If you asked me what LeBron James would need to do to surpass Michael Jordan’s excellence, I would say something like “better three point shooting.” But via FreeDarko, Ray Allen has something else in mind:

“Mike paved the way for all of us to open up the endorsement door,” said Celtics star Ray Allen, another Jordan Brand athlete. “But the one thing that Mike never was is political. I think in today’s era, the NBA player has an even greater podium if he chooses to use it. And with Barack Obama being the first black president, it’s a great forum. I think that would separate him from anybody who’s done this. … It’s great to be a basketball player, but to transcend sports is a big responsibility. If he were able to pull that off — if he wants to pull that off — I think that would set him apart.”

I think there’s something to that. Obviously, I doubt anyone would particularly care what LeBron thinks about negotiating with Iran, and a certain number of people in Hollywood tend to push political engagement to the point where it’s annoying. But LeBron, like a lot of athletes, is actually in a position to offer an interesting perspective on wealth and poverty and economic opportunity in the United States.

Of course for all I know what LeBron’s concluded from that perspective is that marginal tax rates on the wealthy ought to be low….

John Hollinger says the answer is yes and that LeBron James 2008-2009 season is almost as good as Michael Jordan’s 1987-88 season. One key argument is this chart, which adjusts everyone’s numbers to a flat per-40-minute basis and adjusts to the faster pace of the ’86-’88 Bulls:

I’m not sure, however, that it really makes sense for those of us who aren’t John Hollinger to lean so heavily on his PER stat. Look at shooting efficiency—Jordan had a TS% of 60.3 in the 1988 season, James’ is 58.6; indeed, in the 1989 season Jordan got all the way up to 61.4 and I would say arguably that was a better season than his top PER year as his rebound rate was higher then too.

I would say, in other words, that while LeBron is very good—and still only 24—Jordan still outpaces him. But note that LeBron is still only 24; it wouldn’t be unusually for him to continue improving for several more seasons. In particular, it would only take a small improvement in his 3 point percentage to turn this into an efficient shot, at which point all bets would be off in terms of defending him.

Over the weekend I made the point that one important thing holding LeBron James back from ever averaging a triple-double in one season is that the game is played at a much slower pace today. Unfortunately, since I don’t work at a basketball think tank I wasn’t able to get anyone to do any rigorous research on pace-adjusting his stats for this year. But Neil Paine at Basketball-Reference has the goods:

Okay, so you’ve all seen Wilt and Oscar’s numbers from 1962… but have you ever sat down and looked at the league averages that year? In ‘62, the average team took 107.7 shots per game. By comparison, this year the average team takes 80.2 FGA/G. If we use a regression to estimate turnovers & offensive rebounds, the league pace factor for 1962 was 125.5 possessions/48 minutes, whereas this year it’s 91.7. Oscar’s Royals averaged 124.7 poss/48, while Wilt’s Warriors put up a staggering 129.7 (the highest mark in the league). On the other hand, the 2009 Cavs are averaging a mere 89.2 poss/48. It turns out that the simplest explanation for the crazy statistical feats of 1961-62 (and the early sixties in general) is just that the league was playing at a much faster tempo in those days, with more possessions affording players more opportunities to amass gaudy counting statistics.

Let’s say LeBron ‘09 could switch paces (note that I didn’t say “places”, which is another argument entirely) with Oscar ‘62… That means we would have to scale down the Big O’s per-game numbers by multiplying them by .715, giving Robertson a far more reasonable line of 22.0 PPG, 8.9 RPG, & 8.1 APG — which are still really good numbers, to be sure, but not as crazy as they looked at the breakneck pace of ‘62. By contrast, we have to multiply LBJ’s stats by a factor of 1.4 if we want to see what they would look like if he played at a 1962-style pace. The results: 40.1 PPG, 10.3 RPG, & 10.0 APG!! As you can see, those 35.5 extra possessions per game really make a huge difference when comparing the two players’ stats.

As is well known from basically all sports arguments, these comparisons across long spreads of time are problematic in a large number of ways. But suffice it to say that the main factor making it impossible for Robertson’s achievement to be replicated today is that there aren’t enough possessions per game anymore. Robertson’s rate of rebounding, assists, and scoring would be very impressive today but they’re not off-the-charts relative to what today’s best players are doing. Also — LeBron James is really good basketball player, but you probably already knew that.

The Cavaliers are one of the best teams in the NBA. The Wizards are one of the worst. But yesterday, the good guys won thanks in part to a late-game travel on LeBron James. What I hadn’t seen was his post-game whining:

“I took a ‘crab’ dribble, which is a hesitation dribble and then two steps,” James said. James believes he perfectly executed a jump stop on the play, but was still called for traveling. “It’s a play you don’t see much in the NBA,” he said. “You have your trademark plays, and that’s one of mine.”

It’s hard to see on the original, but the replay clearly shows that LeBron’s “crab” involves a traveling violation, whether or not that’s what he meant to do: