NBA Player Rankings #25-24: Jamal Murray makes cut, does Trae Young, James Harden, or KAT?

and so this is a great time. This is the fourth year in a row and we have taken a dive into player rankings. We do the top twenty five players in the NBA. We go into extensive detail on each player, looking back at their last season, their strengths and weaknesses, what we can expect from them in the coming season. We get into rationale is why guys are ranked where they're ranked. We have a ton of fun

with it. Over the course of the summer. We don't have Olympic basketball this year, is a little bit of a break. We might get a little bit of a EuroBasket as we get into late August, which I'm particularly excited about, especially on the heels of that Men's Health magazine article this morning talking about Luka doncis getting into great shape. I'm gonna have some more thoughts about that when we talk about Luca's allegedly pending extension, which we will get to at some point or over the course

of the next week. But it's a pretty dead summer, so lots of time for us to get into our player rankings today. What I'm going to do is I'm going to dive into our rules so that everyone understands the criteria we use. It's something that is obviously an inexact science. It is like impossible to scientifically rank all of the players in the NBA because there's no such thing as a metric that accurately captures a basketball players impact,

and so there's a lot of subjectivity involved. But we just do the best we can, and we try to stick to a set of rules, and so I'm gonna go over the specific rules that we use. I use different rules each of the first three seasons. Last year, I kind of settled on a specific format that I really like, and so for the first time, we're actually

repeating that format coming into this year's rankings. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the guys that didn't make the cut this year and why some specific guys who dropped out, why they dropped out, who

my final cuts were. So we're gonna do a bunch of that kind of stuff right off of the top, and then we're gonna get into the first two players on the list today, so number twenty five and number twenty four, and then on Wednesday this week, we're gonna get into the next four players on the list, so six players total in the first couple of days of this week. You guys know, the jop before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops Tonight 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 sho announcements. Don't forget about a podcast fee where you get your pocast under 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 over there. In the last but not least, keep dropping mail bag

questions in the YouTube comments. So we're gonna change the way we do our mail bags over the course of the next couple of months. I want to try to gear them towards the player rankings as much as possible. That doesn't mean you can't ask any other mail back questions. You guys can ask whatever you want. But one of the things that's fun about this is there is a

lot of debate. You can argue, we're gonna talk about it with our tiers, but with the way these guys line up in tiers, I don't see much of a gap between player five and player fourteen on this list, or player fifteen and the fortieth guy that didn't make the list. I don't see huge gaps there. You can argue players way up and down this list because how close these players are and how different they are in their archetypes and their specific value in different parts of

the game of basketball. This is up for debate, right, So what I want you guys to do is, if you have a specific ranking that you disagree with, a player you think is underrated, a player you think is overrated, whatever it is in your mail bag question, make a quick elevator pitch as brief as possible, but make a basketball case for why you disagree with the player and where he's ranked on this list, And in our Friday

mail bags, we'll just debate. I'll read out your guys' basketball case for why you feel differently, I'll explain whether or not I agree with something you're saying or I disagree. We'll kind of have those Friday mail bags be more geared towards debating these rankings. So make sure you guys drop your questions again under the full episodes right mail bag with a colon, explain why you disagree and we'll get to them in those Friday mail bags.

but it's that simple. Who's the best guy to lead your team from the start of this coming season to the end of this coming season. So, first of all, we are looking forward, not backward, but we're obviously going to use the past to inform the future. This is not a list of just who had the best season last year. There are guys on this list, even near the top, who had better seasons than guys that will rank ahead of them in this list because I expect

that dynamic to flip in this coming season. What else is valuable availability and night to night regular season impact is being weighed as a real factor here. Take just a random couple of players. Take Steph Curry and Anthony Edwards. If we're playing one single playoff game or one single playoff series that starts tomorrow and everyone's healthy, I think

