Why Anthony Davis is #10 in my NBA player rankings | Dallas Mavericks

to health, also with relation to his skill development. I even want to zoom out a little bit towards the end and talk about his perception of the center position versus the power forward position in some of the strengths and weaknesses of that approach, and some of the things we got to keep an eye out for him with

the Dallas Mavericks in that regard. And then at the tail end of the show, one of the things we're going to start doing, since we're only doing one player at a time from this point forward, is we're going to start hitting some bigger picture basketball debate types of topic. And today we're actually going to start with one that was a raging debate online last week while while I was in Alaska, and I give you guys just a very quick, kind of like thirty thousand foot version of

my opinion. But I wanted to kind of dive deeper into the concept, and it's about two basketball players, one of which is a champion, one of which is not. However, the player who's not a champion is a guy that I view as the better basketball player, and I want to kind of dive into that concept. It's Kyrie Irving versus Chris Paul and who I think is a better basketball player at their absolute peak. So we're going to dive into that at the tail end of the show.

You guys are 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, underscore jcnlts, you guys, don't miss show announcements. Don't forget aboutter podcast for you or every podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's also doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Make sure you guys follow us there. In the last but not least, if you disagree with any of these rankings in any way, shape or form. Where you're doing Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of this series where you guys have the opportunity to explain why you disagree guy

too high, guy too low, whatever it might be. Just right mail bag with the colon, write your elevator pitch just as concisely as possible, your basketball case for why you disagree with a ranking, or even if it's just something you want me to elaborate on a bit further. Put that in the YouTube comments and we'll get to those in our Friday mail bags throughout the remainder of this series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So number ten, Anthony Davis, as last season in review, played in just

fifty one games. We're going to talk about ad and kind of his history with health here in a little bit. Came out guns blazing to start the year, as he was very heavily featured in JJ Redick's offense early in the season. In his first twenty five games, he averaged a super efficient twenty eight points per game to go with three point two steels plus blocks per game. He was legit playing at that top tier superstar level to start the season. Then he got a little banged up.

You're starting to deal with a couple of nagging injuries, and he slowed down pretty significantly after that point. He averaged just twenty three points per game on lower efficiency over his final seventeen games as a Laker. Also, as he started to not perform as well on offense, he started to become less and less featured in the offense, which seemed to take him even further out of rhythm. It just was starting to look like more or less the offensive player that we had seen in previous seasons.

But he did come out guns blazing to start the year, and then he ended up finally succumbing to a groin injury which kept him out the majority of the rest of the season. He ended up playing just nine games

as a Dallas Maverick after the Lukadancics trade. Finished the year in the total of the fifty one games at twenty five points, twelve rebounds in four assists, three point four stocks per game, and his percentages fifty four percent from the field, twenty eight percent from three to seventy eight percent from the line, which amounts to fifty four percent an effective field goal percentage waited for threes and

fifty nine percent in true shooting. This is where I want to start in the health arena for just a minute, because it's always an important context with AD. Eighty has a pretty low, large gap between what his potential ceiling is and what his potential floor is relative to some of these guys, Like there's a case to be made that he belongs in that Kawhi Leonard Joel Embard grouping closer to the bottom of this tier. I disagree because I think he's considerably more reliable than those two guys.

But there are going to be people who disagree with this ranking based on the idea that Ad is not healthy enough, and there is some legitimacy to that argument. I was hopeful as a Lakers fan that after that twenty twenty four season, which if you remember, that was a return to form for Ad from the standpoint of

his health. He played in seventy six games. He made the All NBA team second Team All NBA, which was his first time making an All NBA team since the twenty twenty season when they won the title, And so it looked like, is this gonna be the segment of AD's career where he kind of figures out the health stuff and he starts to be more available and he just couldn't in the following season, goes for fifty one game, suffers a growing injury soft tissue injury pretty simp similar

to some of the injuries he had had early in earlier in his Lakers tenure. So if you zoom out in the four seasons surrounding Anthony Davis's seventy six game All NBA season, he averages forty six games played, thirty six games in twenty twenty one, forty games in twenty twenty two, fifty six and twenty twenty three, and fifty

one in twenty twenty five. So now when I look at him relative to the Mbat Kawhi tier, first of all, Joel Embiid and Kawhi are both dealing with severe degenerative issues in their knees, issues that have completely dominated this phase of their careers and have been recurring in the same knee, and that makes them, in my opinion, significantly less reliable than an Anthony Davis who's just been dealing with some soft tissue related injuries and for the most

