Top 25 peaks of the 2001-25: #9-#10 Spots

[70sFan]

Keep in mind that I moved the voting deadline to next Wednesday!

The next tier of players are for me Kawhi/Shai/Kobe/Paul, though I can see putting Nash/Durant/Dirk in discussion as well. Also, isn't that the time to discuss Harden and Doncic?

I don’t think so. I feel like right now we have:

Tier 1: SGA, Kawhi, Dirk, CP3
Tier 2: Kobe, KD, Manu, AD, Westbrook

After those 9 guys are gone, then I can start considering guys like Nash, Harden, Draymond, Embiid, and Luka.

I struggle to see the case for Westbrook over Nash, Luka or Harden. The three are comfortably better offensive players than Westbrook (especially Nash who clears him offensively) and RW doesn't provide that much defensive value to leverage his case on that argument.

[lessthanjake]

“Basically won 2 series without Curry in 2016” is definitely a huge exaggeration. In the second round, the Warriors had a 2-1 series lead when Curry came back, and all that had happened is that both teams had won their home games. The Warriors definitely did not “basically win” that series without Curry, unless you think the higher seed has “basically won” every time they go up 2-1. I assume you do not think that.

Fair enough, my comment was a (slight) hyperbole, but the fact that the Warriors didn't seem to have any problems in the first 2 rounds without Curry shows that they were pretty far from 25-30 wins team. Do you agree?

Yeah, I don’t think the 2016 Warriors would’ve only won 25-30 games without Curry. But that’s also a genuinely good supporting cast, and One_and_Done was talking about what would happen with something less than that. There certainly is a level of supporting cast with which Draymond would only win 25-30 games—we know that because he did significantly worse than that with a very bad team. The question is just how good or bad the supporting cast would have to be for that to happen. We know it’s somewhere between the 2016 Warriors supporting cast and the 2020 Warriors supporting cast. Which doesn’t tell us much, since there’s a massive amount of room between those two. Does he only win 25-30 wins with a genuinely average supporting cast, as One_and_Done suggested? Well, that seems a bit harsh to me, especially on the low end, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous to wonder about it.

As I pointed out in a post earlier today, if we take Draymond’s net rating with the Warriors from 2015-2025 minus 2020 in minutes without Steph/Durant (which, on average across all those years, is probably roughly an average supporting cast—but feel free to say if you object to that) and parse it out by how many opposing starters were on the floor and then reweight it based on a normal distribution of number of opposing starters a star leading a team tends to face (i.e. basically control for the fact that Draymond without Steph/Durant tended to be facing lots of bench units), we end up with a slightly negative net rating (like -0.5). And, of course, if Draymond were leading a team, they’d spend like a quarter of the time without him on the court, and even good teams tend to have negative net ratings with their best player off the court. So, ultimately, my best guess is that a pretty average team led by Draymond Green would probably be about a -1.5 net rating team overall. That’s about ~37 wins. So yeah, I’d say 25-30 wins is harsh even if we posit he has an average team rather than the 2016 Warriors, but it’s not *super* far off in my estimation.

They did actually basically win the first-round series without him, though even then he played in two of their four wins and they were outscored without him on the court in one of those games.

Come on, the first game was a blowout win for the Warriors, you won't convince that a negative score without Curry is any kind of signal in this situation, especially considering the rest of the series...

It was a blowout win because of what happened before Steph got injured. I’m not overly concerned with exactly what happened afterwards since the game was already out of hand (I just mentioned it to point out that that win truly was derived from before Steph’s injury), but the point is that even that series really wasn’t exactly “basically won” without Steph, since he got injured after giving them an essentially insurmountable lead in one of the games. Based on what happened afterwards, I don’t doubt that they could’ve won that series if Steph didn’t play at all, but the fact remains that he did play and as a consequence at least one of the Warriors’ wins really should not be put in the “Draymond did this without Steph” category.

Overall, it’s worth noting that the Warriors did not actually win their road games without Steph in those playoffs. They basically just won their home games and lost their road games, against completely average teams.

I don't think it's fair to present the situation this way. The Warriors won game 4 of the first round with Curry playing 18:35 min and having neutral +/-. The Warriors blew out the Rockets without Curry on the court and Green had a +34 +/- in that game.

So no, they won one game despite Curry trying to come back and the lost 2 road games. Going 1-2 on the road isn't bad at all for a playoff team and they were dominant in GS.

This is a bit of a grey area, but I think it gets a bit dubious to morph “Draymond led the Warriors to a win without Steph” into “Draymond led the Warriors to a win where Steph played but they did their best in minutes Steph was off.” Those aren’t the same thing. We don’t usually say players led their team to a win without someone else if the other guy played but just didn’t have a positive plus minus. Again, I don’t doubt the Warriors could’ve won the series if Steph didn’t play, but the fact that he did actually play in two of their wins means that the idea that they won or even “basically won” the series without him is not exactly accurate.

Is that suggestive of a 25-30 win team? No. But it’s also just 6 games, and we do have a much larger sample of Draymond leading a team (i.e. 2020) and it was completely abysmal. The upshot here is probably that if you surround Draymond with a genuinely good roster, then he could probably be the most impactful player on a slightly above-average team, but if you surrounded him with something less than that it would not work out well at all.

2020 team was abysmal, because... it was abysmal roster. The better roster with healthy Curry AND Green didn't make the playoffs the next year, how can you expect that Green would have pushed them to the playoffs alone? It's iincredibly tiny sample, but the Warriors with Curry were 1-4 in that season and their only win was against the horrible NOP team.

