Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players of Last 25 Years: How Russell Westbrook & James Harden changed NBA

with twenty five, twenty four, twenty three and twenty two. Today, you guys have the JRP before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And for whatever reason you miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

Under Hoops Tonight, all right, let's talk some basketball. So I'm not gonna lie. This was way harder than the last one because you're filtering through Well, let's just make it simple, you're filtering through twenty five times as much data as you're filtering through looking at one particular NBA season. Also, there are a lot more than twenty five really good basketball players from the last twenty five years, so a lot of really good players had to miss the cut.

But honestly, I'm excited to do this for two reasons. One and it'll give you guys a general idea of how I view, you know, modern NBA history right this time, since basically since Michael Jordan, everything after Michael Jordan hit the shot. So we're not counting nineteen ninety eight, right, it's nineteen ninety nine to twenty twenty three, it's twenty

five seasons. We're basically looking at the post Jordan era here, and there's a lot of stuff that's happened in that era that I haven't really had a chance to talk about on this show. And so this kind of gives us a means with which to talk about players and historical events that I've never really gotten an opportunity to talk about on the show, and so I'm excited to do that. This list kind of gives us a means

by which to do so. Now there are major There are six major accomplishments that I factored in in order to kind of make this list work, and I'm gonna read them to you guys here in list of in order of important. So, by far, the most important accomplishment you can make in the NBA, big shock you guys could probably guess, is to be the best player on

a championship team. If you do what Nikola Jokic just just did, and you run through everybody and you hoist the trophy and you're clearly the best player on your team, that's the most valuable thing that you can do on a basketball court in the NBA. In my opinion, that's the number one most heavily weighted accomplishment. The second most heavily weighted accomplishment for me was to be the second

best player on a championship team. So, for instance, what Kobe Bryant did with the early Shaq Lakers there in two thousand, two thousand and one, two thousand and two, that was a if you produce at a star slash superstar level at least in terms of winning impact within a context of winning an NBA championship with a team as the second best player, I factored that in heavily

third was best player on a finals team. So, for instance, one of the guys who did not make my list is Tracy McGrady, and one of the guys who did make my list is Jimmy Butler. Tracy McGrady was unquestionably a better regular season player, and you look through his time in the NBA, he really dominated regular seasons, but he never made it out of the first round of

the playoffs. Jimmy Butler has been the best player on a team that made it to the NBA Finals twice and has been one of the best playoff performers of this era. So I gave heavy preferential treatment to guys who have that type of accomplishment on their resume. The fourth most heavily weighted accomplishment for me was MVP awards won so for guys like Joel Embiid, James Harden, and

Russell Westbrook. These are examples of guys that have a lot of limitations, but in my opinion, to be able to attack a season from start to finish and have us all leave that season and generally at least maybe not necessarily all agree, but at least most of us agree that this person was the best basketball player within that regular season. I think that that matters quite a bit.

Also to me, that's like there is a narrative element to it, but at the end of the day, the narrative usually has some sort of grounds to it, and that grounds is usually based in basketball production, and they dominate that particular regular season in term of the headlines, and I think that matters in terms of the history of the NBA. Fifth I put all NBA selections, so

for instance, a guy like Anthony Davis. A guy like Anthony Davis as somebody that a lot of people are not super high on, but the dude has four first team All NBA selections, So that means four times we left the season thinking that dude's the best player at his position. And I think that that matters a lot in a case like this, especially when you coupled it with the playoff success that he has now. Last, but not least, I just listed this as general consensus of

opinion among your peers. So for instance, a guy like Dwight Howard, So this guy who consistently gets made fun of and we constantly talk about all of his downsides, but the truth is during that stretch from two thousand and eight to twenty twelve, Dwight was like consensus considered one of the very best superstars in the league, Like in that top tier there during Kobe's last run in the two thousand and eight to twenty ten range, it was like Kobe and Lebron, and then it was Dwight Howard,

you know, like he was right there right and then after the Kobe ara you get in. It's like it was like right around the time of the decision, it was like Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, maybe Dwayne Wade at three, Dwight Howard at number two. Right, Like during that stretch, everybody view Dwight Howard as one of the very best players in the league. So I thought that mattered a lot in this particular type of conversation. So I narrowed it down to thirty one players for these