part doesn't have any sort of big glaring like ooh that part of his body is likely to break down this season, So I think he's a little bit safer that and then another part of it is the motivation element with him being involved in the Luka Danchitz trade, which we'll get to in a little bit. But I think it's been a combination of three factors that have

led to Anthony Davis's health issues. First of all, luck, like it or not, there is some kind of ethereal injury luck factor that's at play that affects all athletes. Some dudes just break down more, and it's not because of anything they're doing. It's just something that exists there, that injury prone factor, and AD is certainly one of those dudes who just happens to get hurt more than

some of his peers. Secondly, conditioning, AD deserves some of the blame with respect to his injury history because it's been widely reported that, especially in the few years after they won the title, AD would show up to camp out of shape, it would take long stretches of the summer off, and it led to a situation where he wasn't as well conditioned to start seasons as some of his peers at the top of the league, and that

certainly didn't help matters with his health. Right if you look at it as like a spectrum of possible outcomes within the regard or within the range of his injury prone nature. He's been tilting more towards the injured size a side of it in large part, I shouldn't say, in large part partially because of the fact that he didn't come into these seasons in as good as shape as he could have come in. Lastly, he put on

an insane amount of muscle. This is a concept we're going to talk a lot about today with Ad, which I thought was a miscalculation on his part in terms of his development. The reason why is it flat out came at the expense of his foot speed. We've all seen the videos. When a video pops up of Anthony Davis playing basketball in that twenty twenty season, doesn't even look like the same guy. He looks considerably thinner, He was moving considerably better, and it made him a more

dynamic player in a bunch of different ways. AD got shoved around in a couple of matchups, especially when he was playing center during that phase of his career, in that twenty twenty twenty twenty one stage, and so he decided he needed to bulk up, and I thought it was a classic example of over indexing on addressing a weakness rather than leaning into your strengths. That's not to say that you don't want to address your weakness, as certainly Ad should have put on some muscle, as every

super thin player that comes into the league should. As we talk about Victor wemb Minyama, he'll face a similar decision in his career how much should he bulk up. Certainly needs to bulk up some, but he doesn't want to bulk up so much that it comes at the expense of his speed, which is the thing at his size that makes him such a transcendently great athlete. And what happened was is eighty's newfound muscle mass really wasn't helping him win as many physical battles as you'd think.

Basketball is every bit is much about leverage and angles as it is about just pure strength and muscle mass. This is a big part of why I've been gravitating towards those like shorter, stockier wings over some of the longer, lankier wings, because it doesn't really like length is of the highest factor at the rim. It certainly helps on the perimeter when you're contesting shots I don't want to pretend it doesn't, but it has its largest impact on

the game at the rim. And if you can win battles on the ground as a stocky athlete on the perimeter, that can prevent guys from even getting past you. That carries a lot of value in the league and prevents some of that length at the rim from being as much of a factor. That's why I gravitate towards some of those shorter, stockier wings, right, And that's the thing.

Like eighty put on all this muscle, and then he still in the last few years would get bullied by jokicch and bullied by Sabonis at times, although he won that battle a couple times last year. Or like even guys like use of Nrkic sometimes would bury him on the offensive glass. Zubats gave him a lot of issues

on the offensive glass. And then the problem was is even though he had all this muscle and he's still kind of struggling with some of these bigger centers, he also at the same time was not as capable of punishing those guys with his speed because he wasn't as fast as he used to be, and he lost a lot of that in the pursuit of that muscle mass, and I mean you got to factor that in with the injuries as well, Like it made him heavier, and if you're heavier, your lower body's going to struggle to

hold up under the wear and tear of moving your

body around. And so really, as we zoom out, the injuries have been the thing that has prevented Ad from reaching his individual ceiling, his ultimate potential, which was like there's a version of AD's career where he's healthier and he's thinner, and he holds up more, which allows him to be in the gym more, which allows him to develop more in terms of his skill set, which allows him to build more of a rhythm in the season and develop into something closer to the Yahnesses of the

world and the hyper versatile bigs that ranked above him on this list that Joel emb when he was healthy, for example, there's a version of eighty's career where he had better health luck, and he too took a different approach in terms of how he built his body, and maybe he was a more skilled player that reached higher heights. But I do think all of those factors played a role in his injury history earlier in his career, so I have him in the top ten, ahead of guys

