Hoops Tonight - Top 25 NBA Players: Devin Booker & Suns time? Jaylen Brown SHUTS UP Celtics critics

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jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co slash ft ball. All right, wellcoon, hoops and I you're at the volume heavy Thursday. Everybody o ball. You guys are having a great end to your week. So we are continuing our player rankings today

with number fifteen and number fourteen. We're also going to have a mail bag at the tail end where we go over your guys's arguments from our previous video number sixteen and number seventeen. The kind of game plan for the US this week. As we're doing fifteen and fourteen today, we'll break out the mail bag tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm actually recording thirteen and twelve, but that's going to run on Saturday.

That will run the mailbag from that on Sunday, and then we're going to get into our Superstar tier, which is eleven players deep at this point in NBA history and we'll be starting that next week on Monday. You guys are the Joe. Before we get started, it's subscribed to Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS.

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keep dropping mail bag questions and those YouTube comments. I want you guys to if you disagree with any of these rankings, to argue why and break it down, and we will get into it in the mailbag portions at the tail end of these rankings videos then the last, but not at least before we get started, I want to talk about game time. Obviously, there's tons of events going on out there these days. Between Major League Baseball, there's concerts and comedy shows, and then foot is right around

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game Time. Download the game Time app, Create an account and use code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase terms apply again. Create an account and redeem code Hoops. That's Hops for twenty dollars off. Download Game Time today. What time is it? Game Time? All right, let's talk some basketball. So we're gonna mix things up a little bit today because I want to get into the rationale behind offense versus defense when it comes to valuing players.

Because the two players we have today at fifteen and fourteen are Jalen Brown at number fifteen and Devin Booker at number fourteen. These are two players that are pretty hotly contested in terms of who people think are better. I actually sent out a poll about this about two weeks ago, a little over two weeks ago, and ninety five hundred of you guys voted in. Sixty percent voted for Devin Booker and forty percent voted for Jalen Brown.

But that was kind of towards the end. For a long time, in the early phase of that poll, it was really hovering right around that fifty to fifty mark, maybe with a very slight edge to Devin Booker. This is a hotly debated ranking between these two particular players, and honestly, like to me, it was a pretty easy

decision to give Devin Booker the edge. And that comes down to one of my overarching basketball philosophies, which is, obviously I value the defensive end of the floor, but I value the offensive end of the floor a little bit more and there's a very specific reason why. So I want to take some time to break that down before we get into the individual players. So again we're gonna mix these this up today. Before we get into the individual players, we're gonna talk some big picture stuff.

So and again I have to emphasize this again as a disclaimer, This doesn't mean I don't value defense. I've played in and watched enough basketball games to know that you have to defend in order to win. I'm not

underrating that. It's more about team construct in the role of superstars within the context of offense and defense, especially when you talk about the fact that when we're ranking players, we're almost always talking about superstars and stars, right, So the reason why I value the offensive end in these discussions is simple. The defensive end mostly comes down to executing a scheme forcing teams into certain types of shots. No defense, even the most elite defenses, just shut teams down.

That's not how it works. You still give up a lot of points. It's not like elite defenses just block every shot you try to attend, right, They just try to play you into your weaknesses and try to limit your efficiency. So, for example, the Minnesota Timberwolves were the best defense in the NBA this year, they still allowed one hundred and eight points per one hundred possessions. The Milwaukee Buck we're nineteenth in defense. That's a defense that

we most of us considered to be below average to bad. Right, they allowed one hundred and fifteen points per one hundred possessions. So we're talking about a difference of seven points over a hundred possessions between a bad defense and the very best defense. So on that end of the floor, it's not about supreme talent just shutting people down. It's about the coaching staff scouting the opponent and putting together a smart game plan and then having a couple of guys

who can do the really tough jobs on defense. So for instance, having who can guard the ball, just a guy who can guard the person with the basketball, a guy who can guard ball screens, so a big guy that can navigate ball screen coverages, or another forward who's like a low man who can help while also getting out to shooters while also helping secure defensive rebounds. Those are like the really hard jobs on the defensive end of the floor. From there, you can actually make easier

jobs for weaker defenders. So I thought the best example of this last year was the Dallas Mavericks, who were in elite defense in the tail end of the season and then that carried over into the postseason as they made their run to the finals. Look at their roster build. They had a guy who could guard the ball and Derek Jones Junior. And obviously they had other guys for

bench units, but I'm mainly focusing on their starters. They had a guy who can guard the ball and Derek Jones Jr. They had a guy who could defend ball screens and Derek Lively. And then Daniel Gafford was more of a deep drop kind of rim protector, but he also could do that job. But Derek Lively's an example of a super versatile kind of pick and roll defender, and then they had a Ford who could be their

low man in PJ. Washington. Those three guys did the really hard jobs so that Kyrie and Luca had small, achievable roles and the MAVs were at awesome defense. It wasn't until the Boston series that they kind of ran into some issues, and even then it was usually just for and I went over this extensively. After that series, the Dallas defense fell apart for stretches for like a quarter here or a half there, where Boston just ran over them, and it was usually when they were rarely

deliberate about attacking Luca. But they had good stretches in that series too, and overall statistically their defense performed pretty well. So the point is you can use quality role players and smart coaching to put together an elite defense. The offensive end is much more complicated, and the reason why is you are guaranteed to run into multiple elite defenses along the way to the title, and those defenses are guaranteed to have a smart game plan and to execute

