Regardless of the Lakers’ 2018-19 struggles, LeBron James is widely regarded as one of the best basketball players in the NBA today and will retire as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. His mastery of the game not only involves making plays efficiently, but knowing when to preserve his energy to make these plays. LeBron has recently referred to this as activating his ‘playoff mode.’ After the Lakers’ recent struggles, LeBron tweeted that he would be activating playoff mode a little earlier than usual, much to the joy of Lakers fans. Unfortunately, after a disappointing 31-37 record as of March 15th and being 7.5 games behind the current 8th seed (LA Clippers), questions have been raised by pundits about LeBron’s ability to supposedly will his team to success at any time of his choosing. So, I decided to take a deep look at LeBron’s regular season vs playoff statistics to find any significant improvement (or lack thereof) in his level of play.

Looking at the data, we can see that in LeBron’s last 13 years (he has made the playoffs in his last 13 seasons), his points per shot attempt in the playoffs (green) has only been above his regular season average (blue) for 5 of the 13 seasons. In many of the years, his efficiency actually dipped substantially below his regular season averages, including 2010 and 2014. In 2014, we can see that LeBron’s points per shot attempt dropped substantially from around 1.4 points/shot to 1.1 points/shot. This seems to make sense for years like 2014 when LeBron did not have 2 of his all-star teammates Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love while playing against the Golden State Warriors in the Finals. Forced to carry most of the offensive burden, he was less efficient. In 2010, LeBron had one of the worst postseasons in his career when the heavily-favored Miami Heat super team lost to the Dallas Mavericks in 6 games in the Finals. Similarly, in 2007 when LeBron was on the Cavaliers, he was the only all-star on the team and was somehow able to push that team to the Finals, where they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs. However, even if we disregard the years when LeBron had uncharacteristically bad performances or when he was forced to be the lone star on the team, we can see that his overall playoff averages in this category mirror his regular season averages closely.

Under a separate efficiency criterion, LeBron can also be judged by 2 point percentage in the regular season vs the playoffs. Players like James, primarily slashers, are at their most efficient while driving toward the rim and finishing at the hoop as opposed to taking outside shots. Of course, LeBron is still very much capable of taking outside jumpers, a skill he has refined with time in the Association. Yet historically, we have seen that when LeBron wants to take over a game, he drives to the hoop rather than taking outside shots. In the graphic shown above, we can see that the percentage of two pointers LeBron converts in the playoffs has only eclipsed the regular season rate 4 times in the 13-year span.

Looking at volume instead of efficiency, we can see that LeBron’s playoff scoring average has surpassed his regular season average markedly, especially in his 2016 and 2017 playoff runs when he averaged close to a staggering 34 points per game. This occurred when his roster was significantly depleted following the departure of Kyrie Irving, but we can see that in terms of raw scoring, there seems to be a significant improvement in James’ output as the postseason begins.

For the following visualizations, LeBron’s player data has been grouped for the first and last 41 games of each season. The first visualization shows points/shot attempt for the first 41 games vs the last 41 games, the second visualization shows PPG, and the last shows RPG. We can see that the blue line of best fit represents the first half of the season, and the data points indicate a down turn in the points/shot attempt, but the orange line (representing points/shot attempt in the last half of the season) has a clear uptrend, indicating that LeBron’s performance in this category improves as the season wears on. Similarly, we can see a higher average for the line of best fit for PPG in the second half of the season vs the first half of the season.

Ultimately, the evidence shows LeBron’s supposed ‘dominance’ in the latter half of the season and the playoffs is not as obvious as previously expected. Although certain aspects of his game certainly improve, these improvements are minor and difficult to attribute to a concerted effort on his part to elevate his performance. Although LeBron is a phenomenal player by every metric, this is one myth about LeBron that can probably be put to rest.