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varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot co, slash audio. I'm obviously a huge believer in Anthony Davis's impact on basketball games. That goes without saying. Anybody who's listened to the show over the last few years knows I'm a huge believer in eighty, but it also extends into what I believe will be

a revenge campaign from him. This year, both Anthony Davis and Luka Doncic will be ranked on this list higher, much higher than what their previous seasons justify. Ad has no case to be a top ten player based solely on last season, and Luka Doncic has no case to be a top five player based solely on last season. But we've already seen a completely different looking Luca in a game with Salave against Germany. There were three moves in particular, a euro step, a move driving a close out,

and there was one more. I can't remember exactly what it was. I think it was just like a jab step behind the back, dribble off the right wing in the first half. But he had three moves in that game where I was like, that's a different guy. He's moving at a completely different speed than he moved in the past. Why Because he got embarrassed by the maps, completely embarrassed by the maps, and he's super pissed off, and he lost a bunch of weight and now he's

on a mission to prove everybody wrong. And as we're looking towards next season, I'm factoring that in same goes for Ad, AD was similarly embarrassed. He was basically shipped off as trade filler in the dead of night. It was unprecedented for a Lakers star. It's unprecedented in the entire NBA. It was the craziest trade in the history

of the MBA. How often do you see a superstar, not DeMar Derozen getting traded for Kawhi, but a superstar that gets moved in person of a better player in his prime because the team wanted the even better player. It's so rare, and so Ad has been similarly embarrassed.

I think he wants to prove everyone wrong. I do think we will see Ad come into training camp in great shape relative to previous seasons from him, which I think will lead to him having a healthier season by his standards, which I think will have him in better rhythm in most of these games, which will allow him to show more of his offensive upside, which we're going to talk about in a bit. That's really what separated

him from that top tier. When Ad is a reliable twenty eight point per game score, the guy that you saw in the bubble, that guy's a top tier superstar. When he's not. When he's in the low twenties and he's more inconsistent offensively, that's when he's more of that second tier star like we have in this particular list. And so I actually look at AD and the reason why I put him at ten is I think we are going to get one of the better seasons from AD out of this phase of his prime. It's a

big part of why I ranked him where I ranked him. Now, let's talk about AD as a basketball player. Rather than looking at his injury history and in the big picture, let's zoom in on his basketball traits and what sets him apart from his peers. We have to start with defense for AD, because that's his calling card. There's a similar range of outcomes for AD as a defender centering around his health. Because of his foot speed. Even the lesser foot speed version of AD has a really high

floor as a perimeter defender. It's not the same guy from New Orleans, not the same guy from like twenty twenty, but healthy Ad, even bigger, bulky, healthy Ad has real footspeed on the perimeter relative to his position, which brings a lot of upside. But as we talked about there's like these banged up versions of Ad, like that second chunk of last season with the Lakers or what you saw with Dallas, where it's like that's a d but he's clearly not moving very well even by his big

bulky standards. Right. But what's crazy with Ad, and it's a big part of why I have him this high, is even lumbering Ad, even big bulky Ad that's out of shape and is just coming back from an injury. Even that guy has an incredibly high floor as a defensive player, and it starts with the shot blocking. Has a standing reach over nine feet, he has good leaping ability, and he has outrageous natural defensive instincts. He can anticipate what offensive players are going to do around the rim,

guessing release points where they're going for layups. And as a result, even while constantly battling injury issues for the last five years and carrying all that extra weight, even with that, he still averaged two point one blocks per game over that five year span that we were referencing earlier. He was consistently banged up. Now, as we know, the younger, faster AD averaged two point five blocks per game for the seven seasons previous. Obviously, he can get to a

higher level there. Even when he's healthy in rhythm, When he plays game after game after game after game, and he drops some of the excess weight he's carrying and he's in good shape, he can go on runs. He had a stretch five games last year with the Lakers where he averaged three point six blocks per game over a five game stretch. He can still get there. But the point is his floor is an outrageously good shot blocker and rim protector. He does it without committing fouls.