twenty five spots. There were six guys who missed the cut, so I want to quickly go over them and just list off quickly why they didn't make it. So Carmelo Anthony did not make my list. He never made a first team All NBA and he only got out of the first round of the playoffs twice. That was pretty much the breakdown CP three. This was by far the hardest one for me to leave out. But he just didn't

really have a career defining achievement. Like he was the best point guard in the league for a decent chunk of time, but never was really considered on the same level as the guys at the top of the league, at least the top top end, like kind of like we were just talking about Dwight Howard being in those kinds of conversations, Chris Paul was never in those kinds of conversations. Even as we look at Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Joel mb during their absolute peaks, they were pretty

consistently considered like one of the superstars, right. He had a lot of great regular seasons, but he never won

an MVP. He had a bunch of good playoff runs, but there was always like some sort of weird story, whether a good playoff run ended with him making some catastrophic mistakes like some of the early Clippers years, or recently really good playoff runs ending an injury, whether it was the twenty eighteen series against the Warriors where he pulls his hamstring or the twenty twenty one NBA Finals.

I think it was a quad injury in that series that kind of took him down, But he pretty consistently in the tail end of his career has had his good playoff runs cut short by injury. So there just wasn't really enough enough there for me to bump some of the guys ahead of him off that list. Tracey McGrady never made it out of the first round of the playoffs, so he missed my list. Damian Lillard, similar to Chris Paul, checks a lot of boxes but doesn't

really have a career defining achievement. Paul George just not quite as good as the players above him. He made six All NBA teams and four All Defensive teams, but not really a significant playoff or regular season moment like his best moment is like probably leading the Clippers to within two wins of the NBA Finals in twenty twenty one without Kawhi Leonard was good, like a good moment, but he still lost to a team that had Devin Booker as its best player, so it wasn't like an

opportunity for how he won that series. Maybe that becomes a different story, right, and then Mayor Genobli was one of the harder ones. He was probably the second best player on the two thousand and five Spurs, right, and was a critical piece of that Spurs dynasty, but is missing too many of the regular season accomplishments and the consistent playoff dominance to really bump some of the other guys off of the list. So that leaves us starting with number twenty five, and these all four guys that

are actually active NBA players. As it turns out, just by the way the list worked out, you'll notice we'll get to a lot of inactive guys later on in the list, But number twenty five for me was Joe el Embat. Now what I'm gonna do for each player is I'm gonna list out their awards that they won. I'm gonna read their stats from their prime, so I'm gonna pull out the chunky years that I consider to be their prime. We'll read out their stats both in

the regular season and the playoffs. We'll go over there claim to fames, basically the thing that kind of defines them as a basketball player. Right. Then we'll look at their archetype, basically talk about what their basketball archetype is within a team, we'll talk about their career defining achievements, so basically their pinnacle moment, and then lastly will go over their biggest what if. That should give us a lot of opportunity to hit some interesting stuff. So Joel

embiid his awards. He made First Team All NBA once. This team was the first year. He is five total All NBA selections. He has won the last two scoring titles, he has made three All Defense teams, and he was the winner of the twenty twenty three regular season MVP award. I put his prime down from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty three, obviously the present in the regular season. In that span, he's averaged twenty eight points, twelve rebounds, and

four assists on sixty one percent true shooting. In the playoffs, down a level from their twenty four points, eleven rebounds and three excuse me, three assists on fifty eight percent true shooting. Now, in my opinion, Joel Embid's claim to fameous. He's been the best scorer in the NBA for the last three years now. He leads the NBA in points per game over that span, and he's got a bliss during sixty four percent true shooting percentage over that span.

So in terms of regular season basketball for the last third of a decade, nobody has been better than Joel Embiid ats scoring the basketball, so that is kind of his claim to fame. He's also been one of the best rim protectors in the league over that span. Doesn't really manifest all the time in shot blocks or block shots, I should say, but just in general in rim deterrence and anchoring a good defense, Joel Ebid's been one of

the best guys in the league at that span. He's definitively been one of the top two guys at his position in that span, although I think he's consistently been a level below Nikole Jokic, and he's consistently been considered one of the ten best players in basketball for about ten years now. That kind of goes to that sixth item that I had in terms of the way you're

discussed around your peers. If you're making top ten lists over the last half decade, Joel Embiid's on it, which I think is incredibly impressive, especially when you factor in the amount of talent that's in the league right now now, Joel ebids archetype. He's basically your throwback two way center, one of the few guys in the league now that you can act. I'd say there's two in the entire league between him and Nikola Jokic that you can actually