I didn’t say I expected that Draymond would have pushed them to the playoffs. I do think we’d probably expect that they wouldn’t literally be even worse in the 43 games he played than the 22 games he missed, though. And that’s what happened. Which is definitely a data point to consider regarding Draymond’s impact while being a team’s best player. It’s not the only data point, and the other info we have looks better than that. But if a guy has an awful team and they don’t get less awful when he plays, then that’s not a good signal.

Green surrounded by good roster was a team that dominated above-average teams, so I definitely wouldn't call them "slightly above average team".

Draymond’s best numbers on his own come in the 2015-2017 span (which is also the span the team was at its best). They did really well in those minutes! It’s his best data point. Specifically, in regular season + playoffs, the 2015-2017 Warriors had a +8.59 net rating in 1588 minutes with Draymond on and Curry/Durant off. But, again, a huge aspect of this was farming opposing bench units, which is not something that someone leading a team actually ends up doing much. In those years, the Warriors with Draymond on and Curry/Durant off actually had a -2.97 net rating in minutes where the opposing team had 4 or 5 starters on the floor. This is not particularly inspiring, and if you’re leading a team, those situations are going to be most of your minutes! Meanwhile, they went +15.19 in minutes where most of the opposing players were bench players, and those minutes were like half of the minutes in question. But if you’re leading a team, those situations are going to be very few of your minutes. So Draymond’s best data is very skewed in his favor.

I think the response to this is that he played full games in the playoffs without Steph and they did really well (indeed, I think those games are what you’re alluding to here), but then that was just a few games, so the sample is really small. It’s a piece of information, but I think completely indexing on 6 games is not a good approach, particularly when there’s much more information out there than just that.

So I think this is right in the sense that the 2020 Warriors were significantly worse than average. They were very bad. But I don’t think anyone would suggest Draymond would lead a normal team to something as bad as that team’s -8.12 SRS.

Yet this argument comes every time someone tries to prove that Green wasn't capable of leading normal teams to the playoffs. Kobe didn't do anything in 2005, Garnett played on horrible teams in the mid-2000s but nobody says it's a proof they wouldn't do much as the main guys.

Those guys never had a team they led be close to as bad as the 2020 Warriors. Of course, one might argue their rosters were never quite that bad either, but I would wager that if they had been that bad those teams wouldn’t have done better in games without Garnett or Kobe than with them.

I think the point is that, even accounting for how bad the rest of that team was, he didn’t seem to provide much of any lift. Indeed, the Warriors had a -9.11 net rating in the 43 games Draymond played and a -7.50 net rating in the 22 games he didn’t play. To be fair, they were worse with him off the court than on the court (-7.24 vs. -9.43), but there’s just not much indication Draymond had virtually any impact that year.

So now the question we need to ask ourselves is if there is any evidence that negates the well known narrative that the Warriors tanked during that season and Green just did not put any effort during that year. I don't say that we shouldn't count it and it doesn't give us a good perspective on Green's intangibles, but I don't think we could just say that's how Green usually played during his prime. It's far and away the worst boxscore production from 2015-22 period for example. His ON/OFF numbers also look quite weak for him. Is this really a stretch to say that Green played well below his usual standards due to lack of competitiveness?

Yep, I agree it’s a data point that we can fairly say is biased against him, because he probably wasn’t putting in maximal effort/focus. I am not saying it’s the only data point we should look at, or even that it’s an unbiased data point. Just that it is a relevant data point that we should look at, while understanding the context that it came in. Which is something you seem to be agreeing with, so I’m not arguing with you here.

Even if we’d expect that both the on-court and off-court numbers would be a good bit higher with a less awful supporting cast, it doesn’t exactly tend to give a lot of confidence in what Draymond would do with a fairly average team. I think the counterargument to this would be that not only were the 2020 Warriors bad but they were also not built around Draymond, so if you improved the quality of the players *and* made them at least be aimed at fitting with him, then he might actually provide some serious lift on a relatively mediocre team. It’s possible. But ultimately, we have the information that we have, and 2020 is a significant data point for a question about what would happen if Draymond was leading a team.

Come on, this team is extremely horrible. We can't even talk about any fit here, that team should not play in the NBA. I have no idea how you can extrapolate that to "mediocre" teams, 2020 Warriors were far from mediocre.

The point is that we know his impact was fantastic on a great team, and we also know that his impact dwindled down to basically nothing on an awful team. Which might naturally lead to an inference that perhaps his impact on a mediocre team might be somewhere in the middle—especially when we intuitively know that part of what made him so impactful was how well he slotted in with superstar players.

[homecourtloss]

“Basically won 2 series without Curry in 2016” is definitely a huge exaggeration. In the second round, the Warriors had a 2-1 series lead when Curry came back, and all that had happened is that both teams had won their home games. The Warriors definitely did not “basically win” that series without Curry, unless you think the higher seed has “basically won” every time they go up 2-1. I assume you do not think that.

Fair enough, my comment was a (slight) hyperbole, but the fact that the Warriors didn't seem to have any problems in the first 2 rounds without Curry shows that they were pretty far from 25-30 wins team. Do you agree?

They did actually basically win the first-round series without him, though even then he played in two of their four wins and they were outscored without him on the court in one of those games.

Come on, the first game was a blowout win for the Warriors, you won't convince that a negative score without Curry is any kind of signal in this situation, especially considering the rest of the series...

Overall, it’s worth noting that the Warriors did not actually win their road games without Steph in those playoffs. They basically just won their home games and lost their road games, against completely average teams.

I don't think it's fair to present the situation this way. The Warriors won game 4 of the first round with Curry playing 18:35 min and having neutral +/-. The Warriors blew out the Rockets without Curry on the court and Green had a +34 +/- in that game.