He does it without giving up too many unnecessary offensive rebounds by chasing stupid shots that he has no chance of blocking. He is a rock solid, foundational rim protector in this league, even when he's banged up. He's also an excellent defensive rebounder, a career eleven rebounds per game

in twelve point three rebouls game. Over his last three seasons, he led the entire league in rebounding in twenty twenty three, He was third in rebounding in twenty twenty four, and even the banged up version of Anthony Davis last year

was seventh in overall rebounding. He has had occasional issues giving up certain types of offensive rebounds on like Duccans to certain types of centers, so guys like Zubat's so Bonis yokicch even Nurkic sometimes like we talked about, But even factoring in that down mark, there's no way to look at Anthony Davis as anything other than a monster rebounder and one of the very best rebounders in the

entire NBA. And that's part of the appeal for a player like Anthony Davis on a list like this, his floor no matter what Dallas is gonna get, even if he's banged up and only plays fifty games. For fifty games, they're going to get a rock solid defensive anchor, a guy who can protect the rim at an elite level and rebound at an an elite level. And when you can do those two things, it just makes it so much easier for a basketball team to build around that

and to function around that. We used to talk about this for eighties bad games, right like even the slower moving, banged up version of AD. He'd have these like bad games where he'd have twelve points, fourteen rebounds, and three blocks, and people would rightfully complain that, like, yeah, that inconsistently inconsistency, especially on offense, is what would separate him from guys

like Yannis, And that would be fair. If you're comparing him to Giannis, you're gonna frequently run into things that are frustrating. I'm not going to argue against that. But in those games, he was still doing so much dirty work, like he'd have twelve, fourteen and three, and people would be complaining and like to quote Pete Zayas and again, if you're a Lakers fan, I think Pete and Darius have the best team specific Lakers podcast. You guys got

to check it out. Pete taught me so much about what I know about the modern NBA, and I just think he's awesome. You guys have to go check out. It's a Laker film room podcast. But Pete, you would always say, like everyone's yelling at Ad when he's trying to move the couch by himself, and it's like, how about we help him move the couch, and then we start complaining about whatever else he's doing, And it's the truth.

Like Ad had to carry such an insanely heavy load as a defensive player and as a rebounder for that Lakers team. You know, like we're going to talk about him overall as a ceiling as a defensive player. But like a lot of times people will say, like, oh, well, Ad doesn't have these accolades, he doesn't have the Defensive Player of the Year, the racked up first Team All Defensivewards, and all this kind of stuff. And you want to

know why. It's because people for years have had their brains broken by the idea of basketball being a team sport. It is a team sport, and the Lakers were consistently fielding rosters utterly devoid of defensive talent, where Ad is carrying everything on that end of the floor. And we talk about it all the time, the speed with which

a dribble penetrator gets past his man. If it's a straight lines, straight line, sprinting drive, it breaks any defense, let alone a defense that's anchored by any elite defensive player like Anthony Davis. The Lakers were a trash defense and they were still hitting mediocre, you know, in that you know, fifteen to twenty four range of defensive ratings because Anthony Davis was anchoring everything on that end of

the floor. Their second best defender was like an old Lebron who, as we all know, especially when he doesn't believe a team can win the title, will take some time off on that end of the floor in the regular season. I think AD is a grossly underappreciated defensive player overall. It's a big part of why I have him so much higher on this list than many people will. Everything we just discussed is AD's floor as a defensive player. Elite,

top tier in protector, elite top tier rebounder. That's the floor. The ceiling for AD as a defensive player is the best defensive player in the NBA, at least before Victor wemen Yama came around. Like, I'm gonna reference non Wemby a few times here because he has come in and broken everything. But as you guys have noticed, we haven't even gotten to Wemby yet on this list. I'm a huge believer in what Victor wm Minyama can do, but I believe before Wemby that the healthy, in shape Anthony

Davis was the best defensive player in basketball. He was a frightening rim protector that would break offenses. Like even just last year, like I talked about, he had a five game stretch towards the beginning of the year when he was healthy and in shape, where he averaged three point six blocks per game. That's outrageous. But he'd also bring crazy scheme versatility, and this is what sets him apart.

There are a lot of guys like Joel Embiid or great rim protectors when they can sit back and protect the basket or sit in a deeper drop coverage, but as soon as you ask them to do anything else, it falls apart. Like you know, I think Game seven in that playoff series against the Celtics, where he's just getting pulled out to the perimeter and just cooked repeatedly, over and over again by Jason Tatum. With ad you could ask him to be a deep drop coverage big

and he'd crush at that. But you could also ask him to come up to the level and contest pull up shooters or as guys are coming downhill, reaching in on the on the guard as he's working downhill. He's always been a high steels guy. He had sixteen games last year with multiple steals. But again he's also an awesome switching big. Maybe not as good as a guy like bam At a bio but near that level and in conjunction with his A plus plus plus rim protection.

