Wilt Chamberlain was so dominant that the NBA widened the paint and implemented offensive goaltending rules. Steph Curry’s shooting and floor stretching opened every offense in basketball. The 30th three-point attempting team this year would have been number one just seven seasons ago. Dirk Nowitzki paved the way for seven-footers to be some of the best outside threats alive.
Coaches like Phil Jackson with the triangle and Mike D’Antoni’s 5 out, points per possession emphasis changed how we play. Shaq’s peak at the turn of the century turned every other team into foes and copycats, attempting to build teams around stopping his paint dominance. Players like Erick Dampier were overpaid expressly for the potential to help take 4 games out of 7 against the Lakers.
We don’t see LeBron James in this light. He’s just considered one of the two greatest of all-time to play the sport.
When James entered the league in 2003, it was the peak of the NBA’s dead ball era. His rookie year, 2003-04, is the second-lowest scoring season since the shot clock was instituted in 1955. Teams were grinding out each possession, hammering inside, not shooting, and decimating pace. The ball stayed in the hands of the point guard. This seemed smart; the prevailing thought was that your best playmaker should be making as many of the plays as possible. If he wasn’t, that meant someone less equipped was doing so.
Instead of optimizing, this was handcuffing. The offense was forced to go through one guy every single time, leaving minimal room for improvisation. The defenses in the NBA are smart, and feasted on offenses all era. Rookie LeBron was the only non-point guard in the top 19 in assists, (big ol’ Vlade Divac was 20th). This year, there are eleven non-point guards averaging as many assists.
Team’s best playmakers are often not point guards at all anymore. 14 of 30 teams are led in assists by non-point guards. That number was 4 in LeBron’s rookie year, one being him.
Point forward is not a position invented by LeBron James. Grant Hill and Larry Bird are his seminal predecessors, but their respective peaks were ephemeral compared to James, and their eras less amenable. The belief around those two was still that their abilities were just a nice bonus; that they complemented point guards, and needed a traditional offense-runner alongside them at all times. They never truly were allowed to orchestrate the offense how wings do now.
The stars of the league in the eras before and up to 2003 were cast in old molds. Playmaking point guards, scoring shooting guards, glass-cleaning bigs. Wings were small or defense-oriented, specializing in the little things.
LeBron is the longest-tenured best player alive in history. His reign lasted roughly from 2009-2020. Many will say it isn’t in the past tense. And in the seasons leading up to 2009, he was ages 18-23, the chosen one, and taking the league by storm. That dominance begets and necessitates major influence. Every team has tried to find and make the next LeBron with tempered expectations. Because it works. What he brought to the game and what he does between the lines works. It works consistently, it works over time, and it works against everyone.
Flash forward from 2003 to present. We have stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Jimmy Butler. In eras before the modern one, those players are being misused or under-utilized. They’re not handling the ball. Playmaking is not the best skill for any of those players. But they all average over 5 assists, posting figures that often top their point guards.
This didn’t happen before LeBron, and it’s now a duty we presume for teams’ best players. Only four teams have a leading scorer averaging less than 4 assists (Joel Embiid, Nikola Vucevic, Zion Williamson, and Jerami Grant). Two centers and two power forwards.
Wing is the most important position in basketball. It used to be center, from the conception of the sport until King James’ coronation. The Celtics drafted Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum top 3 in back-to-back seasons. Then they signed Gordon Hayward for $128 million. And bookending the duration of that contract, they employed Marcus Smart for his ability to lockdown the other team’s wing.
Players like Jae Crowder have carved out names and spots in the league for themselves expressly by opposing teams’ LeBrons. Andre Iguodala and Kawhi Leonard took home Finals MVPs for their work opposite James. The Bucks just traded for PJ Tucker, a 35-year-old having an awful season. His ability to go against these large star wings makes him an objective asset. To win a series, you need guys like that to throw at the other team.
This likely isn’t going anywhere. Sports changing is not necessarily the same as them evolving. It’s a certainty that basketball will change again, but leaving the large wings and the playmaking wings behind would be a regression. So it won’t happen. We were wrong before. When teams let one player handle all facilitation, all offense-running. When offenses had to go through one guy. They were bottle necked. Consider the levee broken now.
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