Lebron A Bull?

Everybody from my Dad to Barack Obama has been campaigning for Lebron James to leave Cleveland and become a Chicago Bull. Today though, Jeff Van Gundy claimed that the Bulls still wouldn't be a real contender. So who's right? Fortunately John Hollinger has a statistic called Estimated Wins Added based off his PER stat. This is the number of wins (roughly) that a player would add over a replacement.

The Bulls should've won 36.1 games this year (They got lucky and won 41, but those sort of variations iron out over time). Luol Deng had an EWA of 7.4. Lebron's was 30.5. Putting Lebron in for Deng, and the 10-11 Bulls have 59 wins! Losing Salmons also will probably cost the Bulls an extra three wins from this year's team (he had a 5.9 EWA, against Hinrich's 1.0 over about 2/3 of the season).

What about other teams?

The Knicks (Lebron over Wilson Chandler) - 57 wins

The Nets (Lebron over crap)-46 wins

The Clippers (Lebron over more crap)-53 wins

The Heat (Lebron over Dorell Wright)-74 wins (umm, what? Okay, near extremes EWA isn't so good. Probably more like 65).

The Cavaliers (Lebron over Lebron) -59 wins.

So a simple Lebron substitution provides the following win totals:

Heat: 74 (65?)

Bulls: 59 (56?)

Cavs: 59

Knicks: 57

Clippers: 53 (more with Blake Griffin?)

Nets: 46

And purely for my amusement, the Bulls with Lebron and Chris Bosh?

+11 for Bosh. Bulls: 70 wins!

and Dwayne Wade (+20)?

Bulls: 90 wins!!!!!

Okay probably not. But it sounds like a record breaker. DWade for a midlevel exception?

The point is, JVG is right. For Lebron to really put a team over the edge he has to join a team that's already good (like the Heat) or he has to bring somebody like Bosh with him. He still helps though. I'm rooting for Lebron as a Bull.