The Magic were on PEDs and hitting a crazy amount of threes

Cavs cost him 3-5 titles

I’ve never seen anything 2009 LeBron athleticism. Also, he was clearly pissed and on a mission. Playing angry and downhill.

It’s solely because they didn’t get to the finals unlike 2018, but the 2009 Magic were better than any east team that season

Those numbers are almost incomprehensible. There will never be another Lebron James.

35/7/9 on insane efficiency, best defender, scorer and playmaker on the court at all times.

Let’s not forget he went 66-16 (26-4 against the West) that season with Mo Williams, Delonte West, Varejao and Big Z.

Also insane considering the pase/scoring was much different in 2009

It is. His team got overhauled mid season and he dragged that team to the Finals. That version of LeBron was Thanos and he ran into the Avengers and got finger snapped

We were like a wrecking crew and LeBron was unstoppable. So unstoppable in fact that the NBA ran a whole puppet campaign on LeBron vs Kobe finals. Ran into a perfect team designed to stop us at a perfect time.

More than anything that loss in 2009 convinced LeBron to hunt for rings. 2010 was just a whimper compared to the 2009 season.

Crazy to think he literally peaked twice in the span of 9 years.

People really got to realize how dogshit his rosters were. Give LeBron a true reliable #2 like all the other greats had and he wins at least 6 rings

Got to see LeBron at the Izod Center where the NJ Nets played in 2009. I think he almost had a near triple double that game. It’s a relatively obscure highlight now for him, but the play I remember most was he hit a fast crossover, took one dribble to blow by Brook Lopez, and slammed it off one for the and-one. The dude was just head and shoulders the best athlete out there and a great all around player it looked so easy

Not making it all the way to the finals does matter. Players can have phenomenal stats in earlier rounds, but the deeper you go into the playoffs, the more likely it is you run into a defense that exposes your weaknesses, so losing earlier can avoid reaching the point where your weaknesses are exposed, and Lebron most certainly had weaknesses in 2009; he was an inconsistent jump shooter and poor at posting up, it’s just that those weaknesses were only properly finally exposed in 2011, after which he fixed them.

Would Phil Jackson’s coaching also have exposed those weaknesses in 2009? It’s impossible to say, but that’s why you can’t compare a ECF run to a finals run, because you get the “benefit” of losing before getting to the hardest challenges. In 2018, Lebron definitively proved that there was no team that could slow him down or affect him even in the finals against the best team of all time, whereas in 2009 he doesn’t actually have to test himself on the hardest stage.

7 more games before we talk about LeBron

Imagine what 09-10 LeBron would’ve done with modern spacing. The Cavs finally got one decent shooter in Mo Will and they won 66 games. And of course Mo Will turned into a pumpkin in the ECF and the Cavs lose.

The people discussing this weren’t around for 2009/it was too far back, feels like LeBron discourse ignores the first CLE stint

I honestly think 2012 was he was just ultra consistent and motivated and some of his best back to the wall performances came against them. 2009 was overwhelming dominance it’s unfortunate the magic got hot against the Cavs and the Cavs bigs didn’t have answers for Dwight in a way the lakers bigs did

2009 Lebron is my favorite version because he had insane athletecism and motor on both ends. I will say although there’s overpraise for what he did in 2018, I think he was more of cerebral and refined player by then

a lot of people love to talk about basketball but there’s not a lot of people who loves to watch basketball consistently

People like to say “Oh if his team was so bad how did they win 66 games?” And to me it’s pretty obvious it’s because of how elite LeBron was on both ends during this stage of his career. His offensive game wasn’t quite as polished, but this was his athletic peak without a doubt.

I’m ok with forgetting 2009

Straight up 2009 LeBron had the best payoff scoring run ever. +7.5 ts while also scoring the most per possession ever is unbelievable.

People forgot he was good because he lost. Also this was the chance for him and Kobe to face off and the Cavs didn’t get the memo

That year will haunt me forever. I thought we would be champions.

09 LeBron is my favorite player

you don’t need to be as skilled when you’re the greatest athlete to ever live

Still boggles my mind how people think Kobe was better than Bron in ‘09

I would still say 2013 and maybe 2012 LeBron are better players, and 2017 and 2018 I think I would trust to more reliably have that level of offense than 2009 LeBron in the postseason (but 2009 LeBron is a better defender). I think 2009 LeBron is a top 10, maybe top 5 season of all time, but I still have 2013 and possibly 2012 LeBron above it. IMO 2013 LeBron was a dominant roster built poorly around maximizing his individual statistical output, while 2009 LeBron was a much worse roster built excellently around him to maximize his individual statistical output.