it well. They are going to play you into your lower percentage shots. Right. Those problems cannot be solved with quality role players and smart In a smart game plan, it requires elite, high end offensive talent to break down those types of defenses, either by making the tough shots that the defense is trying to get you to make, or by bringing two to the ball, which breaks down the base defensive scheme and forces them to be in rotation, so that now your offensive role players have easy jobs

like knocking down open shots or attacking a closeout. So again, like those specific problems on the defensive end that a defense presents to an offense, they can only be solved by superstar offensive talent, Whereas, like we saw with Dallas, you can create an elite defense even with defensively limited stars. So to put it very simply, it's a lot easier to create an elite defense around a defensively limited star than it is to create an elite offense around an

offensively limited star. That's why I have guys like Luka and Nikola Jokic over Yannis. That's why I have a guy like Shaye Yelojas Alexander over Jason Tatum. And that's why I have Devin Booker over Jalen Brown. Now, to be clear, Jalen Brown is not a weak offensive player and Devin Booker is not a weak defensive player, right, But the best and most useful superpower that either of those guys has is Devin Booker's ability to consistently generate

quality shots for his team in the half court. So if I was a GM and I needed to build a championship team from scratch with the first pick in an open draft of the NBA's players, I would have an easier time constructing a championship team around Devin Booker as my first pick than around Jalen Brown. It's not an exact science, to be clear, Like I have guys that are defensive minded stars that are very high on this list that we just haven't even got to yet.

I mean, you saw how hig I've bam adebio for instance. So it's not an exact science. But when all things are equal, that's a differentiator for me, and that's why I have Devin Booker over Jalen Brown. So on that note, hopefully that's clear. If you guys have any questions about that, drop in the mailbag, and we can get into it

more later on in the series. If you disagree with me, make a basketball case for it, put it in YouTube and on the comments that we can break it down a little bit more since we got some time here over the summer. Jalen Brown number fifteen last year, played in seventy games, averaged twenty three points per game, five

point five rebounds on three point six assists. That was actually a career high and assist for Jalen Brown, and that was despite his usage being the lowest since twenty twenty, So career high and assists with a proportionally lower usage rate right also his fewest turnovers per game since twenty twenty. And the main thing that I think is really cool about this is Jalen heard all of the slander last summer and he went into the gym and he made

himself a much better ball handler last summer. It's one of the big things I talked about with Colin Coward after the two disappointing losses in the finals and in the Eastern Conference Finals. I said to him, like, the Celtics are are more poised to benefit by Jalen Brown just getting better than they are trying to trade him. And I thought they made the right decision by staying

committed to this core and like here's the thing. He went into the gym and he worked on that handle, and you can really tell the difference in a couple of really key areas. Specifically, he just looks like he's reading the floor a little bit more patiently, And a big part of that is the ability to protect the ball. When a ball pressure defender forces you to get squeamish with your handle, all of a sudden, your attention comes

inward towards regaining control of the ball. But once you have control of the ball, you can stop worrying so much about the pressure and take time to see what's happening around you. And that I thought was abundantly evident in that career high and assist in that fewest turnover since twenty twenty, all under a load usage. You can literally see his confidence with especially with that left hand

coming to fruition. I thought it was cool that he iced Game two of the Finals with that left handed drive by Mexic Lee, but to put him up seven with thirty seconds left, that was the thing that he was criticized for. And he rode that specific skill to a huge bucket in a big moment in an NBA Finals game. And so that honestly is the big piece of improvement I thought that we saw from Jalen Brown

this year. He just got better at handling the basketball, which allowed him to protect the basketball so that he could focus outward on seeing the floor and making reads from there. He also got one point seven stocks per game. That's the second highest mark of his career. I'm going to rip through some shooting numbers real quick. He shot forty nine point nine percent from the field, thirty five point four percent from three to seventy percent from the line.

That amounts to fifty six percent an effective field goal percentage waited for threes and fifty eight percent true shooting percentage. Good not great. Other ways to improve his true shooting percentage just raising that three point volume and getting to the line more. That's most of the high true shooting guys guys that are over sixty percent other than the

big bullyball guys around the rim. Most of them are guys who shoot a lot of threes and guys who get to the foul line a lot shooting percent energy one point zero four points per jump shot, one point

zero eight in catch and shoot situations. He was actually a little better when he was open, which is kind of interesting in the context of the conversations we had about Donovan Mitchell, like Jalen Brown, likes to slow himself down when he's open and shoot more of like a like a less athletic shot, which is interesting considering how good of an athlete he is. But I think that manifests in him just being a little bit more accurate when he's open Versus the guys that really elevate on

their shot. They're almost a little better when they're guarded because they don't slow themselves down, they get that lift that they need. He was zero point nine to nine points per shot off the dribble. That's completely respectable, one point zero nine in face up. Had a really good jab step jumper last year. Shot forty seven percent on floaters, but not super high volume. He took about two every three games, and then he was sixty two percent at the rim, which is solid for a wing, fifty eight

percent on layups. Playtype data pers energy. He was in the eighty fifth percentile for pick and roll players. He actually got one point zero eight points per possession including passes, which is excellent, but only four hundred and thirty reps, so he's relatively low volume. Most of that was him.