So no, they won one game despite Curry trying to come back and the lost 2 road games. Going 1-2 on the road isn't bad at all for a playoff team and they were dominant in GS.

Is that suggestive of a 25-30 win team? No. But it’s also just 6 games, and we do have a much larger sample of Draymond leading a team (i.e. 2020) and it was completely abysmal. The upshot here is probably that if you surround Draymond with a genuinely good roster, then he could probably be the most impactful player on a slightly above-average team, but if you surrounded him with something less than that it would not work out well at all.

2020 team was abysmal, because... it was abysmal roster. The better roster with healthy Curry AND Green didn't make the playoffs the next year, how can you expect that Green would have pushed them to the playoffs alone? It's iincredibly tiny sample, but the Warriors with Curry were 1-4 in that season and their only win was against the horrible NOP team.

Green surrounded by good roster was a team that dominated above-average teams, so I definitely wouldn't call them "slightly above average team".

So I think this is right in the sense that the 2020 Warriors were significantly worse than average. They were very bad. But I don’t think anyone would suggest Draymond would lead a normal team to something as bad as that team’s -8.12 SRS.

Yet this argument comes every time someone tries to prove that Green wasn't capable of leading normal teams to the playoffs. Kobe didn't do anything in 2005, Garnett played on horrible teams in the mid-2000s but nobody says it's a proof they wouldn't do much as the main guys.

I think the point is that, even accounting for how bad the rest of that team was, he didn’t seem to provide much of any lift. Indeed, the Warriors had a -9.11 net rating in the 43 games Draymond played and a -7.50 net rating in the 22 games he didn’t play. To be fair, they were worse with him off the court than on the court (-7.24 vs. -9.43), but there’s just not much indication Draymond had virtually any impact that year.

So now the question we need to ask ourselves is if there is any evidence that negates the well known narrative that the Warriors tanked during that season and Green just did not put any effort during that year. I don't say that we shouldn't count it and it doesn't give us a good perspective on Green's intangibles, but I don't think we could just say that's how Green usually played during his prime. It's far and away the worst boxscore production from 2015-22 period for example. His ON/OFF numbers also look quite weak for him. Is this really a stretch to say that Green played well below his usual standards due to lack of competitiveness?

Even if we’d expect that both the on-court and off-court numbers would be a good bit higher with a less awful supporting cast, it doesn’t exactly tend to give a lot of confidence in what Draymond would do with a fairly average team. I think the counterargument to this would be that not only were the 2020 Warriors bad but they were also not built around Draymond, so if you improved the quality of the players *and* made them at least be aimed at fitting with him, then he might actually provide some serious lift on a relatively mediocre team. It’s possible. But ultimately, we have the information that we have, and 2020 is a significant data point for a question about what would happen if Draymond was leading a team.

Come on, this team is extremely horrible. We can't even talk about any fit here, that team should not play in the NBA. I have no idea how you can extrapolate that to "mediocre" teams, 2020 Warriors were far from mediocre.

It’s not the only data point (and the other data points are better for him), but it is one of them. To me, I look at the information we have and conclude that if Draymond was surrounded by a very good ensemble cast, he could lead a slightly above-average team (i.e. a team that could make the playoffs and win playoff series against low-level playoff teams), but if his team was more barren of talent then the results probably would be pretty uninspiring. It’s actually not such a bad thing IMO—after all, seeming to have more impact on better teams is probably better than the opposite! But if the question is what would happen if Draymond led a team of “average” players (which is what One_and_Done is talking about), then I’m not so confident in Draymond

You can have doubts because Green didn't have many occasions to prove himself on "average" teams, but let's be serious - most people criticize Green strictly because of his low scoring output, which makes little sense to me.

For casuals, this is true. For others, they're trying elevate another player and also by proxy diminish another.

[Djoker]

^^Very good point on Draymond ON Curry OFF lineups being largely against bench units and correcting for that. It's a pretty big deal to point out.

Also, the 2016 playoff sample is far too small to make any kind of definitive conclusions nor do I think the Warriors necessarily win the Portland series if Curry doesn't come back. Even with him in Game 4 and Game 5, they won by 7 points in OT and 4 points, respectively. They were -20 in those two games without Steph on the court. In 2025, we saw the Dubs without Curry win Game 1 at Minnesota and everyone started jumping on how the Warriors didn't need Curry. I pleaded caution and in fact predicted that the Wolves would still win the series after Game 1. And as we know the Wolves ended up sweeping four straight by 24, 5, 7, and 11 points. With small samples, we underestimate how dramatically the pendulum can swing in the other direction.

[Top10alltime]

Giannis at 7. Wow, I thought realGM was better than this. And the PC Board too

[DraymondGold]

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I think this is a perfectly reasonable view to take, and I think a lot of people would have 2015 as Chris Paul’s greatest peak. That said, him missing 2 playoff games in the series they lost does weigh pretty significantly IMO.

