Thinking Basketball's Top 10 Players of 2024

[Djoker]

Health adjustments are tough but no way Giannis completely misses out on the top 10. that doesn't feel right.

[tone wone]

Ben’s Curry fetish. He wasn’t that Curry this year.

But if he wasn't that guy than WHO was good on the Warriors? Much has been made of the demise of both Thompson and Wiggins. Draymond was suspended a quarter of the season. Chris Paul missed his yearly 20 games.

The difference between the Warriors being out of the playoffs and the Lakers being in the playoffs is 1 game.

I don't believe the Lakers supporting cast is so bad that the Lakers can have two guys on the top 10 and be a play-in team.


Is Looney, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Podziemski, Kuminga that much better than Vincent, Vanderbilt, Prince, Russell, Reaves?

2 of those players played a combined 30 games, 3 of those players don’t know how to defend except Reaves magically post all star break, and our head coach got shot in the head lol

Lakers supporting cast was unserious till the last quarter of the year where it was solid, but then Dlo forgot how to play basketball in the playoffs again

This post made me curious if Vando and Vincent actually played a game together this year. Sure enough, they played exactly 1 together. 12/20 @ CHI.

It was Vando's 7th game back from his heel injury that cost him the first 20 games of the season. Vincent had been out since 10/30 with knee problems and would have surgery right after this game miss the next 47. Vando would hurt his foot on 2/01 @ BOS and miss the rest of the season.

[Owly]

Health adjustments are tough but no way Giannis completely misses out on the top 10. that doesn't feel right.

Personally I'm inclined to be sympathetic to a view that that seems harsh. But I would also say it depends on your criteria and what you are doing.

If injuries happening exactly as they did are a given and a player isn't going to be available at any point in the playoffs and one's criteria is heavily tilted on a literal interpretation of CORP and so heavily playoff tilted ... it would be very easy to dismiss and otherwise high quality, high quantity season (not saying this is necessarily exactly Ben's route, haven't listened yet). The help is the advantage in the seeding having you generates and the route that provides including HCA but nothing on court in the playoffs (some might even ding you on the salary) ... that's not my bag but it (the answers given) certainly depends on the criteria and how one interprets the question.

[ardee]

I think Ben has rated Curry mostly appropriately in the past. He was top 3 in 2019 (and I was fine with 1), and definitely had a case for 1 in 2021 which is where Ben ranked him.

But he's way too high on him this year. Top 5 above LeBron just makes zero sense.

[trex_8063]

Steph being too high stands out the most, wouldn’t take him over LeBron on either list

I wouldn't take him over Brunson this year, either. Or Haliburton, who doesn't show up anywhere (seems a notable snub).

[LukaTheGOAT]

Pretty solid list even if I my switch a few things round. Only questionable thing is falling for the Embiid gimmick in 2024. Top 4 at full-health, but he's not Luka or Giannis. And then implying he has a case over Jokic...yeah. Sour way to end an otherwise incredible pod. Still enjoyed it a lot.

Also want to give Ben credit for growth. I believe he had KD #4 last year and this year he was outside the top 10 (although could have been in there based on his ranges).

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I'm probably in the minority in thinking that a player's injury-proneness is as much of a feature of that player as his height, strength or quickness. .

Complete agreement here. They're is a big difference between durable players suffering a one off-injury such as 2009 KG or 1986 Jordan rather than a player who chronically breaks down such as Kawhi or Manu.

I don't consider the former a product of injury proneness nor does scare me that much unless it alters a career ala Penny.

But the later does and I consider those players (Kawhi or Embiid as example) season as is to be real Kawhi.

So I don't think it makes any sense to rank Kawhi in a top 10.

I'm not a hardcore only the playoffs count, unlike Kawhi Leonard, so I could see a case for placing Kawhi in the top 10. But Kawhi's durability issues are severe.

Everyone knows about Manu's durability issues. He entered the NBA at 25. From 25 to 37, Manu played 23,135 minutes. Kawhi entered the NBA at 20. From age 20 to 32, he played 22,103 minutes. Manu played in 187 of his team's 193 playoff games. Kawhi played in 139 of his teams' 163 playoff games.

Kawhi is less durable than Manu. And Manu's durability is heavily held against him.

Manu wasn't missing games, you knew what you were getting out of him.
The issue here is projecting guys at full health when they have always something going on with them.
Kawhi in particular, his so rarely healthy that it becomes easy to blame injuries when he doesn't play well.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I think that people should understand the rules and the message of this ranking.
ElGee insists a lot that players have "ranges" that overlap so in many cases for him there's not a significant difference.
For him 8 to 12 are almost the same level, 7 and 6 (he assumes Kawhi fully healthy but he recognises it's hard to figure out what's that, now) are rather close to this group. There's a significant jump to 5, another minijump to 4 and then Jokic being clearly at #1. But he can see Giannis and Embiid in particular be candidate for #1 as well, in their upper range.

[clearlynotjesse]

Health adjustments are tough but no way Giannis completely misses out on the top 10. that doesn't feel right.

Ben has always heavily downgraded players who have a playoff injury. Makes no sense to me but he's always done it this way.