He personally shot forty eight percent field goals in pick and roll situations and ISO two hundred and seven points on two hundred and six possessions including passes that was sixty sixth percentile, and then in the post two hundred and thirteen points on two hundred and two possessions including passes that was in the fifty seventh percentile. He personally shot fifty six percent in the post up area of the floor. Big part of that was he was the

best fadeaway jump shooter in the league last year. And this is where I want to kind of get into the late season run because Jalen Brown's early part of the season, and a big part of this too is just you're adding in a couple of new players. It kind of tweaks some of the ball handling responsibilities. It messes with your head a little bit. Jalen Brown really started to come around at the tail end of the season.

His scoring ramped up to twenty six points per game in his last nineteen season games, and I actually thought he was the best player on the Celtics in the playoff run. I think we all agree Tatum is the best player on the team, Like if you're in a vacuum evaluating the roster and who's the most valuable player if like everyone was available for trade, obviously Tatum is the guy that would get the most in return. He's

the best player. But Tatum was in a bad shooting slump, and Jalen Brown just played better basketball than Tatum over the course of those two months. A simple stat to demonstrate that Jalen Brown shot over fifty percent in fourteen of the playoff games, Jason Tatum shot over fifty percent in three of them, and Tatum averaged twenty five. Jalen

Brown averaged twenty four. So Jalen Brown basically matched Tatum scoring efficiency or scoring volume and was far more efficient and far more reliable on a night in, night out basis,

And both of them played massive defensive roles. Tatum was obviously the guy guarding the center and making a lot of that stuff work, But Jalen Brown is a guy guarding the ball, and like we've talked a lot about how you put Tatum on the center that alleviates your center to then row him off of a bat above the break shooters, so we can help at the rim. But the other part of that is you switch pick and roll right. So like if you bring the center

up into the ball screen, Tatum just switches. But in order for that to work, you need your point of attack defender to be able to switch on to centers,

and Jalen Brown is big enough to do that. I mean, Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum both were monumentally important on the defensive end of the floor, and so like I mean, I just thought Jalen Brown in this particular two month stretch played better and that's why he deserved different Eastern Conference Finals MVP, and that's why he deserved finals MVP. All that said, separate point on Tatum, I do think this Tatum slump is temporary, and I do think he's

gonna have a huge bounce back year. We're gonna get more into that when we get into our top ten when we start talking Tatum. But the point is that Jalen Brown was playing at an extremely high level over the final third of the season and in the playoffs, and for me, it really felt like he went up a level in three main areas because like, if we were tiering players last year, I had Jalen Brown in that next tier below with all those other guards that

we hit at the start of the list. I didn't think he was good enough to be the best player on a championship team. He has gone up an entire tier he is now. I mean, to put it simply, he's in this tier, which is players that can be the best player on a championship team as long as they have overwhelming support. And we literally know that because he just was. He just was the best player on

a championship team with overwhelming support around him. So he actually kind of perfectly fits the definition of this tier of players. But the main basketball improvements that put him into that tier, the three improvements are Number One, he got more committed to defending at the point of attack

right around halfway through the season. And I mean, he did it periodically over the previous seasons, but he really seemed to take a more intentional approach to guarding the other team's best player every night around halfway through the year and just applying a lot of ball pressure and being super physical. And he's just awesome at it. He's big, he's strong, he attacks the basketball, he applies physicality without committing too many fouls, he has the length to apply

back pressure. He can switch on to Biggs. Like I talked earlier in the Jason Tatum defensive scheme, I thought it was the best defensive season Jalen Browns had in a long time. So that was piece number one, just recommitting and inflicting his athleticism on the defensive end of the four. Number two his feel for the game. Talked about this earlier. Being able to handle the ball more allowed him to see beyond his defender and make better reads. And so even though his usage went down, his assist

totals went up and his turnovers went down. That's a really strong indicator that he took a leap in terms of just his overall feel for the game. And a lot of that too, is just experiences being in a lot of these situations, been there, done that, you derive confidence from that. And then, lastly, short to mid range shot making. He was the best turnaround fadaway jump shooter

in the league last year. Did a good job of initiating contact and getting good separation with his athleticism as he'd drift away from the rim, but also staying balanced so that he can knock the shot down and he

made several in big moments in the NBA five. In Game three, he had that deep seal over Luca where he just fade over his right shoulder quick in the fourth quarter, and then the huge shot late it was I want to say it was a three point game with like a minute left and he got Tim Hardaway Junior on a switch and just drove at him and got into that like kind of fifteen foot area by the elbow and like pump faked and then just leaned back and elevated over the top and knocked it down.

