Maybe, but his peak is a different level. Neil suggests an off-peak for James is 18 Win Shares, still well above what Durant has done, and probably will do in the future. LeBron has Jordan numbers, he went to Miami for rings not because any player exists with better stats. He's 25 years old, age is irrelevant still.

Lots of dimensions of intangibles, and I don't want to go there...is Lebron a dog who gave up and couldn't carry his team when it counted or is he a possible GOAT dragged down by the rest of his team? I've seen that hashed to death.

But, just by the numbers, just assuming that win shares actually represent the full contribution to winning (and that's a working assumption for this specific analysis, not a general claim about the value of win shares), who would you want?

Given the projections as presented, it's a no-brainer: James not only has more total win shares, but much higher peaks, meaning championships are more likely (At least according to the study Neil references in comment #55).

But how are those projections?
When I looked at the projections for the future, I thought "is it really reasonable that KD will never again come within 25% of his 21-year-old output"? (Rick Barry's career sort of has the shape of the projected KD career--peak of 14.4 at 22, next best 12.7)
I looked for all the guys who played a lot of minutes at young ages (19, 20) to see if they had a better season after 21 than they did at 19, 20 or 21, and most did.

I looked for all the guys who had a huge season by age 24 (24 was semi-randomly chosen as what I thought would be a pre-peak age; by "huge season" I picked 13 WS or better). There were 67 such seasons. Among them, the following guys had better seasons after age 24 than before:
Marion
Duncan
Robertson
Erving
Nowitzki
Dantley
Brand
Petit
Macauley
Shaq
Moses Malone
Wade
Stoudemire
Kobe Bryant
Frazier
D. Robinson
Barkley
Chamberlain

On the other hand, the following guys had their best season by age 24:
Mikkelsen
Moncrief
Roy (1 year)
Issel
Arenas
Bellamy
Kareem (best season at 24)
Jordan (best season at 24)
Archibald (best season at 24)
Penny Hardaway (best season at 24)
Rick Barry (best season at 22--a reasonable comp for the KD projection)
Grant Hill (best season at 24)
Mcadoo (best season at 23, 2nd best at 22)
Neil Johnston (best season at 24)
Paul Arizin (best season at 23)
McGrady (best season at 23)
Jimmy Jones (best season at 24)
Spencer Haywood (best season at 20 in ABA, never came close in NBA)
Gilmore (best season at 22 in ABA)

Dwight Howard
James
Paul (best season at 23)

Those last three, of course, may well put up better seasons in the future.
But looking at the list I saw that a lot of these guys were putting up their best (in terms of WS) at 24 or 23, including top contenders for GOAT Jordan and Abdul Jabbar. And James had more WS at 24 than at 25.

That made me wonder about what the peak year is. We keep saying that James, at 25, is going into his prime. But what is the peak? There must be a post on this somewhere, but I did a quick and dirty query to get an estimate--I picked all the seasons with WS >= 16. And I picked the best season of each man on the list:

Age of best season (in WS)
Kareem 24
Wilt 27
Jordan 24
Robertson 25
James 24
Robinson 28
Gilmore 22
S. O'Neal 27
Garnett 27
Johnston 24
Paul 23
Hawkins 25
Duncan 25
McAdoo 23
Erving 25
Nowitzki 27
Barkley 26
Russell 29
Haywood 20
West 27
Karl Malone 33
Magic 30
Bellamy 22
Jimmy Jones 24
McGrady 23
Arizin 23
Durant 21
Z. Beatty 31
Mean age of best season: 25.32142857
Median age of best season: 25
Mode age of best season: 24

The guys who played a lot when they were young (19,20,21) usually had better seasons later in their career. And it looks like the really great players peak in their early to mid 20s.
And that makes me wonder: is it possible that James is already past his peak, while KD still will reach higher in the next 2-3 years?
History suggests that players playing at the highest level peak at 24 or 25

1) the measure of an individual in a team sport is the number of championships won by teams that individual played for
2) the measure of an individual in team sports who has played on championship teams is the crappiness of the players around him.

I know that my statistically adept friends, if so inclined, could come up with a fun formula to actually show us who the greatest player ever was (something like: number of championships won - HOF probability of teammates on each of those championship teams x infinity). I'm not statistically adept, but I thought I'd throw this out there in case anybody really wants to have a go. I wonder how some of the legends who figure in these age-old arguments: Russell, Chamberlain, Jabbar, Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, etc would fare.

Also, as several others have pointed out, LBJ has a proven track record of dominance that KD can't (yet) match, and it's not as if Durant is so much younger. Let's notforget that KD played horribly in OKC's 1st round exit this year.

I'm just glad that there is an audience for honest and frank conversations for this topic and others like it. We won't always see eye to eye, but the fact we can have a conversation here that has been completely absent from the national dialogue is encouraging and depressing all at the same time. Just glad to contribute and participate.

Good point. The situation I posited is not analogous to a Durant/LeBron debate. I was more just getting at the fact that career WS probably isn't the best way to decide such a debate. Now, should Durant ascend to a LeBron or near-LeBron level and maintain that for another half-decade, I see why you go with him. But if he remains a notch below LeBron, I'm not sure how much longer one has him makes a difference.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=4388

After some tweaking to make the career shapes of each player type more obviously different, I found that the superstar-peak guy with the shorter career delivered more titles in a 20-year span than the good player with a long, consistent career.

However, I'm not sure how that changes when you've got two guys with superstar-level peaks (one being GOAT-level).

Btw, here's a poll based on this post, since I forgot to include one here last week:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7617