I would say 2009 LeBron isn’t really this “outlier player” compared to his previous and later seasons, but rather that the roster and game plans were built more to revolve around LeBron than 2013. Another factor is that in the 2009 playoffs the Magic defense gameplanned specifically to let LeBron score as much as possible, and to let LeBron have the ball as much as possible, because one person can’t beat five and they could stop everybody else. That was ⁶⁄₁₄ games right there and the first elite defense they played. I think the 2009 playoffs are basically a top 5-10 season ever that looks like an outlier goat season for a variety of reasons.

1. ⁶⁄₁₄ games have a defense that specifically planned to have LeBron have the ball in his hands and score as much as possible, which skews the data results. This is the only elite defense faced that postseason. 2. The roster was built in a way that did a fantastic job of allowing one player to statistically dominate as much as possible, but not a good job of what to do without that player on the court. 3. A hot shooting streak, and with ⁶⁄₁₄ games being against a defense wanting him to score and the first 2 rounds being sweeps against a hopelessly outmatched team I don’t know how sustainable this hot streak is with more games, in the finals, and how much it represents his actual level of gameplay. 4. The first 2 rounds were hopelessly outmatched teams.

So I think all in all 2009 LeBron is a top 10 season ever, possibly top 5, but I have it narrowly behind 2013 LeBron, think 2017 and 2018 are slightly better offensive seasons, and think 2012 is a possibly better season as well. There’s a reason why most of the advanced stats and analytics people still have 2013 LeBron and a lot have 2012 LeBron above it despite what the stats and advanced stats say. I think 2009 is clearly the best season any player has ever had if we take the stats at face value, and it has the highest “ceiling” of how to plausibly view any individual season in NBA history. But I don’t think those outlier stats should be taken at face value (which most advanced stats/analytics people seem to agree with) and when put into context, it’s more in the 5-10 range of best seasons ever and narrowly behind 2013 LeBron and other seasons like 91 Jordan and 2000 Shaq.

I ignore it so there’s that

Its probably so ignored because most fans today were 9 or younger at the time.

#AMEN AMEN.

Also scoring was quite lower in 2009. You ramp it up at today’s pace eand holy shit he would have averaged 40+/10/10 easy.

That was the year we were supposed to get Kobe vs LeBron. Fucking others couldn’t do enough to get the Magic.

The 3pt game winner was a shot

I agree, 2009 Lebron is his best playoff run and its talked about too much how much attention 2018 playoff run is

I definitely don’t ignore the 2009 playoffs!

09’ bron has the best highlight reel of any mvp maybe ever

“It’s not mentioned enough how ignored X thing is” you see how that’s a tautology right?

2009 Bron is what got me into following the NBA. All I saw were his highlights of him of dunking on the Hawks 😞

To this day ill say 2017 lebron was the best ive ever seen him in all faucets of basketball. 2018 he was mentally even sharper and very clutch but he really was moving differently the year before

Ya except that unfortunately he lost that ECF despite being the huge favorites (-700 according to covers,com). (And he lost in 6 games, even with that last second shot to win G2.)

Of course, it wasn’t his fault (next best players were Delonte West and Mo Williams). But still, it was a big upset.

And, everyone (rightly or wrongly) always blames the best player for it (just like everyone always gives the best player for credit for winning a championship).

Probably extremely unpopular but I think 2017 LeBron is his best version. Even over 2009, 2012, 2013, 2016, or 2018. The main engine behind the 2nd greatest playoff offense ever and he was better on defense than in 2018. To me, 2017 felt like watching someone who had completely mastered the game while still having his incredible athleticism.

I just think objectively to the eye test 2018 was clearly the best and most dominant version we’ve seen of him

Yeah the problem with NBA media is definitely how little or how much we are talking about past championships LeBron’s played in, especially over the actual championship about to be played. LeBron is only mentioned daily even though he is out of these playoffs, but lets examine this further in a braindead reddit thread to absolute exhaustion, the Finals are less important I am sure.

Edit: Mutombo died and was a legend a grew up watching, LeBron is what everyone here was talking about that day to. Brain rot media this sub, no substance ever.

You can’t compare stats from a year where someone didn’t play in the finals to a year where they did. it’s intentionally leaving out their toughest (or second toughest, at worst usually) series. it’s sample size skewed badly.

taken to extreme, obv some guys who went nuclear in a round 1 but lost in 7 games may have better per game stats stats than someone who wins a finals

You can’t have the most impactful playoff run in NBA history if you don’t even make the finals.

the Lebron Cavs 1.0 were favored by refs more than this OKC team

Hopefully LeBron can get over this. Poor guy, not one person has ever noticed this guy. Hopefully when he retires someone can finally write an article on this poor guy.