Lakers twittersphere experienced a minor tizzy last Friday upon the release of a projected win totals piece from ESPN’s Kevin Pelton. (ESPN Insider access is required to read it because, as we know, all worthy content can’t be consumed for free.)
One of basketball media’s best eggheads, Pelton employs a combination of “ESPN’s real plus-minus (RPM) along with a projection of games played and [a] best guess at playing time” to forecast seasons. But to improve accuracy, he made a few new adjustments, including the variable of declined RPM for players changing teams.
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Using the new math, Pelton’s prediction left many Laker fans unhappy: 41.2 wins and a nine seed. Wrote Pelton:
When the Lakers first signed LeBron, I put together a preliminary RPM projection that pegged them for 50 wins. So why the drop to 41 in the full version? No team was hit harder by the adjustment for players changing teams than the Lakers, who project to have just 55 percent of their minutes played by returning players. (Only the Phoenix Suns are lower in this regard.) And no individual was hit harder than James, whose projected RPM dropped from plus-5.0 to plus-2.7.
If James drops only to a plus-4.0, the Lakers would move into eighth, and even if this projection is accurate for all teams, they would still probably be better than 50-50 bets to make the playoffs because somebody else falls out, so RPM isn’t necessarily calling them a lottery team. Nonetheless, these projections do now suggest the Lakers are far from challenging the best teams in the West.
I’ve seen many folks challenging the methodology, but I’m not here for that. Pelton is very good at mathematical analysis and, quite frankly, I’m not nearly smart enough to devise his models, much less challenge their veracity. Plus, save the part where we all put Golden State at the top, concocting win totals and seeds three months before a season begins is always to some degree an exercise in nonsense. For me, the “why” is more interesting than the actual prediction.
With that in mind, I dug into the details, then landed on a very disturbing part of his formula.
2018-19 Lakers RPM projection
| Player | GP | MPG | OffRPM | DefRPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lonzo Ball | 77 | 32 | -0.2 | 2.1 |
| Kentavious Caldwell-Pope | 78 | 32 | 1.0 | 0.2 |
| Brandon Ingram | 77 | 34 | 0.1 | -0.5 |
| LeBron James | 78 | 36 | 4.6 | 0.4 |
| JaVale McGee | 78 | 18 | -0.3 | 0.1 |
| Kyle Kuzma | 78 | 28 | 0.6 | -0.7 |
| Rajon Rondo | 76 | 24 | -1.1 | -0.7 |
| Josh Hart | 78 | 20 | 0.9 | -0.3 |
| Lance Stephenson | 78 | 18 | -0.3 | -1.8 |
| Ivica Zubac | 78 | 12 | -1.0 | 0.9 |
| Total | 3.6 | 0.1 |
A team-leading 36 minutes per game for LeBron? At age 34? In his 16th season?
Yikes!
Granted, Pelton estimated these minutes before Michael Beasley was signed, which could affect how everything’s chopped up. However, I’m not convinced Beasley will make the rotation, in no small part because it doesn’t sound like he’s convinced. Also, there’s no guarantee whatever steady minutes would come at LeBron’s expense, given how little Beasley replicates him beyond scoring. Moreover, it’s always a natural assumption that LeBron will lead his team in minutes per game and total minutes, since that’s been the case for his entire career except the 2015 season, when he finished behind Kyrie Irving.
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Hell, playing more than anybody in the entire league is seemingly never out of the question.
For example, LeBron raised quite a few eyebrows by leading the NBA in minutes per game (36.9) and total minutes (3026) last season while dragging an unimpressive Cavaliers squad to the Finals. And rightly so. It was downright amazing at this junction of his career. But what hasn’t been mentioned as much is how during that postseason, LeBron also led all players for mpg (41.9) and total minutes (922). Or how LeBron held top honors for minutes per game (37.8) during the 2017 season. For that matter, he led all players in total minutes (744) during the 2017 playoffs, while averaging a gnarly 41.3 mpg. The dude has never averaged fewer than 35 mpg during the regular season throughout his entire career. And during a postseason run that’s been uninterrupted since George W. Bush began a second term, only twice did he average fewer than 40 mpg.