run your offense through because they're skilled enough. But at the same time, Joel Embid's an old school throwback, you know, big old rimp protector, plays with a lot of the similar type of offensive style that you saw back in the nineties, that golden age of centers. That kind of is the type of player that Joel Embiid represents in my opinion, good mix of perimeter skill with power right, although I'd like to see his power game kind of

go up a level. His limitations somewhat injury prone, struggles to handle double teams, and struggles to score in the postseason when he gets to the postseason for whatever reason, it's usually a combination of injuries, I think in just general fatigue and uh and you know, like stuff related to stamina. He just struggles to knock down his jump shot in that stage, doesn't get the same amount of foul calls as he normally gets, and has obviously dealt

with some injury issues in those situations. So those are his limitations. His career defining achievement was winning the MVP this year. Really earned it too, Which was funny because I think there's this point there at two thirds of the way through the season where like a lot of people were saying Jokic, Jokics was a deserving candidate. I was kind of leaning towards Janis at that point, but Embiid was kind of like third on my list at

that point. And then there was this whole kind of thing over whether or not it was too narrative based, and there was all these discussions. It kind of got toxic. But then legitimately, while Jokichen Jannis kind of both tailed off a little bit ten this season, and Beid just continued kicking everybody's ass the rest of the year, had a bunch of big wins and head to head matchups against important players, and like genuinely deserved the MVP award,

like a truly earned MVP award. And that's where I shouted out in our player rankings. I shouted out his competitiveness and just how much I appreciated him wanting that thing, wanting it so bad and going out on the basketball court and earning it straight up. I think that was his career to finding achievement, and the next step for him obviously is translating it to the playoffs. His biggest what if in my opinion, will Joel Embiid ever be

able to stay healthy for a full playoff run. Now we've talked about the different things in terms of his approach and his foul grifting and stuff that struggle in the postseason, but the biggest one in my opinion is the health. As soon as he deals with some sort of nagging knee injury, it throws off the energy transfer from his jump shot from his feet through his hands and it messes up his muscle memory and then he

can't make a damn jump shot. I went over his jump shooting numbers in our player rankings videos, but like he was consistently a very good jump shooter in the regular season in the last few years and it just hasn't translated to the postseason. And I think injury injuries played the biggest role in that. So the biggest one if for me with Joel Embiid is will he ever be able to stay healthy for a full playoff run.

All right, Moving on to number twenty four, James Harden six first team All NBA selections, seven total All NBA selections, back to back to back scoring titles twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen in twenty twenty. He also won the assist title in twenty seventeen and this last year in Philly. Many of you guys probably aren't aware of that that James Harden led the league and assists this year. He won the MVP Award in twenty eighteen. I put his prime

down from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty. There's been a significant drop off basically since he left Houston. In the twenty twenty one one season. Regular season numbers over that span thirty points, six rebounds, eight assists on sixty one percent true shooting. Playoffs twenty eight points, six assists, seven rebounds on fifty eight percent true shooting. So, and then we're going to talk about this more in a little bit. But not a huge drop off from the regular season

to the playoffs in terms of his production. A little bit of one, but not a huge drop off. But he's known as one of the worst playoff performers of his era. I want to dive into that concept a little bit here, in a little bit, now, what is what is James Harden's claim to fame? In my opinion, similar to Joel Embiid, he was the league's best regular

season scorer for a while. Basically during that span there in the late twenty tens, there was nobody in the league that was better at scoring in the NBA regular season. I think at one point, like he to, he had the MVP season, but he followed that up averaging thirty six points a game for an entire season, shot sixty

two percent true shooting. During that span, he kind of rigged the game, so to speak, in the sense that he just kind of figured out a way to spam a specific action essentially a pick and roll that would either lead to an ISO against switches or shot in the pick and roll where he could consistently generate a certain amount of points per possession. And Houston just leaned on that and spammed it and spammed it and spammed it, and teams really struggled to handle it in the regular season,

which led to him having those ridiculous scoring numbers. He popularized this step back three. This was something that was a big story on Twitter a few weeks back, and like, the discussion was basically centered around, you know, whether or not James Harden is underrated in terms of his overall impact on basketball, and I tend to agree here. James Harden is known as an underperformer when it comes to the playoffs and things along those lines, but he is

