One of the go-to arguments for people trying to diminish LeBron James‘ accomplishments during his career is that he spent much of it in East, typically the weakest of the two conferences this century.
This has gnawed at LeBron himself a bit.
“There was a lot of conversation about, ‘LeBron can do those things in the East, but if he ever came to the West, what could he do?’” James said this week when discussing the MVP race. “I heard all of that.”
From a statistical standpoint, there’s little merit to the argument. We checked James’ stats vs. teams in the East and West throughout his career and, in fact, his numbers are slightly better when playing against the franchises in the strongest of the two conferences.
Take a look:
The data in the second table is pretty significant considering he faced many mediocre teams in the Eastern playoffs, but only the cream of the crop in the Finals vs. Western Conference clubs – including all-time great squads such as Stephen Curry‘s Warriors and Tim Duncan‘s Spurs.
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