That’s insane, especially with no signs of slowing down.
But every player, even the NBA’s resident cyborg, is indestructible until they’re not. And I can’t help but wonder if we’ve officially entered the stage of LeBron’s career where this much floor time is playing with fire. When you start actually breaking down his minutes, the context becomes staggering. For example, LeBron is now 18th all-time for NBA regular season minutes (44,298). Check out the active players nearest to him on that list.
Dirk Nowitzki. Joe Johnson. Vince Carter. Jason Terry. Pau Gasol.
Forget being a focal point of their teams. These elder statesmen don’t come close to sniffing even 30 minutes per game anymore. The player nearest to LeBron on the list with a similar workload last season was fellow Banana-boater Carmelo Anthony, who logged 32.1 mpg with the Thunder. However, at 47th all-time, Melo has also played 6,463 fewer regular-season minutes, and the gap in playoff minutes between him and the all-time postseason minutes leader isn’t even that close. Travel further down the list for other active players coming off reasonably comparable nightly averages and you’ll land on Dwight Howard (30.4 mpg, 64th all-time, 35,754 minutes) and Chris Paul (31.8 mpg, 116th all-time, 31,493 minutes).
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Again, the discrepancies are eye-opening, further underscoring just how unfathomable LeBron’s pace has been.
And if I may offer a morbid comparison, when Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles, he had logged 45,390 regular-season minutes, plus another 8,641 in the postseason, for a grand total of 54,031 minutes of NBA run. Guess who’s lapped that sum by 316 minutes.
Bottom line, continuing this workload for LeBron strikes me as crazy and dangerous. There must be an urgency towards reduction. If possible, at a career-low. To me, 33.5 mpg feels like a great goal. Shaving just 3.4 minutes may sound trivial, but over the course of 82 games, 278.8 minutes add up. It’s difficult to believe LeBron’s body wouldn’t benefit from that time off, especially as the Lakers enter the playoffs.
Of course, therein lies the rub.
Balancing the goals of keeping LeBron fresh for the short (and long) haul while heavily prioritizing the playoffs is no picnic. The Western Conference ain’t getting any easier, as I count 11 teams with a realistic shot at the postseason. (While I’m not among them, there are people who believe in the Grizzlies staying healthy, which could raise the total to 12.) There will be few cakewalks, which adds urgency to every outcome. This will be a fight for a franchise desperate to end a playoff drought.
Still, desperation can’t create shortsightedness. There will certainly be times when LeBron must push 40 minutes to win a game of significance, and if these spots are picked judiciously, fine. But if killing LeBron over 82 games is required to simply make the playoffs, that hell for the sake of optics isn’t worth it. Yes, another missed playoffs would be embarrassing, but even worse would be your franchise face ground to ashes in service of a team that couldn’t make noise should they steal an eight seed. (Again, I remind everyone about the story of Kobe and his Achilles.)
To be clear, I don’t anticipate this outcome. The young core is much readier for prime time than typically given credit, and in particular, Brandon Ingram will be an asset. A brutal conference will inevitably create standings tighter than The J.B.’s. Teams will cannibalize each other, but I believe the Lakers will succeed enough to prevent too much anxiety.
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With that in mind, the Lakers hopefully can not only reduce LeBron’s minutes but also have the luxury of implementing them with purpose. In a perfect world, the lion’s share of run will come alongside Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart. In part because, along with Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, these are the best Lakers, and therefore best equipped to make LeBron’s life easier. But also because playing him with the kids allows the front office to gather the most information while deducing which youngsters operate best with LeBron, then make whatever future moves accordingly.
But any future for the Lakers looks brightest if LeBron continues breaking Father Time’s ankles. That’s no easy task to begin with, but the quest will be greatly aided by placing an onus on reduced minutes.
Top Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images