NBA Player Rankings #12-11: Donovan Mitchell & Kevin Durant

can't imagine it going any better than it did. You know how, anybody who has ever been to Alaska knows there's a little bit of a crap shoot with weather, and we just got so lucky and I got to see so many cool things. I'll talk about that trip more at the tail end of the show today. We're getting back into our player rankings with number twelve and number eleven, the beginning of a segment of this list that was far and away the hardest segment for me

to rank. But we're getting to two more players today. You guys know the joke before we get started to subscribe to the Hoops and Not YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLT so you guys don't miss show announcement. SOTI forget about a podcast feed where you get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front.

Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there. The last, but not least, if you guys want to get questions into the mail bags, we're doing Friday mail bags geared around the player rankings here for the next month or so. Again, if you disagree with the ranking, if you think a guy should be higher, lower, should have made the list, shouldn't have made the list, whatever it is you disagree with,

just lay that out as concisely as you can. A little elevator. Pitch in a comment under this video that says mail bag with a colon, and we'll get to it in our mail bags at on Fridays throughout the remainder of this list. All right, let's talk some basketball, all right, So this was by far the hardest section of this list for me to rank. Kawhi Leonard and Joel Embiid are very clearly at the bottom. Right, Like, we all know that Kawhi can outplay the top players

in the league. We saw him do it against Jokichen in Game two, if I remember correctly, in that first round series, he's capable of reaching that level. We know Joelmbi when he's healthy, could very well be one of the top two or three players in the entire NBA, right, But they both obviously have this injury history that pushes them towards the bottom, and Kawi is obviously in better shape now as someone who was able to finish his last playoff run, so he got the nod for number thirteen.

Joel was at number fourteen. That was pretty straightforward, right, But there is an incredibly minuscule gap between number twelve on this list and number five. For example, I'll just go ahead and spoil today's rankings. I have Donovan Mitchell at number twelve and Kevin Durant at number eleven. We'll obviously do deep dives into both of those players today. Donovan Mitchell was just the best player on the second

best team in the league this year. He averaged thirty points per game on fifty seven percent true shooting in this year's playoff run. He made first team All NBA and he finished fifth and MVP voting. He had a forty eight point playoff game, Andy forty three point playoff game just in this last playoff front and there isn'take case for him to be above of anybody that I have ahead of him on this list. For me, at least personally, I think you could argue him to be higher.

But for me, I couldn't find a case to move him up from twelve, top five in MVP voting, first Team All NBA, and I struggle to put him higher than twelve. That's the nature of this part of the list. And Kevin Durant is Kevin Durant. KD catches a ton of crap online and I disagree with most of it. I don't blame him for what went wrong in Phoenix. He was getting crap online for not leading his team in shot attempts since twenty eighteen. I don't view that

as a negative for KD. Of you, that is a positive. We're going to talk about that today. I think he's going to massively improve Houston's ability to compete for a championship, and I think he firmly meets the criteria of this tier, which again this tier, the criteria is a player who on any given night can outplay the very best players in the world. They just struggle to consistently get to that level. Kdi very much is in that tier, and like I don't have him in my top ten. It's

just a testament to how deep this league is. The top twelve is completely insane. I moved the names around a half dozen times. Multiple guys went up and down several spots in different versions of this list before I landed where I landed. The point is, we are very much splitting hairs at this point, and if you disagree with me and you go, Jason, I have KD at five, Jason, I have Donovan Mitchell at five. I know I'm going

to argue against it, but I'm not. There's such a small gap there that I think it's at least defensible. The guys that I have above these guys at this point in the list, I just viewed having a more liable night tonight trade. So maybe an apex athlete who brings insane motor every night, or an offensive engine. You guys know how I feel about offensive engines. I don't think Durant or Mitchell kind of fall into that specific category. Guys who make offense easier for everyone on the roster

every single night. Or a defensive monster, like a guy who's just an absolute pain in the ass athlete with super long arms that no one can deal with on the defensive end of the floor. That just sets a super high floor for everybody. Those are the kinds of guys that I ended up favoring over Donovan Mitchell and

Kevin Durant. But these gaps are incredibly close. I just wanted to emphasize that from five to twelve, I mean, you could just shake it up and like a bunch of yachtzi dice and just kind of see how it lands, and you're gonna be able to make a decent case for that rank. But let's get started. But number twelve, Donovan Mitchell UFC three nineteen is blowing back to the

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bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG, dot co slash audio last year in review for Donna, and he played in seventy one games. That was his healthiest season since twenty nineteen,

which was his second year in the league. He averaged twenty four points, five rebounds, and five assists, one point five stocks, forty four percent from the field, thirty seven percent from three to eighty two percent from the line fifty three percent, and effective field goal percentage that's just field goal percentage waited for threes in fifty eight percent in true shooting. Really stacked up the accolades this year.

