Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Mailbag: Why LeBron James and Kevin Durant are so high & Jokic is "so low"

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all right. Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. We gotta packed show for you today, Today's mail bag Day. We're gonna be going over all of your questions and complaints and concerns about my top twenty five NBA players list that we worked on over the course of the last month. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any

more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt S, you guys don't miss show announcements. And last but not least, if you miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight. All right, so here's the plan for today. Like I promised, what I would like to do, shout out two of you guys who took the time to explain with basketball why you disagreed with something on my list.

Like one of my biggest pet peeves with these lists is people just yelling scream at each other and there's not a whole lot of constructive basketball discourse, and so I wanted to kind of promote that a little bit. So I wanted to shout out a couple of you guys. First off, of Mr Henry, thanks for comment thing Henry. I think Trey Young should be top twenty five he's

such an unbelievable offensive engine in the regular season. I agree with your point that he is limited a little more in the playoffs, but I think that has a lot to do with surrounding talent. Not a single other guy on the team you can create really any sort of advantage at all. He basically is the entire Hawks offense. I don't think you are entirely unreasonable, though, since he is also one of the five worst defensive players in the league. Thank you, Henry first of all, and look,

you're right man like. If you value the offensive engine is my huch as I do, which I really do. Then in theory, if you surround him with the right types of pieces and put him in a situation where he can really divert all his energy towards offense and you can cover for him on the defensive end of the floor, there is a scenario where he can be a lot more valuable than the people above him on

this list. Now, as a totality, I still, especially on the offensive end with Trey, I think he's a little bit more limited, limited creating shots in a playoff situation where teams can scout him, they stay glued to him as he comes over the top of screens, Refs aren't giving him the foul calls anymore when he jumps back into people. And if you look into the numbers, he's really really weak finishing around the basket. So if you can funnel him off of his pick and rolls to

the basket, he's gonna struggle to finish. So I find even some of his offensive engine stuff to be limited. But what you're saying, Henry is completely fair, and he certainly does have a case to be in the top twenty five. That's why I had that top twenty nine. The idea there was is there's twenty nine players, I'm picking twenty five. But hey, the gap between twenty nine and eleven is really not that big of a gap. The second one I wanted to shout out with Suleiman.

I don't think Ingram should be ahead of Dame Jaw or Booker. Why even though Day missed out this season, he has been a beast. Jaw and d book were in the same m v P discussions at some point. All you had to say about b I was a six game playoff series in which he played. Well, you left joke at Yokich out of the top three because he hasn't done enough. The same case could be made for b I. He doesn't have enough material to be in the top twenty. Did he have a good six

game run? Yes? Is it enough? No? So first of all, thank you, Suleiman. You're absolutely right. I I I never tried to hide the fact that I'm biased. I really like Brandon Ingram and I'm absolutely ranking him there based a lot on what I expect from him this season. The truth of the matter is is his defensive performance, especially in the last few years, hasn't been up to

par for what his abilities are. And I have him up that high because I consider him to be an excellent wing defensive player, because I know he can be, and I know he was against Phoenix. And what you're saying is I'm being inconsistent with the way I've applied my criteria, and that's completely fair. So Henry and Suliman, thank you guys so much. Again with this kind of stuff, I'm much rather have you guys just get into my mentions and tell me why you disagree with stuff based

on the basketball. All right, So we're going to bring my guy Carson on you guys. Remember Carson from when we were breaking down the games during the NBA playoffs. He's obviously gonna have a bone to pick with me about Mr Yokich down at number seven. We're gonna get all into into that, as well as a bunch of mail back questions from you guys. What's up, Carson, How

you doing man? I'm great, Jason. It's incredible to be back, and I'm just sorry that it had to come under these circumstances by which you so actively disrespected Nikola Yokich. I think, to me, the point where things get indefensible in my eyes is when you put him below Jayson Tatum, when you have Tatum six in Yoki seven. Because philosophically, I totally understand your principle of valuing wings and perimeter

