Just How Well is LeBron Playing Right Now?

LeBron James is absolutely torching the league so far this season. Most people (with at least some justification) have little interest in his regular season performances anymore, and simply want to see if he can win a ring while having some sterling games in the Finals. But it's worth marveling at what we are currently witnessing.

James' PER is currently 32.49. best in the league. His teammate Dwayne Wade has the second highest PER at 26.59, just above Chris Paul, who comes in at 26.52. Kevin Durant and others closely follow.

The difference between James' and Wade's PERs is about 6 (5.90 to be exact). If you drop 5.90 "points" off Wade's PER you get...Spencer Hawes, who has the league's 31st highest PER. That's right, the difference between the #1 and #2 PER is the same as the difference between the #2 and the #31 PER.

How rare is this kind of statistical dominance? John Hollinger's website includes all PERs since the 2002-03 regular season. During that time frame, the difference between the player with the top PER and the second place finisher has been: 1.21, 3.09, 1.30, 0.76, 1.34, 0.03, 1.17, 2.36, and 1.58. Of that group of numbers, even 3.09 is somewhat of an outlier. And it's barely more than half the gap between LeBron and Wade as of now.

And unlike players like Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, and Greg Monroe, who benefit greatly from a purely box-score driven composite statistic like PER because it hides their defensive deficiencies, LeBron is also one of the best defenders in the league (as has been detailed on this blog on a number of previous occasions).

We are still a tad less than half-way into a shortened season, so who knows whether LeBron can sustain this level of dominance. And we'll all be holding our breath in the Playoffs and wondering whether he will settle for long distance jumpers in crunch time (or even allow the opposing team to simply erase him from the play). But for now, lets appreciate the historic performance that is being displayed.