Steph's a better player than Anthony Edwards. I just think he's a better all around basketball player with the better understanding of how to win in like very very tough

playoff environments. But Anthony Edwards plays seventy nine games every season like clockwork, and Steph literally just broke down against him in a second round series because Steph had to go pedal to the medal for three straight months to end the season, because this team was trying to claw their way out of the play in tournament, right, and because he's thirty seven years old, he's just a little bit more susceptible to breaking down right than a twenty

three year old is. So when we're comparing those two guys, it's not just as simple as who is better. It's a combination of all those factors. Steph and him just being a better basketball player when he's healthy is going to weigh in Steph's favor. But Anthony Edwards and his youthful exuberance and energy and durability is going to weigh in Anthony Edwards's favor, and all of those factors put together is going to help place those players on this

particular list. Also, guys like Jason Tatum, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Halliburton, guys who were all on this list last year, they're simply not on the list this year because they will not play, so they do not bring any value between the start of October twenty twenty five training camp and the twenty twenty six playoff runt, So they will be removed from the list for this year, and they will re enter the list next summer when we're discussing them as players that are going to play. That's just the

rules of this particular list. It also opens up space on this list for new guys to enter, well for guys that used to be on the list to re enter the list. That's three spots that would typically be taken up by those guys that other guys will get to take up. But ultimately, the goal is to win an NBA championship. So it's not just night to night availability,

it's the combination of everything. Night to night availability leadership, producing statistically at a high level throughout the season, and being able to thrive when everything shifts to playoff basketball, which as we all know, can be so very different, not just in one or two playoff games, but through in the end of a playoff series, when teams make adjustments and start to figure out your strengths and weaknesses, and the on ball defenders get a little bit more

keyed in to your quirks and start to figure out how to guard you better.

important for people to understand. In terms of the way these rankings come together. I have the players separated into three tiers. There are top tier superstars. These are the guys who night to night play at the peak of modern basketball. Consistency is the expectation, it's the norm. Then the second tier guys, second tier secondary superstars. These are the guys who are capable on any given night of reaching the same level of the top guys in the league,

but they struggle to maintain it. Whether it's because they're too old, or they've dealt with injury concerns over their careers, or just general youthful inconsistency from young players. You will see Ky Cunningham on certain nights look like he could be one of the best players in the world, but then he's susceptible to inconsistency because he's a young player. Right Those guys are still every bit as valuable on singular occasions, but they don't bring the night to night value.

That's our second tier superstars, our third tier stars. These are guys who are worth the max and near max contracts that they're on. They bring enough impact to justify the money, but they probably can't be the best player on a championship team. They need a lot of support and they probably need a better player than them in order to reach the promised Land. Within each of those tiers,

the players are incredibly closely ranked. So for instance, the guy that I have on fourteen in this list could very easily be argued as high as five or vice versa, and everybody in that range can be argued anywhere in that range. Similarly, for the third tier spots, there are

eleven players between fifteen and twenty five. I considered twenty six players for those eleven spots, which means there are fifteen guys who did not make this list that absolutely have an argument to potentially be as high as fifteen. John Moran didn't make my list, you could make a basketball case for him being as high as fifteenth on this list. So that what I'm trying to say is I totally understand if you guys disagree with the order. That's part of the fun of this. That's why it's

a debate. That's why we're doing those mail bags at the end of the week where I want you guys to argue so that we can get into it a little bit. So again, literally, if you'd disagree with anything that we have in this list, write it in the mail bag, make an elevator, pitch a quick breakdown of why you disagree, and we'll get into it. That's the

whole fun of this. It's supposed to be fun. If anything, this guy's will just this list will give you guys a better look at the way I see the game of basketball, just to help you guys understand why I rank players the way with the way I rank them, Why I value specific skill sets over others, and so on and so forth. Now, before we get started, I'm gonna list the fifteen guys who didn't make the list

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again these are in no particular order. John Morant, Zion Williamson, Julius Randall, Demona Simonis, Alpern, Shangoon, Darius Garland, DeMar Derozen Brandon, Ingram, Zach Lavine, Franz Wagner, Tyler Harrow, Daron Fox, Tyrese Maxey, Karl Anthony Towns, and James Harden. Those are the guys that were in that list of twenty five players that I considered for the final or twenty six players that