initiators more than big. I understand the defensive liability element of it, the slow footedness, but I think that there's a big difference between an equivalent wing and an equivalent big and a big who is just way better at basketball, which is who what I think Yoka is compared to Tatum. And there's a few key things I think they're. First of all, Yoka just not like any other big on

the planet. You talk about how it's easier to deny big is their ability to initiate offense and a guy who can just bring the ball up the court, And of course that's true, but it's less true for Yoki than anybody else on the planet. I mean, he is to me the best offensive player alive, and he is as complete of an offensive engine as a big man without being a freak athlete can be. Like they run inverted pick and roll and he crushes people. You know,

he runs off screens and he kills people. He's really improved as a cutter this year. He can bring the ball up the floor, he pushes in transition, and then of course you get all the post stuff. You get him as a role man, like he does everything. He scored more than to a in this year in the

regular season and the playoffs, did so way more efficiently. Obviously, has way more of a playmaking impact, is a genius passer and pretty much always makes the best possible decisions, sees things on the basketball court that other people just don't see, locating cutters and shooters, and ultimately just elevated a team of journeyman where Aaron Gordon's the second best player on his basketball team to play as an elite team in terms of point differential when he was on

the floor in an elite offense, whereas they were miserable without him, they were a better offense than the Celtics were. And I understand, I really do your anti exploitability take and like, why you would have Traim off your top twenty five, right, some of those fundamental glaring issues. Being one of the worst defenders in basketball period is a massive problem. The thing with me when I compare him

to Tatum is that Tatum has glaring issues too. They don't always show up, but he still regresses into the bad shot selection. The guy shot thirty two on two's in the finals, Like, that's a tendency that still very much exists for him in the bad moments. He can still struggle to read doubles. You know, he was four plus turnovers the game in the playoffs and there were some really bad games there where. He's kind of the

fundamental issue with the Celtics offense. So if it's Lebron, you know, this complete incredible offensive engine who can attack down hill, you can kill you with the jump shooting, genius playmaker who when he's engaged. You think, yes, good defender if it's you know, Janice right, unbelievable two way force.

I can understand those arguments, but I just think when you're talking about offensive production and efficiency, we've never seen versus a player who is still legitimately flawed offensively in Jayson Tatum. It feels to me like it's a little bit too far in the direction of principle of you know, I value this kind of player versus these are who these two specific players actually are. So that's the real sticking point for me is once we get to Tatum,

I I can't I can't have it. I can't have it without putting that hard that's very well put carson um with Tatum. Particularly to me, it was a payment of respect to what was a really impressive playoff run.

You know how like we we sometimes with Lebron will do like the blind Lebron tests, Like if it wasn't Lebron that was averaging you know, seven and seven for two months on shooting from the field and thirty eight percent from three, or it's like some of his stretches during the regular season, if it wasn't Lebron, we would just be fawning over the guy for what he did, right. That's kind of the way I look at this the

Jayson Tatums playoff run. Like if I told you that Jayson Tatum was the best player on a team that came two wins away from an NBA championship, that he was arguably the best perimeter defensive player in that entire playoff field and took on defensive assignments that were deeply impactful for his team, including basically shutting down Kevin Durant and single coverage UH in the first round of the

playoffs and averaging you know, whatever, whatever it was. I had it all earlier, but like twenty seven in points per game on about just just under sixty percent true shooting, you know, while having eight games where had at least seven assists and his team goes eight no, or whatever whatever the numbers were. If I told you that a player did that and his name was Kawhi Leonard, you'd be like, oh, man, that's an all time great playoff

run just barely came short. If I said Kevin Durant, you'd be like, all time great playoff run just barely came up short. Because it's Jason Tatum, we hyper focused on the flaws and we gola, Yeah, oh, he's just not ready yet. And the reality was as he had as dominant of a two way playoff runt as we see from Wings in the NBA, with an incredibly difficult

pathway through a ton of really good teams. He dude his Game six in Milwaukee to send that series to Game seven, the way he executed Milwaukee on their home floor to send that game back, that series back to Boston, like he had a dominant playoff run. So it was

