Hoops Tonight - Top 25 NBA Players: Steph Curry & Warriors NOT DONE YET? Embiid & 76ers TRUSTWORTHY?

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Void and Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG dot co slash ft ball. All right, welcome to Hosidai. You're at the volume. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend. Well, we have made it to the Superstar tier of our player rankings that we do every single summer. These final eleven

guys actually rank into two tiers. The top five guys I have listed as perennial MVP candidates, something I think the guys below are not capable of necessarily doing. And then the rest of them are superstars guys in five through eleven, superstars that can reach the level of perennial MVP candidate type of guys, but just can't maintain that level. But this is a very talented group of eleven players.

It was painstakingly difficult to rank them. I am guaranteed no matter how I do this to piss a bunch of people off, but we're gonna go ahead and try it anyway. Today we are starting with number eleven and with number ten. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops to Night YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS. You guys, don't miss you announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed where you get your

podcast on our Hoops Tonight. Don't forget it's helpful if you leave your rating in a review for us on that front. And the last, but not least, keepdropping mailbag questions in those YouTube comments. If you disagree with the ranking, break it down, tell me why. I especially appreciate it. If you make a basketball case and we'll get to it in the mail bag questions at the tail end of every single one of these videos. All right, let's talk some basketball. So here were the final eleven guys.

This is in the order of where they appeared in the standing so as to not give anything away on the list, But our final eleven are Jason Tatum, shag Kil, just Alexander Nicole, Jokic, Anthony Edwards, Luka, Doncic, Giannis and Tennan Kumpo, Kevin Durant, Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, and Steph Curry. So one of those guys has to be eleven. One of those guys Tatum, Shay, Jokic, Aunt, Luca Giannis, kd Lebron, ad Embiid, and Steph one of

those guys literally has to be number eleven. That's just the virtue of how the league is stacked with talent at this point. So to be clear, when I go through number eleven in particular, this isn't like a well this guy isn't top ten anymore kind of thing. It's just the reality of how many great players we have in the league, and it's just where this person fell in the ranking. So if you're pissed off, just remember

that everyone else would be too. If I ranked a different player from anybody else on that list at number eleven, it would be a revolt from that particular fan base. So it's just kind of the natural order of the

way this kind of broke out. Remember the criteria, I'm including factors like regular season availability the motor like how consistently they play at the top of their game in the regular season, as well as playoff translatability like how well does their game translate to the intensity that you need in order to get through four rounds of the playoffs. This is very much in October through June type of ranking.

If I had to start a team tomorrow and I needed someone to lead me through the entire thing from training camp to trophy, who am I going with? And so that kind of will give you, guys a little bit of an indicator on how I'm actually doing the list. And lastly, remember the reality. I look at the tiers as the main differentiators between players. I see little to no gap at all between number eleven on this list

and number five on this list. I could see any of those players being ranked anywhere in that stretch, and it's defensible to me. So keep that in mind. This is not meant to signify some massive gap, but rather splitting hairs between transcendently great players. And so, without any further ado, number eleven, the guy that ended up being the impossible decision in this list, I put Joel Embiid. Now,

before we go any further into Joelle's season. As we get into the top to eleven, it's going to be a lot of numbers like we did in the earlier parts of the list, but it's also going to be a lot of rationale. I'm gonna be talking a lot about why I have guys ranked where I have them ranked. So before we go into Joel's last season, let's talk about why I decided on Joel Embiid as the guy

I was going to drop to eleven. So, as we know, after he pushed himself really hard in that twenty twenty three season to get MVP, he got hurt in the playoffs again and he looked bad again, and then he missed forty three games last year in the regular season before losing in the first rounds of the round of the playoffs. He filled the box score in the next series.

He actually averaged thirty three points, eleven rebounds, and seven assists, but consistently wore down at the end of games, especially on the defensive end of the floor. But he also

shot poorly. He shot just four for fourteen in clutch situations, including zero for four from three against the Knicks, and most importantly, he just couldn't get the job done his peers against the top of the league, or I should say his peers at the top of the league playing against that Knicks team that did not have Julius Randall that was dealing with injuries. I just think his peers at the top of the league would have been able to push their teams over the top, which is something

that Embiid was not able to do. Now, Embiid was clearly hurt, his knee was all sorts of fucked up, but that's kind of the point in the reality of starting your franchise or building your franchise around a guy like Joel Embiid. So to be clear, I think Embiid, when he's one hundred percent healthy, is a better basketball player than several of the players that I have ranked above him in this list. But there are three reasons

I decided to drop Embiid to eleven number one. Starting this year, and this is a list that is designed for this upcoming season. Starting this year, I expect the Sixers to heavily manage his regular season workload. He already has his MVP, so there's no sort of accolade that he's chasing, and he's shown consistently that under a heavy

workload he will break down. I think you saw that in the what they did with the roster, not just bringing in an additional star like Paul George to handle in terms of firepower, but they also went out and got one of the best backup centers in the league

and Andre Drummond. And I'm sure that was part of the appeal for Drummond, like, hey, dude, you might start thirty games this year, You're definitely gonna play a substantial minute load, and so that is that's literally, but the Sixers are telling you, we know we can't count on Embiid to be this like foundational piece over the course of a long regular season, so we need to bolster him over the course of the eighty two. That's something that has to get factored in when we're talking about

ranking players in this list. Embiid is just not a guy that you can count on to play seventy seventy five games and be healthy for four rounds of the playoffs. That's something that has to be factored in. Number two. He is a historically poor playoff performer. Now, again, a good percentage of that is health related, but it also comes down to other things, his reliance on his jump shot.

