I Used Data To Find The Closest Player To LeBron In The Entire NBA

while watching this Summer's Olympics I couldn't help but to think now more than ever LeBron is an absolute anomaly truly a one of one in the NBA's near 80-year history there's never been a player quite like him I mean go through the laundry list of players both passed and present who have drawn comparisons and none of them are all that similar to LeBron an unfair blend of size and speed the strength of a big with the skills of a guard an alleged pass first player who bulldozed his way to the most points in any NBA history and all of this got me thinking who is the most similar player to LeBron in the NBA right now it's a question that I've always wanted to know the answer to and after spending countless hours looking at the data crunching the numbers and comparing players from all around the league to LeBron from the playmaking to the size the shooting the play style I finally have the answer and the most similar player to LeBron is not who you think it is [Music] today's video is sponsored by DrftKings football season is here and my partners at DrftKings are ready to kick the season off with a bang right now all new customers who bet $5 will instantly get $250 in bonus bets plus one month of NFL Plus premium I repeat bet just $5 on anything and instantly get $250 in bonus bets plus 1 month of NFL Plus premium and you can stay in on the action and use your $250 in bonus bets to bet anytime touchdowns on DrftKings and if sports betting is not yet available in your state you can still join in on the action with DrftKings daily fantasy and have a shot to win cash prizes download the draftking sports book app now new customers use my promo code Jimmy High Roller and get $250 in bonus bets instantly that's promo code Jimmy High Roller only at draftking Sportsbook quick off the top of your head of all the active players currently in the NBA who reminds you most of LeBron James of course not including himself who is the most similar to him I'm sure among some of the names that come to mind Paulo benero Zion Williamson what remains of Ben Simmons and Luca donic are all viable candidates but even those guys despite being the closest thing are not really all that similar to LeBron Paulo isn't as offensively dynamic as a young LeBron was Zion isn't as good or in of a passer Luca isn't nearly as explosive and Ben Simmons has pretty much stopped playing basketball altogether oddly enough LeBron's game isn't even that unique a Do-it all Swiss army knife point forward if anything in today's positionist League this archetype of player is the most common and yet somehow after 21 years not only have we not come across a single player who can do it as well as him we have yet to see a player with a game that even resembles LeBron's but why is that and in fact with a game as relatively simple and effective as LeBron's why has there not been a single player in the NBA who plays like him this series of questions led me down a long and exhausting Rabbit Hole of what I believe to be the most extensive look into this topic who is the most similar player to LeBron James now usually whenever this question comes up the most common and possibly accurate answer involves combining two different players a hybrid many fans have said LeBron is a mix between Magic Johnson and Scotty Pippen the skills of Grant Hill with the frame of a power forward Tracy McGrady and Carl Malone's body crafted nba. com has a great tool called doppelgangers which uses an extensive batch of metrics to find similar players throughout the NBA but this tool specifically looks at the results of a player's game without looking at the method in which they got those results which is an important distinction for example Kevin Durant and bamat aayou had the same field goal percentage last season but the shots they took to get there were wildly different to find real similarity the method is just as important as the result and so I decided to take matters into my own hands and after hours of research metric-based analysis and data crunching in an attempt to solve this age-old question I think I have the answer an almost definitive conclusion on the most similar player to LeBron in the NBA today and I guarantee the player who came came out ahead of everyone else is not who you think it is first I had to reduce the entire league down to the players who had even an ounce of resemblance to LeBron and his game floor generals oversized guards hyper athletic players slashers players who are just really good bigs with guard skills the do-it-all Swiss Army knives high usage guys and because why not Victor wanyama eventually I was able to narrow down the list of players included in our experiment to about 70 of those 70 players he are the ones that scored the highest in similarity to LeBron now how exactly did I quantify similarity throughout this process well first I had to determine the metrics in which I wanted to measure and here are those metrics stature usage and creation shooting Tendencies portability passing defense athleticism dominance shooting ability and play Style 10 isolated metrics that factor in each and every aspect of LeBron's game finding the similarities between him and any other player was the easy part for example take passing which can be measured fairly accurately with passer rating a metric that measures how frequent effective and efficient a player passes the ball the metric is on a scale from 1 to 10 and LeBron's career passer rating is 7. 67 that's really good James Harden has a career passer rating of 7.

37 that is also really good Jaylen Brown has a career passer rating of 3. 24 and that's not so good to quantify just how similar these two players are to LeBron in terms of passing we just need to figure out how much their passer rating deviates from LeBron's in this case James Harden's passer rating only deviates from LeBron's by 3. 9% while Jaylen Brown's passer rating deviates by 57.