kind of me paying an homage to death. Now, as far as the rankings in general go, I'll be honest with you, I cared a lot less about the numbers to speak, as I did about actually diving into the players and their skill sets, looking at their strengths and weaknesses. So if you wanted to tell me you thought Yokich was about Tatum, that's fair. I put him up there as a payment of respect for what was a dominant

playoff run. I'm always going to value that stuff more Yokich. Yes, it's the team's fault, but the reality of this situation is that he's facing back to back first round exits and in playoffs after out playing Nicola Yokich, he was outplayed by Anthony Davis. So the way that I look at it, for me, even though this is not an anti Yoki take, I don't dislike the player. He's actually

one of my favorite young players in the league. I'm just going to wait to see him have consistent deep runs into the playoffs where he continues to produce the way that he's producing before I move him up that list in front of players that are making deep playoff runs. You know, uh Tatum has been to the conference finals before, He's been to the NBA Finals before. I just I'm giving him a little bit more credit there. Obviously, Yoki just had an Eastern Conference finals run as well. I

really appreciated the way you broke down his game. His versatility is ridiculous. The two things that you hit on that are so under appreciated with your kitch is the transition stuff. His ability to start fast breaks by getting rebounds and hitting his wings running the floor. His ability to make those decisions and dribble if there's no passing option is what allows his guards and wings to run the floor as opposed to having to come back to

get the basketball. That's a lot of value. And then secondly, those inverted ball screens. And this is such an interesting concept that a lot of people are seeing more frequently in the NBA because we have so many skilled big men. But when you invert the ball screen, you're turning a guard into a screen defender, and no guard knows how to defend a screen. Biggs will sit and drop coverage. In high school, they'll sit and drop coverage. In college,

they'll sit and drop coverage. In the NBA. They've run ice, they've run level, They've run every single type of ball screen coverage that exists. That's what they do for a living every day. A guard does not. A guard does not know how to defend a ball screen. They have no idea what the print schools are. It doesn't make sense to use them in a drop because they're too small.

So running these inverted ball screens where all of a sudden, Yoki is the ball handler and the guard is is the one that's defending the screen, it just it just throws all these teams in a loop. And Yokich that's what makes him an alien, and that's what makes him so unique. And I have that's my one thing I want to get across with this Yoki thing as a final little take here. I have the utmost respect for yokitch. I absolutely believe he's capable of being the best player

in the league. But right now, his defensive limitations covering in space and in transition, and the fading of his perimeter jump shot for me, leave him out of that conversation. That's just that's just my two cents. I appreciate the hell out of his game, and I think you've laid that out really well, Carson. But that's just where my reasoning was at. If I can launch one final little mini defense the success stuff, he's so brutal because they did win a playoff series last year. It was against

a no defense Portland's team. Oh I forgot about that. You're that's very important, guys. Clarification, Jason was wrong. They did not lose back to back first round series. Is that garbage? As Portland's team did lose to them, and his best perimeter initiator for that series was Monte Morris, And youn say what you want about Monte Morris, like he's a good basketball player, he's a good role player. But that's just an absurd talent deficit compared to teams

that are contending. And meanwhile, individually, this year he was thirty one a game on sixtent try shooting in that series. Last year he was thirty twelve and five. Like he's doing his thing, He's killing people. He just has completely incomparable talent to the teams that are contending. So I will continue to defend him. I think, to me, he's certainly in that top three, and I think he's the best offensive player alive. So with that, somebody else seems

to agree with me. We'll get to the mail back here. We've got lots of good replies from Twitter. This is from hef a At still out you. He says Yokus stamped is the best passing big ever. His secondary skill was scoring, but over the last years he's elevated as scoring volume and efficiency to match his primary skill of playmaking. He's also an elite rebounder on both ends. So is

Yoke the best offensive player in the NBA? Jason, I don't think so, but it's largely because I have so much respect for what Lebron James and Steph Curry can do. Um I think Steph Curry has demonstrated that at length. I've gotten into detail on this and both of their deep dives that I did UH during our top lists. I won't go too far into it. With Yokich and with Luca, I think they enter into that conversation um and are very much like at a very similar level.

