak, concerns over the Cavs’ overall team defense (which has improved from 30th to 27th in the league) have quieted considerably.
James is doing all of this while transitioning into being the Cavaliers’ main point guard. LeBron has always been one of the primary ball-handlers on any team he’s been on, but rarely did he take the official title of point guard. In critical moments, James has long been the one to bring the ball up the floor and initiate the offense, but this year he’s had to take on that role more often and in the early regular season with the trade of Kyrie Irving and injuries to Isaiah Thomas, Derrick Rose, and Iman Shumpert.
While James has thrived in this role, it’s not something he wanted to do or was preparing to do this summer. Sports Illustrated‘s Jake Fischer recounted James rattling off a brief rant during some shooting drills in New York in the direction of Channing Frye, talking to Fischer, about how he ended up as the point guard this season.
“I didn’t know I was going to have to be the starting point guard when the season started,” James crows. A Cavs’ development coach pauses feeding James’s shooting pocket, chuckling along with the rant. “We weren’t doing much passing this summer,” James continues. “In the summer time we did a lot of catch-and-shoot, post-ups and sh*t. We were feeling good.
“I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, we’ve got four point guards this year!’ Then we start the season and it’s like, ‘LeBron’s the point guard, holy sh*t!’ he sneers directly at Frye. “So I gotta work on my precision passing more.”
James has adapted to his unpredictable turn as the Cavs’ point guard extraordinarily well (he’s not listed as playing any percentage of minutes at point guard on Basketball-Reference, even though he’s been listed at starter there before and acts as the point guard regularly even with Wade or Calderon on the floor), but that is to be expected when James is asked to do most anything on the basketball court. His mindset coming into this season was clearly focused on being a primary scorer without Irving, focusing on catch-and-shoot and post-up situations, but he was at the least expecting the Cavs to have a point guard rotation that would be able to get him the ball in those situations.
That points to some wishful thinking by James, if that was the expectation even after the Irving trade. Derrick Rose was signed and James was on record being excited about it, but Rose hasn’t been a net positive for a team since 2014-15, and the other options until Thomas gets healthy are Jose Calderon and Iman Shumpert. James’ optimism in thinking that group could carry the load and allow him to focus on scoring is admirable, but reality quickly set in that until Thomas returned, James was going to have to run the show and be the finisher.
He’s done that incredibly well, and there’s something to be said about the pressure James puts on a defense as the point guard, as Giannis Antetokounmpo explained to us earlier this season.
“It’s hard. It’s hard to guard him,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s really hard to guard him. He’s the threat and the ball starts from there, so you have to guard him [the whole possession] because you know when they move the ball, the ball’s going to get back to him. So it’s hard.”
When James is off the court, the Cavs’ offense gets 10 points worse per 100 possessions. That comes as little surprise, and James’ on court/off court splits were staggering last year as well. It’s just this year it feels more obvious the impact he has on every possession, because he’s so often starting possessions by bringing the ball up the court. That will likely continue until Isaiah Thomas comes back and LeBron can take a much needed break.