He finished his sixth consecutive All Star appearance, first Team All NBA in fifth, and MVP voting for me like a classic example of why box score watching is so silly, Donovan, his numbers were down across the board year over year. Points per game down, rebounds per game down. It's this per game down, field goal percentage down, block steals down, three point percentage down, free throw percentage down. Everything was down year over year, and he was flat out better

this year than he was the previous year. Keep that in mind when we get to KD and we start talking about his field goal numbers, because it's the same kind of idea that I think a lot of people get hung up on now. To be clear, yes, box score production is an important manifestation of how you're producing for a basketball team, but it is not the only manifestation of how well a basketball player is playing. The

evidence is in the play type data. Even though Donovan Mitchell's individual statistics weren't as impressive as the previous season, when Donovan did more with the basketball and when Donovan had you know, he's running a lot more pick and roll every game. He's just he was just more on the right. Even though his numbers came down, even though his individual statistics weren't as impressive, Donovan did things that helped the Cleveland Cavaliers as a team score more points

just shot creation data. In twenty twenty four, Donovan ran one thousand and sixty two pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups including passes, got one thousand and eighty three points. That's one point zero two points per possession, which is decent FIR star guard, but it's nothing to write home about. In twenty twenty five, he ran one thousand, three hundred and sixteen pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups, obviously higher volume with him being healthier, but fourteen hundred and

five points. That's one point zero seven points per possession. That's five points better per one hundred possessions than he was the previous year. That puts him into an elite tier as a high volume shot creator. The Cleveland Cavaliers functioned better as an offense with Donovan Mitchell this year than they did last year, even though his individual scoring volume in percentages went down. So the question is how how did Donovan Mitchell help the Calves this year compared

to last year? And the short answer is he bought him to what Kenny Atkinson was trying to do with that Calves offense, getting them to play more fast paced, more in transition, more ball in player movement. It required quicker decision making, and most importantly, it required Donovan to give up the basketball more and to play more in the flow of the offense, and he did just that.

Here's a simple stat to demonstrate how much Donovan Mitchell gave up the basketball last year premba dot COM's tracking data in twenty twenty four, Donovan Mitchell averaged six point three minutes of possession time per game. In twenty twenty five, That dropped from six point three to four point nine. Another way to put it is, Donovan's time of possession dropped by twenty two point three per year over year.

That's a significant a decrease there. And yet despite a twenty two point three percent decrease in his time of possession, his scoring volume only dropped by less than ten percent, a little over nine percent, from twenty six point six points per game to twenty four points per game. He basically refined his role to fit exactly what the team needed.

He took a step back and allowed the finally healthy version of Darius Garland to do more of what Darius does best, which is initiate the offense with his drivele penetration, and that advantaged creation just greased the wheels in so many different ways for the Cavs as we know. And then in shorter bursts when the situation called for it, Donovan stepped in and was super aggressive. He actually shot the ball, or I should say, passed the ball less per touch last year than the year before, So he

actually passed the ball less when he had it. But that was what the team needed. The team needed him to seed control of a large portion of the offense to Darius in a larger extent than he did in previous years, and for him to win, he had the ball do what Donovan Mitchell does best, score the damn basketball. The team needed him to be a score, and so he took back some of his touches and refined and

simplified his approach to being more of a score. In short, he cut down on his touches but focused on what he does best and that led to a explosive scoring season for the Cavs offense. Donovan was lethally efficient in pick and roll this year. He's actually more efficient as a scorer in pick and roll this year than he was the year before, despite his shooting percentages being down

across the board. Overall, he was one of only six players in the entire NBA last year to attempt at least five hundred shots in pick and roll and to get over a point per shot. He did this by shooting fifty percent on twos. Again, that's a big part of that shot making and pick and roll right fueled by a deadly floater. He shot fifty two percent on

over one hundred and fifty floaters this year. Donovan was one of only eight players in the NBA to attempt at least one hundred and fifty floaters and make more than half of them. We're gonna talk about it more and when we get to here in just a second. But he had a really useful set of counter moves in the mid range, and he's always had these, but he's really refined it into a super efficient part of