I considered for the final eleven spots. A couple of specifics that I want to get into, just four specific guys I want to briefly touch on. First of all, both the Aaron Fox and Tyrese Maxey were on this list last year in the twenties range, and they fell off. Both of them substantially declined as ump shooters and that ended up limiting their effectiveness. Taron Fox went from having a pretty good shooting season to being below thirty percent

on catch and shoot jump shots this year. A Tyrese Maxi catch and shoot jump shot two years ago was worth one point three to one points down to one point zero five points in this last season. That's twenty six points per one hundred catch and shoot jump shots. Worse, the two things that made these guys clear top twenty five guys was their combination of elite downhill force with the jump shot to counter and the jump shot to play off the ball. And when their jumpers aren't as

dialed in, they're simply not as effective. And so for those two guys, it was the decline in jump shooting that dropped them off the list our final two cuts. As you can imagine, when I started with that forty, I started pulling guys off, and eventually I got down to twenty seven out of the twenty five I needed to grab, or more like if you specifically with that final tier of eleven, and I was looking at thirteen players for the final tier of eleven, and I had

to cut two guys. So the final two cuts ended up being James Harden in Karl Anthony Towns. So on the one hand, it's important to acknowledge I viewed both of those guys as top twenty seven players in the NBA, or above the other thirteen guys that I listed earlier. But The reason why I cut these two guys was

specific to the playoffs. James Harden, again in his last two playoff losses this year, in Game five and Game seven against Denver, didn't even attempt ten shots in either game, totaled just eighteen points on five for seventeen shooting in two games combined, two must win games combined. Consistently, in James Harden's career, when his back is against the wall, he simply loses his mojo. It's not like he plays with his usual level of aggression and shots just don't fall,

or he has a couple more turnovers than usual. He straight up loses everything that makes him James Harden in those big playoff games at the end of series. And it's happened so many times over the course of his career that it's something you literally have to plan for as an organization. I'm a big believer in James Harden and his value as a regular season offensive engine. We discussed this extensively already this summer with regards to the new contract that he signed. I even think his playoff

struggles are a little bit more complicated. They're kind of geared towards the tail end of series big moments. He's had some monster playoff games over the last few years mixed in with excruciatingly bad, but he's had some awesome playoff games. He was great in Game six against them, for example, but those playoff limitations ended up making him one of the final cuts this year. Karl Anthony Towns, it's about the downright damaging lack of attention to detail

on anything outside of his typical offensive game. I literally can't get the image out of my head from Game six against Indiana of him making poor pop role decisions like rolling into the lane when there's already multiple players in the dunker spot, or you know, crashing off the top of the key, crashing the offensive glass when he

has get back responsibility. He was screaming off the tape in game six as one of the main reasons why they got blown off the floor against Indiana in game six, or on defense him just throwing some crazy hedge out thirty five feet from the rim when the guard hasn't even used the screen yet and the guard just simply rejects the screen and now Karl Anthony Towns is thirty five feet away from the rim being completely useless, while giving up a wide open layup or a wide open dunk.

He is just so undisciplined outside of his offensive game that it massively undercuts his offensive production. And again it's a shame because he is he is a great offensive player, and that separates him from even players above this list. As an offensive player, he was eighth in playoff scoring this year among players who played at least ten games fifty nine percent true shooting. He made third team All

NBA this year for his regular season production. But again, as we mentioned in the criteria, the idea like one of the things when we're talking about getting through from October all the way through June, one of the important details is like, are you good enough on defense that we can at least run a functional defensive scheme with you on the floor. Can we scale up our defense

to where it needs to get. One of the things we're going to talk about when we get to the first player on our list is I view two different kinds of bad defenders in the NBA. There's bad defenders that have their athletic limitations. They're small, they're slow, whatever it might be. But they understand defense. They know where to be, they understand how to fill a role in his scheme. They can kind of see things coming, They

have good defensive instincts. These are the guys that can scale up their defense in the postseason context, even with their athletic limitations. Then there are bad defenders who like straight up don't understand defense. It's less about athleticism. And there are great athletes that fall into this category, but

they don't know where to be. They have poor instincts, They make poor help recover to situations, leaving a shooter when they shouldn't, not helping when they should, missing basic details like box outs and corner crashes, or excuse me, a crackdown rebounding from the wing. To try to help your bigs when they're engaged in box outs like they're just they're undisciplined in the details. That is a kind of defense that you cannot scale up with in the postseason.