For a while there before Wemby came around, I thought healthy Ad was the best defensive player in the world. I thought the twenty twenty three series against Golden State was the classic example of how even in this big, bulky version of Ad, when he's healthy, is the best

non wenbe defender in the world. He can completely stifled Golden State's offense to the point where every single decision that Steve Kerr made, every lineup decision, every floor geometry decision, everything Steve Kerr was doing was geared around getting Anthony Davis away from the action and away from the rim.

And then, in the pivotal moment of the series in Game four, when Steph was still causing so many problems for the Laker defense with what he was doing in pick and roll, Anthony Davis at the end of that game twice switched the screen, got onto Steph and got

two key stops. He forced him into an extremely difficult one legged fade away from the mid range and a super deep three because Steph on the second look there was like, I'm not even gonna try to go around this guy, I'm just going to pull from out here, and it was like a thirty footer that he ended up missing. That was the differentiator. Steve Kerr kept trying stuff and Ad just literally had a defensive answer for

everything they did, even Steph on any island. And so that's a big part of why I have Ad at ten this year. Even with his health variants, he's going to be one of the top two or three defense and rebounding foundations in the entire NBA, and the high end is potentially the best defender in basketball other than Victor Weinmanyam. That's an extremely high floor for a guy

before we even get to the offensive end. And then on the offensive end, while he can be frustrating and inconsistent as an on ball player, he's an excellent play finisher, which makes him on every single night a very useful offensive player. Again, twenty five points per game last year on fifty nine per century shooting, that's nothing to roll your eyes at. He had three forty point games, eleven thirty five point games, and nineteen to thirty point games.

He was a super efficient role man in ball screens on one hundred and ninety reps as a Laker in ball screens, he got one point two to three points per possession, which is all. He'shot forty two percent pick and pop threes. This is an interesting idea. It's something I wish the Lakers would have used more. It was

better for their spacing as well. Eighty is not a good jump shooter, but for whatever reason, there's something about the rhythm of pick and pop, and a lot of it could be just how open he would get, but there was like a rhythm for him with pick and pop where he shot well out of it. He was fifteen for thirty six last year on pick and pop threes. He was also excellent on floaters fifty two percent last year. And then he's a ridiculous vertical spacing threat. He's got

magnet hands. He catches everything with nine foot standing reach and plenty of mobility even at his larger size to finish everything above the rim. So he was flat out just an awesome pick and roll threat as the screener last year. He was also a solid post player. Was little down year over year last year, just one point zero four points per possession including passes, which is just above average. Nothing to write home about, but above average. The previous year, though he was very good when he

was healthier. He was one point zero nine points per possession including passes out of the post, which is the seventy first percentile, shoots over fifty percent on hook shots. That's the thing with ads above fifty percent on both hook shots and floaters, not yokic territory, he's going to be up over sixty percent on those. But Ad among biggs in the NBA is as good as short range finisher as you'll find outside of the yokch types in

the league. It was mainly a passing issue that kept him from really reaching his lead his ceiling as a post player in twenty twenty four when he shot out of the post again. That was the year that he played super well and got one point zero nine points per possession. In twenty twenty four, he had a score percentage when he'd shoot out of the post of fifty four percent, meaning if you toss the ball to Ad and he was able to get a shot up, he was going to score well over half the time. It

was a super reliable play type. But over the years, even though he made some slight improvements as a passer, he never got good enough at it to become a guy that you could just lean on for high, high volume out of the post, the way you could with the guy like Embiid, who is so good at scoring out of the post that even his playmaking issues didn't matter as much. And a guy like Jokic's obviously one of the best post players to ever touch the floor. Right,

there was just a tier. The eighty was clearly a tier below because he can never quite figure out the passing element of it to make his scoring ability worth it to be a super high volume post up player. He always just seemed to get spooked by double teams. The big thing I would always talk about is it would look like he was trying to get rid of the ball rather than trying to find the kill pass.