his game. We'll get to that in a second. Then he shot thirty six point four percent on pull up threes, and that's a very good number because of the efficiency boost that you get from that three point shot. That was one point zero nine points per pull up three in pick and roll. That's very good. Classic for Donovan Mitchell is a combination of what we've talked about with

a lot of the athletic guards in the league. The combination of that downhill burst mixed with the pull up jumper that can get defenders either on their heels or he can easily pull up or up on their toes, or he can ease the league go past them. And again this is where the mid range counters come in. Donovan had this ridiculous over the top gather, I should

say has. He's had it for years. This ridiculous over the top gather that he would pull over a defender that would step underneath him, and he'd step into a floater out of that, and then he was really nasty

with that eurostep. Those little moves in the mid range allowed him to quickly get separation, almost like John Morant esque, with his ability to quickly get separation in that short range, that five to ten foot range where he could get to an easy shot that he could make over fifty percent from of the time, which removed some of that variants and gave him a reliable piece of shot making that gave him the ability to be one of only six players in the NBA a shot over fifty percent

pick and roll on a massive volume with that or over a point per possession, I should say on that massive volume of over five hundred attempts in pick and roll. He also scored really efficiently off the ball. Donovan got one point one one points per possession and spot up situations fueled by him shooting a crazy forty seven percent on unguarded catch and shoot threes and then some really good close out attacking when guys would chase him off

the line. The biggest boost for Donovan Mitchell on this list. The reason why he is higher than many of the guys who scored more points per game than him this year is the simple fact that Donovan is one of the best playoff risers in the NBA. Darius Garland, who did not make my list this year, he hits many of the similar markers that Donovan hits that we've talked about in this segment. Darius was excellent shooting in pick and roll, had an excellent floater. He shot like forty

three percent unpull up threes in pick and roll. Darius, I would actually argue, in terms of just the regular season, is a better offensive engine than Donovan Mitchell because of his ability to consistently cut teams to pieces with his dribble penetration in pass effectively out of it. It really

greased the wheels for this Caps team. Their offense was actually four points better per one hundre possessions this year when Darius was on versus off, but consistently every single year, whether it be because of health or him struggling in that environment, or a combination of both, Darius just kind of falls apart in the postseason relative to his regular season impact. Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell is like straight up one

of the very best playoff scorers of this era. Once again last year, thirty points per game in the postseason on fifty seven percent true shooting. For six consecutive playoff runs spanning forty seven games, Donovan Mitchell is good for thirty five and five on fifty nine percent truugh shooting

in the playoffs. To put it very simply, he is one of the very best playoff scorers in the entire NBA, and that puts him in this special tier of players who is capable of out playing any top tier superstar on any given night, which is what put him in this grouping now, defense has always been a bit complicated for Donovan, But I actually think Donovan's made real strides over the last couple of years. He's ever been good on the ball. He competes there better than he used to.

You guys remember how bad it was in Utah. Was just a disaster on the ball there. But nowadays he still struggles a little bit, even though he competes better because he can get too handsy. He commits a lot of fouls. He's just overly physical on the ball. As a defender, but he's made major strides over the last

couple of years as an off ball defender. The main thing is is it's an excellent opportunity for him to weaponize that trait that he loves to be physically aggressive and go after the basketball well on the ball that

can give up drill penetration too easily. Off the ball, it actually is useful for him digging down on driving lanes or digging down on cutters, and so Donovan has gotten really good at like digging down into the lane attacking the back basketball, but having the foot speed and the fundamentals in terms of his closeouts to get back out to the perimeter to a shooter, and that's made

him a very good help and recover player. So as a result, like the Cavs defense was actually better this year with Donovan Mitchell on the ball versus off and it's given him the ability to meet that mandatory minimum which we always talk about, like in order to be one of these guys in this tier, you have to be able to at least fill a role on a team as a useful defender. You have to be able to do something that helps your team on that end of the floor, and Donovan has found that role off

the ball. He can dig down into the lane, attack the basketball, and he can recover out to the perimeter with really quality closeouts for a star player at that position. You look at Darius Garland and we talked about it. Like Darius Garland, He's not a better score than Donovan Mitchell. I don't even think he's a better playoff offensive player overall than Donovan Mitchell. But in the regular season, Darius