If anything, it gets further exposed. And Kat falls into that second category of bad defender, and that for me was what ended up keeping him out of this list, making him one of the final cuts. But again it's important for me to acknowledge both hard and and cat I had at twenty six and twenty seven in this list. So on that note, let's get started again. Two players today,

number twenty five and number twenty four. Number twenty five Jamal Murray, a player that was as high as number sixteen two years ago after they won the title, when he averaged a preposterous stat line on the way to hoisting the trophy, and then actually dropping out of the list last year after a brutal shooting performance outside of a couple of game winners in his playoff run last season.

In review for Jamal Murray, you played in sixty seven games, averaged twenty one points, four rebounds, and six assists, one point nine stocks. He's one of those guys who falls into that set, that first category of like players that has some athletic limitations, but that he understands defense. We're going to get into that more later, but he is a good defensive playmaker. His one point four steals per game is the same as guys like Amn Thompson and

Jimmy Butler. He's a good defensive playmaker. His efficiency, he was forty seven percent from the field last year, thirty nine percent from three, eighty nine percent from the line, fifty four percent in effective field goal percentage. That's field goals waited for weighted for threes, and then fifty eight percent true shooting, which waits his ability to get to the foul line. His playtype data we're going to get into this. This is data for throughout this entire list.

This data is from Synergy and it's specifically about how efficient each player is out of certain types of action. So pick and rolls, for examples, ISOs post ups, attacking closeouts for our big guy scoring out a role man touches things along those lines right in pick and roll. Jamal ran eight hundred and fifty seven pick and rolls last year, and he got one point zero nine points per possession including passes. That's in the eighty fifth percent tile out of the twenty three players to run at

least eight hundred pick and rolls last year. His one point zero nine points per possession ranked sixth on that list. Jamal is the quintessential modern NBA pick and roll player because he can make all of the shots and all of the reads out of every conceivable situation that he would run into playing pick and roll with Nikole Jokich. So, for instance, you duck under a pick against Jamal in a ball screen, or if you die on the pick

and you let him get a clean look. He shot over forty percent on off the dribble threes last year. You cannot go under or die on the pick against Jamal if you get over the top, but you're separated at all because you get caught a little bit on the pick, or he just shed you with a move that sets you up for the pick. He can score effectively in the mid range. He's forty six percent on mid range pull out twos, and he's just as efficient outside as seventeen feet as he is inside of seventeen feet.

A very good mid range jump shooter, forty three percent on floaters, so he can make the shots in the short to mid range that you get if you run into the pick. And then he finishes at the rim better than most guards. He was sixty percent at the rim last year. Five attempts per game. That's really good.

And then he's an underrated playmaker out of action. He's averaged six point two assists per game in the three seasons since his knee injury, at roughly a three to one assist The turnover ratio not an offensive engine like some of the other guys we will discuss on this list, but he can make the reads. But most importantly, and this is the separator from Jamal, for Jamal from many of the other players, even some guys that are above

him on this list. In the event of a switch or a situation that calls for one on one, he is still one of the very best one on one players in the NBA. He ran two hundred and five fifty ISOs and post ups last year including passes, and generated two hundred and sixty five points out of them. That's one point zero six point per possession, which is very good for one on one play, specifically with ISOs.

His one point zero four points per possession including passes ranked thirteenth out of the fifty two players to run at least one hundred and fifty ISOs last year, ahead of big names like Steph Curry, Lebron James, Jason Tatum, Donovan Mitchell. He is remarkably gifted at getting separation with dribble combinations. In footwork, he can shoot step backs and side steps and turn around jump shots over both shoulders.

