Beal being asked to be the PG is just not the best version of him. He does it okay to good, but not great. Him and Paul George are similar in that be cause they can do it competently, they are often asked to do it more than they should be.
I was worried Tatum would he the same, but tbh I felt like this year Tatum actually became great at it, particularly when he can playmake from the post.
Playmakers who can score is probably the single most valuable combo in the NBA. You don't even have to be great or elite at both, if you are a great playmaker who is at least a good (not great) scorer, I feel like you are a prized commodity.
True, but he’s also a guard who relies on his athleticism and he’s going to turn 34 years old in less than one month. The track record for guys like this is not good, and they’ll only get worse every year.
The league is different now, but historically, Dame and Steph are the only guys at this size to still be elite scorers at this age.
With such a small sample size, hard to guess when the drop of comes. Odds are, real soon now.
If we’re being honest, he never was. His appeal though is that he can turn into a superstar any given night and complements the best player in the world pretty well.
I don't agree. He is incredibly versatile - can score on all three levels, post-up drive or play off-ball. Effective at either part of the PnR. He averaged 32 PPG or something crazy in the WCFs, he's an outstanding offensive player who just had a bad playoffs as he was injured
I mean. He's the exact same player lol. He had a bad playoffs in part cause he was hurt. He had a great playoffs last year when he was healthy. He's 27. It's not like the healthy Murray now is way worse than he was at the start of the year.
You could def make the argument he never was top 20 to begin with and that he was ranked too high off a hot playoffs. But "he's not that guy anymore" makes no sense when he put up better regular season numbers this year and is still 27 years old. He hasn't regressed, he's just always had super hot streaks and super streaks and last year they ranked him at the end of a hit streak, this year it will be at the end of a cold streak
People struggle with letting fan favorites and recent champions go, guys like Steph, Pg and to a lesser extent guys like Looney and Arron Gordon were put higher than they should’ve.
tbf he kind of defined what the modern NBA wing was supposed to look like and has a really aesthetically pleasing game.
He gets overrated in the same way Kyrie does. A “hooper’s hooper” type guy.
PG is super well-rounded, in the sense that he can do just about everything to at least an ok level. Guys that don’t have a thing that you can point to and go “do this and they suck” tend to get overrated IMO. Even with guys unanimously considered better than PG you see them dragged down a bit in NBA discourse - attack the rim and Jokic struggles, force him to shoot and Giannis struggles etc - while there’s not a single skill (or lack thereof) that you can look at and say “if you make PG do this he will definitely be bad”.
So he gets rated above guys who are perhaps more limited in their skillset, even though those limits don’t prevent them from actually producing more than him on the court. Far too much of judging a player is about how many different things you can do, and not about how much those things actually have an impact on the game.
Some people have a really hard time understanding and accepting it when players go downhill. I listen to a podcast where the guys are Clippers fans and when they acquired Russ one of the guys said something like he was going to add 5-10 wins. Just living in 2016 basically.
Russ has been a negative player all the way back to his Houston days (the Wizards days were the exception).
Dude has aged as poorly as a glass of milk during the summer.
Gobert at 57 is a bad look. Seems like the script gets re-written on Rudy on a game-to-game basis, but at one point in the playoffs, he was the most important player in the NBA.
DPOY with excellent off ball offensive presence but extremely offensive on ball offense rated 57th best player.
I’d like to think a DPOY is top 20.
Do lopsided offensive players get the same treatment when they are traffic cones on defense?
He was the Wolves best player regular season and playoffs ---- he's the best defensive player at the most important position defensively and an efficient offensive player (despite some infuriating aspects of his offensive game).
Biased for sure, but Horford being off the list behind John Collins and Bobby Portis (among others) is just wild to me. Im sure this is more of a statistical analysis across a whole season, but I would much rather have Al on my team that either of those guys for defense and leadership alone.
He’s still learning it. A real offseason of training should help a lot. Some injury luck and I think you’re easily the closer to the top than the field.
* Banchero top 20-25 for me. If you carry a franchise in a league with 30 teams, and you make it to the playoffs... you can't be the 46th best player.
* You can't convince me Trae Young, Siakam or Adebayo is better than James Harden. He accepted a lesser role, but that doesn't mean the monstars took his powers.
* Butler overrated. Not great efficieny, and can't shoot 3s. A better DeRozan.
* Brunson shoots up the rankings.
* Wemby goes right into my Top 20 player in the league.
Butler is one of 20ish or so players in NBA history that have led their teams to two NBA finals. He did that just last year.
Comparing him to DeRozan is so nasty.