Garland is a better offensive engine than Donovan Mitchell. But even in that context, the Cavs defense was five points worse per one hundred possessions with Darius on versus off, and it undercut a lot of his success. It's a big part of why he didn't make this list this year. In addition to the playoff struggles that we talked about, Donovan has become a useful defender for a good defense. That was the mandatory minimum that he needed to reach as a small guard and he got there. So now,

why isn't Donovan Mitchell higher on this list? Jason, He's fifth in MVP voting, he made First Team All NBA. Why is he all the way down at twelve? The big thing for Donovan is I just don't think he has enough of that like game management, flow of the game piece, that offensive engine piece that you need to compete with the elite offensive players that are above him on this list. So let's look at last year. In the playoffs, the injuries start to stack up. Darius Garland's

got the bad toe. He's not moving as well as he used to, He's not cutting the defense up the way he used to. He's sitting out for entire games. A lot of their shooters go cold in large part because of that lack of advantage creation. And so Donovan Mitchell like kind of flashed a lot of the old Donovan Mitchell right, really taking control of the offense and more to a heliocentric manner in the excuse me. In the regular season, his usage rate was below thirty one percent.

In the postseason it was over thirty seven percent. So he kind of like reverted back to that hyper aggressive on ball, heliocentric, kind of ball hoggy type of player, right. And for the record, I don't blame him for that. It was the right thing for him to do in that situation. Darius didn't have it. He needed to be more in control of things. I do not blame Donovan for that. It was the best chance that Cleveland had

to survive their set of circumstances. But when Donovan goes that route, he this is a lot of the easy reads that are available to him, and it can be a lot of make or miss, feast or famine type of stuff, and it can lead to him not having the same level of offensive impact as the guys that

are above him on this list. For example, in this postseason run, when Donovan Mitchell was on the floor, the Caves managed one hundred and seventeen points six points per one hundred possessions, which is fine, but it's well below what the Cavs are producing in the regular season, and it's well below what they did when Darius Garland was

in control, especially in the regular season. Right. So, like, I just don't see Donovan as that overall offensive engine that you get from the offensive players that have above him on this list. I have a couple of guys on the list above him that are more defensive minded players, but are defensive weapons, I should say, But among the offensive players in this tier, Donovan's lack of that high level playmaking talent is what kept him kept him below.

The next step for Donovan if he wants to move up this list and get into the top seven top eight, for me, is that game management piece becoming the type of guy who you can give control of the offense to and he's gonna average eight nine assists per game like the Damian Lillards of the world, right, because he weaponizes that downhill force to generate advantages early in possession. That greased the wheels for his offense. That's the next step. But for right now, I have Donovan as the twelfth

best player in the NBA. Number eleven Kevin Durant. This was an impossible one for me. I'm just such a huge fan of Kevin Durant and his game, and I really do believe he's gonna be amazing for Houston this year. But again, every time I looked at a guy above him, I just personally couldn't unseat one of those guys. But again, if you argued KDE as high as five, I could at least respect the case there. Same goes for Donovan. Is this more again a testament to how talented the

rest of the NBA is. Our top twelve is insane, right, now, as you guys will see as we continue to work through this list. Last season in review, for KD sixty two games played, he averaged twenty seven point six rebounds and four assists two stocks per game. Fifty three percent from the field, fifty seven percent on two is just outrageous from two. We're gonna talk more about that in a minute, because that's considering almost no rim attempts relative

to his peers. Forty three percent from three, eighty four percent from the line for a sixty percent effective field goal percentage, and sixty four percent in true shooting. The shot making from KD is just completely outrageous. Like, just just listen to these numbers. KD was the best jump shooter in the entire NBA last year. He shot over fifty percent on all jump shots, even if you wait it for threes. He got one point two to one

points per attempt. That ranked number one out of the fifty eight players to attempt at least five hundred jump shots. Kevin Durant best jump shooter in the NBA last year. End of story, forty eight percent off the catch, fifty one percent one unguarded, fifty two percent on off the dribble jump shots. He had a rough year and pull up three he didn't take very many. He took seventy three. All years shot just below thirty three percent. But Kevin Durant shot fifty six percent on pull up mid range

jump shots. In short range when he got inside of seventeen feet he hit fifty eight percent. That's that's one of the most reliable shots in the NBA right now. It's encroaching on that Yokich territory of like mid sixties, high sixties, of like unbelievable reliability and immunity to variant. Kd's become so incredibly deadly on those short range jump shots. That shot making led to insanely efficient isolation numbers. KD was the best ISO player in the NBA last year