Most of his big man peers in the league, which we're going to talk about more in a minute, they take a lot more short range shots close to the basket that Joel Embiid does, which makes them more reliable playoff players. That's something that he's had an issue with, his reliance on foulgrifting and how that can become an issue when you get into later rounds of the playoffs, and then last his struggles to read aggressive defensive coverages. Those things. Those are just on the offensive end too.

That doesn't even get into his struggles to get up and down the floor and transition. Some of his limitations in terms of the defensive coverages that you can deploy him in. He has struggled historically in the playoffs. So not a guy that can really hold up over the course of the eighty two and a guy that when he gets to the postseason seems to play below his capability. Third with respect to trying to build a team around him, he's a very one dimensional player on both ends of

the floor. On offense, as we saw in the Olympics, he really can't play read and react basketball among a bunch of high level players. He can't play in a ball in player movement style of offense. He's not good at making reads, which is a fundamental part of that style of five out offense. So as a GM, if you take Embiid, you basically have to play a very rudimentary run everything through him, a lot of ball screens and dribble handoffs where he's getting the ball at the

elbow and catching and going to work. He is a high usage, kind of like heliocentric style of big. He struggles with quick ball and player movements, so there are some limitations in the types of rosters you can build around Embiid that don't exist for some of the players that he has higher on the list. And on defense, he is strictly a drop coverage big. He struggles consistently to get up to the level of ball screens or

to switch out onto perimeter players. Even within the drop coverage he's very good at protecting the rim, but he's not very good at bothering players in that mid range area. He can also struggle to get up and down the floor in transition, so you have to surround him with a ton of length and speed and there's pretty much one defensive scheme that you can run around him, which is essentially just a deep drop coverage, and so that

just kind of makes things difficult. Again, if he's healthy and you have the perfect set of circumstances around him, he will impact winning at a much higher level. I would argue that when he's healthy, he kind of scratches this surface of that top tier group of guys that we have. It's just that set of circumstances just never takes place for whatever reason, and so that just to me made him the guy that I had to drop.

So to put it simply, he has one of the highest ceilings in the league as an individual basketball player, but he's also one of the most difficult players to build around because he needs a ton of regular season support as well as postseason support, and he requires a certain style of play on both ends, and so that lack of durability and versatility dropped him to number eleven

for me. To Darryl Moury's credit, I think he's done a really nice job trying to build a roster to help Joel tons of regular season support like Andre Drummond at center, a second perimeter star to help eat up usage and tons of postseason support. That's the three star build. If Embiid's getting double teamed, it's just harder to do that with Paul George and Tyrese Maxi off the ball.

If Embiid's just having a bad matchup or a bad night, which we know is something that can happen to him in the postseason, having that three star build can help. It can help make up for that. Both of his co stars too, This is a credit to Darryl Moray, are very comfortable playing off the ball. Tyres Maxi is one of the best, like on the cat shooters that we have in the league. Obviously, Paul George, I've talked about him in this context, is almost like a juiced

up star version of Michael Porter Junior. He's Darryl Moray has done everything he can to accentuate Joel Embiid's strengths and to minimize his weaknesses, and so that's a difficult job, which is why I have him BEI down an eleven. But Darryl Moray has put him in position to be a guy that can contribute to winning at that top tier level, and I'm really interested to see if he

can do that next year. Quickly going through his numbers from last year, thirty nine games played, thirty four point seven points per game, which is obviously obsurd, eleven rebounds, five point six assists. It's a career high for him. Also a career high three point eight turnovers. Nick Nurse did a pretty damn good job of simplifying his reads and making stuff easier for him in the post. We're gonna get more into that later when we start talking

play types. Two point nine stocks per game. His shooting splits fifty three percent from the field, thirty nine percent from three, eighty eight percent from the line, which amounts to fifty six percent in effective field goal percentage, and thanks to twelve of free throw attempts per game, a blistering sixty four percent true shooting percentage. His shooting numbers percentergy one point per jump shot, flat, one point zero nine off the catch, excuse me, one point one to

nine off the catch, which is very good. He shot fifty five percent on unguarded jump shots, seventy five percent when it's weighted for threes. Em Bid has become a very good three point shooter. And we saw this again even a little bit with Team USA, which has really helped him maintain some of his effectiveness as his body has started to break down now that he's into his thirties. I think that's a really interesting kind of developmental piece.

We're going to talk about it more in a minute, but I think Embiid has over indexed towards perimeter skill development rather than interior skill development, which I think has hurt him. However, if he's gonna be limited physically, like if he's gonna be let's just say he never is able to maintain athleticism the way he was a couple

of years ago. There's a version of this where that three point shooting could actually end up being very beneficial to kind of extend his start prime a little bit longer. Zero point eighty eight points per shot off the dribble, actually shot forty two percent in field goal percentage, though it's just because most of them are pull up twos. And then zero point nine to five points per face

up jumper. Actually shot forty six percent on face up jumpers, which is a great number, but once again, almost all from the mid range. That's why the efficiency's a little lower. This is where I want to get into the skill development, so and beats shot sixty percent on floaters, but he only made twelve all year. He shot seventy four percent on hooks, but he only made fourteen of them all year.

