For the last 14 seasons, NBA defenses have had but one strategy available to them when it comes to defending, or at least trying to moderately disrupt, LeBron James: Force him to shoot from the outside, and cling to the hope that he'll, one, take the bait and actually settle for the shot, and two, miss just often enough to give you a fighting chance.

This season, the calculus has changed right alongside LeBron's shooting percentages -- which have gone completely off the grid. Entering Tuesday, the Cavaliers superstar is shooting a tick under 58 percent from the field and better than 41 percent from three, which adds up to a bonkers 63.0 eFG percentage. All of these are career highs for LeBron, but even that doesn't tell the full story.

That last number, the 63.0 eFG percentage, is the exact same number Stephen Curry put up in 2015-16 when he shot over 45 percent from deep en route to making an NBA record 402 threes. Think about that. LeBron James, in his 15th season with closer to 20 years of NBA miles on his almost-33-year-old legs, is not only putting together, by far, the best shooting season of his career -- he's actually demanding that we talk about his shooting in at least the same sentence as the greatest shooter, who had the greatest shooting season, in NBA history.

And this is supposed to be his weakness?

The thing defenses want him to do?

To be clear, LeBron and the word "weakness" colliding in the same sentence is only possible in supremely relative terms, and to be even clearer, James is NOT having the kind of shooting season Curry had in 2015-16, when he made more threes per game (5.1) than LeBron is even attempting (4.9). But you get the point. That LeBron, quite possibly the best player to ever put on an NBA uniform, is still improving, significantly, at this point in his career is astonishing.

How is he doing it? Well, early in the season LeBron told ESPN's Dave McMenamin that a mysterious offseason elbow injury forced him to alter his shooting mechanics -- specifically his release point -- during workouts, and he never went back to the old form. From ESPN:

The adjustment came with an unintended consequence: It didn't just make James' arm feel better; it made him shoot better, too. "I shoot it higher," James said. "When the swelling went down, I just continued to do the same motion, the same motion. My free throws, my 3s, my pullups, all that."

When you watch LeBron's jumper this season, it's nearly impossible to tell much of a difference from years past at game speed with the naked eye. But if you slow things down there is at least subtle evidence of this higher release point he referenced back in October. In the photo below, the shot on the left is from this season while the shot on the right is from 2016-17.

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Again, it's subtle, but you can see that this year's version is a higher release point, with the ball also positioned slightly more out front as opposed to more cocked back atop his head. Keep in mind, the shot on the left is also further along in the shooting motion -- i.e., closer to the actual release, so there's likely still some room for extension on last year's version. This screen shot below perhaps best illustrates the greater extension LeBron is getting this year:

Earlier this season I spent some time talking with Mark Price, who, of course, was one of the greatest shooters in NBA history in his own right before working as an assistant coach for the Orlando Magic and Charlotte Hornets. He said something that feels inversely applicable to what we're watching LeBron do this season.

"The mental side of shooting is something a lot of people still don't understand the depths of," Price said. "Confidence is huge ... Even the best shooters in the world struggle with confidence [when they're not making shots]."

If that's true, then the reverse would be true as well -- which is to say, confidence, even for all-time-great athletes who are soaked in confidence regardless of circumstance, goes to another level when you are making shots. Price also said that with shooters who have a solid foundation, which clearly LeBron has, small tweaks can make a big difference. Price pointed to Kemba Walker, who he worked with in Charlotte, as an example of this. But in the end, it's not about the technicalities of shooting. It's about the results, because results feed confidence, and confidence, more than anything else, feeds shooters. Right now, LeBron, who is seeing the ball go through the hoop at a more efficient rate than at any other time in his career, is flat-out feeling it.

This step-back three used to be kind of a bail-out shot, a look he settled for on the defense's terms rather than his own. This season, he's hunting this shot. You can see him smoothly, rhythmically setting it up with his dribble from a mile away, and there's still nothing you can do to stop it. And he knows it.

These step-back threes are quickly becoming LeBron's signature shot -- and in money time to boot. He hit a step-back game-sealer against Sacramento last week. Before that he did it to Memphis in a game in which he scored the Cavs' final 13 points. He scored or assisted on Cleveland's final 22 points in a win over Philly. He leads the league with 81 points in the clutch and 9.3 fourth-quarter points per game, per NBA.com. He's in the 95th percentile on off-the-dribble jumpers, per Synergy. If the season were to end today, he'd be the only player in history to average at least 28 points, eight assists and eight rebounds while shooting better that 55 percent from the field. The Cavs have won 14 of 15.

So, yeah, about those early-season worries in Cleveland ...