Part of what makes LeBron James the best basketball player on the planet is his insane basketball IQ. That’s something that is hard to define but it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” deals and it’s not hard to see it with LeBron on the offensive end.
James sees things few others do and is able to anticipate what the defense is about to do and make the right play at the right time an astounding percentage of the time. Sometimes that’s making a cross-court pass when the defense has loaded up on the play side or attacking for himself, but James seems to make the right play on the court almost every time.
On the defensive end, LeBron has that same insane capability, but it’s a bit harder to recognize. You can see it when he jumps a passing lane, knowing what the opposition is trying to run, or when he rotates down to make a block that clearly required more than just a great reaction time to what the other team is doing. As former Cavaliers GM David Griffin explained on his recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, James knows pretty much every play the opposition is trying to run and sometimes he’ll flat out tell them what they should be doing.
That apparently happened in the 2017 playoffs in the Cavs’ sweep of the Raptors (not to be confused with this year’s sweep of the Raptors) as Griffin told the story of him watching LeBron explain to Patrick Patterson what he was supposed to do on a play out of a timeout and that he was positioned wrong (transcription via William Lou of The Score).
“There’s literally nothing you can show him that he can’t do. There’s no play you’ll run against him he can’t name, and then go out there and teach your players how to do it better than anyone else,” Griffin said. “I was in the gym when I watched him on the floor against Toronto tell Patrick Patterson where he was supposed to go on the play they had called out of a timeout late in the fourth quarter. He was like ‘no Pat, you’re supposed to stand over there and set a pin down for DeMar (DeRozan) over here.'”
It’s both nice and evil of LeBron to do this, particularly in the middle of a sweep of the Raptors. LeBron has owned the Raptors for the past three years in the postseason and this might offer a hint as to why. James doesn’t just have their number, he quite literally knows exactly what they’re going to try and do against him.
There are undoubtedly plenty other examples of LeBron doing this, but following this latest domination of Toronto, this one offers a glimpse into just how much he knows about his primary rivals in the East and why none of them have been able to beat him for nearly a decade.