deeply impactful in the culture of basketball. Like I'll give you as an example, James Harden is not my favorite player, but one of the most significant chunks of my game that I've added in the last five years is an arsenal of step back threes that I literally added from watching James Harden. You watch young basketball players, now, there's

a footwork too. It's basically that extra side step. And I'm not talking about the really dramatic shuffle step that a lot of people think as a travel I'm just thinking, like that classic you're in your high hesitation and you just take that one extra step to the side when before you rise up, that's considered part of your gather. Right, That's a completely legal move that almost every star in the league uses. Now. James Harden popularized that footwork. He

may not have invented it, but he popularized it. He made it basically, he basically made it a normal shot to take an NBA games by demonstrating that if you work hard enough at it, you can get good enough at it. I also put down here that he invented modern helio centrism. So helo centrism kind of started with Lebron in the early twenty tens, but it was never

like a bread and butter thing. It was always something that Lebron would go to in specific playoff moments, so like when things would break down or in specific positions in like a fourth quarter situation or a late game situation, Lebron would go helio centric. It'd be like, rather than having the point guard bring the ball up the floor, let's just let our best player have the ball. He'll bring it up, we'll space the floor, and he'll either pick on a matchup, he'll run, pick and roll. Right.

Lebron kind of invented the baseline for that, but he didn't do it very often. James Harden was basically the first guy to just be like, I'm doing this every single possession for an entire regular season. He basically took a singular concept and made it the foundation of their entire offense there in Houston for all those years, so that I kind of give him credit for that specifically kind of modern spacing as well. What you've seen before

the Russell Westbrook trade. When he came to Houston, it was four out one in classic like Clincapella, setting the screens, rolling hard to the ram Dwight Howard a little bit in the early age or early era there with James Harden. When Russell Westbrook came, it became more of a five out kind of thing. But they kind of set up that like we're just gonna have a shooter in the corner, shooter in the corner. We're gonna have a long distance shooter.

A guy was comfortable shooting from like twenty seven twenty eight feet, you know, that would sit on the right wing. You know, guys like Eric Gordon Anderson, the guys like that would sit on the wing. And that guy kind of like pulls that defender even further out because he can shoot from further behind the line. Then James Harden works from the opposite wing. He'll either call for the ball screen and then work off a switch if he doesn't need the ball screen anymore. He'll put Clint Capella

back down in the dunker spot. That whole concept of modern spacing and helio centrism, in my opinion, was kind of invented by James Harden and the Houston Rockets. His archetype is interesting because is the body and skill set of an old fashioned two guard, like one of the ones we've used to see, right, like six five sixty six long arms, you know, a strong, good quickness, athleticism, tons of skill, but none of the old fashioned play style.

Every other two guard had so much more offensive diversity in James Harden kind of became this classic modern, you know, helio centric shot creator, right. So I think that does lead to his playoff limitations, which we'll get to in a little bit. He also was a bad slash lazy defensive player who took pride when he would get hunted in post mismatches and had the size to kind of hold up well in those situations, which helped a lot in Houston's switching scheme that they used in twenty eighteen,

which we're gonna talk about right now. So, in my opinion, James Harden's career defining achievement was winning the MVP in twenty eighteen. If you remember that Rockets team had a guy named Jeff Bizelic. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I always butcher it Bezdelic. I think Jeff Bizelic. They basically brought him in and he designed the rocket switching scheme essentially, like we're gonna switch everything, and it was entirely constructed around the idea of how to beat the

Golden State Warriors. Essentially, the Golden State Warriors run this crazy motion offense, and they have this flow that just

keeps everybody involved in it and no one can guard it. Right, But what if we switched everything and we basically turned them into an isolation team and baited them into their worst tendencies, Like, we have a better chance of beating the Warriors if Katie and Steph are just running ISO every time, then if we have them running in the flow of the offense and it's crazy, because it damn near worked. They were up three games to two before