And this has been my main point of contention with Embiid in his development over the course of his career, and I think it's the main reason why he's not become a more reliable playoff player. The hooks in the floaters, they are what I would call short range scoring. All of the jump shots you take are more like mid range scoring. Right. The short range scoring is what has made guys like Nicola Jokic and Anthony Davis such great

playoff players. As we talked about earlier, Joel Embiid made only twenty six floaters and hooks, Anthony Davis made ninety seven of them. Nicola Jokic made two hundred and thirty nine of them. They are just far more reliable and less susceptible to variants than jump shots. You're gonna make your hook shots, You're gonna make your short floaters. There are gonna be nights with your mid range shot where you're just not on and you're gonna go two for ten.

You're never gonna go two for ten on hooks and floaters. They're too close to the basket. It's too easy to get your rhythm down there. Not to mention, in ball screens, that's where they're getting their catches. Yokicchen eight roll further into the lane and they take more floaters in the role. Embiid is always short rolling to that foul line area

so that he can catch an iso. And so essentially Ady and Jokic have made themselves more you know, capable of playing alongside other players because they can be just finishers as role men rather than embiads. Catching on the role almost as like another area of where he's initiating the offense. Like he's catching. It's like, oh, great pick and roll, MAXI hit Embiid, he's right there at the foul Okay, here comes the jab step pump fake, jab step pump fake. It's like now we're back to just

Embiid working there. And so in addition to the lack of efficiency, there's just more flow and making quicker decisions off of the catch in ball screens, which have made jokicen Ad into such deadly role men. Again, like indeed, Embiid can make those jumpers, and he'll have games where it's like, oh my god, he's just not missing that fifteen footer. It's just there's a lot more variance in that regard. I would love to see Embiid add more

of a bully ball close range game. I also think it would just make him be able to use his physical tools better. He's bigger and stronger than most people, and like as you saw from the percentages, he certainly can make them at the rim. Joel Embiid shot just sixty four percent last year. Nicole Jokic and Ad were both at seventy percent PERCENTERGY, so that's really the main issue. Embiid is indexing towards the perimeter. With the skill development,

Ady and Jokic are still functionally bigs. Ad will take his fair share of ISO jump shots. Jokic will certainly take some late clock jump ISO jumpers in the mid range. He'll certainly take some pick and pop threes, but those are purely supplementary parts of their game, whereas everything they do on the interior is something that can pretty much depend on on a night to night basis. Obviously, Yokic to a much greater extent than Ad, But I have Ad over Embiid in this regard for a similar reason.

As far as around the rim, he's always just throwing up bullshit, trying to draw fouls and falling on the ground instead of just going up strong and finishing through contact. And again that's a substantial dip in percentage. Sixty four percent for a guy with Embiid's size and strength is just not good. You gotta be up around seventy percent, like Jokic and Ad are. But like that's the ironic thing is like I would say Embiid is the best

perimeter scorer of the group by far. Like if it was like king of the court starting from the top of the key to drible limit, I'd give me Ad over Mbid and Ad. Excuse me, give me Embiid over Ad and Jokic any day of the week. But in terms of everything that a big guy needs to do for a basketball team, that's where Ad and Yokic have the edge. Running the floor, winning physical rebound battles. Remember when Embid was getting his ass kicked on the glass

against Serbia in the fourth quarter. Short range scoring in ball screens, short range scoring against switches, finished around the rim, All of those things are actually more important to the center position than perimeter scoring, and they're all areas where MB could stand to improve significantly. Play type data from Synergy he only ran twenty seven inverted ball screens all year, but he did pretty well. He got thirty four points out of them including passes, which is one point twenty

six points per possession. Two hundred and ninety seven ISOs for three hundred and twenty one points. That was one point zero eight points per possession, or the eighty first percentile. That ranked eighth out of twenty four players to run at least two hundred and fifty, so he's one of the better ISO players in the league. Last year, post ups three hundred and eighteen reps for three hundred and fifty one points. That's one point zero one point one

zero points per possession. That ranked fourth out of eighteen players to run at least two hundred fifty, So he's one of the best ISO and post up guys in the league last year. The adjustments that I was talking about with Nick Nurse that led to more assists from Joel Embiid last year. The two main things that I noticed better distribution of his touches in the Embiid ran the majority of his post ups from the left block. He actually ran over fifty percent of his post ups

from the left block. And one of the issues you have with that specific situation is Embid loves to face up and then rip through to the right, and so as a result, he's catching on the left block, he's turning and facing and when he rips through, he's ripping

through and ending up in all of that traffic. Well, last year there was a significant shift to more balance, a lot more touches from the right block, a lot more touches from the middle of the floor as well as matter of fact, if I remember correctly, about as many post touches from the middle of the floor as he did the entire previous season, despite playing in like half as many games. And with that respect, there's a

couple different things. One from that right block when he wants to rip through towards the baseline, it's just less crowded over there. And then two, especially from the middle of the floor, that's actually the area where it's hardest to double team and Embiid again, we saw an increase in turnovers, which is to be expected because that's actually one of the hardest places to pass out of. But from that spot on the floor is when you can make defenses pay for doubling. And we saw a substantial

increase in Embiid's passing ability last year. One of the other things, the second piece that I noticed from Nick Nurse was just always keeping usually tyres maaxy, but always an excellent above the break shooter that was one pass away. Ad has a similar problem, but like Embiid when he gets double teams kind of just wants to get rid of the ball to the first outlet, like he's more interested in just getting rid of it without turning it over rather than making the kill pass that beats the

double team, right. And so one of the things there is like if you just make it so that the guy who's throwing that post entry pass and is standing on the wing, you know, ten fifteen feet away, is a guy who's a deadly above the break shooter, especially one they could shoot a little behind the line, like in that twenty five to twenty eight foot kind of range.