Like he'd catch the ball out of a double team in the post and he would dribble out and throw to a guy who's being guarded by throwing an over the top pass just to like get rid of the ball, and he'd throw the pass to a guy who's thirty thirty five feet from the rim. Whereas, like you watch the best post players in the league, they work aggressively into the double and try to pass through the defense to the weak side where there's usually a wide open

player or a wide open cutter. They make the kill pass. The pass that make it makes it so that you cannot double him. That was the thing that Ady never was quite able to figure out, and so because of that, because he was a little sketchy as a ball handler overall, it just it just never amounted to a legitimate offensive engine type of player the way Joel Embiid was able to get or the way that nikolea Jokic was able

to get. That really is the differentiator for Anthony Davis between him as a second tier star in the top tier stars at the top of the league. The second piece of it was the jump shot. The jump shot just never came around to what it was in twenty twenty. Like we talked about, he shot well on picking pops, but overall last year he was a zero point nine

points per shot on jump shots. He's okay from short range forty nine percent inside of seventeen feet and that's fine, but that's notably still under a point per shot, and he shot just forty three percent on long twos outside of seventeen feet, which is only zero point eighty six points per shot, and he was below thirty percent from three, so even from three he was below a point per shot.

So again like him not developing as either a great jump shooter or an elite ball handler playmaker, because like Jannis, never became an elite jump shooter, but Jannis has become an elite ball handler playmaker as a monster frontcourt defensive weapon, and that is what allowed Giannis to become like a perennial MVP candidate in the way that Anthony Davis has

not been able to figure out. If he could have become an elite jump shooter, you know, a la Dirk Noovisky, that becomes a thing that can carry him up to he didn't, you wouldn't even need to be as good as Dirk just if he became an elite jump shooter relative to most play finishers, just like a knockdown pick and pop big or something like that, he could have been a guy that could have entered into that top

tier because of how gifted he was defensively. If he could have just figured out how to become a top not a top tier, but a very good on the ballplayer as a ball handler playmaker, he could have entered into that tier, but he ended up being neither. And again you can factor in injuries into that equation. Equation, I think it's worth mentioning like Ad has never really been able to work on his game as much as

some of his peers because he's been banged up. That has been what's kept him from entering into that superstar tier outside of the twenty twenty season. In that twenty twenty season, when he shot like Kevin Freakin Durant in the bubble, I had him as the fourth best player in the world, and I think that was like the

absolute peak. It was a skinnier version of AD that was a better defensive player and just a ridiculous shot maker out of the high post in ISO situations and it just and he shot really well from three too, famously hit a game winning three against the Denver Nuggets in that Western Conference final series. So he was just another level of a jump shooter. That's kind of an example of what I was talking about, like jump shooting

AD plus elite defense, top tier superstar. If he could have figured out the playmaking piece, because he has shot making out of the post, he could have got there. But he just never was able to figure those pieces out. But still, when you look at the big picture, you can basically bank on Ad to give you at least twenty five and twelve next year, and you can bank on him being an excellent defensive, rebounder and rim protector. That's the floor. What a strong foundation for the rest

of your team to build on. And he's still a good post up threat and a top tier rollman weapon that you can build around. On offense. On any given night, he can explode for forty points. And that's the low end. And I think there's a range of potential outcomes here where he hits higher because of his motivation level, and I think we're going to get there. So for me,

I had Anthony Davis at number ten this year. Now, before we move on to the Chris Paul Kyrie debate, I did want to give a bonus AD topic regarding him playing the power forward for the Dallas Mavericks. He's said. I saw another quote just the other day of him talking about how he views himself as a power forward more than the center. And again, like I want to start like this, I don't want to say that Ady

can't play power forward. I actually think in the modern NBA, having two big looks is an important punch that you can throw in certain situations. So for instance, like the Thunder being able to lean heavily into Hartenstein and Chat in the Denver series was a huge part of how they were able to make things very difficult for Nicole Jokich.

And so I think you should have that look. But then as you can see, like then when the Thunder got into later playoff rounds, they went away from the two big look like they didn't use it as much against the Pacers because the speed would have been an issue, right, And so like the point is is, like you want to have that as a punch, but it can't be

your like foundational thing that you try to do. And this is where I get a little concern about the overall team construct of the Dallas Mavericks, especially with all the centers that they have on staff right now. The problem is Ad is fast, even big bulky Ad is fast for a center, but he's not fast compared to power forwards. Old Lebron is a much better athlete than Anthony Davis in terms of foot speed and quickness and changing ends of the floor. Aaron Gordon in the Western Conference.