He can get wherever he wants to on the floor, get separation from defenders, and his shot making ability is incredible, and so that's what makes him such an incredible two man game partner with Nikola JOKICCH Jokic is an excellent

screener and he has great role man gravity. Right guys gravitate towards him on the roll, so he gets good separation in ball screens and in those situations forty percent on pull up threes, forty six percent on pull up twos, forty three percent on floaters, sixty percent at the rim. He's very efficient making any shot that he might need

to make coming off of action with Nikola JOKICCH. But then if you switch, he's going to be able to burn a big man or to post up a small He's got the versatility as a one on one player to fulfill the other side of the two man game equation with Nikola Jokic. That is the separator. That's what makes him so uniquely impactful alongside NIKOLEA. Jokic relative to his like in a vacuum type of value, he doesn't really have a weakness on offense. If you leave him

wide open, he's a great catch and shoot player. He's forty one point four percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shot. Last year, he can drive a close out. He finishes extremely well on cuts for a guard. He shoots seventy one percent on cuts because he's a good rim finisher. In the playoffs, he had his late his

like ups and downs. This is worth mentioning with Jamal, but one of the things that's kind of prevented his up and down shot making In terms of postseason consistency, He's been so good late in games that it undoes most of the damage from that kind of inconsistent shooting. He's hit in the last three playoff runs sixteen clut shots, including multiple buzzer beaters. He is one of the most dependable late game shot makers in the NBA, which gives

him a ton of postseason utility. Now he has his downsides, Jamal can be a very frustrating player because of his lows. He's notorious for coming into training camp out of shape and then playing his way into shape. His seasons tend to take on this repetitive flow where he gets in shape and plays really well in the middle portion of the season, but then his body starts to break down.

He's had to miss a decent chunk of time right before the postseason in each of the last two years, those injuries end up then disrupting his rhythm and preventing him from getting to that level of consistency. Again, if you look during the title run, he averaged twenty six point six rebounds and seven assists on fifty nine percent true shooting. He's shown it before that for four playoff

rounds he can be a reliable score. He just hasn't been able to replicate the necessary conditioning in that conditioning is directly related to you being able to sustain certain little bang up injuries that you might get over the course of the year. The stuff with defense with Jamal I'm less concerned with. Again, like we talked about earlier, there are two different kinds of bad defenders. Guys who just straight up don't understand defense and are constantly in

the wrong place. These are mistake makers. They incessantly make mistakes, and it makes them impossible to bring or build a good defense around. Then there's the guys that are limited athletes and because of their offensive focus, they might have a lot of like laziness in the regular season, or it's less about them not understanding where to be, but them just being like bah, fuck it, We'll try it again on the next possession, or we'll do it at

the end of the game when we need to. Right, there are a lot of guys who fall into that category. Jamal falls into that category. And in that category, these are guys that have high IQ, that do understand defense, do know where to be, do know when to rotate, when not to, how to fulfill a role in a defense. Those guys can scale up their defense when they need to.

And it's absolutely worth mentioning that the Nuggets have been able to scale up their defense to where they need to get in the playoffs, winning the title in twenty twenty three. Last year, they did about as good a job guarding Oklahoma City as anybody in that playoff run because of their intelligence, their overall cumulative intelligence on the defensive end of the floor. And Jamal Murray was part

of that. And he's a good defensive playmaker. But the conditioning stuff is real and it obviously comes with inconsistency that has hurt his team at times over the years. That's what prevents Jamal from reaching his potential again. I've had him as high as number sixteen on this list two summers ago. After they won the title. He is capable of getting back to that level if he can work on those conditioning details and maximize his talent over

the course of an entire season. For all to talk about, you know, Nikole Jochitz never playing with an All Star or an All NBA player, we all know.

including switches. It's truly unique. There's not a lot of guards, including the next guy we're going to discuss on this list, that have that level of versatility, and it's what allows Jamal to come in at number twenty five on this year's list. Number twenty four Tray Young. Last season in review, he played in seventy six games, average twenty four points, three rebounds and twelve assists, one point four stocks. Decent

steels guy. Over the course of the last couple seasons, his efficiency forty one percent from the field, thirty four percent from three eighty eight percent from the foul line represents forty nine percent an effective field goal percentage fifty seven percent in true shooting. This is a lot having to do with his throw rate. He's a high free throw rate, and he shoots the ball well when he

gets to the foul line. That allows him to have a high true shooting percentage relative to his actual ability to put the ball in the basket. Play type data consistently one of the highest volume pick and roll players in the NBA. He ran over two thousand pick and rolls last year including passes. For perspective, when I've done the high volume pick and roll list each summer, I typically have the cutoff at one thousand. He's ran over

