Depending on Kobe and LeBron

Supporting casts are central factors in any comparison of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant -- or any two great players, really. The reaction toward the quality of a star's teammates can go either way: Kobe can be held back by Kwame Brown, or propped up by Pau Gasol; LeBron's numbers can be inflated by a lack of help, or discounted by a lack of ... well, help.

There's no clear way to grade Kobe's pips to LeBron's backing band; if there were, it'd be impossible to say for sure what it all means. We aren't that advanced. But we can look at each team's dependency on its signature star.

This is not a fail-safe assertion of superiority between the pair. There will be time for that, but think of this more as a description of the environments each star exists within rather than a hierarchy of swag. Once again, for the skimmers: THIS POST DOES NOT MEAN THAT LEBRON > KOBE or KOBE > LEBRON. (We cool? Cool.)

LeBron and Kobe are extremely vital to their teams; this is indisputable. Take either away, and the resulting roster is not elite. We have any number of metrics that tell us this is so, and only the most cynically stupid will argue this. On the whole, LeBron has incredible import to the Cavaliers and Kobe has incredible import to the Lakers.

What about on a game-to-game basis, though? Do the teams rise and fall with their stars? If LeBron has a bad game, does Cleveland suffer? If Kobe plays poorly, do the Lakers fail? To investigate, I lined up each player's GameScore (a well-regarded single-game Hollinger box score metric) with his team's final result (using points margin: a 110-105 win would be a +5, and a 110-105 loss is a -5) for every game played since 2006-07. How strong is the correlation? Do the teams lose more and by larger margins when the star's individual performance is bad?

For LeBron and the Cavs, the answer is yes: there is a 0.24 correlation between LeBron's GameScore and Cleveland's points margin. It's more magnified in "Bad 'Bron" games (0.32) but valid in good/great 'Bron games (0.13). A solid connection exists between LeBron's individual performance and Cleveland's performance. Makes perfect sense, right?

But the Lakers seem much less dependent on Kobe's performance: the correlation between Bryant's GameScore and the Lakers' result is a smaller 0.07. In "Bad Kobe" games and "Good Kobe" games, the difference is slight. The Cavaliers rise and fall with LeBron more than is the case with Kobe and the Lakers.

Once again: This isn't a measure of superiority. To wit, Vince Carter has a correlation stronger than LeBron's over the past 2-1/2 years (0.43). There are other factors at play here; one obvious variable in this instance is consistency. Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus pointed out to me that back in Seattle's heyday, Brent Barry would likely have had a high GameScore-to-team score correlation because when Barry was on, the team was unstoppable ... while Gary Payton was so consistent game to game that his individual performance wouldn't blip team performance too much. Because Payton's performance was consistent, Seattle's dependency on his excellence would be masked by such a measure.

Consistency remains another of basketball's white whales, but we can take a Polaroid of the situation in this case. It's easy to see Vince is inconsistent compared to the other two stars: 41% of Carter's games since 2006-07 register less than a 15 GameScore (roughly average for a starter), while only 15% and 23% of LeBron's and Kobe's games (respectively) fall under that mark. Carter is good, but (far) more apt to have a bad game than the other stars. His performance is more of a variable than the others'; he is the Brent Barry in this case, while LeBron and Kobe fit more of a "pencil it in" motif.

But take a look again, there: LeBron is less frequently bad than Kobe. And his correlation to team performance is stronger. So when LeBron is bad -- which is infrequent -- the Cavs fall apart. When Kobe's bad -- which is infrequent -- the Lakers tend to survive. The relationship is negligible with Kobe, visible with LeBron ... even though both rarely have "bad" games.

It may be too smoky to say for sure, but it would appear the Cavaliers are more dependent on LeBron than the Lakers are on Kobe. And if that is indeed the case (as it would appear), that says something either about the dominance of the player or the quality of the supporting cast. We're knee-deep in hedges and theory at this point, so draw your own conclusions.