LeBron James

After his summer workouts, James checked in with Spoelstra to let him know about his summer project. “Spo and I had a conversation. I told him how hard I worked on my low-post game. I knew we needed low-post scoring; we were more of a perimeter-oriented team my first year here, the year we lost the Finals, and I knew I had to get better, and in order for us to get better we had to be more efficient in the low post, so I took that approach.”

It worked. James emerged from that summer transformed. “When he returned after the lockout, he was a totally different player,” Spoelstra says. “It was as if he downloaded a program with all of Olajuwon’s and Ewing’s post-up moves. I don’t know if I’ve seen a player improve that much in a specific area in one offseason. His improvement in that area alone transformed our offense to a championship level in 2012.”

James’s shot selection in the 2011-12 campaign was completely different, and completely dominant. For the first time in his career, his game was heavily asymmetric. James spent a lot more time on the left side of the court than the right, especially down on the left block, a spot that he now refers to as his “sweet spot.” He took fewer 3s and spent most of his time closer to the basket. Good things happen for Miami when James is in the post and near the basket. Not only is he his team’s leading scorer, he’s its best passer and its best rebounder. LeBron’s migration to the left block not only helped his scoring efficiency, it opened up space elsewhere for spot-up shooters like Shane Battier. When you study his most common shot locations before and after the Hakeem trip, it’s almost like you’re looking at two different players.

It’s not hard to find people around the Heat who will tell you that the summer following that Finals loss to Dallas is what transformed James from a runner-up into a champion. Up through those 2011 Finals, James had yet to fully take advantage of his size and the inherent matchup nightmares he brings to every game. Battier says James is far better at exploiting that fact now.

“He understands that he’s got a physical mismatch pretty much every night, and the best place to take advantage of that is on the block,” he says. “He’s worked at that. Scoring on the block is not a right in this league, you have to have a game down there, and he’s worked on that. Now he’s got a few moves that are really tough to stop down there.”

The 2011 trip to Houston, and subsequent adjustments, obviously worked. The Heat beat the Thunder in the Finals, and LeBron was named the MVP of both the regular season and the Finals. But James wasn’t satisfied. He recommitted himself to improving even more in the summer of 2012. This season, LeBron still loves the left block, but he’s also introduced a few more tricks.

This season he’s back to shooting 3s and fewer midrange shots.

“You know, I changed. I didn’t shoot many 3s last year, I kind of played more in the post, and more in the midrange, but I felt like I worked on 3s enough this past offseason that I could make another change — and the least efficient shot in our game is the midrange shot — so I thought maybe I could move it out, improve my 3-point shooting, continue to work on my low-post scoring, and then leave the midrange to be my next journey.”

James told me that when he was working on his 3s, he’d punish himself until he met a lofty set of self-enforced shooting milestones.

“It’s work,” James says. “It’s a lot of work. It’s being in workouts, and not accomplishing your goal, and paying for it. So, if I get to a spot in a workout and want to make eight out of 10, if I don’t make eight of 10, then I run. I push myself to the point of exhaustion until I make that goal. So you build up that mentality that you got to make that shot and then use that in a game situation — it’s the ultimate feeling, when you’re able to work on something and implement it.”

Last year James achieved that ultimate feeling by developing and implementing that left-block game. This season he’s doing it with his much-improved long-range shot and his continued dominance attacking the basket and finding open shooters. “Our team is built around perimeter attacking, getting to the rim, and when guys clog up the paint, we’re able to kick it out for 3s.”

James is also a very good passer. Using optically tracked performance data from the SportVU system, we can start to visualize this vital aspect of his game. LeBron’s dominance near the basket forces defenses to collapse in upon him, which opens up shots along the perimeter. The Heat decorate the perimeter with some of the league’s most elite spot-up shooters, including Ray Allen and Battier. James is highly aware of the whereabouts of these teammates, and he’s always cognizant of who might be open where and when. As a result, he commonly fires long passes to spot-up shooters in the corners as soon as he notices a collapsing defender.

The reintegration of his own 3-point shot is justified in part by James’s newfound comfort. He’s shooting 39 percent from 3-point range this season, far and away the highest such mark in his career. In Cleveland, James was frequently forced to create his own shot and rarely had good catch-and-shoot chances. That’s different now. In fact, when we look at the SportVU data to see where he spends his time on offense, there are four distinct pockets of space.

Three of these areas are, unsurprisingly, on that dominant left side — on the wing beyond the arc, on the elbow, and on the block — but there’s one anomalous spot on the right. James spends a surprising amount of time in the right corner, a spot usually reserved for spot-up shooters like Battier or Rashard Lewis. LeBron says, “Our offense puts me in the right corner sometimes; in one of our sets I’m kind of in the right corner, or I’m running in transition and D-Wade is handling the ball so I’m kind of giving him space.” Although the sample remains small, James is hitting an obnoxious 53 percent of his shots from that right corner. The league’s most overqualified spot-up shooter is hitting those shots at an elite rate and providing yet another way for his team to succeed.

Simply put, LeBron James remains both the NBA’s most valuable and its most versatile player. He is acutely aware of his own game and his team’s strategy. He continues to find new ways to integrate his own evolving talents with those of his teammates, and he makes everyone better in the process. While it’s simple to label James a physical freak with outrageous basketball talents, that sells his progress, work ethic, and intelligence short. LeBron James is a basketball nerd who just happens to possess once-in-a-generation talent.

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