I’d also note that I don’t think the bolded statement about his impact metrics in 2008 being way below 2015 is actually right. These years look very similar in that regard. For instance, Chris Paul’s regular season EPM in 2008 was 7.5 and his regular season EPM in 2015 was 7.6. In the playoffs, it was 5.8 in 2008 and 5.1 in 2015. So overall, if anything, I’d say his EPM looks really slightly better in 2008, though it’s just splitting hairs between super similar numbers. His xRAPM in 2008 *is* way below 2015 (5.5 vs. 8.1), but I think that’s a consequence of Engelmann’s methodology—which involves using prior-informed RAPM with the previous years’ RAPM as the prior. That methodology will always tend to underrate years where a guy took a big leap from the previous year, which was definitely the case for 2008 Chris Paul (note: This sort of thing is why xRAPM has some very weird results, such as thinking LeBron was a bit better in 2011 than in 2009). The fact that Chris Paul had an xRAPM the next year that was very similar to 2015 (7.7) after playing similarly well as in 2008 tells me that this factor was basically doing virtually all the work creating the gap between 2008 and 2015, so I don’t really regard xRAPM as evidencing a big gap here. Meanwhile, two-year RAPM on the NBArapm website has 2008/2009 at 5.7 and 2015 & 2016 at 6.6. Slight edge to the later time period, but 2008 isn’t way below there. And then there’s also impact-correlated box numbers. Chris Paul’s regular season BPM in 2008 was 10.4, while it was 8.0 in 2015. In the playoffs, his BPM was 11.3 in 2008 and 8.6 in 2015. So his BPM in 2008 was significantly better than 2015. Meanwhile, his RAPTOR in 2008 led the league with 10.0 in 2008. We can’t directly compare to his 2015 RAPTOR, since the pre-2014 RAPTOR was “Approximate RAPTOR” (which is essentially an impact-correlated box measure), but FWIW his 2015 RAPTOR was 2nd in the league with 10.7.

Overall, I look at the above and think it looks very close. 2008 Chris Paul comes out looking better in certain measures (very slightly better overall in EPM and significantly better in BPM), while 2015 Chris Paul mostly comes out looking a little bit better in other stuff. On balance I’d probably give a very slight edge to 2015, but I don’t look at this and think there’s much of a difference overall. For me, this difference is not enough to overcome the serious negative of 2015 Chris Paul missing multiple playoff games.

Also, I wouldn’t really say it’s fair to say the 2008 Hornets choked. Their 2-0 lead and 3-2 lead just involved both teams winning their home games. It was basically a series where the two teams went back and forth winning all their home games, until the away team pulled out Game 7. And that’s in a series where the Spurs were the favorites. I’d also say that anecdotally I was rooting heavily for the Hornets in that series and while I was very disappointed they lost I definitely didn’t feel like they’d choked (and in fact was surprised they made the series that close). I think the 2015 series against the Rockets was definitely more of a choke by the Clippers, though I agree with you that the first-round series win against the Spurs was really impressive, so on balance I think the 2015 Clippers showed some good quality in the playoffs.

EDIT: Also, while I agree that 2015 Chris Paul was a better shooter, I’ll note that he was already a good shooter in 2008. His shooting percentages in 2008 from 3P, 16-3P, 10-16, and 3-10 respectively were 36.9%, 45.7%, 44.7%, and 52.4%. The corresponding percentages in 2015 were 39.8%, 49.5%, 52.0%, and 49.6%. Definitely better in 2015, but it was already good in 2008. And the flip side here is that his ability to get to the basket was at a completely different level in 2008 than it was in 2015. He had 23.0% of his FGA at the basket in 2008, compared to 9.6% in 2015. And in the playoffs it was 28.5% in 2008 compared to 10.1% in 2015. This is a pretty big difference—he basically had a whole massive strength in 2008 that didn’t really exist in 2015. On the flip side, I definitely agree he was a better defender in 2015 than in 2008. So basically, I think there’s aspects of his skill set that were very clearly better in one year than the other, but it’s not immediately clear to me that the overall skill-set picture is better in one of those years, though I wouldn’t begrudge someone for preferring the 2015 version.

Loving the discussion of Chris Paul so far!

Re: data...
-EPM: Like you say the 08 vs 15 is quite close. 2008 RS +7.5 =< 2015 RS +7.6, so slightly favoring 2015. But 2008 RS +21.6 Estimated Wins >= 2015 RS +20.7 Estimated Wins, so slightly favoring 2008. You mention the playoffs slightly favor 2008 -- that's true! 2008 +5.8 vs 2015 +5.1. But looking at surrounding years (which is important given the noise of single-playoff metrics), Paul starts to look a bit better in the playoffs when he's older: 2014's +6.4, 2015's +5.1, 2016's +6.3. Of course if we include surrounding years, it's worth admitting that 2009 looks like the best regular season of the bunch. But at least in the playoffs, older Paul seems to be slightly preferred in EPM.

-Box stats: You mention box stats favor younger Paul, and that's true. But one thing to emphasize is that box stats usually struggle to capture the value of playmaking and defense, two areas where Paul tends to be pretty good. The best box stat at these areas -- Thinking Basketball's version of BPM -- has the gap a lot closer. 2009 RS +7.7 > 2008 RS +7.2 > 2014 +6.8 > 2015 +6.5. In the playoffs: 2008 PS +9.4 > 2014 PS +8.0 > 2015 PS +6.8 > 2009 PS -0.4. So both still favors younger Paul when healthy, but the gap's shrunk.
Now if we combine the best box data with the plus minus data and do some approximate teammate adjustment (Augmented Plus Minus), we start to favor older Paul. In the RS: 2015 6.2 > 2009 5.9 > 2014 +4.9 >= 2008 +4.8. In the PS: [2017 5.7] > 2014 5.5 > 2008 5.4 > 2015 5.1 > 2009 1.
And regardless the box performance looks respectable compared to some of the other competition ... e.g. Dirk peaks in 2003 RS at +6.6, but is +4.1 in the 2011 RS and +5.2 in the 2011 PS, so clearly favoring Paul. Shai peaks in the RS at +8.4 (+6.1 AuPM) and in the PS at +6.5 (+4.7 AuPM), so Shai has the better RS box stats, but they look comparable in RS impact and Paul looks a touch better in PS.