It's just me paying respect to the guys that have been there and done that. You know what you were saying with you is true. It was incredible against the Warriors this year. He was incredible last year through two

rounds of the playoffs. I just it's it's one of those things where it's like I'm ready to see him do it on the next level, Like I I'm ready for Jamal murready come back, and hopefully for uh Michael Porter Jr. To get healthy, because I want to see Yoki do this with real steaks, where where he's asked to over the course of a seven game series, navigate the chess match and beat teams that have all world superstars on the other end and that can attack his weaknesses,

but he can attack their weaknesses. I just want to see him play with real steaks. I have no doubt that he can be a dominant regular season basketball player. I have no doubt that he can beat teams like the Portland Trailblazers and put up big numbers while losing to better teams. I'm ready to see him beat better teams. I know it's his roster's fault. I'm a thousand percent

aware of that. However, before I move him up this list, I want to see him get that good roster and get some WS under his belt so that he can earn that spot in the league. Yeah. I mean, this year is gonna be a fascinating opportunity because last time we saw healthy Nuggets it was a conference finals run, and we'll see what that looks like this year. Obviously, West is loaded, but I have my faith in YO have to put it all out there and that there's nothing more for me to say there. Okay, we've got

another question here from at raid Romo. Based on your criteria size, playoff trans translatability, availability, defensive versatility, playmaking, three level scoring, shouldn't Andrew Wiggins be ranked higher than James Harden or perhaps who do you think is a better

playoff player? So I had a hard time with this when I was doing my list, because you know, Golden State shouldn't be winning the championship without another top twenty five player in theory, but there's a huge difference between ranking basketball players in a vacuum versus evaluating and applying like a metric to account for a player's value in their specific system. Like Draymond is not a top twenty five basketball player in the world, but he is top

twenty five in his impact within the Warriors system. And that's kind of the way that like to me, Comparing what James Harden has to do as the primary perimeter initiator for the Philadelphia seventy sixers to Andrew Wiggins and what he did for the Warriors is impossible because there's very little comparison there. You know, Andrew Wiggins was primarily a release valve. He would attack on possessions when he felt like he had a significant advantage or when Steph

needed to take some rest. He was being guarded softly by every defense that he faced. Not a discredit to him, just the realities of him playing alongside Georgian Pool and Clay Thompson and Steph Curry. He's consistently in single coverage. He's not facing health defense. He's frequently attacking closeouts, meaning his defender is helping somewhere else on the floor, and then running out to Andrew Wiggins, where Andrew Wiggins is beating people off the dribble and then dunking on people.

What Andrew Wiggins did in this playoff runt was deeply impactful, immensely valued. That goes without saying, but that's not the same as being as good at basketball as James Harden. And so for me, like, even though I think Andrew Wiggins was the second best player on that Warriors team, and that therefore means he had a top twenty five type of impact on that Warriors team. If I'm ranking basketball players, I'm gonna get to about at least thirty

before I get to Andrew Wiggins. And and it's just it's more just differentiating between value in a system versus a player in a vacuum, if that makes sense. I think the tendency to try to sort of overrate Wiggins or throw him into a tier that he probably doesn't

belong in is really interesting. And you addressed it in one of the videos when you were going through your top twenty five, and it made me think of I just read Thinking Basketball by Ben Taylor, which is a really good basketball book, and one of the things that he talks about is sort of the fallacy that we tend to overrate the impact of the loan superstar and if they don't have another like clear star level guy alongside them, then we can, you know, underrate the collective

value of the team, or we can try to look and elevate somebody to that second star status. Because Andrew Wiggins is in the top twenty five player in basketball. He was really good and he did a lot of those winning things. But the Warriors were a great team and they won the title, so obviously people want to elevate that second star. But it's like, well, there's four other really high levels players alongside Steph, four five guys in total who you know, can be close to that

top fifty. So in the aggregate, that's an elite basketball team. So that's just kind of what that makes me think of, because you see it over and over again with people trying to put Wiggins into that conversation. But of course I agree with you. I mean, in the star basketball player role, who can do more to elevate, who can

