每个人都在想 詹皇的巅峰到底还有多长?
During his 15th NBA season, Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James is performing at a level that echoes the prime that saw him win four MVPs. As James nears his 33rd birthday later this month, his performance at that age stands up to any of his predecessors, including Michael Jordan's 1995-96 season that produced an MVP, a then-record 72 wins and a championship. (Because James entered the NBA directly out of high school, NBA experience isn't the best way to compare how he's aging to his peers. After all, Jordan's 15th year was actually his final one in the NBA at age 40.) Given his age and the heavy minutes James has played since coming to the NBA at age 18, including extended playoff runs with trips to the NBA Finals each of the past seven years, his ability to stave off a decline in play has been improbable. Has James managed to break the aging curve that governs most NBA players? Before this season, a look at James' all-in-one metrics during the regular season would have looked like a fairly typical NBA aging curve, albeit shifted with a far higher peak than virtually any player in league history has enjoyed. After a relatively poor rookie season — only by his high standards could winning Rookie of the Year and playing at an above-average level in the NBA as a teenager be considered relatively poor — James quickly leaped into superstardom and improved gradually from there. His four best seasons came from ages 24 through 28, a stretch interrupted only by a down performance from James in 2010-11, his first year with the Miami Heat. The best-fit curve suggests James peaking just before age 27, the expected time for an NBA player, and declining gently from there. The aging curve gets a bit more complicated when we consider James' playoff performance. Here's how that looks using the same chart: With the notable exception of 2009, when a limited Cleveland team lost in the Eastern Conference finals despite James delivering the best player win percentage in modern playoff history (since 1977-78, the first year individual turnovers were tracked), the curve now flattens out. James' past two postseasons have been about as good as any in his career outside of 2009. This is especially clear when we plot regular season and playoff performance together: There's strong evidence to suggest James mastered the art of coasting after rejoining the Cavaliers. As Brian Windhorst noted before the season using research by our former colleague Tom Haberstroh, James has consistently been better in the second half of the past four seasons -- a split that wasn't previously apparent. This pacing is, of course, its own kind of concession to aging. Surely, if James felt he could still play at his playoff level over a full 82 games, he would have done it. Nonetheless, it suggests that James' age-related decline is more complex than charting his regular-season performance made it seem. |