All in all, there's no real disagreement with the qualitative takeaways. There's stats that favor both versions like you say. Just thought I'd point out two areas where it's slightly more in favor of older Paul than I think you describe... although the shift is pretty noisy / insignificant, and it's not a clear enough trend to be super compelling.

Re: skills breakdown,
mainly agree with the idea that Older Paul's a bette shooter and younger Paul's a better rim finisher. What I think this misses is Paul's growing command of pace and IQ as he gets older and his improved defense.
Take a listen to Thinking Basketball''s recent podcast on this (21st century Peaks EP 8; starting around 18:00), where he talks about how Chris Paul's clearly a better defender as he got older particularly around 2014 where he didn't miss any postseason games (although did miss a few regular season games which may have given him more rest).

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On the discussion Re: Draymond,
I tend to think he has some of the best scalability ever, and that he's tremendously underrated, but that #9/#10th best peak of the century is still a little high to be ranking him. I'll have him in my Top 25 ballots, but probably closer to #20/#25, with the ability to get up to maybe #15ish with reasonable uncertainty. I have trouble imagining taking peak Draymond over peak Chris Paul, Kawhi, Dirk, Kobe, Durant, etc., and I don't think that should be too controversial.

Re: 2020, he's definitely a worse player by 2020 than in 2016, and he's definitely coasting. But at the same time, I don't think it's fair to say "Data from meaningless tanking seasons are exactly that - meaningless." If you start completely throwing out data when a player's healthy and playing, you're leaving yourself less informed. That doesn't mean we should weight everything equally. The plus minus data from his peak in 2016 and surrounding years is much better -- so we can downweight 2020 due to Draymond being older and situational concerns. I'm not saying we should fixate on 2020 -- as people have said, the supporting cast is objectively terrible, and the team was coasting/tanking.

But Draymond's specific performance declined more in that single-season scenario than basically any other guy in their prime who's going to make the top 20/25. Plenty of players have had bad supporting casts, or been on teams that were coasting or tanking. Not everyone's impact dropped so precipitously as Draymond's. If we really want to blame it all on coasting, are we going to say that Draymond reduced his effort substantially more than any other player who coasted, or say that Draymond's impact is substantially more dependent on his effort than other players? Maybe, could be. But the evidence for that hasn't been provided yet, and I don't think it's crazy to say that Draymond's fit (being a better ceiling raiser with an offensive costar than floor raiser with lesser talent) is another factor. Personally, I think it's a combination of the lesser effort, Draymond's scalability / worse floor raising, and Draymond's aging decline (particularly with scoring... which becomes all the more important in floor raising scenarios).

So I'll downweight 2020 in my analysis of peak Draymond for the reasons I said above. He performed better in the no-Curry lineups in other years, impressively so in the playoffs (although some of this success was boosted by facing bench lineups, or by having teams design their game plans to stop Curry first, with Draymond being the beneficiary of a lesser gameplan focus at times). But I won't ignore 2020 entirely either. It's all part of the picture, and we should look at the full distribution. Don't fixate too much on the positive or negative tails of the distribution, but don't entirely ignore them either. For me, that's good enough for Draymond to be ~ #20 or #25, not quite good enough to be ~ #10.

[One_and_Done]

Giannis at 7. Wow, I thought realGM was better than this. And the PC Board too

I agree. It's too low. Giannis should have been top 6.

[Top10alltime]

Giannis at 7. Wow, I thought realGM was better than this. And the PC Board too

I agree. It's too low. Giannis should have been top 6.

Giannis isn't top 15. Call me a troll for a different opinion, but then shouldn't everyone be a troll? I can call One_and_Done a troll on Kobe, but it's just him stating his opinion (no matter how weak the arguments are). Giannis isn't top 15-20 peaks in the 2000s, not even close to Draymond.

[Cavsfansince84]

One of the other things re Draymond that deserves mention is his tendency for picking up flagrant fouls and doing things which can harm his team. You could even argue it cost them a title in 2016 which is his peak year. So that's another thing I think that has to be considered.

[Jaivl]

Giannis at 7. Wow, I thought realGM was better than this. And the PC Board too

I agree. It's too low. Giannis should have been top 6.

Giannis isn't top 15. Call me a troll for a different opinion, but then shouldn't everyone be a troll? I can call One_and_Done a troll on Kobe, but it's just him stating his opinion (no matter how weak the arguments are). Giannis isn't top 15-20 peaks in the 2000s, not even close to Draymond.

Giannis isn't top 15-20 peaks in the 2000s and he's not even close to Draymond. Correct. Glad to see we all agree.

[jalengreen]

^^Very good point on Draymond ON Curry OFF lineups being largely against bench units and correcting for that. It's a pretty big deal to point out.

Also, the 2016 playoff sample is far too small to make any kind of definitive conclusions nor do I think the Warriors necessarily win the Portland series if Curry doesn't come back. Even with him in Game 4 and Game 5, they won by 7 points in OT and 4 points, respectively. They were -20 in those two games without Steph on the court. In 2025, we saw the Dubs without Curry win Game 1 at Minnesota and everyone started jumping on how the Warriors didn't need Curry. I pleaded caution and in fact predicted that the Wolves would still win the series after Game 1. And as we know the Wolves ended up sweeping four straight by 24, 5, 7, and 11 points. With small samples, we underestimate how dramatically the pendulum can swing in the other direction.

Hm? Minnesota immediately swung to being favored in the series despite losing Game 1 (an incredible rarity). And that was before it was clear that Curry wouldn't be returning. I just checked the 2024-25 discussion thread, only person here who said the Warriors didn't need Curry was EmpireFalls, who LTJ identified at the time as clearly trying to reverse jinx.