do more to create offense? All these things. It's clearly James Harden and we have another hard and related question here really quickly before you move on, because I wanted to shout this out because I didn't get a chance to in the top twenty five list, and I should have done it just a minute ago. Um, the job that Andrew Wiggins did guarding Luca don Chitch and Jayson Tatum was such an incredibly valuable thing to the Warrior's

ability to win those two playoffs series. Um, I expected Luca to have a lot more success against Andrew Wiggins than he did. It's a testament to his improvements as a wing defender over the course of the last couple of years. And then he basically was the only guy in this playoff run who made Jayson Tatum consistently uncomfortable. So I would say that, you know, I had said earlier that I think Jayson Tatum is potentially the best

perimeter defender in the league. I think Andrew Wiggins has firmly entered that conversation, and that's a and that's a ton of credit to hit like to go back to back through Luca and Tatum. The way that he did is beyond impressive and he deserves a ton of credit for that. Wow. I mean that's a pretty remarkable claim just given what he was for his entire time in Minnesota, you know, just such an overwhelming disappointment on that end,

so consistently disengaged. Okay, So, as I said, we have another hard related question here, this one from Kyle's takes. He says, what's up, Jason, just finished watching your Steph Curry video. Just wanted to ask, what's the difference when you say great offensive engine versus a helio centric player? Just for clarification's sake for you, is Houston Harden a great offensive engine or a heliocentric player? So I look at it as kind of like a ven diagram type

of concept, like, um, that there's some overlap there. So to me, heliocentric means that you're initiating every possession with the live dribble, uh, bringing the ball up the floor and making every single decision, right, where whereas an offensive engine more has to do with a player that is responsible for creating shots for the vast majority of the possessions of the game rather than just a play finisher. Right. So,

for instance, Anthony Davis is like a play finisher. An offensive engine is more like a Lebron James, who you know, for two thirds of the possessions of the game, he's either creating a shot off the dribble himself for himself, creating a shot off the dribble for someone else. He's a decoy as a screener. He's moving without the back like he's doing all these different things to create shots. And you know, the Steph curries another great example of that.

That offensive engine piece has to do with your possession by possession role, which is to create shots for your team. Helio Centric has to do with the way you are doing it. So Steph is not heliocentric because he does so much work without the basketball. You know yr Kich for instances, he there's some heliocentrism to him, but not a ton because he will act as a screener so so frequently for his ball handlers, the James Harden, Luca don Chich, Lebron James is really the best of this group.

But that that I bring the ball up the floor every possession and I make all the decisions, that to me is helio centric basketball. It's like more of the method versus the role and there is absolutely some overlap there. As far as James Harden goes, he is both. He's a heliocentric offensive engine. He's just to climbed so much as a player over the course of the last couple of years that he's not really in those conversations with

the best players in the league. I will say this, though, I made a prediction that I thought that he would have learned his lesson after these last two injury played seasons and the intel the social media post, it appears that Hardened looks like he's in better shape than he's been in a long time. I can't take that to the bank. He's got to do it during the eight two game regular season, but it looks like he I

may have been on the right track there. It looks like Harden is starting to get into some better shape and it's also doing some post work in his pickup runs, which is interesting as well. Yeah, you were definitely early on the Hardened comeback year wagon, but that narrative is definitely starting and that would be a lot of fun because obviously, I mean that just takes Philly to a different level and extremely talented team. If he's you know,

top fifteen kind of player, James Harden. So one of the issues that we saw with your list that a lot of people talked about was saying that Kevin Durant at number three was too high, having him above Lebron, having him above Yokich, particularly given his playoff let down against the Celtics and what was obviously a pretty brutal series. So what's your response to that, Jason, and how do you defend and explain that placement of Katie. To me,

it was the way he failed against Boston. Um, you know, I'm never I'm never going to rewrite a players entire basketball resume over one week of basketball, which is what that first round series against Boston was. It was one week of basketball. When you look into the film, he was getting all of the same Katie shots he always gets, and he just wasn't making This is a player who made half of his pull up jump shots this year. Literally of his pull up jump shots went in this

