NBA season is coming up and that means NBA previews. This one caught my eye.
"LeBron James: Will Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant or another overtake Cleveland Cavaliers star?"
LeBron played in his sixth NBA finals last season and fifth in a row. At age 30, he remains at the top of the game and likely has several great years left.
But he wasn't the best player in the NBA last season. Stephen Curry was the best player in the NBA last season and James Harden was second. LeBron was the third best player in the league if you look at the various advanced metrics.
A favorite stat in today's circles is Personal Efficiency Rating or PER. James was just sixth in that category in the regular season (behind Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Curry, Harden and Chris Paul). PER is tilted toward scorers.
In Win Shares, which is tilted to players from winning teams, LeBron was tied for ninth behind Harden, Paul, Curry, Davis, DeAndre Jordan, Jimmy Butler, Westbrook and Damian Lillard.
In Box Plus/Minus, which calculates how much better your team performs with you on the floor than it does without you, James was fifth, behind Westbrook, Curry, Harden and Paul.
Finally, James was fifth in the Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) metric, which estimates how much better a player is than the league average player at his position. Curry, Harden, Westbrook and Paul finished ahead of James in that category.
Of cource, the playoffs is where reputations are made and his impressive efforts in the finals without Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love had many saying James remains the game's top talents.
Indeed, James advanced metrics were better in the playoffs. He was tops among playoff players in Box Plus/Minus and VORP. Curry was second in both of those measurements. In playoff Win/Shares, James finished behind Curry and Davis was tops in playoff PER while James was third.
Add to that the fact that unquestionably Curry was a bigger winner (Curry's team went 67-13 in the regular season when he played and 16-5 in the playoffs compared with LeBron's winning percentages of 50-19 and 14-6) and Curry was unquestionably the top player in the game.
The question now is whether we've seen the best of James. In most respects it was LeBron's worst year since 2006-2007. And usually basketball players decline fairly rapidly in their 30s. There are some exceptions.
* Michael Jordan's greatest years, when you include playoffs, were when he was 27-28-29 and then 32-33. He showed some slippage at 34 during the Bulls' last title run and then he retired for a while.
* Julius Erving's greatest season in the NBA -- he had several better in the ABA -- was in 1981-1982 when he was 31. Erving was better than Larry Bird in 1979-1980, 1980-1981 and 1981-1982. In 1982-1983, when Erving hit 32, Bird passed him. To be accurate though, in 1981-1982, the best player in the NBA by a slight margin was Magic Johnson.
* Magic Johnson's greatest season came when he was 27. Although he wasn't at Jordan's level, Magic remained one of the top three players in the game in 1990-1991 when he was 31. The next year he abruptly retired because of the HIV virus.
* Bird peaked at 29 in 1985-1986. By 32, a bad back had reduced him to a shell of himself.
In the history of the NBA, LeBron, to me, is battling Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jordan for title of GOAT (greatest of all time). Jabbar and Jordan spent much of their 30s at or near the top of the game. James likely will follow that arc, but it's also likely that his reign as the unquestioned best already is over.