by a mile. There were twenty two players that shot out of ISO at least two hundred times. Kd's one point one six points per possession was far and away number one. Give you an idea. Shay was in second place, and he was a full six points per one hundred possessions less efficient shooting out of ISO than KD was on twos In ISO. Last year, KD shot fifty nine percent one hundred and nine for one eighty six. He's

just the best to ever do it. When you need a bucket, There's never been a better guy to give the ball to. I've seeing the clips going around on social media the other day while I was gone of that Serbia USA game, and that still to this day is my very favorite basketball memory that I can think of.

Just the intensity, the stakes, the fear, the legitimate fear that they were going to lose, and then seeing everyone step up and specifically Katie, Steph and Lebron run the show down the stretch, and each one of those three guys show their greatness and unique ways, from like Steph keeping the team afloat early in the game with his shooting and then late in the game hitting that three coming off the left wing that was the lead changing shot.

He had the transition layup as well. Lebron James showcasing his versatility. He's guarding Yolkic on one end of the floor, having those two somehow having the leg strength to get those two crazy transition finishes in crunch time, and then in the final minutes I think they were up to at the time super important possession. I think it was

under a minute. If I remember quickly, they desperately need a bucket, and Steph Lebron, all those dudes they turn to Kevin Durant and they say, get us a bucket. I'm staying off my couch screaming at the TV, like, get a bucket, KD, we need a bucket. And he hits that left to right crossover and hits that pull up jumper and knocks that shit down to send him

to the gold medal game. It wasn't a fluke. He's literally the very best player in the NBA still at it today, and he's been the very best player at it that I've ever seen. This is where I want to touch on that shot attempts thing. So KD has been very active on social media in the last couple of days regarding several things, but the big one was this idea that KD hasn't led a team in shot attempts since twenty eighteen. As if it's a bad thing. I think this is one of Kadi's strengths. This is

where we have to get away from box score watching. Look, scoring the basketball is a very important basketball trade, and I'm not going to roll my eyes a guys, who are putting up big points per game numbers. It's too hard to score in the NBA to just gloss over that, But we had twenty five players in the NBA last year average at least twenty four points per game. Not all points per game totals are the same. The goal of an NBA offense is for the team to score points,

not for an individual player to score points. And there are a lot of guys in the NBA that can score the basketball, but at the expense of the rhythm and flow of their teammates and of the offense overall. Kevin Durant is the best I've ever seen at scoring the basketball in the flow of an offense, meaning doing so without disrupting the rhythm of his teammates, without stopping ball in player movement. This is what makes him so

easy to fit in any basketball situation. Every time he changes teams, it just looks like such a natural fit on the offensive end of the floor. This is why I think it's gonna fit so great for him in Houston. I think it comes down to how comes down to two things. First of all, Katie is excellent at scoring off the ball, both in spot up situations, and attacking in the action that NBA offense runs. So like driving closeouts. Kd when he drove closeouts shot sixty four percent on

twos last year. That's insane. That was on eighty one attempts, so once a game, more than once a game, he'd put the ball on the floor against the closeout and shoot and make almost two thirds of them. Like that goes in hand in hand with him shooting over fifty percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots. So you just an incredibly useful spot up player if you can create an advantage for him. But then he also could score out of action. He shot sixty percent out of

dribble handoffs. He shot forty eight percent coming off of off ball screens. He's excellent at scoring in the flow of NBA offense, and then when he's on the ball, he's always super decisive and super efficient with his dribbles. Kadi averaged just three point three seconds per touch last year and just two dribbles per touch. That's per NBA dot COM's tracking data. Now compare that to a guy like Luka Doncic, who averaged seven seconds per touch and

four dribbles per touch. Now, Luca is a better player than KD. But I'm trying to show the difference in just the quickness, how quickly and how efficiently Katie attacks when he has the ball. And even though I do believe in Luca and his supreme ability, I have talked about how him dribbling the air out of the basketball

can disrupt the rhythm and flow for other players. It's been part of the reason why I've talked so much about Lebron and Austin and how they have to become better catch and shoot players, because a lot of Lebron and Austin's on ball ability can get a little bit of a diminishing return in the context of a Luca led offense because he can dribble the air out of