[jalengreen]

One of the other things re Draymond that deserves mention is his tendency for picking up flagrant fouls and doing things which can harm his team. You could even argue it cost them a title in 2016 which is his peak year. So that's another thing I think has to be considered.

Double edged sword here, if you think it cost them a title then you're expressing confidence on how he would have impacted a game the Warriors lost by 15 without him. It only cost them a title if you think his peak impact was.. well, very high. Valid criticism though

[Cavsfansince84]

Double edged sword here, if you think it cost them a title then you're expressing confidence on how he would have impacted a game the Warriors lost by 15 without him. It only cost them a title if you think his peak impact was.. well, very high. Valid criticism though

Not really. If a guy is a team's second best player and he is out for a game(easily could have been more if the league had actually enforced its rules) it has a negative effect on your team's chances at winning. That's just how it's going to be for any team missing its second best player. You can argue it cost them a title because maybe things do go differently.

[Top10alltime]

I agree. It's too low. Giannis should have been top 6.

Giannis isn't top 15. Call me a troll for a different opinion, but then shouldn't everyone be a troll? I can call One_and_Done a troll on Kobe, but it's just him stating his opinion (no matter how weak the arguments are). Giannis isn't top 15-20 peaks in the 2000s, not even close to Draymond.

Giannis isn't top 15-20 peaks in the 2000s and he's not even close to Draymond. Correct. Glad to see we all agree.

I know you're high on Giannis, so please tell me why

[jalengreen]

Double edged sword here, if you think it cost them a title then you're expressing confidence on how he would have impacted a game the Warriors lost by 15 without him. It only cost them a title if you think his peak impact was.. well, very high. Valid criticism though

Not really. If a guy is a team's second best player and he is out for a game(easily could have been more if the league had actually enforced its rules) it has a negative effect on your team's chances at winning. That's just how it's going to be for any team missing its second best player. You can argue it cost them a title because maybe things do go differently.

Yeah I don't agree. You said "You could even argue it cost them a title in 2016", and if one made this argument they'd be relying on a notion of Draymond being a high enough impact player to swing a 15 point loss into a win. Which is something people say all of the time, by the way - I'm not just bringing it up now. Plenty of people think that the Warriors would have won Game 5 with Draymond. And I think that position only makes sense if you think Draymond's impact on the 2016 Warriors was remarkably high (which, hey, it was!)

[One_and_Done]

1. Kawhi (2017)
2. KD (2014 I guess?)
3. SGA (2025)
4. Dirk (2011) [for now]

My vote for Kawhi has been discussed before at length. At his peak he was aptly nicknamed Robo-Jordan, because he was a better version of MJ. His two way impact was insane, and I can’t see any logic to punishing him for a random injury in the WCFs (when we are voting in guys for seasons who didn’t even see them progress that far). No criteria which rewards a guy for playing fewer games makes much sense to me. If he’d missed large chunks of the season maybe, but he played enough.

Kawhi also stands out as a guy who has no real weaknesses. He gives you a better version of Jordan on offense, and a better version of Pippen on defence. That’s an insane combination. I saw someone suggest Kobe has better numbers than Kawhi. No, he doesn’t, nor is it even close. Here’s 17 Kawhi v.s 09 Kobe (who was advanced as the best Kobe year by that person).

Kawhi RS 17: 39/9/5 per 100, on 610 TS%, while playing DPOY level D
Kobe RS 09: 38/7/7 per 100, on 561 TS%, while being an ok defensive player at best.

Kawhi PS 17: 40/12/5 per 100, on 672 TS%, while continuing to play at a DPOY level on D
Kobe PS 09: 39/7/7 per 100, on 564 TS%, while being at best solid on D

Kobe has no argument whatever against Kawhi. Kawhi was clearly more impactful on both ends. Then you look at Kobe’s terrible floor raising, often detrimental attributes, and we’re a long way off Kobe getting a look in.

The next three names are tougher. I considered a number of candidates, particularly KD, Luka, SGA, Harden, Nash, CP3, T-Mac, Dirk, AD and J.Butler. I’ve ultimately gone with KD and SGA for 2 and 3, but will need to mull on vote #4 for a bit longer. I will likely go with Dirk just because he has more traction, but I could easily see myself voting for CP3, Nash, Harden, Luka, or Butler.

We have ample evidence KD gave a huge impact on winning, even for non-stacked teams.

In 2014 for example, the Thunder were 25-11 in the games Westbrook missed, thanks to KD.

His Brooklyn time is a bit of a mess to assess, because of all the stuff that happened involving availability of guys, but we can see in 21 the team was 23-12 with KD, and only 25-24 without him. Similarly, the Nets in 22 were 36-19 with him, and only 8-19 without him. We also saw KD carry the Nets in the 21 playoffs, almost past the Bucks, with Kyrie and Harden both going down with injuries. If KDs toe isn’t on the line, the Nets likely win the championship this year largely on the back of KD.

In KD’s Phoenix tenure, despite being past his prime, the win-loss still holds up well for KD. From 23 to 25 the Suns were 85-60 with him, and 15-30 without him. The contrast was stark.

But hey, some computer formulas that, by their nature, are unreliable at accurately measuring value don’t agree, so I guess forget all that other stuff.

As for SGA last season, he didn’t have the best playoffs, but he also had a historic RS and led a very injured team to 68 wins then a title. I’m satisfied he’s done enough to get the nod.

I’ll follow the debate as it unfolds before settling on my #4.

EDIT: I'll go with Dirk for now at #4.