Those were huge shots that Jalen Brown worked really hard for a long time to develop. And so between the overall feel for the game, the improvement as a shot maker, and then the commitment to the defensive end, those three things vaulted Jalen Brown up a tier as a player, and he clearly demonstrated that he's capable of being the best player on a championship team as long as you

give him the necessary amount of support. I actually thought like, if you look back at this Celtics season, his story in Al Horford's story to me were the two coolest overall elements to the Celtics title. Run al Horford obviously, just because he was a rock solid fringe star slash super high level role player on a lot of good teams for a long time and he just never got over the hump and then he finally does and so that was a really cool moment for Al Horford. But

the Jalen Brown piece is awesome. I mean, catches a world of slander after that disappointing playoff run against Miami, He's getting open. I mean we've got Jimmy Butler talking about him on Instagram. Obviously, the public opinion turned against him in a lot of different ways, and he got in the gym, got better in one finals MVP the following year. That's really cool. I'm happy for Jalen and it's just awesome to see him this high on this list and in this tier of players.

single time. And then you can take those patterns directly to the draft simulator and make your mock draft feel like the real thing. When your real draft comes around, you're gonna be ready and the draft assistant will be there for you to give you live pick by pick insights and expert recommendations of who to draft and when to draft them. You can see all of this and more at fantasypros dot com. Slash Volume Today.

six percent from the line. That all adds up to fifty five percent in effective field goal percentage weighted for threes, and sixty one percent in true shooting percentage, which also includes foul shooting. His overall jump shooting or shot making numbers from Synergy. You got one point zero seven points per jump shot one point zero eight and catch and shoot situations. Kind of a weird split between one he

was guarded and when he was open. He was zero point nine to one when guarded, but one point two eight when unguarded. That's just a really bizarre split. I would imagine that's mostly an outlier. He got one point zero seven points per pull up jump shot. That was the second best high volume jump shooting performance in the league last year. A little trivia for you guys, So there were nine players in the NBA who attempted at least five hundred pull up jump shots and also got

at least one point per pull up jump shot. Number one, take a guess, it's Luka Doncic, Number two, Devin Booker, as we said, number three, Kevin Durant, number four, Steph Curry, number five, Jalen Brunson, number six, Shay Gilders, Alexander number seven, Fred Van Vliet on the list that was a surprise to me. Number eight Dejonte Murray also a surprise to me, and number nine Damian Lillard. And those are in order of efficiency. So that was actually your top nine high

volume pull up sho shooters last year. That all got over five hundred attempts in over one point per shot. Devin Booker did shoot just thirty six percent on floaters and made only twenty one in the whole season. Not really a part of his game. He prefers to get into that like pull up jump shot even really close to the rim. So I mean it's not like he needs a floater, he just has a different shot that he goes to there. Really surprising here, this is a

stat that I think would shock most NBA fans. Devin Booker shot sixty five percent at the rim last year, including sixty four percent on layups. He made three point five per game. That's pretty high volume. As a matter of fact, there were only four players in the league that were six six or less sixty six or shorter that made more shots per game in the restricted era in more shots per game in the restricted area, Tyres Maxi, Jalen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards. That's it among the

smaller guys, So like those are all freaky out. Tyres Maxey one of the fastest guys in the league. Jalen Brown one of the best all around athletes in the league. Donovan Mitchell one of the best all around athletes in the league, Anthony Edwards potentially the best athlete in the league. That's the list that Devin Booker, a guy who's not a great athlete, has put himself on getting to the rim and not just there with volume, but with the

efficiency to boot. And so I actually went back and I watched a bunch of his rim attempts this morning because I was like, how is it that he's so damn efficient? And it comes down to a couple of different things. One similar to Steph Curry, really good at weaponizing the high hesitation. This is a move that I talked about a lot with the kids that I'm training in high school. It is a bridge move from the

high hesitation. You can go to anything from there. So just imagine that you're guarding me and I do it between the legs, dribble into the high hesitation. I'm just sitting there kind of pausing for a second. Now, technically,

by the rule book, it's a carry. But one of the things I always tell the kids is at every level, as long as you look like you know what you're doing and you can control the basketball like you look like a good ball handler, they're usually gonna let you get away with it, right, Like we all see that high hesitation in every level of basketball, where the hand's like kind of on the side of the ball and the ball kind of comes to a rest for a second.

If you're sloppy with it, they'll call you for a carrot. But if you have it on a string and you have it under control, they'll usually let you get away with it. But once you get there, you can go to any move right. I'm sitting in the high hesitation. Guys too far far back, boom, I rise up into a jump shot. The guy is coming up too close on the jump shot, maybe on my right shoulder. I push ahead to drive to the basket. If I need

to cross over, I can cross. I can go between the legs, I can go behind the back, or if I need to create additional separation, I can in and out to a step back, or I can go between the legs and to a step back. Like we talked about with Donovan Mitchell, that high hesitation is your bridge move to everything right, But in order to get a defender to commit to one thing or the other, you

need to have a threat right. So like for really good downhill guys, they get into their high hesitation and the defenders so far back on their heels because they're terrified that he's just gonna hit the jets and go right by them, so they can easily get to high hesitation pull up jump shots. Right. We talked about this with Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards gets really high quality pull up jump shot looks because dudes are on their heels because of how athletic he is. Right, Devin Booker gets

the reverse form of that. He gets in that high hesitation. And I watched so many clips today where like the big guy and pick and roll, like he'll come off the ball screen and he'll get into that mid range. He'll just look at the rim and sit in a high hesitation, and the big will get up out of his stance and like stand upright and then come up and then he'll just go right around him and he'll kind of sleep a slip inside and shoot a little

finger roll off the glass or something like that. A lot of times in he'll do it too, where like the big guy will stay back, but the guard will recover and kind of get back in front, but Devin Booker will kind of sit in that high hesitation until the guy comes all the way over and then he'll just cross back over between his legs and he's right back to the basket right And then a big part of his passing too, so by using his shooting as a threat, it's the fear of his pull up jump shot.

