tiers gives him cover as well. if he had russ 50th, it would lead to a lot of @s, but if he's the bottom of tier 3 or whatever and behind a paywall, it isn't going to cause as many ripples

How about we lock this thread, I feel like I'm cheating on Geoff.

That's exactly why he's doing tiers TBH. And htese will be big tiers. Like players 11-35. The way he's setting it up Im actually not as hyped about it now I get why he's doing it but it wont be as revealing.

I agree.

Lock �� it up!

I got a little time to kill before work picks up Ill try out some tier player rankings. Note Im actually ranking within a tier

Tier 1:

1) LeBron James

Tier 2:

2) Stephen Curry

3) Kawhi Leonard

4) Giannis Antetokounmpo

5) Anthony Davis

6) James Harden

Note this is a really really interchangeable tier. You can rank them 2-6 in a ton of ways I dont really care. Steph's offensive impact and ability to extract value equally both on and off ball tends to get pretty underrated for my money and why he's here. Although TBH before the playoffs I wouldve had Giannis and Kawhi Leonard probably over him.

Tier 3:

7) Nikola Jokic

It's a one man tier after what he did in the playoffs. There are those who argue he's better than AD and I get why. I just value AD's scaleability more.

Tier 4:

8) Damian Lillard

9) Luka Doncic

Tier 5:

10) Jimmy Butler

11) Joel Embiid

12) Kevin Durant

13) Jayson Tatum

14) Paul George

Big tier here. As you can tell Im less sanguine on how KD comes back at age 32 post achilles than others. This is where Im projecting him to be. Ill also take the Paul George stock people are selling he's still really good and could easily be better than a guy like Jimmy Butler next year.

Tier 6:

15) Bam Adebayo

16) Rudy Gobert

17) Devin Booker

18) Karl Anthony Towns

19) Ben Simmons

20) Kyrie Irving

21) Chris Paul

22) Kyle Lowry

23) Bradley Beal

This is a giant tier. It was the hardest one ot rank. Maybe some recency bias here. Oh well. Kyrie's injury track record is bumping him down. People will push back at Booker because of his advanced metrics in in the Zach Lowe camp that I dont think his defense is as bad as the metrics say I just dont. He gets a bubble boost also maybe a bit too much. But again this is a very very fluid tier you can interchangeably rank guys many different ways

Tier 7:

24) Donovan Mitchell

25) Khris Middleton

26) Russell Westbrook

27) Trae Young

28) Pascal Siakam

29) Jamal Murray

Last one here I got time to do. Another tough one. Murray again big bubble boost maybe too much. This might also be too high for Westbrook we'll see. Trae is worth all the offensive hype and his defense is as bad as advertised.

Kemba Walker, Jrue Holiday, Brandon Ingram, Zion Williamson all narrowly missing out.

I assume you don't know he's a longtime mod here (hardly posts anymore tho).

No we can look at their regular season as well as the entire playoff stats and you can also adjust for KD's absence. It's not like we don't have a good estimate of KD's impact. The statistical evidence generally points to this team being a championship-caliber team, but not an especially dominant one. You can't just dismiss the evidence because it disagrees with your preconceived notion.

And if you do this, you should be skeptical that the Warriors were substantially better. How is this team

KD
Curry
Klay
Draymond
Iguodala
Kevon Looney
Jerebko/etc

much better than

Kawhi
Lowry
Gasol
Siakam
Ibaka
FVV
Danny Green/etc

Just as the Warriors in 16 serves as evidence of how talented that group was with Durant, this year's Raptors (basically last year's Raptors minus Kawhi and Danny Green, but a year older) should serve as evidence of how talented this team was last year with Kawhi. It was a great team. Probably not on par with the Warriors in 17 or 18, but this team both looks comparable on paper with the 19 Warriors, and they match up fairly well statistically as well.

I didn't do this. I don't know if you're being dishonest or just careless in your reading comprehension, but I made it very clear why I was mentioning those splits - it's not to prove anything with it, but to demonstrate that there's nothing hidden in the splits that should challenge the conclusion that we should draw from the aggregate stats. In other words, I'm being so thorough that I'm going out of my way to help explore fidstar's side of argument, since he's unusually focused how the Warriors are without KD (quite clearly great in 2017, not so much in 2019). I don't understand your pedantic insistence that I'm doing something wrong here - if you're going to be pedantic, don't be this obviously wrong.

