As for LeBron's challenges reaching the Finals, I won't pull the stats now because I did it in another thread a while back, but if you look at the last 6-8 years or so, most of the top 5-6 teams in SRS (Simple Rating Score -- based on schedule strength and point differential) have been in the West.
In any given season, LeBron has had to face 0-1 of the best teams in the league on his way to the Finals.
Of course, the Raps were by the numbers one of the best teams this year, and he obliterated them.
So again, LeBron is the death of trying to reason your way through this stuff beyond "Which team has LeBron?"
Maybe this is more about the Raps being a confounding outlier as a team that underperforms its regular season each year. The Hawks had a similar falling apart against the Cavs in 2015, though.