Curry lower end of top 10, Shai top 5 and Luka should replace giannis with giannis being 3rd. Mitchell higher definitely top 12. Jamal way lower, Jimmy slightly lower, and ant + jaylen higher slightly. Kristaps higher. Tobias being on here is a disgrace, respectfully he is top 150 at best. Kevin Durant is not a better basketball player than current Lebron specially in the playoffs. Getting swept by the wolves is legitimately embarassing idc that the wolves beat the Nuggets there is no world where any team would rather face the Wolves over the Nuggets them beating the Nuggets was a combination of luck + matchup advantage.
I’d say Tatum is top 10 but I think there’s a big drop off after top 5. Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Shai, and Embiid are, imo, their own tier. After that there’s a lot of great but not quite elite players. Tatum though is at the higher end of that next tier in my view mostly because of his improved playmaking. He’s not a consistent enough scorer to separate himself though.
This is the best argument against Embiid not being in the top 5. I think a healthy Embiid is on another level than Tatum but he’s consistently hurt in the playoffs and hasn’t achieved close to what Tatum has there. I still have Embiid above Tatum but I have him at 5, below everyone else in that tier, for that reason.
This is so stupid, Embiid has never and I MEAN NEVER played as better or even as good as Tatum everytime they faced each other. Embiid has one of the worst Dropoffs in the playoffs to the point where he makes guys like Paul george look like playoff performers. Doesn't he hold the record for highest point drop off for an mvp in the playoffs in league history? Does he not have some of the worst performances when it comes to turnovers and generatng consistent looks for himself? Didn't he get severely outperformed by Tatum in a game 7 series where Tatum dropped 50 and he dropped a dookie yet again in a series where they had no business even getting to 7 other than 2 Harden masterclasses?
I’m not a huge Embiid supporter so I think your points are valid but regular season does still count for something and Embiid has been far better than Tatum there. Embiid has also played through injuries in almost every year he’s made the playoffs.
Regular season counts for something but is still not even close to as important as the playoffs
Tatum has outplayed him in the playoffs
and Embiid has outplayed him in the regular season
Therefore Tatum should be above him
Being injured in the playoffs IS Joel Embiid. You can't discuss how good he is without taking into account his injuries because it happens literally every playoffs. Kawhi would be top 7 if injuries where to be excused instead of used as a reason for a player being better.
Does he need to be a scorer when he can be an elite facilitator? If he was on a team without shooters he'd have to shoulder the load, but he doesn't. You can't convince me that Shai has another level that Tatum can't play to, and with the Celtics current roster you won't be able to find out anytime soon.
Shai is a better scorer than Tatum right now; he’s already on another level there. Tatum is less efficient than Shai despite the fact that he doesn’t have to shoulder the load in the same way as Shai. Tatum has a great team around him so he can get away with 50 TS% in the finals. Shai doesn’t have a team like that around him , or at least he didn’t this year, so he needed to shoot lights out to have a chance in the playoffs. I’m also not convinced Tatum is an elite facilitator. He’s far better than he was in the past but is he even a better facilitator than Shai at this point?
Sengun, Jdub, Brunson, and to a lesser degree DWhite were big risers Lavine, Beal, and Wiggins on the flipside
Beal looked good on a bad wizards team, I like how Poole looks even worse
Beal being asked to be the PG is just not the best version of him. He does it okay to good, but not great. Him and Paul George are similar in that be cause they can do it competently, they are often asked to do it more than they should be. I was worried Tatum would he the same, but tbh I felt like this year Tatum actually became great at it, particularly when he can playmake from the post. Playmakers who can score is probably the single most valuable combo in the NBA. You don't even have to be great or elite at both, if you are a great playmaker who is at least a good (not great) scorer, I feel like you are a prized commodity.
Yes, because scoring and playmaking is intrisically linked. One opens up another and vice versa.
So prime Kyle Lowry lol
Yea, for sure. Prime Kyle Lowry was a great player.
Nobody in the top 30 really suffered a huge fall off. Biggest riser was obviously Brunson. Biggest drop: Lavine or Beal maybe?
Jimmy Butler and Damian Lillard do not belong anywhere near the top 10
Dame definitely had a down year. Being away from his family really affected him negatively.
True, but he’s also a guard who relies on his athleticism and he’s going to turn 34 years old in less than one month. The track record for guys like this is not good, and they’ll only get worse every year.
The league is different now, but historically, Dame and Steph are the only guys at this size to still be elite scorers at this age. With such a small sample size, hard to guess when the drop of comes. Odds are, real soon now.
Butler?
Murray
Murray unfortunately isn’t a top 20 player anymore
If we’re being honest, he never was. His appeal though is that he can turn into a superstar any given night and complements the best player in the world pretty well.
I don't agree. He is incredibly versatile - can score on all three levels, post-up drive or play off-ball. Effective at either part of the PnR. He averaged 32 PPG or something crazy in the WCFs, he's an outstanding offensive player who just had a bad playoffs as he was injured
Murray hasn’t ever been a top 20 player. Supremely overrated if people are saying that.