We already went over this. The Warriors net rating without KD in the playoffs was just 0.0. They were fine, but not great without KD. This includes all of the wins you're talking about, so they must have been especially bad outside of those. You can't just exclude that. There also were a bunch of games KD did play, and the Warriors didn't look that great. You can't exclude that either. If you're trying to evaluate teams, you have to be able to use some kind methodology that would apply to any team, not just this team. You can't just cherry pick a handful of games, create a narrative around it, and use it to prove something. You can make these kinds of narratives around any team to make them look better.

Sure you can. A lot of things can happen in a short series. The Cavs without Kyrie and Love went 2-3 against the 2015 Warriors. They also swept a 60-win team in the conference finals, winning by an average of 13 points despite Love missing the whole series and Kyrie missing half the series. Given their lack of depth, losing both Kyrie and Love was probably comparable to losing Durant. Does that demonstrate that the Cavs were much better than the Warriors that year? Not at all.

Lebron this year in the playoffs was better than Kevin Durant has ever been in any playoffs run. And no one thinks this year's Lakers were that great - this is a fairly average championship team.

I did not know this interesting

Also i was wrong this is the only tier group he's not breaking into sub groups. So we'll get more detail distinguishing his other tiers which is good and TBH I get why there is no sub tiers for this it's splitting hairs big time 80th vs 95th or whatever

My two cents on the Warriors stuff

1) Here's the area of concern: 2019 playoffs Warriors defnesive rating was like 112. And it wasnt good even before the injuries hit. Personnel is worse and older now

2) Like I said a couple days ago huge huge difference between the Warriors getting to play 3 weeks without Durant and them having to do it for 7 months 82 games and a postseason. The wear and tear from the latter is massive. Huge caveat when looking at their data without KD. The Warriors from 2017-19 the games it was Steph no KD hardly took those nights off even in the reg season it was almost like it rejuvenated them somewhat. That can last for 2-3 weeks. For 82 games and playoffs very different

3) This is what it coems down to defensively

2015-19 [GSW with Draymond without any of KD Iguodala Klay or Bogut 103 defensive rating](https://www.pbpstats.com/wowy-combos...,202691,203110)

Draymond for a long time when engaged can be a one man defense. Will he still have it at this age in his condition and all that. That's what it comes down to. If he doesnt then everything falls apart.

4) I for the record dont buy that GSW wins vs Toronto if Klay doesnt get hurt.

a) Im not sold Klay alone was enough to make up the margin in game 3 which Toronto controlled

b) Klay had an above average game for his standards game 4 Tor still won by double digits

c) If KD doesnt play in game 5 GSW I dont think wins and that series is over. Those 14 pts 5/6 shooting early on were big from KD before getting hurt.

Great list except Westbrook going into Next Season has no business being in the top 50.

He doesn't help at winning basketball games for a good team. He hinders it. For the fact that he would lift the NY Knicks win ceiling by what? 8-10 games next season doesn't warrant him to be in the top 50, let alone the top 30.

But yeah seriously, great list and I love the tiers.

Damn I’m not used to being a westbrook apologist but I can’t get behind no top 50

He had a reasonable 3rd team all nba case before the playoffs when he wasn’t healthy

Overrated by casual fans but he still does a lot to impact a game through the pressure he puts attacking the rim, in transition and being a better passer than he’s given credit for

You could certainly argue he’s like 10 spots too high I just thought that kind of drop would be an overreaction

Westbrook in the Mecca is a top 50 STORY no question.

I actually think Chris Paul might be a Knick next year

I'd say Lakers, but it's so hard for them to acquire him (might even not be possible aorn, I'm too lazy to check).

So I also feel pretty confident the Knicks will trade for him. WHEN THEY SHOULD BE TANKING! JFC.

Luka at least in same tier as Curry, Kawhi and Harden. He's already better than Harden.

Playoffs are always "a handful of games", so narratives will be for any analysis. I mean the Warriors blew the Rockets out by 40 points in the 2018 playoffs. Are they significantly worse if in junk time Rockets got that back to 10 points? I mean it moves their average winning margin by 2 ppg.

I mean the numbers show that the Warriors are pretty good without Durant. You've used the on and offs for Durant during the regular season. There's a simple reason for that. Curry played about 25% of the minutes Durant didn't play (they're +13pp 100 in those minutes fwiw). So, yes, if Curry only plays 25% of our minutes next year, we're probably going to suck.