Chris Paul pulled his hamstring. But this is where I want to talk about a little bit about James Harden's playoff struggles, because there's a narrative that kind of came out of that sequence of years that they just couldn't get over the Warriors hump. And there's a lot of truth to that that I've frequently said, the two thousand and seven team, twenty eighteen Warriors are the most talented

team that I've ever seen assembled. Right, Like, I've seen, you know, great playoff performers like Lebron James lose to that team. I've seen, you know, they're they're not. There's no shame necessarily and losing to that particular team. But if you were there in the moment and you watched those games, what was unfortunate was James Harden didn't really fulfill his end of the bargain in those specific situations. So the defense actually worked, it really stagnated Golden State,

caused them a lot of problems. They lost a lot of their flow and it was a huge part of how they were up three games to two. Those games were stuck in the mud. But over the final six games of the twenty eighteen Western Conference Finals, James Harden was fourteen for sixty nine from three. That's twenty percent. Fourteen for sixty nine. Everyone's like, oh, they missed twenty

seven straight threes in game seven. A big part of that was they became so one dimensional in their offensive approach, where it was like they were just taking any three they got a decent look at, even if it was heavily contested. James Harden taking these extremely difficult step back threes and always falling and trying to draw fouls, it

became easy to guard. And if you actually go back and watch that series, Golden State is vacating the middle of the floor to chase guys off the three point line and to play up on James Harden and make him feel uncomfortable. And the one dimensional nature of their approach specifically made them easy to guard, which is a big part of why James Harden was fourteen for sixty nine from three over the final six games of that series. And then we go down to the twenty nineteen series.

Kevin Durant went down in game four. There was a two game stretch there in game five, in game six where they had an opportunity to win the series without Kevin Durant on the floor, and they literally went in and lost in Golden State, and then they went home and they lost at home, and at home they were within two with two minutes left, a chance to extend that series and send it to seven, where they would have had a good chance to win with Kevin Duran

unavailable and James Harden had back to back to back careless turnovers at the end of the game, just throwing the ball away, that famous one there on the base line where he just imbounds it and basically just throws it to the Warriors, like time and time again, it's not about with James Harden the averages. Like I told,

I'll reagi the averages again. James Harden regular season thirty six and eight, sixty one percent through shooting during his prime playoffs twenty eight six and seven on fifty eight percent try shooting. If I told you any other player in the league average twenty eight six and seven on fifty eight percentry shooting of an eight year span in the playoffs, you'd be like, that's awesome. But it was

never about the averages with James Harden. It was always about what would happen in pivotal moments at the end of series, which takes you back to that helio centric concept early in series when teams are not prepared for you yet or not as prepared as they will be towards the end of the series. The James heliocentric spread

pick and roll in ISO thing would work. I would encourage you guys to go look in that twenty eighteen playoff run, Go look at how well he played in the first game of a series, and then look at how he played at the end of the series, and you'll see it in a clear drop off, many times culminating in a two for eleven type of game when

the series was on the line. In a game five, or Game six or a game seven, the averages are fine, but James Harden had these incredibly ugly games that in large part were fueled by that completely redundant and predictable approach. The biggest what if for me in James Harden's career was what if James Harden had played ten years earlier. It wasn't so analytically focused. I blamed Darryl Mory in a lot of ways for the way that James Harden's career went, and again I wasn't in those locker rooms.

So a lot of this is pontification. But the way I think about it, I'm like, I could just see James Harden playing a certain way, and I could see Darryl Mory going like, hey, look, every time you run an ISO, we get one point two points per possession. Every time you run a spread pick and roll, we get you know, one point one five points per possession. Why are we doing anything else? Let's just do this every single possession, and the coaching staff getting invested in it.

And then they almost it almost became comical in the sense that they just got rid of any sort of traditional basketball movement motion and flow and just leaned so heavily on the James Harden isolation and pick and roll thing.

They completely erased any of his off ball movement. They completely erased his mid range pull up jump shot, both things that were big parts of his game when he was in Oklahoma City, and it caused him to reach these incredible statistical highs, but it limited him in the playoffs. And so I wonder if he played a more traditional style, had he been drafted in the early two thousands and and you know, came up under a more traditional coach, would he have been a better playoff player because he

would have been more diverse in his offensive approach. Would he have been a better defender because he went have had to devote as many resources to just spamming, isolation and pick and roll every single time. I'm curious to see. I mean, even if we get rid of the ten years earlier modifier and just say, if he didn't have any sort of association with Daryl Morey, what would happen with James Harden in his career? I'd be really curious

to see. Number twenty three Russell Westbrook. Two time first Team All NBA, nine time total NBA selections, two scoring titles twenty fifteen and twenty seventeen, three assists titles twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty one, and he won the MVP Award in twenty seventeen. His prime I put down from twenty eleven to twenty twenty. It was pretty much after