When you have that, those are easy kickout passes for Embiid that he can knock down or that that he can make the redconsistently and that shooter can knock down and I thought that was a big part of the increased bit of assist volume that we saw from him. Again, Embid may have his limitations, but when he's healthy, he's a force to be reckoned with. And Darryl Moore is surrounded him with a ton of talent, very specifically with

talent that helps address embads specific weaknesses. But the reality is that he's a harder player to build a championship level roster around than the guys that I have above him because of his issues that extend all the way from October to June. So I have him at eleven on this list.

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board last year from the previous year. His points were down, his rebounds were down, his assists were down, his steals were down, his blocks were down, his field goal percentage was down, his three point percentage was down, like substantially across the board. He really struggled to end the year.

From February twenty third to the end of the season, Steph played in twenty three games, averaged just twenty two point seven ten points per game, four point eight rebounds, five point two assists, just forty one point nine percent from the field, and just thirty seven point five percent from three, which is solid by NBA standards, but for Steph, that's not the three point percentage you expect to see for him. So for basically the last third of the season,

forget about shooting slump. Steph just wasn't even playing at a superstar level anymore. One last stat to drive this home twenty twenty one, which was the last time that Steph played a truly great regular season. It was the last time he finished top five in MVP. He had twenty six games where he scored at least thirty five points. Last year he had just eleven games where he scored at least thirty five points, despite the fact that he played in eleven more games than he played in the

twenty twenty one season. All you have to do is go look at my YouTube comments, especially on the Brunson video, the Mitchell video, or the John Mourant video. A lot of those fan bases, all those fan bases think their guy is better than Steph at this point, and I disagree. A lot of people don't think Steph's at a top ten player playing at a top ten level anymore. I disagree.

So here are the three reasons that I think Steph is still a top ten player in the NBA, and then I think he is poised for a bounce back season this year. Number one, Steph has by far the most limited supporting cast out of anybody in the Superstar tier. He does not have a legitimate secondary ball handler. His best option there is probably Brandon Pazemski, who I think will probably start this year, and he's a fine young player, but you'd prefer him as your third or fourth best

ball handler. And obviously you prefer somebody a little more experienced to give in the age group that Steph Curry and Raymond Green are playing from right, And even with Chris Paul last year, between the injuries and just his limited ability at this phase in his career, Steph just hasn't been surrounded by a secondary ball handler. This puts a ton of pressure on Steph to create absolutely everything, and I thought he wore down over the course of

the season as a result. I thought that was directly responsible for the slump that he faced towards the end. Some of the most aggressive defensive coverages I've ever seen thrown at Steph because everyone just knew throw the kitchen sink at Steph and they don't have the talent on the backside to make you pay, and I thought that was a big part of why his efficiency in his

volume took a hit. The rest of the roster was a plethora of wings that were either super inconsistent like Andrew Wiggins or super young raw you know, flawed wings like Jonathan Kaminga and Moses Moody, who both could be very good players in the long run, but they're basically kids by NBA standards. Right. Tray Jackson Davis a really nice pickup for the front court, but Kevon Loonie kind of lost a step last year and they're still very

much on the undersize side of things in that front court. Right. Basketball is a team sport, and it is hard to win games in the modern NBA with the way that this roster is built, which is why we've all been begging for them to make a more aggressive deal, which

they haven't been able to do at this point. But the point is the first reason I think that Steph is still top ten is that I believe if he were given a supporting cast like the Knicks, for instance, I think he'd return to that superstar level basically immediately and I mentioned this in the Brunson mail bag. I said, if the Knicks traded bruns And for Steph straight up today,

that the Knicks title odds with Skyrocket. I think that that's a strong indicator of the way that Vegas at least, and I think that we all feel about Steph Curry, which is he's just kind of in a bad situation right now, But that doesn't necessarily mean that he's not the same basketball player that we knew he was capable of being. Number two. We've seen Steph enter into what looks like an extended slump before only to bounce back

in a huge way. He had a very similar extended slump at the end of the twenty twenty two season. He averaged just twenty three points per game, just like this year, over a thirty one game span a little bit longer than this year, with similarly low percentages by Steph standards. The field goal percentage was a little higher, but the three point percentage was a little lower, and then he ripped off a classic Steph c playoff run

and won the title. So like, it's just too soon to write Steph off over shooting slump, because we've literally seen him bounce back from one before. Now, the main difference is that twenty twenty two roster was a championship level roster and this one is not. But they did get a little bit better with some of their role player signings, and they do have a trade to make, which I want to get to in a little bit.

But the simple fact is that just because Steph was in his slump doesn't necessarily mean that it's over for him. And I thought that the last two Team USA games were a huge step in the right direction. He didn't just break out of his slump. He exploded out of his slump in those two games. And about his high stakes of the situation, as you can imagine, he looked

incredibly confident. He even looked relieved at times when he hit that three coming off with a curl from the screen from embiid on that left wing, that the one that put USA up eighty seven eighty six. I think with about three minutes left in the fourth quarter, he like ran down the floor with like a double fizz bump like scream because you could just tell it's like he's been working so hard and it's like he finally

broke out when it really mattered right. I also generally think that playing with Tmosa is a great launching pad to start an NBA season from. And Steph is particularly motivated because he needs to demonstrate to the Warriors front office that they are worth investing in, and so I expect him to come out and just attack the start of the season next year. And then, lastly, the third reason why I think Steph is still top ten. We've seen how slight tweaks in Golden State's role players can

vault them up to another level. From twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two is roughly the same core. Steph was even a better player in twenty twenty one, that was his last truly great regular season. But they just made a couple of tweaks, going from Kent Baysmore, Kelly u Bray and Brad Wanamaker to Namanya bi elitza Otto Porter junior, and just getting Klay Thompson back. Just those tweaks took them from a playing team all the way to winning the title. Kyle Anderson, Buddy Yield, and the

