Back in February, I asserted that LeBron James was the best basketball player ever, and at that point, he was. He had at that point, by a comfortable margin, a higher player efficiency rating than any player ever had achieved. (General explanation of PER in the previous post; full explanation here.) Although he regressed from 32.8 to 30.74 to finish the season, it still was good enough to be the tenth best season ever by an individual player. In so doing, James knocked David Robinson out of the top ten, meaning that James (4, 9, 10), Wilt Chamberlain (1, 2, 5), and Michael Jordan (3, 6, 7, 8) collectively turned in the ten best seasons of professional basketball ever played.
James’ competitors for the MVP this year weren’t even close to him:
| Rank | Player | PER | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | LeBron James | 30.74 | ||
| 2. | Chris Paul | 27.04 | ||
| 3. | Dwayne Wade | 26.31 | ||
| 4. | Kevin Durant | 26.20 | ||
| 5. | Kevin Love | 25.36 | ||
| 6. | Dwight Howard | 24.24 | ||
| 7. | Blake Griffin | 23.43 | ||
| 8. | Derrick Rose | 23.02 | ||
| 9. | Russell Westbrook | 22.94 | ||
| 9. | Andrew Bynum | 22.94 |
For comparison, Paul is the only other player whose 2011-12 charted on the top 100 all time— at #79.
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Previously
LeBron James is the best professional basketball player ever
Lebron is the,best player today. The shortened season would tell me that his rating would stay in the 30.something percent. Lets see how it tracks against the west. It didnt fair well last year. It took Mike a few years to build that ability to take players with him to win the real game. It took something different to bring everyone up, build and rise to a level when winning a championship was on the line. Pippen was good but come on Dwayne won 1 without James or Bosh…..some big time coaching came into play. We need to see James get the mental toughness that comes with age and see if all of that talent wont be wasted. To be,the greatest to ever play will always go along with winning some championships, not most ever but some.
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