We all know who and what he is. He is the one-man-difference between a team being one of the worst in the league, and a team that won the East last season. I’ll try to look at him from a fantasy point of view though and discuss if he is viable candidate for the #1 pick.
It’s incredibly hard to write anything bad about this guy; he is the face of the league right now and he is, as far as I know, a high character guy who is doing a terrific job of keeping his ego in check in spite of being hailed as the next coming of MJ (which at this point in his career is ridiculous by the way), but I have to call it as I see it. The answer to the question above is: no way. While he is could be a top-6 fantasy player this season, he has some serious deficiencies in his game. Here are his per-game stats from last year

GP FGM FG% 3PTM FTM FT% REB AST STL TO BLK PPG
78 - 9.9 - 47.6 - 1.27 - 6.3 - 69.8 - 6.7 - 6.0 - 1.6 - 3.2 - 0.7 - 27.33

It’s evident that he is solid-to-great in 7 cats. His 6 assists from the small forward position are huge and he is one of the league leaders in scoring. Steals are strong while blocks and 3 pointers are good(for a SF) and rebounds and FG% are solid. So far he is comparable to KG and Marion who, in my opinion, are main candidates for #1, but he’s not blowing them away, he might have very slight edge over either of them: he beats KG in treys and points, but his edge in steals and assists is very small(4.1 assists from PF is just as huge as 6 from SF), blocks and rebs go to KG and fg% is tied; he is far superior to Matrix in ast and pts cats and gets the slight edge in treys but losses out other 4 cats more or less decisively. And here are reasons why he’s currently not in their league:

First: 3.2 TOs
Only 3 other candidates for top ten picks commit over 3 turnovers per game and they are all guards(Kobe, Arenas, Wade); his 3.2 is 11th worst in the league. You might think it doesn’t matter that much when you compare it to KG’s 2.7 since 0.5 isn’t much of the difference, but compared to Marion’s 1.4 it’s nothing short of terrible, and in the end 0.5 isn’t as little as it sounds when we are talking TOs. So what, you say, you can tank a cat if you have to in order to win big in other areas (more on that later).

Second: 69.8 FT% on 6.3 free throws made per game
T his is where all #1 discussions end as far as LBJ is concerned. To put things into perspective, no other top-10 candidate shoots under 74.75%( Pau Gasol who is center eligible, hits fts at that rate); only one other top 20 player shoots under 70% (Tim Duncan, again center eligible player, shoots 63.73% but he shoots less free throws so actually he does less damage then LBJ). Marion shoots 81.05%, though he doesn’t get enough free throws to significantly help, he does help some, and he certainly doesn’t hurt you; KG is even better: 83.53% on 5.5 shots made from a PF is great and helps a lot.
To be the worst among the top 20 players in any cat is not good enough for the first pick. Picking LBJ effectively makes you tank FT% and also puts you in a bad situation with TOs after your first pick, which takes away almost all of your flexibility for the rest of the draft. From there on you can’t afford to take any more high TO guys if you don’t want to tank TOs. Tanking is something people lightly do, but tanking that early in the draft means you need to take only players who fit in with your team and miss on some good players who fall to you because they won’t help you win (for more on this read the Tactics of Ditching article).

So the question becomes: does he bring any overwhelming positives to make up for the negatives. The answer is no, he doesn’t dominate any other cat: he is a great scorer, but he alone won’t win it for you , nor will he win assists without at least one other major passer. Don’t get me wrong, he’ll help tremendously in both cats, but he won’t win them on regular bases. At some point his positives overshadow his negatives and you are forced to take him in spite of losing flexibility, but take a look at other 2 guys I considered for No 1. If you pick Marion you are in position to dominate TOs, you still have to be careful not to pick any 3+ guys but 2 best players who get less tos then Marion are Ben and Rasheed Wallace so after 1st round you have a great advantage over everyone else. At the same time you get a good basis for 7 other cats, as Marion's only weakness is assists but very few SFs get more then 3 assists so you are not at a big loss here. In essence, Matrix doesn’t dominate anything, but enables you to go in any direction you want with a great foundation and that’s very important in the early stages of the draft. KG on the other hand doesn’t get treys, but few PFs do, so you’re not at a loss here either. Meanwhile helping in assists and FT% which is great from a PF. Also, he is the league leader in rebounds and he is good in all other cats. After picking him you can go in any direction, same as with Marion.
Durability is not an issue with any of them, KG might miss the championship week if Celts decide to rest him for the post-season, but you can expect him to lead your team for 23 weeks and that’s quite enough in my book.

There’s been much speculation on the effect of the trade to Boston on KG’s numbers and there’s no way to know for sure until season starts. But what we can do is make a few educated guesses. First of all I believe that superstars don’t change their game for the team as much as team changes its style to take advantage of superstar’s skills and KG is the biggest superstar on Celtics team. Many people are concerned that he’ll have trouble scoring because of 2 other premier scorers on the team, but there are also positives:
1) No other player on the team can consistently score inside so that alone should keep him in teens
2) Ray Allen and Paul Pearce will command a lot more attention from opposing defenses then any of KG’s teammates in Minnesota ever did, so that should allow him to shoot better FG% meaning he will need less touches to score same number of points
3) Outside of the Big 3, the Celtics have little fire power so the majority of points will have to come from those 3
4) With the move East he’ll face weaker opposition at his position, meaning his overall numbers should go up (not just scoring, but rebounding, FG%, steals and blocks).

In the end his points might drop some but not too much and he won’t start shooting treys, but on the other hand all 7 remaining cats should improve or remain the same. His assists should go up due to having more good scorers to pass to, FG% should go up due to 2) and 4), rebounds, blocks, steals due to 4) and TOs due to 4) and the fact that he’ll have the ball in his hands less with 2 other able ball handlers present.

Marion’s possible trade would reduce his value some due to not having Steve Nash to pass him the ball, but it’s becoming very unlikely that any such trade would happen this year.

One more thing to keep in mind is that LBJ played through last 2 summers with national team so while he’s been an iron-man so far and is still very young, all that wear and tear should not be taken lightly. This can sound like minor issue to you, but this kind of thing you consider when we’re talking #1.

There is only one excuse for drafting LBJ #1 - his upside and the possibility of him improving his game further. But gambling is not the way to go in the early rounds, and by taking LBJ 1st overall you’re gambling on him improving his FT% significantly. Play it safe, don’t be the guy who picks Melo, T-Mac or D-how in the 2nd round, Shaq in the 7th or LBJ with #1.

Why do I think keeping flexibility is important, for as long as possible, when I agree that you should tank at least one category (but no more then 2) at some point of the draft? The answer is that flexible teams can afford to take the best player available at any given moment and thus can gain the most value out of their picks. This means that with Marion as your 1st pick you can take the best player available in the 2nd round, but with LBJ players that shoot good FT% don’t hold as much value for you as they do for other teams. Almost all of your potential 2nd rounders shoot good FT%, or at least good FT% relative to their position and that means that you lose value in 2nd round if you’re unable to take Duncan or Josh Smith. This story repeats itself in every round. If you tank TOs you have to be even better in remaining 7 cats, and if you don’t tank TOs, you have to pass on some players who hold value to you without FT% (T-Mac and D-How). So while it is still possible to build a good team, it does become more difficult. Now I’m not saying LBJ is bad fantasy player, he should go no lower then 6th in any 9-cat draft (in my opinion), but at least 4 other players give you similar value with more flexibility in 1st round.

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Aleksander is a new column writer for RotoFreak.com. If you'd like to comment on the article, please chime in on the boards.