year on a huge volume. I think it was over six hundred attempts, and then we get into this Boston Celtics series and only makes about a third of them. It's it's a maker misleague boss, and kind of had his number, he lost his confidence in his rhythm a little bit. I did not see any sort of massive physical decline or inability to get to the types of shots that he likes to get. So to me, it's like, it really is this simple. He had a bad series,

and I get it. With recency bias, we have a tendency to cling to that sort of thing and have a hard time kind of like contextualizing it. But again, what happened one year prior, less than one year prior, because of the way that the season started late, like less than one year prior. He was the same Katie that we all know, the one that is as unguardable of an isolation player that there is in basketball, which effectively makes him an antidote for any type of playoff defense.

And the Milwaukee Bucks did everything right in that series and still came literally this close to losing to an underman next team because of what Kevin Durant can do scoring the basketball regardless of the defense that he's facing. That's Kevin Durant. I know that's Kevin Durant because that's what Kevin Durant has in his entire career, with exception

of a handful of bad series. He had a bad series against the Memphis Grizzlies, he had a bad series against the Golden State Warriors, and he had a bad series against the Boston Celtics. Those three have been mixed around a ton of really impressive playoff performances. He is a pull up jump shooter, so he's going to have stretches where he doesn't shoot well. That's a natural side

effect of that archetype. On Monday, I did a whole video about that, about the superstar archetypes, and I talked about how these big scoring wings they're a little susceptible to their shot going cold. It happened to Kawhi Leonard against the Denver Nuggets in the bubble, if you guys remember. So it's just kind of a part of the downside with that archetype. But the upside is still there. He still is an unguardable isolation player who can be a

dominant rim protector when he's engaged defensively. To me, don't ignore all of that just because he had a bad week of basketball. I could not agree with you more. And just some more stats to provide context of that. You talk about the resume. This was his first playoff run under sixty true shooting, which is an elite mark since he wasn't. Okay, see, it's his first playoff rum not scoring twenty eight or more points per game since his first ever appearance when he was twenty one years old.

And I mean, you know, the raw production was still there. It was just the turnovers and it was the inefficiency. But I completely agree with you, of course. I mean, he's as perfect a pull up jump shooter as there is. He's to me a top two score of the basketball of all time. Like the reactionary stuff of it all

is ridiculous. And one playoff ago was one of his most outstanding individual performances ever where he put up thirty four game in that run, and we know what he did pushing Milwaukee has a score and a playmaker, So I don't think anybody's seen skill regression since then. Nothing changed with him during the regular season. He had a really bad matchup in a really bad series and that's that. So his regular season numbers were insane, Like yeah, I mean,

he's gotten better as a playmaker. He had a career season there. He had his high scoring season in almost a decade. On mind blowing efficiency, and nothing that he's doing there is not replicable. I mean, he's as unguardable of a player as there is because you talk about what the pull up jump shooting mold. When you're deadly accurate in your seven ft tall and you have the handle that he does, like, it's really really hard to

take that away. So I agree with you. I think it's clearly an outlier performance, and I think that people generally have been overly reactionary to that as this kind of the tendency with all things. But it's like you said, it's a week, it's four games, it's not even you know,

a normal full series. But we did see, of course, Jayson Tatum and that Celtics defense overall give him some fits and make some things tough, and I matchup applying some pretty intense pressure causing him to lose the handle, the turnovers increase. We've talked about Tatum a bit already, and Jason, you're obviously a big advocate of his and what he did in that run. We have a quote from Matt Dubois two on Twitter. Could you see Tatum taking that leap into the top three to five guys

by the other next season, Jason, it's possible. The problem is is the guys that are ahead of him are very good as well as the guys that are rising with him are very good. Like, it's hard for me to imagine him passing Luca, you know what I mean, Like, it's hard for me to It's It's like Steph Curry is still very much at the top of his game. Lebron is going to be fading out of this picture. But even Kevin Durant probably has another solid three or four years at the top of his game. Janice has

a strangle hold on that number one spot. So if you really start to think about it, we're looking at We're looking at uh, Steph, Janice, k d Luca at a minimum. But could Tatum crack into that five spot. Absolutely, it's all on the table, Katie. You know, Katie could decline Lebron's declining he um uh. The thing with you, the with Tatum. That's gonna be interesting to watch as his playmaking this particular playoff run was very up up and down for him in that regard, which is not

exactly that big of a shock. He kind of was your textbook play finishing scoring wing who has been refashioned into more of a point forward type of archetype where he's making more decisions, and so you can tell when he's in that frame of mind and he's actively looking to pass the basketball and make plays for his teammates, everything is well oiled. And the numbers showed that. Just look.