Anthony Melton all fit Golden State system very well. Kyle Anderson and the Anthony Melton in particular, really fit their defensive system, especially, and they have a trade to make. Now, do I think they're going to go all the way into contention the way they did in twenty twenty two. No, But I do think, especially if they make that type of trade that we've been talking about, that they'll be in that middle tier of the West, which is a hell of a lot better than missing the playoffs the

way they did last year. So, in summary, a lot of people are kicking Steph when he's down and pretending it's over for him, when the reality is that the Warriors just didn't have a good basketball team last year, and I think they have a chance to be better this year. I think Steph will be better this year, and if they make the right trade, they could potentially

make some noise. And again, like you gotta think a lot about what makes Steph great in particular, like beyond the actual scoring ability, and this is something I talked about a lot with Timosa. I thought Steph was still providing quite a bit of positive impact even when he wasn't shooting well because people guard Steph like he's Steph Curry. Now what that means is as he's running off of

that wide pin down. He will sometimes drag two players with them as they miscommunicate a switch and error on the side of getting Steph Curry. All of that is about creating openings for guys. Those openings have to be capitalized on. They're not all dunks. We've all seen the dunks, right, Like we've all seen Steph run off of a baseline screen where the guy who sets the pick slips to the rim and Draymond hits him and it's just an easy dunk, right. He's a million of those over the

course of Steph's career. Those easy ones are great, but it's less about that, and it's more about converting small advantages. When Steph is being guarded like that. There are all sorts of small advantages that appear on the floor, and high level basketball players can capitalize on those small advantages, grow them into bigger advantages, and then finish the plays. But you have to have the talent to make up

for that. And so that's the thing is like when it comes to Steph, there's just nobody that's guarded the way that he's guarded as he's running down the floor around screens and stuff like that, regardless of what his actual shooting percentages are, so he is one of the guys that specifically benefits from having surrounding talent that can capitalize on those openings, and he just hasn't had access to that in the last season. So before we move on to our mailbag, our just quick grip through of

Steph's numbers from last year. Seventy four games played, twenty six point four points per game, four point five rebounds per game, five point one assists, one point one stocks. He definitely is starting to show a little bit of a decline on the defensive end of the four shooting splits forty five percent from the field, forty one percent from three, ninety two percent from the line, which amounts to fifty seven percent in effective field goal percentage and

sixty two percent in true shooting percentage. Shooting numbers perc energy one point one six points per jump shot, one point three to one points per catch and shoot jump shot, which is obviously absurd, one point zero five points per pull up jump shot, a little down from some of

his previous seasons. Forty four percent on floaters, a little over one attempt per game, sixty percent at the rim, which is like incredible for a ball guards surrounded by the poor shooting, or that that golden state surrounds him with. That's what's crazy. Steph sixty percent at the rim, Joel embiids sixty four percent at the rim. Like that goes to show you kind of what I was talking about earlier with embiid playtype data perc Entergy Pick and Roll

barely missed our high volume list. He ran nine hundred and seventy nine reps, but he got one and twenty five points, which is one point zero five points per possession. That would have ranked had he got those extra twenty one reps, that would have ranked tenth on that list of twenty five players had he hit that one thousand of rep mark. But that also amounted to the seventy seventh percentile. Percentergy ISO numbers lastly, one point zero six

points per possession one hundred and sixty seven reps. That's in the seventy sixth percentile. I'm rooting for Steph this year. Is my second favorite player of all time, behind Lebron. I think people are writing him off too soon. Like I talked about earlier, I've personally been wrong about him before. I was talking a lot at the end of the twenty twenty one season about like this is weird, like what's going on here?

into that mailbag. Love the content, Jason. I just want to point out how incredible it is that Steph Curry has an argument of being a top ten player ever if he's not already there with a height of six to two in a game like basketball, the fact that he has done more winning with less size and weight than any other player is truly remarkable, and I think it needs to be talked about more. I totally agree, And to take it further, I think he's easily one

of the ten best players ever. And I have him as the fifth best perimeter player ever, which is crazy because both of those lists are dominated by guys. Even the perimeter player lists are dominated by guys with crazy physical gifts. The guards are six six for the forty inch vertical, the wings are six ' eight six ' nine. You know, guys like Lebron or super super strong, or like guys are super fast, like there, he just is

the one outlier on that list. And that's kind of how I refer to this is the best way that I could put it. When I see other small players, I talk about Steph as the exception that proves the rule. Like just because Steph did it, didn't mean everyone else,

can you know what I mean? That's how different a guy like Steph is than other guys that would frequently get lumped in with him that aren't necessarily at that level, guys like Damian Lillard for instance, right, even guys who were great athletes like remember when Russell Westbrook got compared to Steph a lot in that like twenty fifteen twenty sixteen stretch, Like, Steph just was consistently a more winning player than all of them despite not having the tools

that they had. Regarding Luca putting on weight, there's a bit of a trade off. Yes, by adding weight, he's lost some speed and quickness. However, it's allowed him to be a much better post player, where he's been able to be quite efficient and generate high quality offense for his team, wouldn't you agree. His best run also came last year, when he was bigger than he was in the bubble. However, this time the MAVs put the right pieces around him and it led to a finals run.

