By John Hollinger, SI.com

LeBron James is selling out arenas, but the Cavaliers are still in last place. Noren Trotman/NBAE/Getty Images

LeBron James is starting to feel the heat.

With the Cavs mired at 5-15 after a recent eight-game losing streak, murmurs that the much-hyped rookie is having negligible impact on the Cavs' fortunes are becoming audible. The critiques come despite James' very respectable averages of 16.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 6.3 assists.

One might think the criticism is a little harsh -- sheesh, he's only 18 and has been a pro for all of 40 days. But, on the other hand, one can argue that James should be having a more salutary impact on Cleveland's record in spite of his youth. It's potentially important, too: If LeBron can't have the impact one expects of a great player, perhaps it's an early indicator that the Chosen One is more like One of the Guys.

Recently, one columnist in particular took LeBron to task for not improving his team the way some other great players have in the past. (Because it was for another Web site I won't mention who wrote it, except to say that he's a former Trail Blazer with the same last name as a 1970's Appalachian TV character named "John Boy", and like many current Blazers he was renowned for his fondness of Jamaican produce.)

So let's get down to brass tacks and see if the soothsayers are sage by comparing LeBron's impact compared to that of some other greats.

To study this, first we need to project Cleveland's final record. Extrapolating 5-15 through the end of the season leaves us at 21-61, but that method sells Cleveland short because the Cavs have played more road games (12) than home games (8). We'll need to adjust for that by projecting the home and road record separately and then adding them at the end. Cleveland is 0-12 on the road, which projects, however unrealistic, to 0-41. Meanwhile, they're 5-3 at home, which trends to 26-15. Add the two together and you end up with 26-56, which seems about right based on their play so far.

Thus, even if we assume that LeBron doesn't improve at all as the year goes on, and neither do the Cavs, 26-56 would be a nine-game improvement from last year's 17-65.

Now let's compare that with some of the all-time greats. The writer (let's call him John Boy Doe) nominated a few players whose teams made notable improvements in their first year, so we'll use them first: Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and David Robinson.

As the chart shows, all seven players made a truly impressive impact, several of which LeBron won't come near. However, perhaps we should be more fair to LeBron. The list includes arguably the six greatest players of all time, and some guy  named Jordan had an impact that was scarcely different from LeBron's.

Additionally, discerning readers will point out that in addition to the six mega-greats, Robinson was fairly blatantly cherry-picked because his Spurs had the greatest one-year improvement in history. But it's easy to come up with a second list of players who were more or less on par with Robinson historically, and had nowhere near the same one-year impact on their franchises.

In this comparison, James looks much more respectable, with his Cavs improving more than five of the seven players on the list. Moreover, note that Kobe Bryant had the smallest impact of any player outside the state of Utah. There's a reason for that, and it's why the comparisons between James and the other players are inherently slanted.

James is only 18 years old, showing up in the NBA without playing a lick of college ball. But everyone on in the comparisons above played the list played at least two seasons of college, and 10 of the 14 stayed for all four years. Comparing him to guys who played several years in college is absurd, because while all were "rookies," the ones who went to college were much farther along in their physical and mental development.

In fact, if we compare LeBron to other preps-to-pros stars in the NBA such as Bryant, we see the impact of his rookie season is at least as strong as the others.

Based on both LeBron's own statistical performance and the Cavs' win-loss record compared to a year ago, he's exceeding what all of those players accomplished in their first year out of high school. And even if James turns out to "only" be as good as Kevin Garnett or Kobe Bryant, I hardly think the Cavs will have considered it a wasted draft pick.

It's easy to stage a comparison of LeBron James to a rookie Larry Bird or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and determine that he's already a disappointment. But comparing the impact of an 18-year-old James to the 22-year-old editions of the greatest players who ever lived hardly seems like a fair fight -- even for somebody with as much ability as LeBron. While it can be hard to keep focus on the big picture when the Cavs are getting their brains beat out every night and haven't won a road game since the Truman administration, LeBron James has yet to do anything to suggest that he won't someday live up to his monumental hype.