he left Houston that things kind of fell off. Regular season twenty five eight to nine on fifty four percent true shooting, playoffs twenty five seven and eight on a fifty one percent true shooting. His claim to fame. In my opinion, Russell Westbrook is the most statistically impressive player of his era. Obviously, he was the first player since Oscar Robinson to average a triple double for an entire

regular season. He's actually done that four times now. There was a peak run in Oklahoma City that was insane. His last three seasons in the thunder Jersey twenty seven, eleven, and ten just ridiculous statistical production. He also was the best athlete of his era pound for pound, in my opinion, really, like if in those of you guys who were old enough to watch Russell Westbrook when he was younger, there really wasn't anything like him when he was in his

prime athletically. It just the burst that he had. And it's crazy because he still has a little bit of burst and he still looks like one of the best athletes on the floor in any given game. But back then he was on this entire different stratosphere. Again, like, there are better athletes in the league, but pound for pound is a six to three frame. There was nobody that moved the way that Russell Westbrook did. You probably

all have a favorite Russell Westbrook dunk. My favorite there's one in particular that always sticks out to me, and it's if you were to do a top one hundred Russell Westbrook's dunk dunk thing I'm not sure it would make the top thirty, but this one, for whatever reason, just kind of resonated with me personally. Was he was into the thunder jersey. It was after KD left. I think it might have been in the last year with Katie. It was somewhere in that twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen range.

But he had a mask on because he had broken his nose or had some sort of orbital issue, right, And he got a rebound and went the length of the floor and just took off from just inside of the free throw line and dunked it with two hands, like rose up with two hands and slammed it down. And as the play was developing, you're like, there's no you're not even thinking dunk because it doesn't even make sense for a player to attempt to dunk in that situation.

And he rises up and just throws down this easy two handed jam, and you're like, oh my god, what did I just watch? There really was nothing like Russell Westbrook in his athletic prime. His archetype was your classic hyperathletic rim pressuring guard. He was consistently one of the

league's best rim attackers. He was also excellent at hitting shooters and dunkers as the team would kind of, you know, collapse around him as he was driving to the baskets, specifically shooters in the corner and hitting dunkers right under the basket. He was also a pretty good defensive player during the KD Era still had a lot of the mistakes that he makes now, like missing box outs, losing

his man off ball. He still has mistakes like that, but he was just so unbelievably athletic that the positives outweigh the negatives in a lot of ways. He's also a good mid range pull up shooter. At that phase of his career, he could hit about forty percent of them there in that you know, twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen range. His biggest limitations he was not good at finishing at the rim. It's funny because everyone thinks of Russell Westbrook as struggling to finish at the rim in

a Lakers jersey. That was always the case. He just got there more often. He was consistently one of the leaders in shot attempts in the restricted area in the NBA, but he always shot around fifty five percent. He just never got to that sixty sixty five percent that you're hoping for from a high level basket attacker. That prevents some of the issues that come from missing laps. There's advantages to missing laps, right, occupying rim protectors, opening up

offensive rebound opportunities, but consistently missing layups at that tune. Like, it's one thing for me to say, hey, Kevin Durant, you're shooting seventy eight percent at the rim, Dude, take more shots there, you know, because you need to pressure the rim more. It's another thing when you're missing half of your rim attempts and it's just constantly leading to fast break opportunities. The other way, that was a consistent

issue for Russ during that time. The biggest issue for me with Russ was he just always struggled to play at different pace, in different speeds. He just struggled to manage games, which is such an important part of the point guard position. It's a decision making position. My favorite example of this to kind of demonstrate it is the twenty sixteen Western Conference Finals against Golden State, the game

sixth Clay game. Right, we always think of that game as the Klay Thompson game, but if you actually go back and watch that game, the Thunder would have won it anyway, regardless of any Klay Thompson outburst if it wasn't for Russell Westbrook's decision making at the end of the game. He had four turnovers in the final two minutes of that game. Four. There were two in particular that I wanted to highlight that kind of demonstrate what