two thousand. Shake Gilges Alexander ran the second most last year, fourteen hundred and ten, so a massive gap in pick and roll volume between Trey and the rest of the league. Trey ran two thousand and seventy eight pick and rolls last year, generating twenty two hundred points. It's one point zero six points per possession. That's very good on the high volume list. Out of the thirteen players to run at least one thousand pick and rolls, his one point

zero six points per possession ranked eight. Now, before we go any further, I want to shout out Tyres Haliburton and Damian Lillard here. Those two guys actually came in at number one and number two on this list as the most efficient pick and role players in the NBA, but obviously they didn't make the list this year because of their Achilles tears. I want to particularly draw attention

to Tyrese Halliburton. He ran over fifteen hundred pick and rolls last year, including the playoffs, and got one point one to three points per possession, which was far and

away number one in the NBA and total efficiency. I've talked a lot about Tyrese Haliburton's kind of like offensive engine capabilities and just how uniquely valuable it is in the modern NBA that he can constantly set guys up with advantages, and I just wanted to shine a light on Tyree's for a second, because, like again, including the postseason, massive volume over fifteen hundred pick and rolls. His efficiency was three points better per one hundred possessions than anyone

else in the NBA. Just one of the very best offensive engines in the sport. I just wanted to take a minute to shout out Tyre Saliburton. With Trey, it's important to acknowledge he's playing with less offensive talent than many of the high volume pick and roll guys in the league. The Hawks ranked eighteenth in spot of efficiency. They were a bottom half catch and shoot team. They generated more roleman touches than anyone in the league, but

they were very mediocre at finishing them. This is not a team that surrounds Trey Young with super high level offensive talent. Trey was a remarkable offensive engine for a group of pretty young and pretty flawed offensive players. Yet they still had a one point fifteen point two offensive rating when he was on the floor last year that would crack the top ten among teams in the NBA. Their offense cratered to eight points worse per one hundred

possessions when he was off the floor. For Trey, he falls into that category of relentless advantage creation concept we've discussed with respect to James Harden, you know, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Tyrese Halliburton. This idea of these players that just set up their teammates with a massive volume of possessions where they have the ball with the player sprinting at them rather than the player standing directly in front of them, and that manifests with easier opportunities that even

flawed basketball players can capitalize on. Trey is a relentless advantage creator. It is that rather than versatility that he brings to the table. A guy like Jamal brings that versatility the ISO play, the ability to beat switches, things along those lines. For Trey, it's the singular talent of advantage creation. Trey Jung is not.

brings to the table as a lead guard. Excellent transition passing, kick ahead passes that unlocks the athletes on this Hawks roster. I'm specifically super excited to see a full season of a healthy Jalen Johnson and Zachary Risasche running the wings. Those are two of the best floor runners in the NBA. Obviously more athletic depth with Dyson Daniels and Nikhil Alexander Walker. Trey is relentless with kick ahead passes. That is going to be a super high value add for the Hawks

this year. That is what I mean when I say like that reasonable facts of what Tyre's Halliburton brings to the table. But he's also the quintessential pick and role player against against like traditional coverages, Like if you're chasing Trey over the top of screens instead of switching, He's

got everything you need to succeed there. He's a good drop coverage scorer, like with his pull up three point shitt And this is a perfect example of the difference between him and Iso versus at a ball screen so envision a pull up three, so and off the dribble three in a ball screen, it's probably going to be because you dribbled off the screen and.

example of that dynamic that I'm talking about. The same thing goes with two point shooting. What does a two point jump shot look like, or two point shot of any kind look like out of a ball screen. It's a floater because the guard got caught on the screen and the bigs too far back, or a little mid range pull up, something along those lines. They are open shots that are being conceded in the action, whereas a two point shot out of ISO that's more of I've

got to get separation from an on ball defender. Trey Jung shot thirty six percent on twos out of ISO last year, forty six percent on twos out of ball screens. That's kind of the dynamic with Trey. That's what makes him so susceptible to switching schemes. That's why their front office went out to go get a guy like Chris tops porzingis to help give him an ability to have some resilience against pick and roll switching, but against traditional coverages.

