Don’t Be Fooled, LeBron James Still Owns The Eastern Conference In The Playoffs


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LeBron James is having his best season in years. His 26 points, eight assists, and eight rebounds a game would be MVP-ish if there wasn’t a guy throwing up a triple-double and having a historic season in Oklahoma City. James is having the best rebounding and assist seasons of his career, his best scoring and shooting (both from the field and three-point range) season since his last year in Miami, and whatever explosion he lacked in his first year back in Cleveland has seemingly returned.

On the flip side, as a team LeBron James and his crew are having the worst regular season they’ve had in years. The Cavs have the fewest wins a LeBron-led team has had since the 2007-08 season. It could be argued that the low win total is a result of parity in the Eastern Conference and a swelling middle class that the East hasn’t seen in years. Maybe. But with their play as of late it could also be argued that Cleveland is a part of that middle class, and a LeBron team is ripe for the taking in a seven game series for the first since his last Cleveland regime.

LeBron doesn’t seem too worried, both laughing off the importance of a regular season game and declaring his team playoff ready in the past week. He even shut it down early, opting to party in Miami and take the last two games off.

His confidence is not without substance, as James has ran the Eastern Conference this decade, including six straight Finals. But it’s not just the results of his Eastern Conference playoff trips that matter, it’s the dominance. The Cavs are 24-4 in the East playoffs since his return, and no opponent has had an answer for LeBron’s versatility and ability to pick teams apart with both his scoring and his passing. If they forced him to shoot, he simply sliced the defenses apart with passing. If they pressed up, he attacked the basket. He’s been clutch, knocking down game winners and daggers galore.

Simply put, nobody in the East has been a match for LeBron, even in stretches where he’s been without Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, or both.

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LeBron’s Miami dominance wasn’t as pretty, but it was just as masterful. The Heat threw up a 64-14 record in the East playoffs during James’ tenure, and while they lost more frequently than he has in Cleveland, they won 82 percent of their games, just short of the 85 percent the Cavs have won.

Still, the Cavs have struggled this season, down Love, J.R. Smith, and trade addition Kyle Korver for extended stretches of the season and without an answer at backup center. The typical LeBron mid-season malaise lasted longer than ever this year as the Cavs played the second half of the season defensively on par with the worst team in basketball (the Brooklyn Nets). Much of the problem can be found in that lackadaisical defense, and even in the games where they supposedly fixed their issues – like the dominant victory over the Celtics last week – the issues persisted, and they simply succeeded in spite of them.

There are fixes for the Cavaliers’ defensive woes beyond the crucial adjustment that is “try harder.” Schematically, Tyronn Lue hinted they have remedies for their issues but can’t use them yet, which would suggest they’re exhausting and not worth implementing in the regular season. One such fix is probably trapping and hedging harder on pick and rolls and switching screens for shooters, the exact adjustment that caused a shouting match between LeBron and Tristan Thompson against the Pacers a few games ago.

This would require increased effort from the Cavs overall and more discipline, and maybe the focus of the playoffs will improve that. They were able to dig down deep last June after being torched by the Warriors for three of the first four games of the Finals and may be able to dial that up again. Even Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love managed to show some defensive intensity in that series, and the increased attention to detail in the most high pressure situations allowed the Cavs to claim the title by the narrowest of margins.

Another fix would be Power Forward LeBron, and not just for the offensive openings that would create, but the defensive flexibility that would allow the team. Having LeBron as the defender guarding the screener on the pick and roll would make for easy switches and create havoc as teams try to turn the corner and penetrate against the Cavs defense.

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While James is hardly the spry defender that tapped the floor and jumped onto the Derrick Rose assignment in 2011, he’s still a better option chasing around a point guard for a few seconds than Kevin Love or Channing Frye. This is more exhausting than LeBron’s usual controlled bursts of effort. But with each game and possession so crucial — as well as a guaranteed game off between each game and as much as a week with each sweep they complete — the increased effort will be worth the trouble.

Those adjustments, along with the switch everything mentality they used against the Warriors last June would go a long way towards fixing some of the Cavs issues, especially if the effort and focus improves. Their blueprint was laid last season; they need to play just enough defense to let Kyrie and LeBron push them over the top on offense. It took a legendary effort, and in Game 7 only LeBron, Love, and Kyrie scored in the fourth quarter, but they have the confidence of last year to show them it can be done.

The Cavs are still deep, and at the end of the day they’ll have the best and probably the best two players on the floor every night in the Eastern Conference playoffs. While they may not be as versatile personnel-wise last season without some of their heft up front, LeBron still operates as the NBA’s quintessential Swiss army knife. Smaller defenders will serve as small deterrents if he choses to work his post game, and if he plays power forward or even center, he forces other teams to make a lesser of two evils decision as they can either stay big and deal with a mismatch or go small and allow LeBron to rummage his way into the paint over and over.

The East still belongs to the Cavs, and LeBron is why. The problem now is they have about two months and anywhere from 12 to 21 games to get their issues tightened up enough to beat the Warriors four times. Last year they barely did it, but there’s no such thing as a barely title. It’s just the Larry O’Brien trophy and champagne showers.

So no matter what the last few months have told you, the Cavs are out there once again trying to solve the quadratic equation that is the Warriors. With the ultimate cheat sheet that is LeBron James, they still just might have the answer.

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