Would a 2015 Finals Win Put LeBron James on NBA's 'Mount Rushmore'?
LeBron James is vying to win his third championship as his Cleveland Cavaliers are currently up on the Golden State Warriors 2-1 in the NBA Finals. Such an achievement would validate his biggest boast. A year ago, shortly before the All-Star break, he made waves when he proclaimed he would be on the NBA version of Mount Rushmore someday.
James answered the question of who he'd put on his monument by saying:
"Four NBA greats—I would say, obviously, the easy three that we all talk about in our league: Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. I would say my fourth...wow, this is so tough. The greatest players of all time that I would like to see on Mount Rushmore. This is not fair. This is not fair. You know how many great players there is? Oh, my God, Oscar Robertson. Those are my four.
"
And when Steve Smith asked James if he would be on it someday, he answered unequivocally:
"I'm going to be one of the top four to ever play this game. For sure. And if they don't want me to have one of those top four spots, they better find another spot. We've got to bump somebody. Somebody got to get bumped. That's not for me to decide. That's for the architects to chisel somebody's face out and put mine up there.
"
There was a good amount of backlash at the time for the remarks, including some from two faces currently residing in the mountainside: Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Criticism noted, James is already deserving of being in the conversation for inclusion, and an NBA Finals win this year could seal his placement.
When you're discussing the four greatest players ever, there are three things that need to be factored in.
- Regular-season accomplishments: A player has to prove himself in the daily grind of the season, game in, game out and year in, year out. He has to separate himself from the peers of his generation in doing so.
- Postseason accomplishments: A player who excels in the regular season but doesn't lead his team to victory in the postseason isn't in the dialogue for the top four. He might be one of the top 10, but when looking at the greatest of the greatest, winning BIG matters.
- Finals accomplishments: On the game's highest stage, the player needs to have signature achievements that made a difference in winning championships. This is not a requirement to be "great," but again, it matters when you're separating the greatest from the great.
Regular-Season Accomplishments
There are a couple handfuls of players whom people might include in their personal Rushmores. I pared the list down to 12 names and compared them statistically.
Before getting into that, there a few housekeeping points I need to address.
The list was determined based on my personal assessment of the above criteria. While some could argue for certain players (for example, Hakeem Olajuwon) above others on my list, I don't think they'd be major candidates for inclusion on the mountain, i.e. Olajuwon might be in your top-10, but probably not in your top-four.
I only used stats and numbers that are available for all players being compared for the sake of uniformity. That's why steals and blocks aren't used.
There are three tabs in the infographic below. The first shows the aggregate traditional stats, the second shows the averages, and the third shows the advanced stats. On the first two tabs, if you click on the name, you can see the total stats (points, rebounds and assists) for each player. On the "Advanced" tab, click on the bar icon in each row to sort accordingly.
*In this and all charts, the asterisk denotes the player has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
As you would expect, the aggregate numbers are very much a reflection of longevity. Some might argue totals are biased toward those who played longer, but that's why it's a part of a testament of greatness. For example, it is a reflection of Abdul-Jabbar's longevity that he had more points alone than James, Johnson, Bird or Jerry West had points, rebounds and assists combined.
James is only ninth on this list, but he has already passed Bird, Johnson and West—all names that frequent the "G.O.A.T." discussion—so it's not inappropriate to put him in the conversation based on career totals.
He is only fifth in averages, but again, there's a bit of a qualifier: The top three of Wilt Chamberlain, Robertson and Russell all played in a different era with a much faster pace and lot more missed shots. As a result, the numbers aren't really comparable.
The simple solution would be to view pace adjusted stats, but to determine that, the distinction between offensive and defensive rebounds is needed. Since those weren't recorded until the 1973-74 season, it is impossible to adjust for pace prior to that. It's also worth mentioning that all three played a portion of their careers before the lanes were widened in 1964-65.
So, that qualified, James is second among the modern-era players.
In the advanced metrics, he is second in player efficiency rating (PER), seventh in win shares (WS) and third in win shares per 48 minutes (WS/48).
In all of these, James is no lower than ninth and is as high as second. Furthermore, the only player in league history who has more points, rebounds and assists is Robertson.
James' regular-season numbers alone don't put him on the mountain, but they're enough to put him in the conversation. At a minimum, he is just outside of the window.