[Top10alltime]

1. Kawhi (2017)
2. KD (2014 I guess?)
3. SGA (2025)
4. TBD

My vote for Kawhi has been discussed before at length. At his peak he was aptly nicknamed Robo-Jordan, because he was a better version of MJ. His two way impact was insane, and I can’t see any logic to punishing him for a random injury in the WCFs (when we are voting in guys for seasons who didn’t even see them progress that far). No criteria which rewards a guy for playing fewer games makes much sense to me. If he’d missed large chunks of the season maybe, but he played enough.

Kawhi also stands out as a guy who has no real weaknesses. He gives you a better version of Jordan on offense, and a better version of Pippen on defence. That’s an insane combination. I saw someone suggest Kobe has better numbers than Kawhi. No, he doesn’t, nor is it even close. Here’s 17 Kawhi v.s 09 Kobe (who was advanced as the best Kobe year by that person).

Kawhi RS 17: 39/9/5 per 100, on 610 TS%, while playing DPOY level D
Kobe RS 09: 38/7/7 per 100, on 561 TS%, while being an ok defensive player at best.

Kawhi PS 17: 40/12/5 per 100, on 672 TS%, while continuing to play at a DPOY level on D
Kobe PS 09: 39/7/7 per 100, on 564 TS%, while being at best solid on D

Kobe has no argument whatever against Kawhi. Kawhi was clearly more impactful on both ends. Then you look at Kobe’s terrible floor raising, often detrimental attributes, and we’re a long way off Kobe getting a look in.

The next three names are tougher. I considered a number of candidates, particularly KD, Luka, SGA, Harden, Nash, CP3, T-Mac, Dirk, AD and J.Butler. I’ve ultimately gone with KD and SGA for 2 and 3, but will need to mull on vote #4 for a bit longer. I will likely go with Dirk just because he has more traction, but I could easily see myself voting for CP3, Nash, Harden, Luka, or Butler.

We have ample evidence KD gave a huge impact on winning, even for non-stacked teams.

In 2014 for example, the Thunder were 25-11 in the games Westbrook missed, thanks to KD.

His Brooklyn time is a bit of a mess to assess, because of all the stuff that happened involving availability of guys, but we can see in 21 the team was 23-12 with KD, and only 25-24 without him. Similarly, the Nets in 22 were 36-19 with him, and only 8-19 without him. We also saw KD carry the Nets in the 21 playoffs, almost past the Bucks, with Kyrie and Harden both going down with injuries. If KDs toe isn’t on the line, the Nets likely win the championship this year largely on the back of KD.

In KD’s Phoenix tenure, despite being past his prime, the win-loss still holds up well for KD. From 23 to 25 the Suns were 85-60 with him, and 15-30 without him. The contrast was stark.

But hey, some computer formulas that, by their nature, are unreliable at accurately measuring value don’t agree, so I guess forget all that other stuff.

As for SGA last season, he didn’t have the best playoffs, but he also had a historic RS and led a very injured team to 68 wins then a title. I’m satisfied he’s done enough to get the nod.

I’ll follow the debate as it unfolds before settling on my #4.

Put Kobe at 4

[Cavsfansince84]

Yeah I don't agree. You said "You could even argue it cost them a title in 2016", and if one made this argument they'd be relying on a notion of Draymond being a high enough impact player to swing a 15 point loss into a win. Which is something people say all of the time, by the way - I'm not just bringing it up now. Plenty of people think that the Warriors would have won Game 5 with Draymond. And I think that position only makes sense if you think Draymond's impact on the 2016 Warriors was remarkably high (which, hey, it was!)

Using a one game sample to talk about a 15 pt swing with reference to one player is silly. GS likely came into that game slightly deflated due to losing him on top of the fact that they were missing their defensive anchor and emotional leader. It's very, very easy from my pov to see how a game they lost by 15 without him could easily be a win because a team can play differently from the tip off. It's not about how many points anyone thinks Draymond is worth in that particular game. It's just how sports work. At this point this kind of a silly discussion regardless, my point about his volatility on the court stands as a weakness however we want to talk about the impact of him missing game 5 of the 2016 finals. That's part of who Draymond is as a player.

[iggymcfrack]

For those who don’t have him top 2 on your ballot yet, I’m kinda curious what is keeping you from more seriously considering Chris Paul for these spots. Absolute monster box score numbers in the regular and post-season. Monster impact numbers (5th all time in career RAPM).

I love Chris Paul as much as anyone and I do have him in the same tier as the other top players now, but top 2 is still a bit strong for me when SGA, Kawhi, and Dirk all have elite impact seasons where they also carried their team to championships. I think he’s the 4th best player left.

Probably not "as much as anyone".

"carried their team to championships" is a phrase I'd be wary of using about any player.

Even if everyone else was league average and played at a league average standard during the playoffs ... having league average teammates isn't a given.

Leonard has a strong playoffs. He also arrived on that team for far less than market value* (otoh the main return was a negative value contract given lack of any evidence of positive impact and then getting worse in the playoffs) allowing a deep cast to remain. That cast is then crucial in that a 10 deep rotation can live without KL for 22 games (2040 RS minutes on the season) ... indeed live with is an understatement ... their win% is slightly better in the RS without him.
*

Spoiler:

After a fairly acrimonious split. Though that isn't to say that was all on Leonard. Indeed from a limited recollection of imperfect information I remember feeling the Spurs were, at least in some instances, handling things poorly.

with 41-19 0.683333333
without 17-5 0.772727273

On-off suggests that’s somewhat luck … but also that the team is still fairly solidly in the positive without their star player.
That 17-5 is far from a given with most supporting casts and without that a team would be either (or both)
a) Facing a trickier route through the playoffs with fewer series with HCA
b) Forced to demand more in the regular season from Leonard with the risk of reduced later performance and enhanced injury injury risk that that implies.

