I don't think Lebron pads his stats any more than Jordan or Kobe ever did. He does do it on occasion, but I've seen many elite players do it.
Many elite players do indeed pad their stats from time to time; however, very few of them force teams to create a system primarily designed around them getting individual stats.
Jordan would be a good example of this. Prior to him playing in the triangle offense, he was a 32-8-8 player. He could've averaged those same numbers for the next five seasons if he wanted to, but he sacrificed his overall stats when he bought into the triangle. He was criticized for stat-padding prior to PJ becoming coach, though, if that means anything.
Kobe never got the chance to pad stats due to first being a bench player, then being in the triangle for nearly his entire career as a starter. The triangle automatically kills individual stats.
Stat padding is really only problematic when it leads to poor decision making.
It's problematic when it leads to a player ball-hogging at the expense of the team, as well.
Then there's the "empty stat" syndrome which isn't quite stat padding (in my opinion). For example, Chris Webber and Kevin Love can have gaudy numbers and sometimes you don't really see the numbers develop. But the impact on the game can be less than the numbers indicate.
Agreed.
Lebron's stats usually are proportional to his impact.
I would disagree. LeBron usually forces teams to build offenses around him that don't interfere with his individual stats. This is usually to the detriment of most of the many all-star players who play with him, but in the east they get away with it. It's when he's against elite teams, you see how exposed this method is.
Take last year's Finals for example. In Gms 1,2 & 4, LeBron put up very good all-around stats for the most part. If you primarily went off the box score(which most people do) you would've thought he was having a monster series up to that point. It's only when you actually watch the games that you see how misleading his numbers were. He was often non-aggressive and seemingly disinterested for several stretches when his team wasn't playing well, then after the game had already been decided he would start attempting layups and easy floaters to get his numbers and shooting percentage up.
There were several threads made about that last year on this very forum. Same thing happened in 2014 Finals when he showed up for one quarter per game over the last three games. His stats looked good, but they were woefully misleading with respect to being proportional to his impact.