Just go to Basketball Reference and look at this Celtics playoff run and sort for Tatum's assists from highest so lois and see what happens with the wins and losses as a result of that. And you could see the opposite side of that. In all of those ugly Boston Celtics losses, it was almost like Tatum's approach shifted. He would drive into traffic instead of viewing the traffic as an opportunity for him to hit an open teammate on the week side of the floor. He was less willing

to make. You know, look, one of the most important things for a primary initiator is to just at the ball reversed like you don't have to every single time, get into the paint and kick it out like it might be as simple as you just coming off of a ball screen, getting a help defender to commit a little bit swing pass and then go relocate. Like little stuff like that can do. It can do a lot

to get a defense into rotation. And one of the things you'll notice with the best players of that ilk, the Lebron's and the Lucas of the world, the big point forwards is they have dozens of possessions every game where they just do that, just little simple things to kind of get the offense oiled and moving, you know what I mean. And and so if Tatum figures that out to where his fame of mind stays in the right place, where he's more active as a playmaker, then

he absolutely enters into that group. Because now we're talking about a guy who can efficiently score points a game, who is capable of putting up seven assists a night, and who was one of the best perimeter defenders in basketball, and that that's basically Kevin Durant. So I don't see any reason why he can't enter into that conversation. He just needs some guys to decline, and then he needs to become more consistent as a playmaker. I think regardless.

I mean, what's undeniable with all of this is just the insane talent in the league. I mean, you go ten deep and you're still looking at clear superstar caliber players. I mean, you had Quiet ten right, and part of that is obviously health available what he's done lately. But regardless, Kawhi Leonard, you know, three years ago led like an all time playoff run and hasn't like really regressed as a basketball player since then. He just hasn't been healthy.

So take whoever you want out of that list, you know, and be at eight, yok which at seven, like it's just crazy, crazy basketball talent. Okay. So we've got a little bit more pushedback here from del A o Do on Twitter, who says Lebron should be the second best player behind the honest because you switched out Lebron and any player, he would accomplish more than that player and they would do less than Lebron did with the Lakers. The only exception to that is Janice. What do you

think about that, Jason? So obviously the bane of my existence is Steph fans and Lebron fans, which is positively hilarious to me because they are literally my two favorite players. Lebron is my favorite player in the world and Steff is my second favorite player in the world. But because I don't literally worship the ground they walk on, and because I because I take my job seriously as someone who's who's analyzes the game and it's supposed to be

fair and unbiased. Even though I have my biases, I try to fight them as much as I can. Like it. It just I deal with this all the time where it's like, I'll I have a forty five minute video on YouTube where forty four minutes of it it's just ME talking about how amazing Steff was, and there's just droves of Steph fans that are disappointed because I didn't actually say he was perfect, you know what I mean. And it's like, and that's one of those things, like,

here's the thing, Lebron fans. If I had a playoff series tomorrow and I was certain that Lebron James was healthy and the teams were evenly matched, there's a decent chance that I would think really hard about taking Lebron number one because of that specific scenario and how devastating I know he can be in that in a seven game series when he has chances to make adjustments and to where on people physically and stuff. Here's the problem

that's that's not how basketball works. There's eighty two games and then you have to win four playoffs series. The reality of the situation is Lebron James just played the worst defensive season of his entire career, and it was directly a one of the things that was responsible for that team being such an inconsistent effort team and such

