CLEVELAND -- Few will argue against LeBron James going down as one of the greatest players ever. Him becoming the first player to notch 27,000 career points, 7,000 assists and 7,000 rebounds in Saturday's 116-105 victory over the Charlotte Hornets only goes to support that premise.
Increasingly this season, the Cleveland Cavaliers are making an argument for their place in the conversation among the greatest 3-point shooting teams ever assembled. Saturday's output from deep (13-for-31 for 41.9 percent) was merely average for the team that leads the league in 3-point percentage (40.1) and is second in makes per game (13.6 coming into the Hornets game).
They've set NBA records for consecutive games with 10 or more 3s to start a season (16, doubling the previous record of eight games held by the 2014-15 Houston Rockets), set the record for most 3s in a half, with 16 against the Portland Trail Blazers, and became the first team with back-to-back games with 20 or more 3s when they followed the Portland game by hitting 20 triples their next outing, against the Dallas Mavericks.
The question is whether the all-time great James will get in on the all-time great 3-point act around him this season or merely use his passing ability and court sensibility to facilitate for the shooters he takes the floor with from Kyrie Irving to Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, Channing Frye, Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert.
James certainly caught the shooting bug Saturday, going 5-for-10 from beyond, hitting the most 3s he has had in a game since Cleveland lost in double overtime in November 2015.
"I have the ability to make 3s," James said after filling out his effort against Charlotte with 44 points, 10 assists, 9 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. "It doesn't drive my game. Teams sag off me or tempt me to shoot, I got to go up and knock them down. I got to keep defenses at bay and keep them off balance throughout the whole game where they're just not keying in on my drive or keying in on my post-ups. I got to be able to knock down some outside shots too, so I work on that as well."
The fact that we're choosing to dissect James' 3-point shooting on a night when he just missed a triple-double while scoring 40-plus for the 56th time in his career, all the while playing 42 minutes on the second night of a back-to-back set as a 14-year veteran is, on its face, ridiculous.
The thing is, just about every other part of James' game outside his outside shot has been praised up and down since before he even entered the league, leaving his 3-ball as low-hanging fruit for critics. (No, really, go and read this scouting report ESPN's Marc Stein compiled back in 2003 and see scouts being quoted saying things like, "His shot is the one element of his game that has been red-flagged," and "If you want to pinpoint a weakness in his game, it's shooting.")
James worked himself into a serviceable shooter while maintaining all the otherworldly parts of his game. He came into Saturday on a bit of a rough patch from deep, going 5-for-17 in his previous five games, but the Hornets game lifted his accuracy to 36.5 percent, which would be the third-best mark of his career and a drastic improvement from the 30.9 percent at which he connected on the long ball last season, the second worst of his career.
"I don't know, just working on it man," James said of the percentage spike. "It's always a rhythm thing for me at times, you know. So I'm just in a really good rhythm right now. My body feels great. My stroke feels pretty dang-on good as well, I just got to continue to put the work in."
James Jones has seen James work on that stroke the past seven seasons as they've been teammates together in Miami and now Cleveland.
"He actually went through a transition where he shot it mostly on full dribble pullup, on full speed to get some momentum into his shot so he could shoot it like a pull-up jumper like he's good at, to now where he's slowed it down and he's a set shooter," Jones said. "He can shoot it off the jab and he uses it a lot more now to set up his drive rather than it being a last resort because people were trying to take away his drive."
Asked how he coaches James to consider the 3-pointer, coach Tyronn Lue's instructions are simple: Shoot it.
"I mean, when you catch the ball and you got shots in rhythm, he has to shoot it. I mean, they work on his shooting every day. He can shoot the basketball. He makes 10, 11 in a row every time they're doing their shooting."
James has engaged in shooting competitions in practice with both Jones and Smith over the years.
"He's a shot-maker," Jones said of the bouts. "Over the long haul, shooters will outshoot him, but in the spirit of competition, when pressure's on, he thrives on it."
Smith, not surprisingly, takes some credit for James' transformation.
"Fortunately he's shooting with a great shooter like myself," Smith said with a laugh. "It will help him out. I mean, he works on it. For him, as he gets older, that's going to be the key to his longevity. He's not going to be able to run and jump forever, so if he makes shots, makes his turnaround, fadeaway like he's been making, nobody can stop him."
Wrong. What can and does stop James is his discretion. When you can do so many things well, there would be a point of diminishing return by going too 3-crazy. When the Cavs hit a franchise-record 22 triples Wednesday against the New York Knicks and James contributed a measly one to the total, did he start getting jealous of all the 3s flying and want to join in?
"Nah, I don't ever," James said. "I'm never jealous of the fact that, we got too many great shooters for me to talk about it, for me to be a part of that. I just got to do my job."