Like we talked about. He was the second best pull up jump shooter in all of basketball last year. So as a defender, whether it's on the ball or the big guy, you're keyed in on that. So when he gets into his high hesitation, you're overplaying up, which allows him to get passed. And then the second piece of it, the passing piece. Devin Booker is one of the most underrated passers in the league. That'll end up putting him in situations where guys don't want to help, and then

he can get all the way to the rim. But those are the main things that I saw in terms of getting those opportunities from there. Using his body at the rim, he doesn't try to go like he doesn't try to like jump with you and finish as high as possible. He gets into your chest and just kind of gets that little bit of separation and leans back and knocks down a shot, or he'll get into your chest and then stretch out with his left hand like

he just uses his body well. And then the last piece of it is off ball situations, understanding the angles that are available when you're attacking closeouts. I talk about this all the time with the kids that are trained, but it's the concept of baked in driving lanes. Very simply put. If I'm on the left wing and Kevin Durant's on the right wing, and my man is helping down at the nail, meaning like he is somewhere between

me and Kevin Durant. If Kevin Durant throws me a rifle pass, the defender is closing out at my right closing out at my right shoulder. So if I catch and just immediately ripped to the left, I'm gonna have a baked in driving lane. And I was amazed at how many of the rim attempts Devin Booker got last year. We're just him running his lane in transition and then catching and ripping on the catch and just getting an

easy driving lane. Or so and so's got the ball, whether it's Bradley Beel or Devin Booker or useif Nurkic and they draw a second defender, they draw nail, help swing and he'll just catch and rip again. Like usually when you're talking about the super efficient scorers in the league, it's not because they make every single tough shot they make. It's like the best pull up jump shooters in the league might get one point zero five one point one

point points per pull up jump shot. Right, they're not getting the offensive ratings that you see where teams are getting one twenty offensive rating, one twenty two offensive rating. In order to hit those efficiencies, you need to capitalize on the easy stuff. The same thing goes for these players, these guys that are up over sixty percent through shooting. It's not because they just make every tough shot they make.

They take four or five really tough shots per game, and they make two of them, and then they take four or five kind of like coverage beater types of shots, right, Like guys in a drop coverage he dies on the screen.

Guys in a drop coverage I get a wide open midrange jump shot, Like those are coverage beaters, right, And then like the other seven to eight shots that you take, they're all like in the flow, like transition driving layup, offensive rebound, putback, driving a close out, shooting a wide

open catch and shoot three. That actually makes up like that shoult make up like half your offense, right, And so the guys that end up being super efficient are usually the guys that like shoot seventy percent on that stuff, and then they shoot forty percent or whatever on everything else. But that's okay. Those are the tough shots. Those are usually late in the shot clock. Those are usually, oh,

they're defending the ball screen two on two. I have to make this shot because that's what the defense is giving, right, Like the easy stuff is so underrated when it comes to efficiency, and these guys that hit thesevolume scoring numbers and keep their percentages high, and a big part of it, like I was amazed at Devin Booker today, is just like how many easy layups he gets every game just by understanding the angles that are available when he's driving closeouts.

And again, sixty five percent for a I mean he's sixty six or the six to eight wingspans. I don't want to sit here and talk like he doesn't have physical tools, but at his you know, particular lack of athletic burst compared to some of the guards at the top of the league. He gets to the rim as much and is more efficient than most of them, And

that's pretty that's pretty impressive under the circumstances. I'm going to really quickly go through play type data and then we'll talk a little bit about Devin Booker on the defensive end of the floor. So he was one of the top pick and roll play makers in the league last year. He got one point one to five points per possession on one thousand and thirty two possessions under a high volume list. Out of the fifteen players to

run at least a thousand, Devin Booker ranked third. So he's one of the best pick and roll players in the league. We know what he does is a score. I just talked about it at length, but passing a couple things. First of all, a lot of those like five those five out quick decisions. I had a mail bag yesterday talking about like high level offensive players being heliocentric. Devin Booker is a great example of a really high level offensive shot creator that does it in a five

out context. And when you watch these thousand pick and rolls that Devin Booker runs, and I've watched several dozen of him this morning. When you watch those videos, he's not pounding the air out of the basketball like Luca. He brings about the floor, ball screen, comes, comes flying off the screen, makes a read. That's what he does. It's it makes him easy to play with because he makes a quick decision. It also leaves a lot of time on the tail end of the shot clock for

guys to make for guys to make plays. The second piece of it is he takes the easy stuff that is available. So like if he comes off and Kevin Durant's man is just syncing in a little bit, he'll just throw the ball right into Kevin rant shooting pockets so that he can shoot a three. If he's driving on the right wing and there's nail help off the left wing, just throw the swing pass. It's there, Just take it. He's got the high level stuff. He can make the skip passes, he can read the low man.

