Today is the second part in a 3 part series ranking the Top 30 Players I would start my NBA Franchise with. Today’s list goes from 23-11. Remember that, I grouped players with similar players skills together, rather than just listing them straight in order. Much appreciation to anyone who let’s me know who they I am too high or low on.
Current Star Guards who can be the Second Best Player on Championship Team Now
23. Kyrie Irving
22. Russell Westbrook
21. Jrue Holiday
18. Bradley Beal
While Kyrie is the only guy on this list who has actually been the second best player on an actual NBA championship team, he’s still the lowest on my list. Taking someone in the first round in this exercise literally is making them your franchise player, and we have quite a bit of evidence showing that isn’t Kyrie’s thing. Whether it’s defensive inability, frustratingly poor leadership qualities, playing below expectations in the playoffs when forced into an alpha role, or recurring major injuries his track record as a guy you build your team around isn’t impressive.
Still there are only a handful of guys who have his handle, shooting stroke, and ability to just go get you buckets against elite defenses. Taking him with a later first round pick, and then hoping a younger guy you get later in the draft develops into a true franchise star is a solid plan at this point in this hypothetical exercise.
Westbrook is probably the best player right on this list outside the top 15. While he isn’t the top 10 player his raw box score stats may indicate, he’s still as a tenacious, pressure inducing super charger as anyone else you’ll find in the League.
So why is he way down at 22? Point Guards that are that dependent on raw athleticism on the wrong side of 30 are scary to me. Throw in all the knee surgeries with how much he struggled to score efficiently last year and you’ve got enough red flags that you could be excused for thinking that you’re at an amusement park. And that’s without getting into how terrible of a 3 point shooter he has been throughout the course of his career. I toyed with removing him from the list entirely like his old pal Kevin Durant, but I’m not quite as worried as him breaking down, and there is a lot of value in having him this year,
Jrue Holiday is probably higher here than he’d be if you asked other people to do this exercise. Thus is the life of being a guy who thrives on defense while playing in a market where not as many people are paying attention to you. Even then he’s not just some guy who does the little things that don’t show up in the box score. He’s a guy who gets you 21 and 6 in addition to being able to guard anyone 1 through 3 at a high level. There’s a reason his teams have played better with him than without him on the court every single season in his 10 year career.
His ability to contribute in a multitude of ways should help him age more gracefully than a lot of these guys around him who need the ball in their hands to be effective. If he proves incapable of having the offense revolve around him in a couple years, he should still be an asset as a secondary playmaker, spot-up shooter, and plus defender.
Bradley Beal is a similar player offensively, only he’s a couple years younger. You can put him in any kind of offense and his skill-set is malleable enough to fit into whatever role you need from him. All-Star caliber players who don’t see their value drop when sharing the floor with ball dominant super stars is one kind of “hidden” value the stats don’t always show.
So if he’s a couple years younger than Holiday why is there only a two spot difference between them? Defense. Jrue is a superstar defender while Beal’s numbers come out well below average. That being said, it’d be interesting to see how his defense would grade out if he weren’t asked to carry such a heavy load, both offensively and in how many minutes he plays. Playing in a place other than Washington with better…….culture, could help too.
The Best Big from the ’18 Draft Class
20. Jaren Jackson Junior
Five of the first 7 picks in the 2018 NBA Draft were big men. A particularly interesting trend considering how the league is becoming more and more perimeter oriented. Of those five, all have at least one question regarding their ability: to protect the paint (Bagley and Ayton), extend their range to the 3 point line (all of them really), or even stay healthy (Bamba) with one exception, Jaren Jackson Junior.
I’m not sure if it’s a hot take to call him a better prospect than DeAndre Ayton, but it shouldn’t be. Not only does he already possess the skills needed to be a plus a 3 and D kind of player, but he’s shown some fervor off the bounce as well. Combine all that with him being the youngest player drafted in last year’s lottery as well as how he is lauded for having a strong work ethic, and it becomes hard to put a ceiling on this guy’s ability. There’s a real good chance he’s 10 spots higher the next time I’m doing this list.
Young Studs who are Probably Never Quite Top 10 Players, but You can’t Rule it out
19. Paskal Siakam
17. Jayson Tatum
16. Donovan Mitchell
It’s hard to put a limit on how good Paskal Siakam can become as it seems every year he makes yet another quantum leap from where he was before. It has been really fun watching him start off as someone who struggled to dribble when he came into the league to now possessing one of the most lethal spin moves in the entire sport. Some of this assuredly due to being introduced to the game at a relatively late age. Will the quantum leaps continue as a result?
Siakam was the principle reason Toronto was able to pull off the surprising feat of actually having a higher win percentage in games without Kawhi Leonard than with him last year. If Siakam does in fact take that next leap and even surpass what he did without Kawhi on the floor last year we could be looking at a potential top 10 player. If this is his prime and he more or less stays where he’s at we have a fringe all-star who can be the third best player on a championship team. #19 feels like the perfect hedge on either of those quite possible outcomes coming to fruition.
Mitchell and Tatum was one of the hardest debates on this entire list. In general I would lean towards a player like Tatum who’s size advantage and being a year younger would indicate there is more long term potential here.
Still, the load Mitchell has been asked to carry for a playoff team through the first two years of his career is insane. I saw on Nate Walker’s twitter the other day that he has the third highest usage rate of any player through the first two years of his career! The list of players who were asked to do so much offensively at this stage of their career and were able to do it with reasonable efficiency is very short.