8% this would give harden a passing similarity score of 96. 1% and Jaylen Brown a similarity score of 42. 2% by using this method of measurement I calculated the similarity score of every player in our experiment across all 10 previously mentioned categories I then tallied up their total score to find the overall most similar player to LeBron the player with the highest score after evaluating all 10 categories is the player that shares the most in common with him so now that you know the method let's see the results now the first category we're going to take a look at is stature if we were put to the task of building a basketball player in a lab with the ideal NBA frame he would probably come out looking like LeBron 69 250 lb with a 7t wingspan in fact here are his exact measurements courtesy of crafted nba.

com measurements you would usually find in a power forward and that's exactly the type of players that share the most in common with LeBron in terms of physical frame among the players we are evaluating the one that has the most similar frame to LeBron is Paulo benero whose measurements are almost identical to LeBron bronze with a similarity score of 99. 1% from his height to his weight and wingspan the next closest players are Julius Randall Ben Simmons alrin senon and Damon sabonis keep in mind although I will only be displaying the results of 20 to 30 players per category each individual score is being factored in and will be revealed at the end now in terms of shooting not efficiency but rather where players choose to operate on offense and take their shots there aren't many players around the league that are very similar to LeBron he's got the size of a power forward and he uses that size to get to the rim and attempt 35% of his shots within 3 feet of the basket but he also attempts nearly a quarter of his shots from behind the three-point line players with shot selections this balanced are pretty rare take for example a player like Zion Williamson who has the physical tools like LeBron but he does the majority of his work right around the basket you'd think a player like Jason Tatum might be similar to LeBron in this aspect with how well-rounded his arsenal of shots can be but he tends to favor three-point shooting above any other shot so when it comes to shot selection the player that is most similar to LeBron throughout the entire NBA is actually Russell Westbrook whose shot selection only deviates from LeBron's by about 8% the next closest player is Julius Randall followed by Jimmy Butler Paulo benero and Andrew Wiggins who all similar to LeBron have extremely balanced shot selections now one of LeBron's most valuable and distinctive traits is his versatility as a player one of his most underrated accomplishments is that he is the only player in NBA history to be listed at all five positions for at least a season and there's actually a metric that makes an attempt to measure this adaptability called portability this metric collects data like passer rating shooting ability ball dominance and usage as well as defensive versatility and calculates how portable a player is within any given system in other words how well would a player fit if you dropped him into a team with 14 random players the metric is on a scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is a perfect score LeBron has a career portability rating of 7. 82 and the most similar players to LeBron in this regard are Chris Paul and Jason Tatum who are both nearly identical to LeBron with similarity scores of 99.

8% the next closest players are Kevin Durant kawh Leonard and James Harden it's worth noting that there are players around the league who are even more portable than LeBron has been throughout his career such as Kawaii Harden Paul George and Nicole yic but you can't really be like LeBron if you aren't willing and great at passing the ball so the next metric we're assessing is passer rating this metric similar to a few others are on a scale from 1 to 10 with of course 10 being the best possible rating now throughout his career LeBron has had a passer rating of 7. 67 and the player most similar to him in this this metric is once again Russell Westbrook who has the same exact career passer rating as LeBron does 100% in similarity the next most similar players are Josh giddy Luca donic johnar and James Harden and already you can begin to see just how diverse LeBron's skills are in some categories he has most in common with big men while in other categories he resembles a guard which leads us to our next category and the most important aspect of LeBron's game usage and creation throughout LeBron's career he has been the engine to every offense he's been a part of not just with his scoring but with his playmaking and to measure this we can use three different metrics box creation estimate offensive load and usage percentage and this is where LeBron really becomes an anomaly players of his size have historically done well generating offense for themselves but usually it takes a ball dominant guard to really carry the load of an entire offense the way LeBron has throughout his career which is why if we search for the most similar players in these metrics we will find point guards Russell Westbrook John Morant and James Harden being the most similar to LeBron in terms of their usage and creation on offense however there are some bigs who have transcended their positional value such as Nicole yic Joel embiid and Giannis an DMO now defensively LeBron's career hasn't been nearly as consistent at his Peak he was a phenomenal Defender one of the best in the entire league but in recent years he has games where he can be a Flatout liability on the defensive end and although defense can be a difficult thing to measure there are a couple metrics that might be able to point us in the right direction in our search for the most similar player to LeBron specifically defensive versatility rating and crafted defensive plus minus are the two metrics we'll be using here throughout his career LeBron has a defensive versatility rating of 60. 3 and a crafted defensive plus minus of 1.