You can't ignore that they went well in the playoffs before they hit the wall with injury when Durant was out, or their success in games when Durant was missing in his time there.

So we have more rankings today

Ill post Partnows 78-39

4A: Oladipo Tobias Harris SGA Ingram brook Lopez CJ Gallinari Derrick Rose DeRozan Danny green Sabonis FVV ingles Dragić Hayward wall Nurkic Aldridge Brogdon PJ Tucker smart vucevic Covington

4B: LaVine Dinwiddie Rubio Beverley Otto Porter joe Harris JJ Redick Conley Harrell Myles Turner OG Anunoby Lou Will Jaren Jackson Mike Conley John Collins Eric Bledsoe Caris LeVert Bojan bogdanovic

LaMelo Frank RJ Gallo Mitch w/ Fred VanVleet 6th man of the year.

Death lineup of VanVleet LaMelo Frank RJ Gallo

I'd **** w/ dat

I'd **** w/ dat too THAY THAY!

That's a spicy Italian meatball!

Who gains more weight in Nola next season between SVG and Zion?

I wonder how much SVG can do for their defense.

Zion needs to slim down to a svelte 265 lbs with a heavy cardio regimen.

Seems the Knicks have been rebuilding for 20 years

Again, I think you're missing the point of these numbers. The point isn't that the Warriors were terrible without Durant - they were obviously a pretty good team even without KD, just as the Raptors were without Kawhi - but that the numbers went from absurd (2017) to normal (2019). Which supports the thesis that the 17 Warriors and the 19 Warriors were very different in terms of their overall quality. Of course starters play more together than not, that's not the point.

Also re:

Where are you getting this? For 18-19,

Curry was +13.2 in 2321 MP
Curry/Durant was +15.7 in 1854 MP

So if you do the math (assuming relatively constant pace) Curry without Durant must have been roughly -3.3. Again, I fully acknowledge that the 2017 Warriors likely were the most loaded super team ever and the 2018 Warriors were still an all-time great team, well above mere championship level teams. My point is that the evidence points to the 2019 Warriors being substantially worse. This happens to every top team - the Pistons from 90 to 91 to 92, the Lakers from 02 to 03, the Heat from 12/13 to 14, etc, etc. Dominance is difficult to sustain and playing in the Finals for 5 straight years is going to be mentally and physical exhausting. The Warriors were so good in 2017 that even a substantial decline, they were at worst a top-2 team, but it looks like they declined just like all great teams eventually do.

Oh the 2019 Warriors were clearly far worse. This shouldnt even be a debate. I posted this last week but Draymond at the 5 defensively in 2019 playoffs was not good, way way way worse than before

2017 was as dominant as any team in NBA history up there with 86 Boston, 96 Chicago etc.

2019 was not some special team. That Houston series before KD went down end of the 3rd quarter in game 5 was as dead even as it gets. And Houston was far worse than in 2018 also. They blew 2 games to LAC. They were beatable had they won a title in 2019 and you ranked all the title teams in NBA history they wouldve definitely been below average on such a list.

What the KD injury did was

1) The Warriors offensive rating skyrocketed for the last 5 quarters of that Hou series the moment it happened, Hou actually had more trouble defending them without KD

2) It brought focus, a sense of urgency and not just taking stretches off. They lose 2 games to LAC in rd 1 with KD but sweep Portland while super banged up....hmmm

The entire vibe was different. But the KD/Steph Warriors it was just so hard to keep focus, energy, drive etc 3 yrs in. And it showed. Im not saying GSW wouldnt have beaten Toronto if healthy but Ill say this: Toronto was definitely capable of beating the GSW team you saw pre KD injury those first 2 rounds. Still think in the NBA Finals GSW probably wouldve rose to the occasion enough to pull it out but it wouldve been hard they wouldve gotten pushed good. Ultimately focus and being engaged is why they blew the 2016 Finals they were flat out better. Had complete control of the series. But they did **** like completely no show the first halves of game 3 and game 6, not bother making adjustments etc and it kept the door slightly open for hte Cavs. You keep giving the opponent a chance and dont put them away eventually theyll catch a break and hit the high end of their variance for a stretch. And that's what happened, Kyrie and LeBron got super hot the series flipped GSW didnt know what to do and everything cascaded from there