Cleveland Cavaliers: Questions surrounding the summer of LeBron James
LeBron James is an “Alpha”
This summer’s crazy free agency period if nothing else serves as a precursor to the summer of 2018. Gordon Hayward was the most sought-after free agent on the board and a circus-like atmosphere developed around him.
Nate Silver of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight in an article highlighting why the Celtics signing of Hayward isn’t enough to win a championship. He introduced us to three gems that can be used to assess superstardom in the NBA. Silver introduces us to what he terms the Alpha, Beta and Gamma players. The Alphas are the top tier players in the league and as Silver puts it, “an Alpha is a player who’s as good as the best player on a typical championship-winning team”.
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He projects that for the upcoming season Westbrook, Harden, LeBron, Steph, Kawhi, and Durant are the Alphas. The Betas are the second tier and Silver defines them thusly:
“A Beta is as good as the second-best player on a typical NBA champion”.
He views Hayward as the prototypical Beta player. The Gammas are defined as:
“A Gamma is good as the third-best player on a typical championship team”.
Hayward garnered so much excitement and he is not among the top tier. Paul George and Jimmy Butler are also players that generated excitement during this NBA offseason. George is considered a Gamma who could become a Beta and Butler is a Beta. Invariably what Silver is saying is that if your best player is a Beta you are unlikely to win a championship.
Silver goes further in his analysis by attaching star points to his player categories. Alphas get three points, Betas two points and Gammas one point. If there is this much excitement for Hayward, George, and Butler this summer what’s going to happen when LeBron is free in 2018?