Lebron's decline

Working through the Laker's in several parts.  The tough one is this one, Lebron's decline and there simply aren't any comparisons to use in NBA history.  It would have been nice if Jordan had retired 67% fewer times, but here we are and we will do what we can.

First off there has been some significant evidence of decline for Lebron over the past two seasons.  His on/off numbers have been the 2nd and 5th worst of his career, his FTr has spent 4 years below his career average, as has his steal rate.  The most interesting point to me though was his offensive performance relative to the league last season.  Thanks to Cleaningtheglass.com we have percentile ranks by year for his performance and in terms of total points scored per shot attempt Lebron was in the 80th percentile.  Something for a mere perennial all-star to be proud off, but for James its a notable drop and his lowest finish since the 2007 season.  Even if we should give him a bump for shooting poorly on FTs this season he would still be behind either of the two previous seasons.  The average ortg in the NBA over the past 3 seasons was 108.8, 108.6 and 110.4, and while Lebron's production had managed to keep pace with the league-wide surge in offense over the previous 4 seasons this year he did not, and actually fell off while overall offense rose.

Looking around to recent great players we see Dirk had his last elite offensive season at age 35, with down years at 33 and 34, Wade his at 31, Kobe had a single resurgent year at 34 after 4 high volume/medium efficiency seasons, Paul Pierce's last top offensive season was age 34, Allen Iverson at 32.  Jordan himself was showing signs of decline during the regular season at age 34, before pulling it back together and trotting out what would be one, last, great playoff run. 

I would expect a decline year for Lebron going into this projection, modest but noticeable.  He has a much broader skill-set with passing and rebounding than the other great players mentioned here outside of MJ, so he should still remain a high impact player for a few more years, perhaps even until he is 40.