He scores the ball plenty well enough to unlock his greatest strength, which is that he's one of the great passers in the NBA. He's incredibly gifted in ball screens at looking off back line defenders with no look passes that open up angles for bounce passes and lobs to biggs that are on the roll or cutting along the baseline. He can make skip passes to the corner with either hand.

He's a great left handed passer. That ability to relentlessly create advantages for his teammates is what puts him into that special category of elite offensive engines in the NBA. Let's go back to the Jamal Murray example. Jamal Murray can credibly make the reads. He can reach a certain floor as a playmaker that can allow him to run a bench group or to be a reasonably good lead ball handler right ball, could never come close to leading a team like this Hawks team to the offensive heights

that Trey Young has lifted them to. It's not something he's capable of doing because he's not the relentless advantage hunter and creator that Trey Young is. Conversely, if the roles were reversed and Trey was in Denver, he wouldn't be as successful with Jokic as Jamal Murray is. Jokic doesn't need Trey's relentless advantage creation. He's a relentless advantage creator himself. There's a redundancy there, diminishing return, and Trey

isn't nearly as gifted as a tough shot maker. So Trey's vulnerability to switching would be a ceiling lowering effect in that Denver Nuggets offense in a way that Jamal is not. That's why I always talk about your specific value relative to your specific situation. Basketball is more art than science in that particular way. My belief in the Hawks as a team this year lies in the unique way that Trey Young accentuates this particular group.

spot up jump shooters and his close out attackers. The Keil Alexander Walker is an excellent catch and shoot player and has a little bit of close out attacking of his own. Dyson Daniels is super raw, but has some tools and has good touch in the short range and a lot of things that will allow him to score

with openings. And Yakakongu can score on the role. And Chris Porzingis should again help them be able to deal with Trey's biggest offensive weakness, which is his vulnerability to switching in Washington three years ago one point one to three points per posed up including passes. First year in Boston one point three to one, last year in Boston

one point two to three. He is a reliable efficient on an island post up player, especially against advantages that come out of switches, which teams will inevitably deploy because that's the best way to kind of contend with what Trey Young does.

bottom of that type of defensive player. Most famously recently his putrid effort at the end of that play in game against Miami where he's just kind of floating around and watching the heat grab multiple offensive rebounds that ends in a dagger by Davion Mitchell along the left wing right, although it's worth mentioning the game is basically how to reach at that point, but he does understand defense, he does know where to be, and I have seen him at various points over the course of the last few

years be a serviceable defender for short stretches. He's a quick guard, he can cover ground in rotation, and like

we mentioned earlier, he does understand where to be. But his limitations are so loud because of his lack of physical tools, and so that kind of prevents him from getting to the same level of the other great offensive engines in the NBA, like Tyres Halliburton, for instance, like is in that category, but is much more active, more consistently, and has like legitimate length, so he can be a defensive playmaker in a way that Trey Young can't be,

so that prevents him from getting higher on the Like. You guys know how much I value offensive advantage creation, and Trey has always been like on the outside looking in on this list or barely cracking this list, in large part because those defensive shortcomings are so loud with his physical limitations. But I still think advantage creation is one of the most valuable traits for an NBA player to have, and Trey brings it in spades, and I'm especially excited to see him play with this young and

deep Hawks team this year. So he comes in at twenty four on this year's player rankings list. All right, guys, this is all I have for today. As I mentioned, we are going to have four more on Wednesday. Then we'll go three at a time through till we get to the top ten, and then we're going one out of time through the top ten. We're going to mail bags on Fridays throughout the way. We're going to stretch

this out. There's no reason to rush. We got lots of time to kill before we get into September and we start our season previews. So again, anything you disagree with a player I didn't have on the list that you think should have been ranked, a player that I listed to day that you think is too high or too low, whatever it might be, drop it in the

mailbag questions. Provide a brief like kind of concise elevator pitch for why you feel that that ranking should be different, and we will get to them in our mailbags throughout the remainder of this list. Again, I appreciate you guys for rocking with us in sport and show. Now see you guys on Wednesday,