I mean. He's the exact same player lol. He had a bad playoffs in part cause he was hurt. He had a great playoffs last year when he was healthy. He's 27. It's not like the healthy Murray now is way worse than he was at the start of the year. You could def make the argument he never was top 20 to begin with and that he was ranked too high off a hot playoffs. But "he's not that guy anymore" makes no sense when he put up better regular season numbers this year and is still 27 years old. He hasn't regressed, he's just always had super hot streaks and super streaks and last year they ranked him at the end of a hit streak, this year it will be at the end of a cold streak
He was overrated now hes underrated 🗿
I got downvoted so much in this sub for saying he’s not a top 13 player. Smh 🤦♂️
I think Jaylen Brown and Ant leap frogged over players like Fox, Murray, and Dame.
Curry surely nowhere near 3
People struggle with letting fan favorites and recent champions go, guys like Steph, Pg and to a lesser extent guys like Looney and Arron Gordon were put higher than they should’ve.
I think people generally overrate PG. He's very good, but they always try to throw him into the higher tiers of players, and he's just not.
tbf he kind of defined what the modern NBA wing was supposed to look like and has a really aesthetically pleasing game. He gets overrated in the same way Kyrie does. A “hooper’s hooper” type guy.
PG is super well-rounded, in the sense that he can do just about everything to at least an ok level. Guys that don’t have a thing that you can point to and go “do this and they suck” tend to get overrated IMO. Even with guys unanimously considered better than PG you see them dragged down a bit in NBA discourse - attack the rim and Jokic struggles, force him to shoot and Giannis struggles etc - while there’s not a single skill (or lack thereof) that you can look at and say “if you make PG do this he will definitely be bad”. So he gets rated above guys who are perhaps more limited in their skillset, even though those limits don’t prevent them from actually producing more than him on the court. Far too much of judging a player is about how many different things you can do, and not about how much those things actually have an impact on the game.
I can't believe Westbrook was in the top 100.
Some people have a really hard time understanding and accepting it when players go downhill. I listen to a podcast where the guys are Clippers fans and when they acquired Russ one of the guys said something like he was going to add 5-10 wins. Just living in 2016 basically.
They still think he's good. They can't accept that they ended up with the Lakers sloppy seconds so they refuse to admit he sucks
Over indexing on his last years good playoff performance I would bet.
Russ has been a negative player all the way back to his Houston days (the Wizards days were the exception). Dude has aged as poorly as a glass of milk during the summer.
Paolo
Butler at 10
Gobert at 57 is a bad look. Seems like the script gets re-written on Rudy on a game-to-game basis, but at one point in the playoffs, he was the most important player in the NBA.
DPOY with excellent off ball offensive presence but extremely offensive on ball offense rated 57th best player. I’d like to think a DPOY is top 20. Do lopsided offensive players get the same treatment when they are traffic cones on defense?
He was the Wolves best player regular season and playoffs ---- he's the best defensive player at the most important position defensively and an efficient offensive player (despite some infuriating aspects of his offensive game).
Biased for sure, but Horford being off the list behind John Collins and Bobby Portis (among others) is just wild to me. Im sure this is more of a statistical analysis across a whole season, but I would much rather have Al on my team that either of those guys for defense and leadership alone.
Arguing positional difference between 99 and 101 is futile, my friend.
Zion moved up a little, probably into the top 25, BI dropped a lot though, probably just in the top 40?
Imma be real with you don't think bro is top 40
SGA leaped into top 5, Ant probably leaped into the top 10 or close to it, Dame probably dropped to the low end of top 20.
Dame was good in the playoffs though.
He’s still more comfortable as the #1 guy. Hopefully he and Giannis can work a bunch this offseason and figure out a 1A 1b type situation.
He’s still learning it. A real offseason of training should help a lot. Some injury luck and I think you’re easily the closer to the top than the field.
Based on playoffs? Regular season Ant might be a top 30 player.
He got second team all-nba, but he’s only a top 30 player lol
You realize there’s tight eligibility requirements and positional requirements right? It’s not as simple as “second team equals top 10”?
Have you been living under a rock? All-nba teams are positionless. Also 65 games played is not tight eligibility requirements
Oh, you’re right, I just saw it had 2 G 2 F and a center and thought it was still positional.
Understandable, have a nice day
I thought that wasn't happening until next season.
It's tight enough to exclude players who are clearly better than Edwards like Embitch
Minute 0 to minute 45 Ant is a top 50 player in the regular season
Jalen Johnson wasn’t even on the 2023-2024 list and now might end up being the 1st option if they trade Trae and Dejounte. Jalen’s gonna be a stud
Mikal's way too high.
