Lebron James is an amazing athlete. He is big, strong, and fast and he can pass a basketball pretty well, but he is not a good basketball player by NBA standards.
The media love to talk about James. They love to tell us how good he is and how he carries the Cavaliers to victory time and time again. James can hit a fade away three pointer and the commentators will talk for five minutes about James’ amazing ability to get you from all angles on the court.
James fans will tout his statistics as proof of his talents. They will point out his triple-doubles and his 30 or so points per game which usually leads the league. How about looking at his shooting percentages for a second?
His career .324 shooting percentage from the three-point line tells me he shouldn’t even be shooting threes. That is a terrible percentage that only gets worse in the playoffs. In the playoffs his three-point percentage is .288.
James will continue to shoot threes to the detriment of his team because he knows a true superstar in the NBA, at his position, must be able to do it all. He knows he must be a threat from the outside, so he will continue to force up the long ball. If he was smart, he would eliminate them from his game completely the way Dwyane Wade has done.
Just like Wade, James uses the free-throw line as a large part of his offensive output. He uses his big body and his quick first step to get in the lane and draw fouls. There are many times throughout a game that James is clearly driving to the hoop with no intention of making the shot; he is just trying to get fouled. As a result, James gets fouled a lot, but he only shoots .728 from the free-throw line in his career. That is hardly worth all the trouble he goes through to get on the line. Wade by comparison shoots .774 from the line; not a great number either, but better than King James.
Kobe Bryant, another player who likes to use the free-throw line for his points, shoots a very solid .839 from the line for his career.
In fairness to James, we must acknowledge his youth. He still has time to improve his game and become a good shooter. In the pre-season this year he has shot over 50 percent from the three-point line and 75 per cent from the free-throw line.
Maybe he is improving. He plays against Boston tonight to open the regular season and will give us the first glimpse of what we can expect this year. If he is actually starting to make shots on a regular basis, the Celtics will be in trouble tonight. If he is the same old Lebron, the Celtics can just let him shoot to his heart’s content and then turn to grab the rebounds on their way to an easy victory.
Keywords: Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, NBA