Like even Kevin Durant for the Houston Rockets moves better than Anthony Davis does. Right, So, like at the five, his speed is an asset at the full, or his speed is a liability. Similarly, his offensive skill, his short range shot making, his ball handling ability at the five, it's an asset. At the four, it's a liability. And one of the things that happens is is if you get him on the floor at the four, you start to dip below these kind of like mandatory minimums in

certain areas of skill set. You put ad at the four next to a Derek Lively or Daniel Gafford, all of a sudden, your team doesn't really have much ball handling on the floor. You put Anthony Davis at the four by a Derek Lively, all of a sudden, your team doesn't have much jump shooting on the floor, all of a sudden, even just overall foot speed. Like we didn't talk about this earlier, but one of the few weaknesses Anthony Davis has on the defensive end is he

is not a good transition big. He falls on the ground a lot. He complains that the refs a lot, and he doesn't run back on defense. I've seen Biggs beat Anthony Davis just literally by running him up and down on the floor. Like, even at the center position, he can sometimes struggle as a changing ends type of floor runner, so like at the four, it can become

a serious problem. So again, I don't hate the idea of the MAVs having two big looks, and you could even talk me into starting games that way, but to me, at least half and all of your at least half of your total minutes and all of the clutch time, big picture moments asign from maybe against Denver, you're gonna need Anthony Davis at center because same with Cooper Flag.

Cooper Flag has a ball handling skill, speed advantage against fours, but he's gonna run into some issues against threes right away. In the NBA, he'll improve, But like Cooper Flag can handle the ball, but how much is this handling gonna be a factor if there's not a lot of surrounding ball handling, Like like what if they end up starting

Klay Thompson, We'll see what ends up happening. But like Clay Thompson's not a guy who dribbles the ball a lot you could run into some issues in terms of your aggregate ball handling on the floor with Anthony Davis at the floor. It's just something to keep an eye on as we watch the MAVs next year. All before we get out of here today, I want to spend a few minutes talking about Chris Paul versus Kyrie Irving.

So this is an interesting debate because Kyrie Irving kind of has a stranglehold on basketball culture, and I don't think that's an accident. I think he's one of the top three or foremost aesthetically appealing basketball players I've ever watched. He's just so much fun to watch when he's chaining together dribble combinations and he's showing outrageous footwork and some

of the wildest finishes I've ever seen. Yeah, every once in a while, I'll see the clips from like Game five or Game seven, a Game seven in particular of the of the NBA Finals in two thousand and sixteen. He had this play where he got it either got a defensive rebound or got outlet pass, and he threw this like straight up wicked push ahead dribble that had

this crazy, like voodoo backspin on it. Because it came out of his hands at like this sharp angle forward, hit the ground and then just bounced straight back up

so that he could catch it on the run. And he got into a euro or a high gather and went like left hand way out wide while getting fouled, like super high off the glass, and it just like perfectly kissed off the glass and went into the basket, and you're just like, oh my god, that was one of the craziest, most beautiful basketball players I've ever seen. Like he has that certain aesthetic appeal that just has

the basketball culture and his stranglehold. He also has one of the most iconic shots in NBA history on his resume with the step back three over Steph Curry to win the twenty sixteen finals. He's a champion, which Chris Paul is not. Those are the things that I think drive a lot of the momentum. Bed Kyrie Irving as a player who could be considered as better than Chris Paul. But I think Chris Paul at his peak, was just a better basketball player than Kyrie Irving's did a lot

of talk about defense. I think Kyrie Irving is actually a little bit underrated as a defender famously in those stretches. If you remember, Kyrie defended well, chasing around screens and staying attached to shooters, and he was never a guy that would be super focused over the course of regular seasons. But I never felt like Kyrie was a substantial weak point on the defensive end of the floor when I was rooting for him during those years with the Cavaliers.

So Chris Paul is a more decorated defender, and certainly in his prime, was a more committed regular season defender. But to me, I'm not looking at the defensive end as much of a differentiator between those two. To me, the difference is simply the archetype. Kyrie Irving is a score and one of the very best to do it,

but Chris Paul is a legitimate offense eve Ent. I think you see this sort of issue when you look at years like when Kyrie Irving was trying to lead those Boston Celtics teams, which in retrospect like that was why he left Cleveland, if you guys remember, he kind of wanted an opportunity to lead his own team, and when he got there, you find out pretty quickly that