As good as Tatum is just about every part of his game, he lacks a signature trait that makes super-stardom seem imminent. The ridiculously high 3 point shooting percentage from his rookie year always felt a little fluky and for as good as a scorer he is, he just doesn’t have that elite level athleticism nor Harden-like feel for the game that makes you think he’ll ever get you 25 a game. There’s a tun of value in having a guy who has no weaknesses in his game, but without an elite trait I don’t see him becoming a top 10 player in the league.
What’s interesting is that with the addition of Conley in Utah and Kyrie leading the exodus out of Boston this year we will probably see their usage rates start to converge and their roles become more similar. I’m predicting this brings out the best version of Mitchell. He’s now projected as a co-#1 option which should allow him to increase his efficiency and pay more attention defensively (he’s fine here, but not as good as projected coming out of college).
Tatum on the other-hand is someone I could see struggling to create offense as he’s asked to take on more of a lion’s share offensively, especially in lineups where Kemba is off the floor. To see how these two respond to their new roles is something I’ll be paying close attention to at the start of the season.
Fringe Top 10 Players just About to Exit their Primes
15. Damian Lillard
14. Jimmy Butler
13. Paul George
Lillard to me is the definition of a league average #1 player on a team. So having him check in at 15 makes a lot of sense. He’s clearly a half tier better than guys like Kyrie while being younger than guys like Russell Westbrook. I think getting to the conference finals like he did last year is the realistic ceiling for a team with him as your best player.
His shooting ability ought to allow him the opportunity to age relatively gracefully, but there is enough data of his performance tailing off against elite defenses, especially those with size in the playoffs that you have to factor it in going forward.
Jimmy Butler is still a hard player to evaluate cause he’s still has yet to find a situation where he’s gotten to flourish in a system built best to utilize his skills. Just about any other player on his level would have been afforded this opportunity, but during his peak Jimmy has to find a way to play alongside awkward ball dominant/poor shooting fits like Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Andrew Wiggins, Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. Give him the supporting cast and coaching that say James Harden has been fortuitous enough to receive and you would have a guy that would have been in the MVP discussion at least once in his career.
Instead we have a guy who has been banging his way through congested traffic when not having to watch some inefficient guard take “his turn on offense”, playing too many minutes while being tasked with playing All-NBA level defense on the oppositions premier weapon. When the playoffs arrived and Brett Brown finally realized he was their best player, they wound up being the closest team to take down the eventual champions being one crazy bounce away from going to overtime in a Game 7.
At the age of 30, with a couple knee injuries and being forced into playing crazy minutes for mediocre teams it’s sad that we haven’t gotten to see more of 76er’s playoffs Jimmy, It’s no sure thing that more opportunities will present themselves. Still, ESPN just put out their NBA rank the other day and he came in at 21. There is no more undervalued current superstar in the league than JB.
I’ve gone back and forth between Paul George and Jimmy Butler for years. Both are all world defenders who provide similar offensive value in different ways. George is a far superior shooter that can space the floor at an elite level making him the perfect compliment to another offensive force. However, last year in lineups with Westbrook was off the floor where George was forced into the role of having the offense revolve around him, he posted a well below average (you could even call it a Westbrookian) true shooting percentage of 51% on a 30% usage rate. In a lot of ways he’s the opposite of Lillard. George is an apex, championship level #2 who loses value if asked to be a #1. Lillard as a guy who is a fringe top 10 alpha who loses value the less he has the ball in his hands. Butler would be the midpoint between the two.
How you wind up ranking these 3 really good players comes down to personal preference more than anything. I went with my list like this, because George is a little younger than Jimmy, and put Lillard last cause his playoff struggles scare me more than Jimmy’s leadership……….abilities.
Young Dominant Bigs with Almost as Big Question Marks
12. Joel Embiid
11. Karl Anthony-Towns
Who would you rather have: One of the sports premier talents with a scary injury history and who’s playing style may not work in playoffs series’s against the most elite of defenses; or a guys who’s skill level has only been seen in a handful of 7 footers all time, yet his physical traits never translate into the defensive accumen he should possess contributing to the fact he has only played in 1 playoff series through the first 4 years of his career?
While some could argue that team success ought to tip this one towards Embiid, I moderately disagree. The difference between these two teams largely stems from the fact that Embiid was lucky to land a team that took Ben Simmons with a #1 overall pick while Towns has had the misfortune of having his career tied to Andrew Wiggins. Swap those two (or even take it one step further and swap the conferences they play in) and I imagine that narrative would be wiped away.
The injuries are really scary as well, but what really did it was watching Aaron Baynes and Marc Gasol being able to almost neutralize Embiid the last two post seasons. When the games really matter, you need to have counters to your bread and butter. KAT beats you from all over the floor. If Embiid can’t get going on the block, he has yet to show another way of taking over offensively.
I went back and forth on the ranking of these for a long time before ultimately deciding I was more intrigued KAT’s all around offensive versatility even though I’m not sure he’ll ever harness the ability to anchor a top 10 defense. That’s basically a prerequisite for a championship team. It’s really the only reason why he’s sitting just outside the Top 10 instead of battling for a top 5 position.
That wraps up today’s work. I’m going to try and get the top 10 up before the end of next week!
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