But those easy reads that are able, those go a long way. Similar to what I was talking about with the shot making piece, you gotta take advantage of the easy passing reads that are available. Don't make the game harder than it needs to be. If there are easy opportunities that are there, you got to jump on them. As a matter of fact, he got a lot of hockey assists where he would just make the read that

led to the read that led to the bucket. NBA dot Com refers to these as secondary assists, and the way they count them is if you pass to a guy who then immediately makes another pass within one second without dribbling to the guy who makes the shot, they call that a secondary assist, and Devin Booker had eighty four of them this year, which was the seventh most in the entire NBA, even in just sixty nine games played.

So like Devin Booker again, when it comes down to pick and roll, he's just one of the best shot makers, shot creators, and shot makers in the league. And then we know what he's like on the ball. You know he can hit the pull up three if you die on the screen or if you go underneath. He's excellent at putting the defender in jail and then taking quick sidestep fifteen footers. We talked about everything that he does

at the rim, using weaponizing, the high hesitation dribble. He's just one of the best at what he does in the league. ISO situations one point zero eight points per possession on three hundred and thirty two reps. He also made a high volume list. Out of the twenty four players to run at least two hundred and fifty, he ranked ninth. He only ran seventy seven post ups last year, but did get one point zero eight points per possession,

which is very good. Now, looking at the playoff series, I thought he had a little bit more of a rough series against Minnesota than the box score numbers would lead you to believe. Like he averaged twenty eight, three and six on sixty six percent through shooting. So so you look at that on the surface and you're like, oh, he was awesome, But he was the primary ball handler for the most part, and I thought he missed a lot of the easy reads that he was making during

the regular season. Now, if you want to see evidence of this, I did at least two film sessions during the playoff series that went extensively into breaking this concept down. But the gist of it is the Suns, And if you want to see those videos again, you just want to go back on our feed and scroll back to the Sun's Timberwolve series and just looked to the look for the film session videos I did around that time.

But to put it simply, the Sons were at their best as a drive in kick team, meaning they were when they were taking catch and shoot threes and driving into layups or taking easy fifteen footers off of close out situations. They were at their worst when they would just take turns, taking pull up jump shots off of ball screens or ISOs. Right, and it really seemed to come together for them right around the end of the end of the year, like post All Star break aus.

A matter of fact, post All Star they were seventh. The Sons were seventh in assist percentage. Sixty six percent of their made field goals were assisted. That dropped all the way down to fifty six percent in the first round series against Minnesota, I thought Minnesota was successful at speeding Devin Booker up and forcing him to kind of

lose sight of the bigger picture a little bit. Again, we talked about this earlier, but like when you speed an offensive player up with good ball pressure, they don't see the rest of the floor. They're primarily focused on surviving their individual matchups. So like that's one of the benefits of ball pressure when you make a ball handler feel uncomfortable, doesn't see the bigger picture as much, doesn't see the four as much, and he can start to

make mistakes. Not to be clear, I don't think Devin Booker was the reason Phoenix lost or got swept. I think it mostly came down to the physical mismatch. Minnesota was just a lot bigger and a lot stronger, and they just basically bullied Phoenix on both ends of the floor. Is it was a roster issue. I'm just saying. I also didn't think it was the best playoff series that Devin Booker played, and I thought the box score numbers

were a little bit deceiving in that regard. In summery though, Devin is one of the best half court shot creators in the league. To the mailback question the other day, like we talked about, he does it in a five out context. He doesn't dribble the air out of the basketball, He comes down the floor, uses ball screen, makes a quick read. He was top five and pick and roll.

He was top ten in ISO and the main reason, the main reason that I have him ahead of other elite half court shot creators, the guys like Donovan Mitchell and Jalen Brunson, who I had multiple people complain about me having Devin Booker over them in the comments yesterday. The main reason why I have him over those guys at the defensive end of the floor, and it's especially impressive because he's not particularly explosive, but he is six ' six with a six to eight wing span that goes

a long way to giving you a fighting chance. There are two main areas that I want to hit with Devin Booker on the defensive end of the floor. First is off ball communication, and I did a bunch of film sessions on this towards the tail end of the year, but especially when Phoenix was starting to get going there at the end, they were really trying to ramp up on defense, and you can see Devin taking a personal responsibility for their lack of communication that they were having before.

He was in a lot of and usually it's their center. Usually it's the center that it operates as their primary communicator.

But Devin Booker was taking a lot of those off ball like kind of backline communication responsibilities, calling out coverages, pointing guys out, telling him where they need to go, and that sort of thing takes a lot of effort and takes a lot of mental focus and uses energy, but it goes a long way towards helping a unit defend, and Devin Booker took that responsibility on the second piece of it was on ball competitiveness. We saw some of this with Phoenix and we saw a lot of it

with Team USA. But you can ask Devin Booker to guard the other team's best guard. You can ask him to apply ball pressure and to fight over the top of screens. Now, Phoenix doesn't need him to do They usually will use a guy like a Kog to do something like that, but when they would go to their more skilled lineups, they could ask Booker to do that. For Team USA, he was guarding the best player on

the other team every night. He can navigate screens, he's got good footwork, he's got good attention to the detail in the game plan. He puts consistent effort in on that side of the floor. You can actually have I remember when I was talking earlier about the tough jobs. You can't ask Donovan Mitchell or Jalen Brunson to do one of the tough jobs. You have to craft them

the easier jobs, which both teams did. We talked about Cleveland putting usually putting Donovan Mitchell on like an off ball shooter and asking him to dig down and use his athleticism to close out right, Jalen Brunson, same sort of thing, a lot of hedging and recovering, holding up in ISO just because he's big and strong. But they weren't asking him to do a tough job. You can ask Devin Booker to do a tough defensive job. You can ask him to be your primary point of attack defender.