an atrocious defensive team. I can't, in in my right mind be like he's above Steph the dude who, even though he's not as impactful on the defensive end as Lebron when he's engaged, he at least tried on defense all season long. He said a tone for his team which resonated down the roster and led to a perennially bad offensive defensive player and Andrew Wiggins to have one of the most dominant defensive playoff runs we've seen from a wing. That what, I can't in my right mind

lift Lebron above guys who had better seasons. But yeah, if I if I had a series tomorrow, I might take him. But that's not what this question was. And you know, Lebron fans, they have such a blind spot for this stuff, and it's crazy to me, like it's just it's like his effort was downright embarrassing on a lot of nights this year. On a lot of nights, I I can't be like, oh, he's the best player

in the world. It's just disrespectful to people who are trying harder, let alone that are that accomplished more this year. If that makes sense. I think that's very well put. And I think that there will always be the the Lebron people who really cannot be reasoned with. It's like you said, Lebron and Steph, it's kind of some of the culture, and uh, you're doing your best to cut through a Jason. I think we can all appreciate that.

I think we can. And you know, sure sometimes you're a little harder on Nikola yokers than I would like. It's always grounded in very sound basketball logic, and you know, point out legitimate flaws in his game, and so even I can live with that, you know, all right, last thing here, obviously you went through he shouted out in that first video a couple of guys who were among the first off, who is the player who was not on your top twenty five list this year but you

expect to be on their next year? Oh, man, that's such a good question. Man. This could go a bunch of different directions. Um. You could look at rookies right like, I'm super high on Jade and Ivy. I could see him really quickly becoming one of the most unguardable two guards that we have in the league. Um, Palo's ability to score the basketball super interesting. But those guys are so young and they're so unpolished in the details of their game would probably be unfair. Um Man, this is

a tough one. I would say that the guy it I could see potentially venturing back into that list as a guy like Bradley Beale. Um. This is a guy that has ability at a similar level to Devin Booker. He's just nowhere nears committed on the defensive end of the floor, and he's been floundering in mediocrity with a with a team with the Washington Wizards who actually put some quality role players around him this year, and then

he got hurt. But you could see a version of this story where he gets healthy and the Wizards have quality role players around him and he has a better season where he averages twenty seven points a game and makes a playoff team and then you have to put him onto that list. But man, this is top This is a this is a really tough question. I'm I'm genuinely curious to hear what your opinion this, Carson, Well,

I think Beal is a great choice. I think he's kind of the first guy who jumped out of me because you know, his last two primarily healthy seasons before this one, he was thirty plus a game. He's progressed as a playmaker. Like you said, I mean, I've always thought that he and Book are the two most versatile scoring two guards who we have. Book maybe sets himself a part of it with the post game, but outside of that, Bradley Bell can do everything pretty much as

a scoring guard. I was thinking about the ascent of some young guys too, and I don't think we can expect it of any incoming rookies this year because that's a huge leap to take. But I was thinking about

some guys from last year's class. I was thinking about Evan Mobili potentially if he progressed a bit offensively, if the perimeter shop becomes more reliable, if he becomes a bit more assertive, because defensively, you know, he's at that all defense level, and he's a good offensive basketball player with a really strong foundation. But it's insane how much talent there is. I mean, you know, I'm Scott that

rocky class. It could literally be you know, I don't think Jalen Green can get there quite yet, but Kade I could see totally, you know, having a twenty plus seven point per game, reasonably efficient season where he's a plus defender. It's just a monster class. So top twenty five that early, with how talented the league is right now, is a lot to ask. But if anybody's gonna do it, I think it's going to be that batch of guys. But I think deal is a very good one. As

far as established guys who would expect to return. The last name that I'd like to throw out there is Zion Williamson. Oh absolutely. If he has a season where he averages, you know, twenty eight points a game on six shooting or something something ridiculous shooting like it's and he's such a matchup problem to that kind of automatically puts him on that list. The Pelicans are gonna be a really interesting team to watch this year, and if

they stay healthy, they'll they'll they'll be really interesting. Is that it for the mail bag? Is that all our questions? That's all we got, all right, everybody has always We sincerely appreciate your support, and we will see you in a couple of days. The volume