the basketball Kadi. Him being hyper efficient, him taking less than half as much time per touch and less than half as many dribbles per touch as a Luka Doncic is what makes him super easy to play with. You know what he's gonna do. He's predictable in a good way to play an offense alongside of you know when to cut, when to relocate, when to screen because he's not pausing. He's super decisive. We've all played with guys like that before that dribble the air out of the

basketball and you don't know what to do. You don't know if you're gonna cut a relocate. You don't even know if he's looking at you. You don't know if he's trying to set something else up. That unpredictability can be difficult to play off of. If you're playing basketball with Kevin Durrant and you pass him the ball and he has an advantage he likes with some good spacing, you can count on him to quickly put the ball down or throw a jab stet and do something super efficient.

One or two dribbles, rise and fire within a like two or three seconds max. He's not gonna stop and stare. He's gonna attack quickly. And that makes him super easy to play with. And it's not like, you know, I saw some of the criticisms because KD doesn't want all that response bullshit. Yeah, Like, every time the game's on the line, KDI wants the ball. He's always been that guy.

He's literally one of the best clutch players ever. I mean he literally the whole beef he had with Draymond literally stemmed from him wanting the basketball at the end of a game. It's it is this hyper efficient, quick, decisive scoring that fits extremely well in the team context. We've talked a lot about this idea, the scoring player versus the offensive engine, and how scorers can be susceptible to variance and scorers can disrupt the flow. A bad game for a score is way worse than a bad

game for an advantage creator. Not as much so for a guy like Kevin Durant, who shoots well over fifty percent from two and on his pull up jump shots he makes over half of his jump shots, so he's less susceptible to variance, and he's so quick and so decisive that he's just super easy to play with and he's never going to disrupt the flow of your offense. Now, why did I leave Katie down at eleven? It has nothing to do with defense. Do I wish Katie would

have devoted more energy and focus to defense over his career? Sure, but even in that context, he's still an excellent defender even today. His tools are just insane, and he can move. He's got good anticipation, He's good both on the ball and off the ball. He's been well over a block per game for years. That's that off ball anticipation and

his ability to use his length at the rim. And he is a nasty ISO defender because he has that length and mobility to give ground to keep the ball in front, but also close that gap and get great contests. Guys shot just twelve for forty five from the field against KD and ISO last year out of one hundred and fifty one players to guard at least fifty ISOs last year. Is zero point seven to six point per possession, ranked sixteenth sixteenth out of one hundred and fifty one.

He's literally one of the best isolation defenders in the NBA. KD being being outside of the top ten came down to three things for me. One, he's declined as a defensive rebounder. He posted his lowest rebounds per game total since rebounds per game number since his rookie season two. He straight up does not pressure the rim. He averaged just two point eight shot attempts per game at the rim last year. That ranked two hundred and twenty eighth

in the NBA. Guys like Kevin Herder and Corey Kisspert attempted more shots at the rim per game last year than KD. A lot of it has to do with the Achilles injury. He's stopping short a lot of the time, but him not threatening the rim prevents him from generating some of the advantages kickout opportunities that his peers generate. And then lastly, he's just not the same level of playmaker as his peers at the top of the league. Now I'm hoping KD proves me wrong on this particular point.

I saw KD reach crazy heights as a pick and roll passer in Brooklyn, and he's kind of just gone away from that that role of the high volume pick and roll weapon, and I actually think Houston could really benefit from it. So I'm hoping they dig that back out of KD. And I hope that we get to see a higher level playmaker this year. But in the last several years he has not been the same level of advantage creator, the guy who generates easy opportunities for

his teammates as his peers that are above him. On this list overall, this was one of the hardest rankings for me to make. You could easily argue KD as high as number five on this list, but for right now, I haven't met number eleven. All right, before we get out here, guys, I'll tell you a little bit about Alaska. So we had gone on an Alaskan cruise when my

wife I was working for this company. She got an incentive trip a while back where we got to go with a bunch of the people that were in her industry, and it was like a loop that went out of Seattle. And the loop was kind of a bummer in a couple of different ways because one, you just didn't get to see all the same ports. When you're doing a seven day loop, you've got to account for a return trip, so there's like three of the seven days you're just on the ocean, and so you just don't get to

spend as much time. Each port call is like five hours four hours, so you're just like really not having the time to explore all of the different areas that you're going. And then secondly, because you're going in a loop, you don't get to go as far up into Alaska, which is like the further you get up, the cooler it is. Right for those of you guys have been you know what I'm talking about. And so we really wanted to go back for two reasons. We wanted to