That's a real value add within the context of trying to build a roster that can win the title. He gives you similar offensive juice as those guards while also giving you real defensive value, and that to me was the main differentiator. Brunson doesn't hurt you. Mitchell helps you a little bit. Booker can actually take a significant defensive role, and that's what sets him apart ETHO. All right, moving on to the mailbag. I only have about five questions today,

since we're going one video at a time now. Feel like sixteen I got a lot of questions like this about Brunson. Feels like sixteen is way too low for Brunson. He was top five in MVP votes last year and was one of the best playoff performers, if not the best. Variations of that question talking about top five and MVP, the sheer amount of scoring volume that he did in the postseason, all that kind of stuff. Here's how I'm gonna try to explain it. Before I go any further.

Don't forget that I primarily am using tiers to demonstrate a large gap in value. Okay, so all of these guys are in the same tier, so I don't see large gaps between them. So I could see Brunson as high as twelve or as low as seventeen, and all of those are pretty close to me, so that to be clear, Like, it's the eleven guys at the top of the league, the superstar tier that I think Brunson has no case over. But I understand the case, the case for Brunson over Booker. I prefer Booker, but I

understand the case. I understand the case for Brunson over to the two guys recovering tomorrow or on Saturday, I should say, but to upfront explain, you know, just the format of this particular list these tiers. The guys are all kind of close. So a lot of this just has to do with the sheer amount of talent that's

in the league. The two guys I had ahead of him today are the defending Eastern Conference Finals MVP in the defending Finals MVP, and Jalen Brown, a guy who's one of the best two way players in the game, Devin Booker, who's a similar level of half court shot creator. He's a career twenty eight points per game in forty seven playoff games on over sixty percent true shooting, and he was the best player on a team that made it to within two wins of an NBA championship, and

he's a substantially more impactful defender. That's the guy that you want to put I mean that, let's just put it this way. If you think Brunson's better than Booker, I respect that, But Booker's got a damn good case to be better, right. And then the two guys were hitting on Saturday, They're both like, we're not gonna get I'm gonna try. You guys can probably guess who they are,

but I'm gonna try not to reveal it. The two guys that we got on Saturday are like Bona fide superstars who have health issues and when they are healthy are both clearly better than Jalen Brunson. So and then the other guys are the eleven superstar guys that I have, and trust me, you're gonna have a really hard time

bumping any of those guys for Jalen Brunson. So it's mostly just a product of the sheer amount of awesome players that we have in the league, the kind of guys that used to look at the screen and go like, oh man, that's a top ten player. By the way, I made this mistake. I'm pretty sure there was a day during the regular season where I was like, holy shit,

Jalen Brunson's playing like a top ten player. But then you actually sit down and you start writing names down and you're like, oh shit, there's just a lot of really good players. So, like I mean to put it simply, like what used to be top ten is now kind of like top seventeen, what used to be top twenty five is now kind of like top forty, top forty five. Like we talked about we did that forty five player list at the start, there are a lot of guys there.

Paul George not even on my list. Trey Young not even on my list. There's a lot of really, really good basketball players in the NBA, and that is the main thing that is driving this. Like I could bump him over any of the eleven. I explained to you guys why I thought Booker was better. I explained to it to you guys, why I thought Jayleen Brown was better. Again, I can. I can personally see the reasoning for Brunson as high as twelve, but for me, he happens to

be at sixteen. One other way to look at it, I think Brunson is the best small guard in the league other than Steph and that's a hell of an accomplishment in the league that has this type of guard depth. I have Jalen Brunston over Donovan Mitchell. I have Jalen Brunson over Tyres Halliburton. I have Jalen Brunson over Tyres Maxey. I have Jalen Brunson over John Morant. I have Jalen Brunson over Damian Lillard. I Jalen Brunson over Daron Fox. I have him over Kyrie Irving, I have him over

Trey Young. I have Brunson over all those guys right now. It's just the guys that have above him are bigger athletes, and you know, obviously I view that as value, and there are guys above him that bring the same at least similar type of offensive shock creation without some of the downsides that come from having a guard that's small.

Here's another follow up question, how the heck is a top five MVP vote getter last season sixteenth on this list Steph Curry ahead of Brunson at this point is crazy. Brunson will be putting his team in championship contention this season. Curry will lead his team to the lottery. Make it

make sense, dude, tired of the Brunson disrespect. To put it simply, Jalen Brunson will contend for a championship this year because he also has Julius Randall og N and Obi McHale bridges in high level two way players like Dante DiVincenzo and Josh Hart. Curry might end up in the play in or the lottery. Just I'm not even

gonna talking about it. Just go ahead and pull up Golden State's roster for this season and you'll find out really quickly why the Knicks are gonna do more than the Warriors are going to do in all likelihood this season. It doesn't have anything to do with Jalen Brunson or Steph Curry. I do think Jalen Brunson had a better and more productive regular season last year, but a big part of that was him being surrounded by more talent.

