LeBron Playoff Points

By: Aaron Staggs

LeBron James is one of my all-time favorite basketball players. There are only two players I’d pick over LeBron James. That’s Russell Westbrook (obv), and Playoff LeBron James. With the playoffs starting this weekend I wanted to take a look at a few items in regards to Lebron’s playoff performances over the years.

Playoff Scoring We know LeBron averages 28.4 ppg in the playoffs, but I wanted to see what his average was in a corresponding game within a playoff series.

These are the libraries I loaded:

library(dplyr)
library(lubridate)
library(ggplot2)
Lebron <- read.csv("/Users/aaronstaggs/Desktop/OK Coders R/LeBron_Playoffs.csv")

As stated earlier, I wanted to find out LeBron’s per game scoring average within a series. So I ran the following code:

LBJ_Points <- Lebron %>%
  select(G, Date, Opp, PTS) %>%
  mutate(Date = isoyear(ymd(Date))) %>%
  group_by(Date, Opp) %>%
  mutate(G = 1:n()) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  group_by(G) %>%
  summarise(PTS = mean(PTS)) %>%
  round(digits = 1)

Yeilding these results. Note:The blue line represents Lebron’s playoff scoring average of 28.4 points per game.

ggplot(data = LBJ_Points) +
  geom_col(mapping = aes(x = G, y = PTS), 
                         fill = "dark red") +
  geom_hline(yintercept = 28.4, linetype = "solid", color = 'blue')

I found it interesting that his scoring average goes up as the series goes on. A testament to his conditioning. Now it should be noted LeBron has played in 217 playoff games in his career, 41 series in total. And has only been to a Game 7 6 times. It is his highest scoring average at 33.2 points, but by far his smallest sample size.

Next, I plotted an “organized” scatterplot of individual scoring games in LeBron’s career. I used a different set of code using the mutate function, instead of summarise at the end.

LBJ_Points2 <- Lebron %>%
  select(G, Date, Opp, PTS) %>%
  mutate(Date = isoyear(ymd(Date))) %>%
  group_by(Date, Opp) %>%
  mutate(G = 1:n()) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  group_by(G) %>%
  mutate(PTS_GM = mean(PTS)) %>%
  ungroup()

ggplot(data = LBJ_Points2) +
  geom_point(mapping = aes(x = G, y = PTS, color = 'wine'),
             alpha = .5
             ) +
labs(x = 'Series Game', y = 'Points per Game', 
     title = 'LeBrons Points Per Playoff Series Game') +
theme(legend.position = "none")

Looking at this chart, Lebron is more inconsistent in his scoring in Games 1 and 3 versus Games 2 and 4.

Finally, I wanted to see which games in the playoffs LeBron has recorded a triple double.

LBJ_POTD <- Lebron %>%
  mutate(Trip_Dub = PTS >= 10 & TRB >= 10 & AST >= 10) %>%
  select(G, Date, Opp, PTS, Trip_Dub) %>%
  mutate(Date = isoyear(ymd(Date))) %>%
  group_by(Date, Opp) %>%
  mutate(G = 1:n()) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  group_by(G) %>%
  mutate(PTS_GM = mean(PTS)) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  mutate(Trip_Dub = as.factor(Trip_Dub))

ggplot(data = LBJ_POTD) + 
  geom_point(mapping = aes(x = G, y = PTS, color = Trip_Dub),
             alpha = .5,
              size = 2) +
  labs(x = 'Series Game', y = 'Points per Game', 
       title = 'LeBrons Points Per Playoff Series Game',
       scale_fill_discrete(name = "Triple Double")) +
  theme(legend.position = "none")