I'm talking about. At one point, the game was tied at one oh one, I believe, and he runs a two man game with Kevin Durant. He's being guarded by Clay Thompson, and Kevin Durant's being guarded by Andrea Guadala, who's probably the best perimeter defender in the league at that time. They run the screen and they get the switch and Kevin Durant kind of goes out to the wing and holds his arm up wanting the ball against Clay Thompson. Russell Westbrook decides to iso Andre Gudala instead,

just objectively a bad decision in that specific situation. Tries to drive by Andre Andre beats him to the spot, loses his balance a little bit, tries to go into a fadeaway. Andre Gadala strips him clean right and then the couple possessions. Later, Clay hits that big three on the right wing. They're up one oh four to one o one. It's a one possession game still though you've

got a chance. They get a stop on a miss steph Curry layup and instead of like walking the ball up the floor to run your set and try to get a good shot, it's a three on three break. There's no advantage. At one point, it's actually three on four as Golden State is sprinting back and Russ is just pushed the ball up the floor with no advantage, and he ends up getting stripped in traffic by Draymond Green,

just a critical turnover. And that's the thing is, like we think about those mistakes now, we think about him taking the pull up jumper against the Blazers in the early season with the Lakers right or like bad decisions

here or there. But he was doing that kind of stuff when he was in his prime, and it was a significant part of the limitations that the Thunder faced is in big time playoff moments, Russ was always playing the same speed and in a big sample size right where you have a hundred possessions, Russ making mistakes that version of Russ was so damn good that it outweighed

the bad. Right, But in any small sample size, let's say you've got you're rolling the dice, and like, if it's one or two, three or four, it's a good outcome, but if it's five or six, it's a bad outcome. If I do that a hundred times, I'm gonna get a lot more bad outcomes than good or good outcomes

and bad outcomes. And that's great for my team. But in a pivotal situation, I'm rolling dice that has a one out of three chance to make a mistake, And in this particular situation, with the season on the line, he rolled mistake four times in a row down the stretch of a game, and so that was the big thing that kind of held him back. Otherwise he'd be

much much higher on this particular list. Biggest what if of Russell Westbrook's career in my opinion, and this is one that I don't think is over, but what if he had evolved his game as he aged. Ever since he left Houston in twenty twenty, he has not been the same player, but he put up big numbers in a losing context with the Wizards, and then he really struggled to play in a winning context on the Lakers, right, And a big part of that is as his athleticism

has declined in his good part. Now the dice is more like one, two, three is good and four or five six is bad. And on any given possession, it's like, you know, one game, it comes out positively for you, in the next game, it comes out negatively for you. Now it's more important than ever for him to polish up a lot of his specific role player tendencies right, his off ball defense, his ability to box out, decision making, all these things are suddenly much much more and he's

really struggled with those. You look at a guy like Jason Kidd, who had this huge prime in the early two thousands with the new Jersey Nets. He gets to Dallas and completely evolves and becomes this role player, spot up shooter guy who's not doing a lot on the ball, who really commits on the defensive end of the floor. Suddenly he becomes an imperative piece of a championship team.

I'd like to see Russell Westbrook do that. We saw some glimpses of that with the Clippers this year and he's on a deal now that's a much lower dollar amount that I think will help Russ kind of come to terms with that fact. And I'm interested to see if he has that in his late prime. But to me, that's the biggest what if of his career to this point and will be the biggest what if of the remainder of his career. Will he evolve his game as he ages? All? Right, last, but not least for today.

Number twenty two Jimmy Butler No first team All NBA selections, but five total all NBA selections, five All defense selections, and his prime I put down from twenty fifteen the present regular season twenty one point six rebounds, five assists, fifty nine percent you shooting, playoffs twenty three seven and five on fifty seven percent trough shooting. His claim to fame one of the best playoff performers of this era.

How do you even describe Jimmy Butler? You heard me read the stats, even in the playoffs twenty three seven and five, fifty seven percent yourre shooting. Nothing exceptional happening there. But I'll keep it really simple. Jimmy Butler has twenty three to thirty point playoff games that ranks sixteenth out of all the players on my list. He has eight forty point playoff games that ranks seventh out of all

the players on this list. For whatever reason, when he gets to the postseason in specific single game samples, typically big pivotal playoff games that have a chance to swing series, the dude just transforms into an all time great playoff players. There's no other way to describe it. And as a result of that, he has been the undisputed best player

on two NBA finals teams. And this wasn't you know Lebron James making eight straight finals with the Cavs, where like, yeah, he was the best player in the league, but he probably doesn't make eight straight finals in the West, right, It's not like that. This was a top heavy East with teams that were favored over him. Bucks teams and Celtics teams. Even the Sixers teams were consistently considered better than Miami, and Miami just beat them and made to

the finals twice. He outplayed Giannis in a playoff series twice. That's the It's just it's difficult, right, But I mean, here's how I'll describe it to my kids. Jimmy was one of those guys who always flew under the radar, but if you ever had to face him in a playoff series, he was absolutely terrifying. There's no other way to put it. I've said this in the player rankings video, but his approach kind of reminds me of Lebron. It's a it's a smaller version of the Lebron James playoff approach.