That Warriors team, similar to the Lakers, similar to the Suns, just doesn't have any role players that can play both ends of the floor effectively. That's the main issue that they have. It's a major roster issue. To put it like, I'll put it even more aggressively. If the Knicks today traded Jalen Brunson straight up for Steph Curry, the Knicks title odds would skyrocket because Steph is a better basketball player.

It's not an insult to Brunson. He's Steph fucking Curry, and that's why I can't like put him up on that particular level. Next question one more Brunson. One bro miss the mark here. He gained a huge boost an audience for the way he covered the Knicks and Brunson all of last season, only to rate him sixteenth best player. Nah, it's it's my job to be authentic and tell you, guys, exactly how I feel, not to propagandaize to your fan base.

So I'm just not gonna do that. Me ranking Brunson sixteen doesn't change how much I love watching him play basketball, or the simple fact that we're gonna be covering the Knicks very closely this year. It's a player ranking, and it really only matters in the summer when we're talking hypotheticals. As soon as we get into the regular season. In the playoffs, it's like, can Brunson with this supporting cast beat this star with his supporting cast? These two teams

facing against each other. The player rankings go out the window in October, Guys like this is not I can't just sit up here and lie and say things that I don't believe to appeal to a fan base, especially on something as simple and foolish as player rankings, which don't really matter in the grand scheme of who gets to hoist hilario'brian trophy at the end of the day.

I have three more wait, yeah, three more questions. The problem with arguing that the Laker slash Lebron greatly benefited from the break in twenty twenty is that there's no proof whatsoever besides feelings. They weren't limping into the break, they weren't injured at all, they didn't look tired or slow. They actually were just about to hit a good stride

beating the Bucks and Clippers back to back. This is in relation to a question we had two days ago, basically insinuating that we don't know if Lebron can make it through a playoff run, and then I kind of piggybacked off that with another take that I had received from a buddy of mine a few weeks back, that the twenty twenty Lakers benefited from the break because they looked like they were gonna break down. And what I said two days ago was that that's just completely theoretical.

Lebron's never missed a playoff game. But this is a really good additional point, which is that in March, when they beat the Bucks and Clippers back to back and Lebron literally looked like the MVP, I thought he should have won the MVP that year. They were cooking with gas and actually ramping up, and it actually kind of fell in line with most Lebron teams that tended to

ramp up around March for the playoff run. So like, yeah, I think that retroactively looking at the Lakers is as a team that should have broken down is based entirely on fantasy. All Right, two more bail back question. We've seen that the Olympics and specifically Lebron's performance have impacted Jason's view on the all time king of Lebron's place.

That being said, did the Olympics impact how you see players in the context of the NBA And did any of these rankings in these videos change because of the Olympics. So the short answer is no. But I did go look at the list after the Olympics before I decided did not make any changes, and so the reason is simple, I didn't. I don't think Jason Tatum's shooting slump is going to last through next season. I would venture to guess that his jumper will be fixed by training camp.

The Olympics were pretty damn close to the finals, and I guarantee you he took some time off after the finals as he should have. He played basketball into mid June, so I doubt he was as polished for the Team USA as some of his peers. I think Tatum is going to get back in the gym this summer, and I think he's going to fix a shot and I think he's going to look great, So I didn't factor

that in. Two. I know Embiid is better in Philly's offensive system, and I already knew Joel Embiid didn't know how to play, read and react basketball, so that I didn't learn anything new about Embid. I already knew that stuff, So that wasn't something that I was gonna change my opinion about him when he's going to be playing for the Sixers and he's gonna have the dam ball all the time. Three. I have always felt like Steph, Cady and Lebron are still some of the very best players

in the world in a small sample size. I felt that way before the Olympics, and I'm not surprised at all. I was disappointed in how some of the young guys played, but I expected Steph, cad and Lebron to play as well as they did. They're just three of the greatest winners of all time, and so of course they're gonna figure out and they're still playing at or near that level.

They just at their ages, they can't superhero their way through an eighty two game season like they used to, and they can't overcome some of the limitations that their rosters have. Again, all three of those rosters don't have any two way role players, guys that play both ends of the four really well. Outside of their stars. That's a problem, and that's why they struggle in the eighty two game season, and at their age, they can't overcome that.

In the Olympics, it's a shorter window and it's just an easier grind, and so they were able to handle it. So, Yeah, I took a look at my list after the Olympics. I just didn't change my mind on anything because most of that was stuff that I already had established. Last question, calling Lebron substantially better than Tatum in a two week stretch is ridiculous. And here's all I'm gonna say to that.

Just for a second in your head, just close your eyes and imagine Lebron James playing basketball with Drew Holliday, Derek White, Jalen Brown, Christops Porzingis, Al Horford, Sam Houser, and Peyton Pritchard. Just imagine it for a minute and you'll pretty quickly come to the same conclusion. That I did. All right, guys. That is all I have for today. As always, a sincerely appreciate you for supporting the show.

We are going to be back on Saturday. Oh I have this mail bag will run as a breakout tomorrow Saturday, I'll run the thirteen and twelve, and then starting next week we're going to be getting into the top eleven, which is just an incredible list of players that was incredibly difficult to rank and I'm excited to break it down and to debate it with you guys. I will see you guys. Then the volume