I don't think Luca being as slim as he was in the Bubble is best for him, as he lose that strength advantage he has against other guards, which I believe is worth losing some speed, as he's proven even at a higher weight he can function as an adequate defender if engaged. Love showing the content. Nice to have someone like you in the space of lots of talking heads looking for clicks. Thank you for supporting the show.

I really appreciate it. So a couple things. There was a video that was going around of Luca's game winner against the Clippers in the Bubble in twenty twenty, and he looked like really thin compared to the way he looks now now. A couple of things. I do agree that there's an advantage that comes from being bigger and stronger. That's just a fact. And I'm sure there are some situations now where Luca is able to bully some players

that maybe he didn't used to. Be able to. However, Luca was still bullying guys back then, and I'm not saying that he needs to just go get skinny. Ideally, there's a version of this where he's in peak shape and he has the same amount of weight maybe that he has now, but it's more functional because it makes him mobile because it's muscle instead of body fat. That's

what we're all talking about. And like, I mean, I think there's another question about Luca later on if I remember correctly, and we'll get to it here in a minute, but like, that's really the thing that I think resonates with everybody when they're watching. It's not just that he's struggling on defense. It's that he's struggling on defense and he looks kind of chubby. That's where it has like a bad optic element to it. Hey, Jason, as I mentioned, great list so far, but this is another part of

the ranking that's interesting. I understand the availability part with Jimmy over Kawhi, but Jimmy's availability is on the decline, as you noted, while his actual game is on the decline too, Kawhi is still a superior player in a vacuum on both ends. And his game age is better. Can you give a bit more of a basketball reason why he's over Jimmy? Splitting hairs? But I just believe Kawhi is and will continue to be a better player in a vacuum this season. Keep up the great work.

I'm assuming you mean that Jimmy's over him, But it's a couple of things. Jimmy is availability issues, but nowhere near to the extent that Kawhi has. I pulled the numbers yesterday, but I want to say since going to the Heat, Jimmy's averaged I think fifty eight games played, and then I want to say Kawhi is like around like forty three games played since the bubble. So, like the availability issues, they both have had issues, but Kawhi

issues have been far more substantial. Jimmy Butler has had some playoff issues, right, like he missed this playoff series this year. However, it was kind of a flukey type of injury. It wasn't like a ware and tarringer. He

was like a flukey type of injury. But then he's also had incidences like remember in twenty twenty two when he had like a couple of really bad games in the Conference Finals because his knee was hurt, Like Jimmy's always banged up and has issues, but it's just a completely different level than what Kawhi has been dealing with. I agree for the record that Kawi is a much better player when he's healthy. The only reason I put Jimmy Butler over him is I just think Jimmy's more

available and more reliable. But again, as we've discussed, it's splitting hairs. It's impossible to kind of account for all that properly. I kind of intended on using that twelve thirteen Jimmy Kawhi tier as like a gap tier, just because I view both of them as kind of outliers compared to some of the other guys on this list. Do you think Chris hops Porzingis would be a top twenty five player if he could stay healthy for an entire season. He was incredibly impactful on the floor, as

evident by Game one of the NBA Finals. That first half run in Game one was incredible, just everything, the pick and pop three is, the rim protection, the beating switches at the high post, that like it was everything, And so I would agree, I think it's certainly possible. I mean, he definitely would have made my preliminary risk if he was a preliminary list, if he was consistently healthy, which he just hasn't been. Maybe he'll maybe he'll be more lucky on that end next year, and then we'll

get to have that conversation in a more serious context. Jason, I really wish you would stop saying the twenty twenty two Celtics team was the most talented team in the league. They weren't even favored in the first round of the playoffs. They were not favored in the finals either. Marcus Smart was the third best player and had Grant Williams as

a starter. Robert Williams was massively injured as well. Other than that, love the content, so it certainly wasn't by as big of a margin as it was this year. But I still think they were the best, like I think this year's Celtics are. Last year, I should say, were more talented than everybody in the league by a wide margin. I thought in twenty twenty two they were the most talented in the league by a small margin, and it was kind of a similarly built top five,

like it was a younger Al Horford. As you're shooting five right. Then you had Marcus Martin Derek White as your like two way guys, right, and then you had Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum, which, by the way, it was a much better version of Jason Tatum at that point. Like Jason Tatum was a very good playoff player for the first three rounds of that playoff run, he was a much lesser version of himself, especially on the offensive end.

In this past season. They also had a big look with Robert Williams is very different than chrisops porzingis, but they had that as a big look. Now, again, I don't think it was by a wide margin, but I do think that Celtics team was the most talented team

in the league. I want this to be a two parter though, and we can get back to this on Wednesday if you want to leave another mailbag response, but who would you have ranked, Like, which team do you think was more talented than the twenty twenty two Celtics. Let me know in the comments. We can get into that on Wednesday. Hey, Jason, you were by far my favorite NBA YouTuber, probably the best basketball mind in the media.