go outside of a work context. We wanted to be able to enjoy it more, just like without the all of the constraints that came from my wife's job at the time. And then two, we wanted to do the one way. We wanted to do a one way cruise so that you could actually spend a lot of time

at each port. Now I'm not much of a cruise guy, but you kind of need to do a cruise to experience the majority of Alaska, just because a lot of these places are not accessible by road, and you get to see a lot of really cool things that you only get to see on a boat in that sort of instance. So like, for instance, we got to see the Hubbard Glacier on this particular trip. That is the largest title a title glacier in the entire world. So you're not going to see that unless you take a

cruise ship into that bay, right. So I'm not much of a cruise guy, but it's kind of the way you have to do it. And so we traveled with my parents, which is a lot of fun. I haven't traveled with my parents since I was a kid, since

I was a teenager. Basically and so my dad was always big into outdoorsy stuff, and so it kind of just worked out with our schedules, and my dad and mom are both finally retired, and so we were able to do it, and we did a whole We did a little trip to Victoria beforehand, so we went up to Vancouver and we got an airbnb in Victoria. The

weather was amazing. In Victoria, we went to like Bouchart Gardens, which is a really cool like basically like a botanical garden that's up there where you can get to see some incredible stuff and you know, hung out in that area we had. The weather was just so great. I got like great views of like Mount Olympus and you could literally see Blue Glacier from inside Victoria. You like got to see seaplanes landing and all this good food.

It's kind of a fun little trip before we went on the cruise and got to take the ferry to and from Victoria from Vancouver, which was beautiful as you kind of get into all those islands that surround Vancouver Island. And then we left out of Vancouver. And if you've been on the Alaskan cruise before, you know that the ports that are on the southern end are not super interesting like ketch a can. It's not my favorite place.

It's just super rainy there all the time. The one thing that was cool is when we went three years ago, for whatever reason, there just wasn't a lot of same in activity. I think we just got there a little too early. But we got there at like the peak

of the salmon returning. It says, you know, the salmon they like go out to ocean and then when they're ready to reproduce, they go back up into fresh water, like by jumping up these like like creeks and rivers and stuff, and then they spawn and then they die, right and so like you see them out in the ocean up against these like uh, you know whatever you call it the deltas, where like the rivers in the in the ocean meet where it's like a mix of

fresh and ocean water, and they like practice jumping and you just see them jumping. Just you literally look off the shore and you just see hundreds of salmon just jumping in and out of the water. And then like you'd see them jumping up the creeks, you'd see them climbing the salmon ladders. It's basically like a structure that

the locals build to help the salmon get upstream. So that was kind of cool, but it's just so rainy, up and catch a can And then we went to Juneo and the weather was amazing and Juno we got super lucky there again. But like we went to go see Mendenhall Glacier and we like canoe up to super cool, but it's retreated so far back that it's literally out of the water now, Like when I went there three years ago, it was in the wa and now Mendenhall

Glacier is like completely out of the water. And when you're canoeing to it, they have all these like orange signs that like demonstrate different times in the history where the glacier was further out. I can't remember the exact number, but like it retreats at some crazy pace. It was like two hundred feet per year or something like that,

so that one's like really retreating back in there. And thankfully we did all that stuff first, because each subsequent port that we went to that was further to the north was crazier and crazier that we got to see, and like the Hudderd Glacier was absolutely unbelievable that we just got perfectly clear weather. So as you're like pulling in, you see this massive glacier, but out in the distance

just all these like fifteen thousand foot peaks. I have always had a thing for super tall mountains, particularly volcanoes, but I've also had a thing for super tall mountains, and you get to see We got to see Mount Saint Elias, which is over eighteen thousand feet. That's now the tallest mountain that I've ever laid eyes on, So that was super cool. We got to see it on a very clear day. I got to see another big

volcano up there. I can't remember I think it was I can't remember what it was called, but it's the volcano right outside of Sidco. We got a crazy view of it as we were going around on the cruise ship.