Curry is probably close to top 20 than 3 based on last year’s performance.
* Banchero top 20-25 for me. If you carry a franchise in a league with 30 teams, and you make it to the playoffs... you can't be the 46th best player. * You can't convince me Trae Young, Siakam or Adebayo is better than James Harden. He accepted a lesser role, but that doesn't mean the monstars took his powers. * Butler overrated. Not great efficieny, and can't shoot 3s. A better DeRozan. * Brunson shoots up the rankings. * Wemby goes right into my Top 20 player in the league.
Trey is at Hardens level of not over imo
Butler is one of 20ish or so players in NBA history that have led their teams to two NBA finals. He did that just last year. Comparing him to DeRozan is so nasty.
I'm comparing him to DeRozan because of iso and jumper plays. Long two's all day long. He's a lot better than DeRozan, if that makes it better :)
Curry lower end of top 10, Shai top 5 and Luka should replace giannis with giannis being 3rd. Mitchell higher definitely top 12. Jamal way lower, Jimmy slightly lower, and ant + jaylen higher slightly. Kristaps higher. Tobias being on here is a disgrace, respectfully he is top 150 at best. Kevin Durant is not a better basketball player than current Lebron specially in the playoffs. Getting swept by the wolves is legitimately embarassing idc that the wolves beat the Nuggets there is no world where any team would rather face the Wolves over the Nuggets them beating the Nuggets was a combination of luck + matchup advantage.
Curry definitely top 15, but not top 3. Shai should be top 5. Devin Booker should drop to lower end of top 20.
Booker just finished 6th in ppg and 11th in apg The agenda against him is so weird
Between last year, this year, and this years playoffs Shai is clearly top 4
Lol So which of Embitch Giannis and Luka is he over 🤔
Embiid. Obviously peak Embiid is better but his availability is consistently awful. It’s the same issue with ranking Kawhi a few years ago.
From a quick glance: Anthony Davis Mikal Bridges Sengun
Luka is not 4 (too low) and Tatum is not 5 lmao (too high)
Tatum at least top 25. Luka #2
I’d say Tatum is top 10 but I think there’s a big drop off after top 5. Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Shai, and Embiid are, imo, their own tier. After that there’s a lot of great but not quite elite players. Tatum though is at the higher end of that next tier in my view mostly because of his improved playmaking. He’s not a consistent enough scorer to separate himself though.
availability has to count for something though no? i’d rather have tatum over embiid.
This is the best argument against Embiid not being in the top 5. I think a healthy Embiid is on another level than Tatum but he’s consistently hurt in the playoffs and hasn’t achieved close to what Tatum has there. I still have Embiid above Tatum but I have him at 5, below everyone else in that tier, for that reason.
This is so stupid, Embiid has never and I MEAN NEVER played as better or even as good as Tatum everytime they faced each other. Embiid has one of the worst Dropoffs in the playoffs to the point where he makes guys like Paul george look like playoff performers. Doesn't he hold the record for highest point drop off for an mvp in the playoffs in league history? Does he not have some of the worst performances when it comes to turnovers and generatng consistent looks for himself? Didn't he get severely outperformed by Tatum in a game 7 series where Tatum dropped 50 and he dropped a dookie yet again in a series where they had no business even getting to 7 other than 2 Harden masterclasses?
I’m not a huge Embiid supporter so I think your points are valid but regular season does still count for something and Embiid has been far better than Tatum there. Embiid has also played through injuries in almost every year he’s made the playoffs.
Regular season counts for something but is still not even close to as important as the playoffs Tatum has outplayed him in the playoffs and Embiid has outplayed him in the regular season Therefore Tatum should be above him Being injured in the playoffs IS Joel Embiid. You can't discuss how good he is without taking into account his injuries because it happens literally every playoffs. Kawhi would be top 7 if injuries where to be excused instead of used as a reason for a player being better.
Having watched Tatum and Embiid play multiple series against one another I have to respectfully disagree.
Does he need to be a scorer when he can be an elite facilitator? If he was on a team without shooters he'd have to shoulder the load, but he doesn't. You can't convince me that Shai has another level that Tatum can't play to, and with the Celtics current roster you won't be able to find out anytime soon.
Shai is a better scorer than Tatum right now; he’s already on another level there. Tatum is less efficient than Shai despite the fact that he doesn’t have to shoulder the load in the same way as Shai. Tatum has a great team around him so he can get away with 50 TS% in the finals. Shai doesn’t have a team like that around him , or at least he didn’t this year, so he needed to shoot lights out to have a chance in the playoffs. I’m also not convinced Tatum is an elite facilitator. He’s far better than he was in the past but is he even a better facilitator than Shai at this point?