Postseason Accomplishments
Contrary to the perception that James takes a step back in the postseason, he actually fares relatively well in our comparison.
He is sixth all-time in total stats after moving past Russell in Game 3. In fact, given the way he's been playing during the Finals, if the series went seven games, he could pass Kobe Bryant before it finished. He needs 197 combined numbers, and he's averaging 61 per game.
James is fourth on our list in averages, with Jordan being the only modern-era player ahead of him. He's fifth all-time in scoring, even extending to players outside of our list. Only Kevin Durant has a higher scoring average with a better true shooting percentage.
In the advanced stats, James is second in PER and win shares per 48 and third in total win shares. Furthermore, if the Finals go to seven games, he has an outside shot of passing Tim Duncan for total win shares to move into second. The columns in the table below are sortable.
I also evaluated the "drop-off" discussion. As the table below shows, most players experience some deterioration in the playoffs, and James compares favorably with all the other greats in that regard.
He has the fourth-smallest decline in PER. He and Jordan are the only two who have at least as many win shares per 48 minutes in the playoffs as they do in the regular season. Ergo, his reputation is not only unwarranted, it's the opposite of reality.
By any measure, James is one of the four-most accomplished postseason players of all time.
Finals Accomplishments
The Finals comparison isn't quite as easy. Complete numbers aren't readily available for games before the 1985-86 season. Ergo, some players who overlapped their careers only have parts of their numbers represented, and some players aren't represented at all.
Of the eight players there are numbers available for, James is currently fifth; but by the end of the series, he could move to as high as second.
He is third in averages behind only Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal (whose Finals performances have been largely ignored due to the whole feud and ensuing fallout with Bryant).
In the metric "game score," which is the single-game equivalent of PER, James is only fifth. And that's where his biggest remaining hurdle lies.
He's played well in the Finals for the most part, but he hasn't had many singular games to distinguish himself. His best performance boasted a game score of 32.5, which ties him for the 25th-best Finals game since 1985. That was his Game 7 performance against the San Antonio Spurs in 2013 when he recorded 37 points, 12 rebounds and four assists.
Since then, there have been 128 incidents of a game score of at least 25.0. James is tied with Johnson for the third-most appearances on the list:
| Player | Games |
| Michael Jordan* | 18 |
| Shaquille O'Neal | 13 |
| Magic Johnson* | 9 |
| LeBron James | 9 |
| Dwyane Wade | 7 |
| Tim Duncan | 6 |
| Hakeem Olajuwon* | 5 |
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar* | 4 |
| Larry Bird* | 4 |
| Kobe Bryant | 4 |
| James Worthy* | 4 |
And this defines James in the Finals—great, but just shy of the greatest. To be on the mountain, separation is required.
Jordan's flu game in 1997 or Johnson starting at center in 1980 are the types of singular achievements that distinguish the greatest from the great. And that's the one thing lacking from James' resume.
James has done nothing "wrong." He isn't at "fault." These conversations easily become overly binary, avoiding any sense of nuance. A player can be great in how he handles hardship and still be defeated in the end.
However, to establish one's place on basketball's alp, handling adversity well can't excuse a player; he must overcome it. He must be not only better than anyone else on the court; he is required to be greater than his circumstances. And James has yet to establish himself in this regard.
That said, here is the King's opportunity to do precisely that. The Warriors are the seventh-best team in history based on the Simple Rating System at Basketball-Reference.com, which factors in strength of schedule and margin of victory.
Per Neil Paine at FiveThirtyEight.com, no one has ever won in the Finals with a weaker supporting cast—and that was before Kyrie Irving broke his kneecap.
And yet, as I noted after Game 3's performance, James' numbers this Finals are comparable with Jordan's '93 battle with the Suns—my personal favorite for greatest Finals performance ever.
It's not hyperbole to say that no one has ever done more with less.
Should he win this series while approaching a triple-double and 40 points, it would conceivably be the greatest singular postseason achievement in the history of the NBA. And that's a reachable attainment based on what's happened in the first three games.
Not only that, it would warrant setting dynamite in the mountainside to carve James a place on NBA's Mount Rushmore.
All stats for this article, including the charts, were obtained from Basketball-Reference.com.
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