LeBron James Will Find More Success on the Miami Heat with Less Wins

It probably all started with Chris Webber.

On March 8, the NBA TV analyst sent this misspelled tweet:

LaBron James and the Miami Heat have to win 18 of there next 18 in a row to TIE Cleveland's record of 61-21 a year ago. 18 WOW

A few days later, some bloggers from the Wages of Wins Network began debating whether the Heat are better than last season's Cavs and whether or not LeBron James actually has better teammates in Miami than he had in Cleveland.

Okay...

...If you're still reading this after rolling on the floor laughing, then let's quickly debunk this nonsense.

This article will use Win Score and Estimated Wins Produced, statistical models created by Professor David Berri from the Wages of Wins Journal, to measure how much a player's box score statistics contributed to their team's efficiency differential and wins. An average player produces an estimated 0.100 wins per 48 minutes (EWP48), a star player produces 0.200+ EWP48 and a superstar produces 0.300+ EWP48. More information on these stats can be found at the following links:

Simple Models of Player Performance
Wins Produced vs. Win Score
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics

The debate started with a nice post by Ian Levy titled "The Grass Might Be Greener." He actually put together a decent list of stats in response to a comment posted at the New York Times Off the Dribble blog, but the flaw with his article is timing.

Levy illustrated how the stats for the 2011 Heat pale in comparison to the 2010 Cavaliers, but the problem is that the picture he painted was done on March 10 after the Heat had lost five games in a row, including a 30-point blowout in San Antonio. That bad stretch was enough to drop the average Estimated Wins Produced Per 48 minutes for the Heat from 0.144 to 0.138 (see the Heat Produced Chart). That's the difference between a team expected to win 59 games and a team expected to win 57 games.

Why is that a big deal? Well, the best measure of a team's quality is efficiency differential and Ian showed that the Heat had the same efficiency differential as last year's Cavs at plus-7.1. Efficiency differential is simply the difference between the points scored and points allowed per possession. Of course, since Estimated Wins Produced per 48 minutes is based on efficiency differential, the Heat's efficiency differential declined during the losing streak, too.

After winning three games in a row, including a 30-point blowout of the Spurs, the Heat's efficiency differential has increased to plus-7.8, according to basketball-reference.com. A team with an efficiency differential that increases by +0.7 would be expected to have two extra wins.

So if we go by efficiency differential, then the 2011 Heat have been more productive than the 2010 Cavaliers.

After Ian's thoughtful look at the Heat and Cavs, things literally started to get silly. Notorious Celtics fan, Arturo Galletti, made the statement that LeBron had better teammates on the 2009 Cavs than his new team in Miami during the podcast "A Rose does not equal Love."

After the podcast, Galletti said this should not be up for debate and sent the following tweet:

@MIA_Heat_Index Just checked. Heat '11 no LBJ project out to 41.7 wins (so far). Cavs '09 no LBJ project out to 43.3 wins. Not a huge diff.

The obvious problems were pointed out with Galletti's analysis during the podcast, mainly:

• He's confusing production with talent.
• LeBron's top five teammates in Miami are better than the top five teammates he had in Cleveland, and that's all that matters in the playoffs according to analysis Galletti did previously.

I'm not going to address those issues, since they were handled by others on the podcast. I'm going to address whether or not LeBron's Cleveland teammates were actually more productive than his Miami teammates.

One of the strongest cases for LeBron being MVP this season has been the awful performance by the Cavs since he left. The Cavs have the worst record in the NBA at 12-53 and the worst efficiency differential at minus-11. In 2009, the Cavs won 65 games and had an efficiency differential of plus-10. 

Clearly, measuring the performance of LeBron's teammates while they were able to benefit from his presence on the floor isn't the best way to evaluate them. I think a better method to evaluate LeBron's teammates in Miami and Cleveland is to measure their performance without LeBron on the floor. This spreadsheet uses data from basketballvalue.com to summarize the performance of lineups without LeBron from the 2009 Cavs and 2011 Heat.

As expected, the 2009 Cavs lineups without LeBron were pretty bad. How bad? They posted an efficiency differential of minus-7, which means they would only be expected to win 23 games in a season.

The 2011 Heat lineups without LeBron were about average, with an efficiency differential of minus-1.4 and would be expected to win 45 games. Should a team with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh be expected to win 22 more games than a team featuring Anderson Varejao and Mo Williams as its best players? Yeah, that sounds about right.

I understand NBA fans being confused about why the Heat don't have a better record. But as I mentioned in an earlier article, the answer really comes down to injuries and the decline of LeBron's play this season, not the declining play of his teammates in Miami.