It's like two way dominance fueled by on defense, being willing to take just about any assignment on ball or in help. He could pick you apart on the other end of the floor as this big point forward that was gonna matchup, attack and pick on your worst defender and bully his way to the basket and play make out of that. It just reminds me of the lesser version of Lebron James, which is exactly why he's been

such a good playoff performer in his career. And the biggest part of it is you just always seem to be the most confident player on the court for whatever reason, and confidence just matters in basketball. You have a muscle memory that you go to and if you're nervous and you're hesitant, it can affect that. But if you're always so confident that even in big game situations, you are calm and your heart rate is under control and your body is relaxed, that's the way you feel when you're practicing,

and then that practice translates to the game better. I think Jimmy Butler's insane levels of confidence I think fuel him a lot in these playoff situations. His archetype, he's a classic undersized point forward, right. He has the athletic tools to be a dominant perimeter defender, but he's not quite big enough to play some of the backline defensive positions that you see a lot of the other big forwards in the league play right, So offensively, he's more

of like a three or a four excuse me. Offensively he plays more like a power forward right, more of a four power game. Back to the basket rim pressure and playmaking. And then on the defensive end, he's more of a primitive player right. He takes a lot of point of attack assignments, he plays passing lanes a lot. He's very forward aggressive right. So he's kind of a mix of two different archetypes of players. Back to the basket game, is that classic old school forward. He's very

patient and methodical. He's got a good arsenal of hook shots and fadeaways over both shoulders. He also has a really good gift for getting players out of position and drawing fouls. And he's a high level playmaker. He has seven games in the playoffs where he's had at least

ten assists, including three times in the NBA Finals. His limitations he was an inconsistent jump shooter, and he always seems to wear down, and especially in like the conference finals finals, he's prone to like bad games where he'll have a single digit nin er, a game where he just it doesn't even look like he's as engaged as he usually is. But then he'll follow that up and be freaking amazing the next game. So even as I talk about that as a limitation, none of it really

makes any sense. It's a very difficult player to kind of compartmentalize in that sense. Biggest what if of his career in my opinion, what if Jimmy Butler had made that pull up three over Jason Tatum. I think it was over Jason Tatum. I can't remember who was over, but on the right wing, that could have won the Eastern Conference Finals last year. Why I had that as such a big one if I think that was easily their best chance to win the title. That Lakers team

was too talented. They weren't gonna beat them. It was like Lebron James and Anthony Davis at the peak of their powers, two top five players. You just weren't gonna beat them. And they had all this size in athleticism and defense, and a good coach and all this stuff. Right, This Nuggets team was probably even better than that Lakers team, right,

So they just didn't really have a chance. Steph Curry was the best player in the league in twenty twenty two in my opinion, but Andrew Wiggins was the second best player on that team, and they were pretty undersized, and they had some legitimate personne elementations. Now, to be clear, I would have picked the Warriors to win that series, but I would have actually given Jimmy Butler in the heat a fighting chance to win that series in a way that I did not give them in the Nuggets

series of the Lakers series. And so it's interesting to me because I actually think that was their best chance to win the title. Jimmy hits that shot they'd go to the finals. Obviously, he'd have to outplay Steph to have any chance to win the series, and I don't think he would have, but he would have had a chance at least, Like it didn't matter. He could have played Yolks to his stalilmate, they would have lost. The Nuggets were too good. He could have played Lebron to

his stailmate, they would have lost. The Lakers were too good. So, like you kind of get the point like that, I as much as I respect the Warriors, that particular team was more of like a one of those situations where the total was more than the some of their parts, right, and they just had this one truly great player. I would have given the Heat a decent chance to beat

those guys. So the biggest one if of Jimmy Butler's career, in my opinion, is what if the Heat would have won the Eastern Conference Finals in twenty twenty two and Jimmy would have had chance you play the Warriors in that finals. Alright, guys, that is all I have for today. We'll be back tomorrow with twenty one, twenty nineteen, and eighteen. As always, I appreciate you, guys, and I will see you that