That's very, very nice of you to say, do you think that Max Christie at Austin Reeves, d Lo, Gabe Vincent can be a sufficient backcourt if Max Christi can contribute to some of the defensive and athletic worries, especially if Vanderbilt is healthy this season. I think healthy Gabe and Van do with Max Christie kind of in just

like a larger role. I think that certainly would help them in the regular season context, just simply because like you're eating innings over eighty two games, and like Gabe was out most of the year, Jared Vanderbilt was out most of the year. Max Christy was on the fringe of the rotation for lesser players most of the year, and so by kind of infusing that into the roster,

that will certainly help. But none of those guys are what I would consider to be like rock solid two way starters, right like and rock solid two way starters. These are the guys that you see on these championship championship teams. Guys like Derek White, Guys like Kentavious Caldwell Pope on that Nuggets team, Guys like Aaron Gordon going back to the Warriors, like what Andrew Wiggins was before he declined, right, Like, those are what I would consider

to be rock solid starters. Klay Thompson circa twenty twenty two was kind of a rock solid starter. Going back to twenty twenty one, a guy like Brook Lopez rock solid starter. The Lakers just don't have that outside of Austin Reeves, Lebron James, and Anthony Davis. And so even though Gabe and Van do and Max Christy supplements specific needs in terms of perimeter defense, they have other issues that they bring to the table. Right. Gabe is and

is kind of a streaky shooter. Jared Vanderbilt's a very limited offensive player, right. Max Chrissy is very very young and struggles when he puts the ball on the floor to make decisions, right. And so there's a lack of reliability on a consistent basis with those guys, which prevents

them from being like rock solid starters. But I think you can get away with a Jared Vanderbilt or a Gabe or even a Max starting in a playoff run as long as you get a third star, like if it was Austin Lebron ad some other star and then you had a limited fifth starter. That's one thing. But if they can't get like a rock solid star, then I think you need two rock solid starters between Austin,

Lebron and Ad. Does that make sense? So like, if I'm seeing Gabe or Van Dos start playoff games for the Lakers, I'm hoping that there's a star in there somewhere that they went after, because otherwise I don't think they have what they need in that starting lineup. But thank you for the kind words and for supporting the show.

I do sincerely appreciate your guys' support. And as you guys all know, there's plenty of negativity, especially every time player rankings come around, and so you guys always outweigh that many times over. Jason, the MAVs defense wasn't the issue in the finals. I'd argue that their defense actually held up pretty well. It was the offense that totally collapsed.

Luca had a bad defensive performance in the finals. That much is true, but his defense has only improved year over year, and as you pointed out, Boston is incredibly unique in being able to attack in that department. Luca, being a liability on defense really only showed up in the finals, and he was still the best player on the court while his co star and supporting cast totally

flat lined. And while it's not an excuse, but people are still not even taking into account his banged up knees slashed playing through injury while carrying the level of offensive load. The criticism of Luca's defense is definitely warranted, but in my opinion, it's gone overboard, and this is

the continuation of what we were talking about earlier. I think the main reason that people are pointing to is that it has something to do with his conditioning, Like he looks like someone who doesn't care about being in peak shape. So then when he gets hurt, people are going to associate it with the fact that he's not in peak shape, and so then that kind of puts a different optic around Like the optics around it are

just different, right. I agree that Boston is a bad matchup, and I do think Luca is capable of holding up defensively in the majority of matchups, which is why I still have him extremely high on this list. For the record, when I was ranking Luca on this list, the Boston series didn't have any sort of negative impact on it for me. But we'll get in more. We'll get more into that when we get to Luca, which will not be until next week. That's how high he is up

on this list. This is a very good question from one of you guys. What is your personal definition of clutch and what does a player need in order to be clutch? So I'd say that there's I'd say it's okay, this is the uh uh, I'm missing the second half of your question here. Here it is. I'd say there's

two main categories. Playing in a clutch game and having a clutch moment with the truly great players demonstrating both time and time again as examples, if I need to choose a point guard to come through in a really important game, I'd pick Steph Curry. But if I needed to put a guard on the court to hit a game tying shot or a game winning shot, I'd want Kyrie. So this is a super interesting question. Clutch to me

is about so many different things. Everyone wants to focus on shot making, right, like this is the Michael Jordan three two one at the buzzer type of shot. Right we saw Kobe Bryant was the next face of this type of thing. Kevin Durant is the face of this kind of thing now along with guys like Kyrie Irving right, But to me, clutch is so much more complicated than that.

There's decision making with the ball right, not taking a tough shot if you don't have to, making the right reads when the defense is throwing multiple defenders at a star, not turning the basketball over, gameplay, and discipline. This is

mainly on the defensive end of the floor. So like avoiding mistakes like losing a shooter when you're playing off the ball, doing the wrong thing in a coverage, like if the coverage asks you to go over the screen and you go under the screen and the guy hits the three in a big time moment, you didn't do your job within the scheme right, missing a box out like that was the big thing I was talking about with Joel Embiiden that in that game against Serbia, It's like, oh,

Embiid hit these three straight shots and they were huge shots, and I'm not trying to take that away. Those were huge feathers in his cap for that game. But then he would go right down to the other end and not do his job on the defensive glass. Like That's also part of clutch basketball, like doing your job and not making mistakes is important because in the large sample you can weather mistakes, but in the small sample, mistakes

can kill you. And then clutch defense like remember when Giannis was like single handedly shutting down the Sun's pick and roll at the end of the twenty twenty one finals, or like Lebron his ability to switch onto guards like when he switched on to Jamal Murray and the twenty twenty Western Conference Finals, or when he switched on to Derreck Rose the twenty eleven Eastern Conference Finals like that is.