38 career defensive numbers that are actually really good especially for an offensive player of his caliber and with these two metrics we can find the player who is most similar to LeBron defensively both in quality and versatility and after crunching the numbers that player is Chris Paul with a similarity score of 88. 2% followed by amn Thompson Jimmy Butler Giannis and Ben Simmons oddly enough despite LeBron not being considered an elite Defender for years now statistically throughout his career as a whole he is most comparable to some of the most valuable defensive players in the league our next category is what I believe to be the most indicative of measuring similarities from player to player and that is play style what role they play on offense where they find the most value while on the courts and their habits both on and off the ball now quantifying a player's play style is tough to do what do you measure and how do you measure it well uncrafted nba. com within each player's profile there is a breakdown of their usage by play type the these plays range from ISO possessions to pick and roll as both the ball handler and the rle man the post off ball Cuts handoffs screens and spot up these eight play types are essentially the eight major different roles a player can play on any given possession in LeBron's case four of these eight different play types make up for the majority of all of his possessions on offense post possessions spot up shooting ISO possessions and his favorite pick and rolls as the ball handler now if we take a look at these four play types and search for the players with the most similar usage percentage across all four then the player that has the most similar play style to LeBron is Jimmy Butler who surprisingly shares many of the same habits both in usage and play type especially in ISO pick and roll and postp possessions the next most similar players to LeBron in this category were Giannis Jason Tatum Durant and Jaylen Brown for the most part versatile wings that can generate offense from just about anywhere on the court now athleticism is extremely difficult to measure in the NBA jumping high and running fast are Feats of athleticism but so are hand ey coordination stamina and body control and LeBron's athleticism is a key aspect of his abilities as a player specifically in regards to his explosiveness but unless you can get out there with a measuring tape and a stopwatch and grab some marks it's almost impossible to really get an idea of how athletic LeBron is or any player is for that matter so that's exactly what we're going to do by looking at each player's vertical leap now although this is only one very simple way of measuring an athlete's explosiveness Max vertical leap is proven to Be an Effective gauge at doing just that and it's an insightful metric in this context since LeBron's vertical leap has been a massive component to his game throughout the majority of his career and according to countless sources at his Peak LeBron had a Max vert somewhere between 40 and 44 in after all these years there's been no real confirmation on these numbers but every single Source I could find has his max vert listed somewhere between 40 and 44 so we'll go with something right in the middle 42 in and in terms of vertical leap there's actually four players in the league today who are most similar to LeBron Anthony Edwards Ben Simmons Aaron Gordon and amen Thompson all with vertical leaps of 41.

5 in the next most similar players are Donovan Mitchell John Morant Andrew Wiggins and Derrick Rose now we have factored in play style and shot selection but we also need to consider shooting ability it's probably the most average aspect of LeBron's game throughout his career LeBron has been a streaky shooter better as of late than he was in his early days in the league but all in all just very average and this is really important it's one of the main things that separates him from other great wings like Durant and Kawaii who have been excellent Shooters throughout their careers and instead of strictly using field goal percentage to measure LeBron's shooting ability we we are going to be using crafted NBA's shooting quality metric it's a stat that combines shooting percentages with spacing and shot value to find what they described to be the most accurate Shooters in the league on a scale from 1 to 100 for context Steph Curry clocked a perfect 100 out of 100 shooting quality rating for the past two seasons over his 21 seasons in the league LeBron has a career average shooting quality rating of 61. 8 and right now the player who is almost exactly the same caliber of shooter as LeBron is Jaylen brown with a career shooting quality rating of 61. 9 and a similarity score of 99.

8% followed by ruie hachimura Brandon Ingram OG anobi and Luca donic and with one more category left we cannot leave out the most important thing of all how good at basketball LeBron is a player can pass like him jump like him shoot like him but if they aren't dominating games how similar to LeBron can they possibly be and to measure dominance instead of looking at accolades and accomplishments we are going to look at purely how great they have been in their time in the NBA through the lens of an advanced metric crafted plus minus now this metric is an aggregate of 10 other Advanced metrics it's essentially an all-in-one of all the all-in ones it's just what we're looking for in LeBron's career crafted plusus is 7. 66 which is the second highest in NBA history only behind Michael Jordan so although we're looking for the most similar player to LeBron really we're looking for the best players in the league in this category and in terms of crafted plus minus that player is Nicole yic with a career crafted plus minus of 7. 62 and a similarity score of 99.

5% easily the most similar player to LeBron in terms of dominance the next closest players are Chris Paul Kawai Leonard James Harden and Joel embiid and with that we have assessed all all 55 players across all 10 categories now did all this research and number crunching take me far longer than I was anticipating yes was it worth it I think so because in a league where there isn't anyone quite like LeBron I think with very high accuracy I have narrowed the search for the most LeBron likee player down to one after scanning a field of 70 potential matches across 10 different categories and dozens of metrics the most similar player to LeBron in the the NBA today is Jimmy Butler it's kind of crazy right I know in the end Butler finished with an average similarity score of 80.