I would therefore argue not “carried”.

SGA is coming off a superb season that may be looked on more fondly when stacked up with more of them (and a stronger playoff performance).
Still … whilst on-off is very noisy in such tiny samples … carried implies the team cannot survive without the player. In the regular season, the impact signal looks superb. But where a Chris Paul seems to be catching heat for things like missing a couple of games … a team that’s still +7.8 with you off the floor doesn’t seem to be getting “carried”. There’s surely some luck in that number but there’s a huge amount of luck whether you happen to be on the team that wins a title even with a given level of individual greatness.

Dirk in 2011 is superb but …
Versus his 3 prior playoff runs his PER, WS/48 and BPM are all clearly down on the average (and he’s down on each individually apart from ’08 WS/48). His OBPM is below his career average (despite relatively weak runs in '14, '15 and '16 and ranks 9th of his 15 playoff runs [or at best 8.5th but I think Reference's sort is based on further digits not shown on the front-end]. And yet his team wins the title.
His being on court does generally coincide with the team’s success but in the finals (and in the last game, G6, fwiw, … some seem to tilt towards later series, later game stuff on leverage reasons … I’d argue late is no more important than early) … the team lose by 4 in his minutes … and win the remaining 9 (and 6 seconds) by 14 to take a 10 point win. For the playoffs, of the 3 games where his +/- and the result differ it’s twice Dallas winning, whilst losing Dirk’s minutes to one instance of the inverse. Again, this seems like luck more than a trustworthy, reliable, long-term indicator of impact. But if the starting point is the team’s title and then further the case is based on “carrying” … a “carrying” which occurred with the team more often flipping outcomes positively when the player was off the court … can that be called a carrying? Dallas had enough margin that we could flip those games back and they still probably win the title (the finals flips come out even and they’d be 3-2 up versus the Thunder) but now we’re back to something more like balance of probabilities and evaluating teams than a simple matter of “carrying” … to my mind at least.

And this isn’t against the players … but against the concept of carrying in general (and therefore as applied here - hopefully having illustrated how this can be picked away at) … and what’s held against Paul …
Fwiw iirc Paul was really high on career (box) playoff rate metrics until he continued playing deep into his 30s. If he were afforded Leonard’s rest or SGA’s offcourt MOV or Dirk’s offcourt reversals … or just if things regarding his teams more cast more generally like … Austin Rivers isn’t in his team’s playoff rotation … team level outcome related things might well be different.
The players mentioned are great players. The players on the title team get the rings and if that’s what people evaluating players or player years or whatever care about … criteria can differ … Paul has his flaws and missed games. What to do with differing circumstances to fairly compare is complex and resists are single, simple answer. I’d still tend to object to “carrying” and to be instinctively inclined (I haven't dived deep and tend not to focus in single years - so this is just an instinct) to broadly support Paul (otoh including over some already in, I would think).

Ugh, so annoying. I had a great 8 paragraphs written out on my phone and I lost the whole thing even though I’d hit preview along the way.

Cliff notes version:

-I’m incredibly high on Paul’s career, but less so on his peak. His best season IMO was 2014 and he still missed 20 games in the regular season that year. I care much less about missed regular season games after a lengthy postseason run both because it creates a larger sample and because it proves that the player could make it through 3 rounds of playoffs without getting injured.

Kawhi in 2019 had a much worse regular season than Chris Paul, but when it mattered most, he delivered A+ series against both Philly and Milwaukee when his team was struggling and an A- performance or even an A would have led to elimination. At that point, sleepwalking through the regular season becomes smart strategy and not a potential weakness. He also had a very good Finals against a very underrated opponent as people act like the Warriors were trash without KD when in reality, they were 29-4 when Steph played without KD in the regular season and 7-0 when he played without him in the postseason.

[lessthanjake]

Double edged sword here, if you think it cost them a title then you're expressing confidence on how he would have impacted a game the Warriors lost by 15 without him. It only cost them a title if you think his peak impact was.. well, very high. Valid criticism though

Not really. If a guy is a team's second best player and he is out for a game(easily could have been more if the league had actually enforced its rules) it has a negative effect on your team's chances at winning. That's just how it's going to be for any team missing its second best player. You can argue it cost them a title because maybe things do go differently.

Yeah I don't agree. You said "You could even argue it cost them a title in 2016", and if one made this argument they'd be relying on a notion of Draymond being a high enough impact player to swing a 15 point loss into a win. Which is something people say all of the time, by the way - I'm not just bringing it up now. Plenty of people think that the Warriors would have won Game 5 with Draymond. And I think that position only makes sense if you think Draymond's impact on the 2016 Warriors was remarkably high (which, hey, it was!)

2016 Draymond was very impactful, but I don’t think anyone thinks he was anywhere near 15-points-a-game impactful. However, that doesn’t mean him being suspended didn’t cost them the Finals. For one thing, impact is super variable on a game-by-game basis, so a guy who has a lot less than 15 points of impact on average can definitely have 15 points of impact in one game. It’s not overly likely, but obviously the chance that that would’ve happened directly translates to a chance that Draymond being suspended cost them the series. More importantly, I don’t think we can validly hold everyone else’s performances constant here. Draymond being suspended and all the controversy surrounding it probably was a big distraction to the team and deflated them at least a bit mentally, while it probably gave the Cavaliers a reason to have some confidence (which I think is really important when going into an away game down 3-1 in a series you’re disfavored in). It is pretty plausible that Draymond’s on-court impact plus the impact the controversy had on both teams in general might’ve had a 15-point effect on the court. I also think it’s plausible that that’s not the case—anyone expressing confidence on what would’ve happened is being overconfident IMO.