I talk about this idea all the time. With respect to scores versus offensive engines, the name of the game is not to generate thirty points on sixty percent through shooting for yourself. You got to generate. You're taking eighty ninety shots in a game as a team, and you're gonna be on the floor for call it eighty percent of that. So you're you're gonna need to generate for your team, you know, sixty seventy shots, maybe not all

in points and assists, but an advantage creation. You're gonna have your twenty five to thirty that you pour in as an on ball score for a guy like Chris Paul Moore, like in that you know, eighteen to twenty four kind of range, although Chris Paul had big score games. But then you're gonna have your assists like you're into twelve times a game, or you spoon fed a guy a wide open three or a cut which is going

to lead to a bucket. But for the offensive engine types, it's also the twenty to thirty to forty times a game where you got into an action early in a set and you made a read that got a guy a close out or shifted the defense side to side or did something to generate an advantage that your team then capitalized on with two or three additional sequences that led to an open shot. That's why I'm so I

gravitate so much towards offensive engines. They simply generate so much more offense for their team relative to what things look like in the box score. Like a guy like Tyrese Halliburton, he's gonna average, you know, sixteen seventeen points

per game and you know, eleven twelve assists. Whatever it is that he puts up and it's not gonna look like it manifests some great offensive output, but he generates so many advantages that the Pacers playoff for extended stretches of each possession, and he gets into it early in the possession that like, for whatever reason, when he's off the floor, the Pacers suddenly don't score it nearly as effective a level. That is the value of it being an offensive engine. With the guy like Kyrie Irving is

a score, there's a certain level of variants. Yeah, he made all those day and pull up jump shots against the Golden State Warriors, and it was the reason that they were able to push over the top and win the title when he hit the shot against Steph Curry. But he also looked great for three rounds with the Dallas Mavericks in twenty twenty four, and then what happened against Boston. Suddenly he couldn't make those pull up jump shots.

They weren't going in. And by the way, that's he was going against really good defenders who made it tougher. But we've seen Kyrie Irving hit really tough shots. There's just a lot of variants. Specifically with tough shot making, there's a heavy make miss factor, and sometimes they don't go in, and then when they don't go in, what's your offensive value that you're bringing to the table. And Kyrie Irving was is a good passer, but he is not the type of offensive engine that a guy like

Chris Paul was. So you get into it, you get a little more complicated. It's like, Okay, well, Chris Paul's not good enough to win the title as your number one option. I'm not. I actually do believe that if Chris Paul was on better teams when he was in his prime, he would have had a really good chance. Now, like the twenty twenty two with the Suns, he was so old his body was breaking down at the end

of the NBA Final series. But like, if you go back to the mid twenty tens, if he was on one of the better rosters in the NBA, I absolutely think Chris Paul was good enough to win the title. But it didn't happen for whatever reason. Okay, Kyrie Irving did get one playing alongside the greatest basketball player ever,

it's not the same. And as we go to the number two piece, Yeah, I do think Kyrie Irving is flat out an awesome option to have as your second best player when you're alongside a superstar player that can handle a lot of that like upside and terms of, you know, managing the load of offensive shot creation. But like just look at it as the reverse for a Chris Paul. So he's a shot creator, so you wouldn't

want to pair him with another shot creator. I do think there were some diminishing returns when you put a guy like Chris Paul with a James Harden, or if you were to put him with a Luka Doncic or even a Lebron James, because they kind of do a lot of the same things. We've talked a lot about that. With the idea of the Lakers potentially trying to pair Luca with Jokic, I just don't think that that's nearly as good a team as it looks like on paper because those skill sets overlap too much. So for a

guy like Chris Paul. If Kyrie Irving got to play with Lebron James at the peak of his powers and get a title there, I do believe that if in twenty sixteen you swapped Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul, I think that Thunder team is absolutely a legitimate championship team. Now would they have beat Lebron who knows? Would they

have beat Steph who knows? But like I think, if you paired CP three with Kevin Durant for six years in the heart of their primes, I think they get a title because you would be pairing Chris Paul's offensive engine nature with the tip of the spear scoring that Kevin Durant provides. So, yeah, Chris Paul didn't have a title the way that Kyrie Irving does, and he doesn't have the cultural resonance that a guy like Kyrie Irving does.

And yeah, he's got a couple of tough black marks on his resume in terms of rough playoff moments, but so does Kyrie, and like, ultimately, when I look at it, I just think Chris Paul is a better basketball player than Kyrie Irving because they're more even as defenders than people think. But Chris Paul is much better at generating offense for his entire team than Kyrie Irving is, and that is an example of why I gravitate towards those

offensive engine types more than the scoring types. All right, guys, it's all I have for today is always a sincerely percent you got for supporting us and supporting the show. We will be back with number nine on Wednesday, as well as another one of these kind of debate topics at the tail end. I will see you guys then