But then, you know, my mom and my wife were shopping in Juno and I was looking at our itinerary and we had we had like six hours to kill in Seward and Seward was the final port, and we never even thought of it as a place to do an excursion because we're like, oh, we're just leaving, like that's when we get off the boat and that's when we'll go home, right, And then I looked at it, I was like, Okay, we're getting off the boat at seven point thirty and we're not getting on the train

until six pm. So we got all this time to do. And so I did some research and then I heard about this like keen I Fjords National Park, this big national park that's like right by seward, but you can't get there unless you go by boat or like helicopter, right, And so I found an excursion like a boating company that would take all four of us out into those fjords. And that ended up being like by far the coolest part of the trip, even though we had amazing weather

everywhere else. It was like super But even though the rain had some downsides, what was cool about it was the rain actually essentially like lubricates the glaciers and causes them to move a little faster into calve a little

bit more calving for a glacier. All it means is as the glacier kind of flows downhill, these big pieces of ice like fall off into the ocean, and by like sheer luck, I happened to have my iPhone out like zoomed in on a spot where this massive piece of ice fell off of the Iliic Glacier, which was one of the two glaciers that we went to go see, and it was the guy who was on the boat said it was literally the biggest calving they had seen

in the entire season. It launched like this massive wave, like this thirty foot wave that was like coming towards us from the from the glacier. So we had to like turn the boat away from it and like go further away so that we could like wait for the wave to spread out and like hit us at a at a lower at a lower level. But I have a video of this, you guys can find. It's on my Instagram and it's on my Twitter at underscore jsonlt.

But it was like literally one of the coolest things I've ever seen, just watching that piece of that glacier fall off. And like one of the things that's cool with glaciers too, is when it's super sunny, they appear white, but when it's super cloudy, they appear like almost like a radioactive shade of blue because of just the lesser

amount of light that they're absorbing. And so it just was like this eerie, creepy, like cloudy, rainy day with these beautiful glaciers that were just like having like crazy in front of us because of the rain, and it

was just an incredible experience. And then, like I kept waiting for things to get more difficult, but it's like then we get on this train, this Alaska Railroad train, and it goes from Seward up to Anchorage, and it's just four hours of incredibly beautiful scenery outside of a train. I saw three additional glaciers, beautiful mountains. The bay that goes thereby I can't remember what it's called. The bay

that goes there right by Anchorage is super pretty. This was like one thing after another of incredible sight seeing and I just felt so lucky. I felt so lucky that the weather was the way that it was. I felt so lucky that we got to see the things that we got to see. It was obviously super cool to get to spend some time with my mom and dad, which I who haven't traveled with in years, and it just was a really special trip. I think it might be my favorite trip that I've ever gone on. A

couple of things. If you're if you're ever gonna go to Alaska. There's several cruise ships that do it, several companies that do it. We use Celebrity. I've been pleased with them. They give a very good experience. I actually think they're relatively affordable too. Uh. They have really good food, which is something that my wife and I are you know, pretty picky on there were foodies. We just really like to have good food. But a couple things to be

prepared for. Do the one way, don't do the loop, because you actually get to spend so much more time in each of your ports and less time at sea. Also, the one way takes you further north in Alaska, Like you'd get to see Hubbard Glacier. You don't get to see that on the loop. You get to go up into Seward, which you don't get to see if you're on the loop, So you get to see the better

stuff that's further north Alaska. A couple things though, if if you do the cruise, when you leave the last port and you go into the Gulf of Alaska, it's a famously rough ocean, and so like come prepared for you know, seasickness by having you know, dramamine or you know, weed or whatever it is you use to survive seasickness,

make sure you're prepared for that. And then if you want to do Alaska without doing a cruise, Seward kind of captures a lot of the same vibe as some of the other ports, and so just fly to Anchorage and then take the Alaska Railroad down to Seward, buying an airbnb or a hotel somewhere there, and then just make sure you do the ken I Fjords tour because it's just super cool and it's an awesome way to get to experience like the glaciers and a lot of

like that kind of stuff that you get to experience in Alaska. But it was just a ton of fun. And I Uh, it's kind of crazy because I'm we're preparing for our phase two of our move to Denver on Wednesday, so it's kind of hectic and obviously there's works around, but like, it just felt really nice to disconnect for him a little bit. There's like almost no cell service out there and Wi Fi on cruise ships is terrible, so it was like an opportunity for me

to disconnect from work a little bit. And I just had a great time and I just I just highly recommend if you ever have a chance to go check out Alaska, go check it out. And if you want to see some pictures, I've shared quite a few on my twitter feed. You guys can see them there. All right, guys, it's all I have for today. It's always a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I'll see you guys on Friday. Four Hour Mailbag