Another element of being clutched is if you're just a defensive weapon that can be deployed that shuts down in action at the end of games. So like io ball is important, there are a lot of times where you'd need someone to take and make tough shots. They are an important part of clutch basketball. But simplifying clutch basketball down to just ioball is a mistake in my opinion, I don't understand how Kawhi, who hasn't played in forever, is far ahead of John Moran, while prime Jaw is

nothing close to prime Kauai. I think the metric for ranking should be consistent as you said in one of your mail bag responses. Availability as is as important as ability Right now, I'd pick Jalen Brown, Devin Booker, and Jalen Brunson ahead of Kawhi no offense. And again the main thing for me here is Kawhi and Jimmy Butler were just kind of in like a separate tier, like I put him both at twelve and thirteen as like deliberately,

as like a gap tier. But the reality is, as far as Jah goes is, jaw has had similar availability issues and never has shown anything close to the same stratosphere of playoff dominance as Kawhi Leonard did. Last question, Hey, Jason, just wondering what you think of all the discourse surrounding Steve Kerr lately. A ton of people on Twitter were trashing him during the Olympics for his lineup decisions and that vitriy all sort of started in Foba last year.

I think he did a perfectly fine job in Paris. Tatum wasn't playing well and Steph just needed to get into a groove. Even before those last two games were Stephan one nuclear, he was still demanding a ton of defensive attention, so his gravity had tremendous value. Do you think Kerr was deserving of the FOBA and Olympics head coaching positions And what mistakes, if any, do you think he made. Which coach in the league other than Spoe is objectively better than him. So there's a huge difference

between mistakes and disagreements. Coaches have philosophies and a lot of times they're trying to inflict those philosophies on to whatever their roster is now. For instance, Steve Kerr tends to solve problems with ball handling and guard play, so he went with a lot of three guard lineups with Timosa, despite the fact that he had an excellent core of forwards. That's not necessarily a mistake. It's just not necessarily what

I would do. But that's just because Kerr's basketball philosophy is different than mine, right, And so that's the thing. Like Steve Kerr, there's there was multiple pathways from when the roster was built to the gold medal. There was different ways to get there, different styles, different you know, rotations, different offensive schemes they could have run, different defensive schemes

they could have run. They could have done so many different things, right, Like we were talking before, like I wanted. I was originally thinking Tatum would start. I was originally thinking, like, oh Steph, Tatum, lebron Katie a d and just switch

everything right. Like, And here's the thing, I could have coached Tmosa if I'm not saying I'm not qualified to coach Tmosa, but if I happened to be just given that job for whatever damn reason, and I decided that that was how I was gonna do it, and I was gonna let it and beat an Aunt, you know, just take over the bench group, just letting them cook on an island, and we ran more drop coverage with

that group. And I'm not gonna get into all the things, but if I like built my own scheme, it would look different than what Steve Kerr did, and it's very possible that we could have still won the title. That wouldn't mean that I was right and Steve Kerr was wrong, or that Steve Kurz right and I was wrong. Like That's the main thing is like a lot of times we see a coach doing something and we just call it wrong or we call it mistake instead of just

different philosophy. There are times where it's wrong, like when Darvin ham is playing Torrian Prince as the starter with the Lakers when he just simply has better basketball players available behind him, and it's actively causing them to lose games as they go three to ten over a thirteen game stretch. That's different team to say won every damn game. And were there things that The main two things that I disagreed with is I thought he went a little

small a few too many three guard lineups. And then I thought the way that he used Tatum was a problem because specifically with Tatum, I thought it was a confidence thing, and I thought it could have been beneficial to lean more into Tatum early and hope that he got out of it in time for the Metal Round games. But Steve Kerr made a different decision. He's like, Tatum doesn't have it, I'm gonna use him very sparingly. I'm gonna focus on these guys. And it worked. And so

that's the thing. Like I would imagine that if I was coaching a basketball team in any sort of national context, there would be a lot of people who would disagree with things that I would do, and there would be things potentially where I was wrong, where it's like all the data says this, all the obvious eye test stuff says this, and I'm still doing this stupid ass thing.

That's one thing, but there are a lot of things in basketball where it's like you could do this, or you could do this, and this scheme might work, or this scheme might work. Like member Boston in the twenty twenty two finals, they're like running a ton of drop coverage against Steph Curry, and there was a moment through three games where you're like, it's kind of working, like

Steph's not hitting enough shots to torch it. Like he's hitting some shots, but he's not hitting enough shots, and like, I guess the idea is you're keeping your defense out of rotation, so maybe this is working. And then Game four happens and Steph Curry lights your drop coverage on fire and you lose the finals, and then all of a sudden, it's not working. And so a lot of times we end up playing the results, like what if Tmusa doesn't come back to win that game against Serbia.

Now everyone calls Steve Kerrn idiot, and that's just kind of the the reality of the job being the head coach of a you know, five plus billion dollar franchise in America, which comes with a ton of pressure. It's not an easy job. And that's the thing, Like I Steve Kerr did some things that if I had been coaching the team, I would have done differently. That doesn't make him wrong. It's just his specific basketball philosophy. And he won the damn Trophy or the gold Medal, I

should say, which is all that matters. I think Steve Kurr is the second best coach in the league behind Eric Spolstra. Uh. And that's the thing, Like there are talked to Heat fans, talk to Heat fans. I've seen Heat fans complain about Spolstra because they disagree with something he does with his basketball philosophy. And that's just kind of the reaction of the way that that job kind of just leads to a lot of criticism, right, it's

kind of unavoidable. All right, guys, That is all I have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you first supporting the show. We'll be back on Wednesday with number nine and number eight. I will see you guys. Then the volume the NFL season's right around the corner. We'll be breaking down all the off season storylines on the Colin Cowherd podcast, my Best Takes, guests like my buddy

Nick Wright. Check out the Colin Coward podcast, part of the Volume network, available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.