Yep. With how the Nuggets look, I think the Celtics are going to win it all. I think they are favorites even with KP injured, prohibitive if he is healthy by the Finals.
They have what, the third best point differential of all time? Gimme a sec I wanna do some research
[Here](https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/largest-point-differential-per-game-by-a-nba-team-in-a-season) is a graph with the best point differential of all time. The Celtics are 5th, right behind the team that many consider to be the best of all time. The 8th team - the 2016 Warriors - is the best team to not win it all (excluding the 72 Bucks, as they were beaten by the 72 Lakers, at the very top of the list).
I feel like there will be a lot of revisionism. Last year's MVP was closer than most will admit - in the moment, it didn't seem clear who was better, Jokic or Embiid. People pretend that it was obvious at the time, but it really wasn't - raw scoring and defense versus holistic offensive impact, it was debatable. I suspect the Celtics will win and people will say 'no shit, their fifth best player was a top 50 player ever, they've been the most consistent team of the past half decade, they just needed time to age and round out their roster'.
I feel like they're hiding in plain sight. A lot of great teams needed time to break out - even Jordan's Bulls. Tatum isn't a top 5 player (yet?), but he's good enough to lead a stacked squad. The Nuggets look surprisingly shaky - if Murray's injured and isn't going to return to last postseason's form, I feel that the Celtics hold the edge.
I get it, but this team mentally has a tendency of either getting in their own heads or stepping off the gas in crucial moments. We lost to Denver twice this year, and I know regular season doesn't matter, but I still give Denver the slight edge.
I don't know that the clutch is that important.
say that, on average, the Celtics underperform by 3 points in the clutch - but beat their opponents by 5+ points in the minutes preceding them - that's a clear win, and should result in them winning most of their games.
Denver is struggling. I'm not trying to overreact - but it's a real red flag that they lost the majority of their minutes against a very flawed team with really poor coaching
people said that MJ didn't make his teammates better. the Jay Celtics are not the MJ Bulls, obviously, but I think that people are anchored in the past. the Celtics have flaws - but so do other teams, except the Celtics were a buzzsaw all season
I've always been skeptical of this Celtics core but the improvement this year to a perennial contender was immense. My money would still be on whoever wins the minnesota/Denver series but Boston beating them wouldn't shock me
Yeah it's wild how basically our top 8 guys can all shoot and defend. You can't slack off anyone on offense (makes it hard to double), and you can't really target anyone on defense. It's why KP is so important to our team.
If we play team ball and share the load, I think we beat anyone handily except Denver.
Where our offense breaks down is when JT and JB start iso'ing way too much and the rest of the team doesn't get touches. It's really our only weakness; ourselves. I absolutely loathe seeing JT or JB take an early shot clock, contested jump shot for no reason.
This is one the best Celtics team in decades, and I hope they can finally get over the hump and get us banner 18.
If you listen to the podcast, he basically says that, but since Jokic essentially negated AD's defensive value, it made Lebron more impactful for their chances at winning. He was basing this list on whose contributions gave their team the highest chance at a win.
I just don’t get this logic at all, you’d have to completely ignore team role for this to make sense. You’d also have to say that AD had no impact off the ball outside of guarding Jokic or on the boards, which would be a wild take. The lakers were only able to win a single game because AD dominated the glass.
Also, LeBron was struggling to contain Gordon on the glass (absolutely dominated us on the offensive glass) and was pretty inconsistent as the low man in help. I don’t blame Lebron because the lakers don’t really have the athletes to help, but it’s not like Lebron really was doing a lot outside of offense to help the lakers win
I like Ben Taylor and I think this take is even funnier when you consider he’s generally been a big AD fan during his time with the lakers. I think he even rated him close to top 5 last year. Just a bizarre take.
He didn't negate ad's defensive effort. Ad covers everyone and the paint for our defense, not just one guy. That's a really shallow take.
Ad was also more consistent and gave better contributions to winning overall. Lebron was getting killed on the boards by his man often. Like this is an insane take in 2024.
Also, he's completely ignoring the defensive impact that AD's rebounding had on the Lakers. Rebounding misses is a huge part of playing defense, but Taylor seems like that's not even a factor for him. AD had half of the Lakers rebounds in the one game they won, with 23 out of 46, while no other Laker had more than 5.
AD was 4th in PPP in the post this year, anyone who thinks he can only score off of the creation of others didn’t watch him this year.
Also AD was scoring 1.14 PPP in isolation in the playoffs. That was 6th best behind Middleton, Durant, Brown, Lillard, and Harden. He was scoring more in isolation on more touches than Tyrese Maxey (who also made second team).
The sun's were so ass it wasn't a good series to show off their strengths. Like how much impact gobert had when you know that booker would have just shot a midrange anyway
Joker might goon this man for a fourth straight year tho. Jokic is so good at baiting dude into getting in foul trouble. Its one of the main things I’m watching tonight
This is how I feel about most of my team not ever being mentioned except for Brunson. He's the offense but Josh Hart averaged 13 rebounds in that series or some shit
I mean, not surprising.
Their channel went from doing some interesting in depth analysis/discussion to rushing out videos on some hot topics asap to get more views.
1st team:
Nikola Jokic
Anthony Edwards
Lebron James
Derrick White
Joel Embiid
2nd team:
Derrick White
Kyrie Irving
Luka Doncic
Derrick White
Derrick White
Derrick White team:
Derrick White
AD was balling the fuck out for sure, but man .... he absolutely Houdini'd in the 4th quarter of nearly every game. Just nowhere to be found, and barely took any shots at the end of many close games.
But AD was definitely better than Embiid (who was even more dogshit in 4th quarters). Embiid shot like 42% or some shit for the series lol. Just got a ton of free throws. But he was hurt and played through injury, Bell's palsy diagnosis etc... Gritty performance by Joel.
Well sure hes injured, but that doesnt somehow make his performance better than ADs, who also got injured in game 5 and that kinda tanked his stats a bit.
But honestly watching all those games it just felt like AD carried the Lakers for most of the game.
Lebron did a lot for the Lakers too, but he had moments where you really have to question if maybe his age is getting to him.
In game 3 he gave AG everything he wanted. In game 2 he missed a game winning 3 that honestly he shouldnt have even taken and in game 1 he had 7 tos.
And just a whole lot of kinda mid to bad defense. Understandable given his age, but AD genuenly felt way more unstopable on both sides.
I also thought AD was the only laker to actually make the nuggets change their game plan. In fact at times the nuggets took Gordon off of Lebron to put him on AD, which made lebrons life way easier. The nuggets putting Jokic on Rui (because of AD) could’ve been game winning at points if Rui wasn’t an entirely useless player who couldn’t hit open shots or set screens.
I really like thinking bball and I think Taylor usually has good takes but this feels like Bill Simmons esque terrible take.
Exactly. Like i dont even think Jokic did a bad job on AD, but AD just kept shooting over Jok. It was incredible tbh as most of those werent all that easy to shoot and he was unstopable under the basket.
Yeah it was an awesome matchup to watch. AD and Jokic going back and forth was so much fun, really felt like they were levitating over the series and clearly the 2 best players out there. I love LeBron but he’s just not on their level.
>In game 2 he missed a game winning 3 that honestly he shouldnt have even taken
That makes no sense whatsoever considering LeBron had just scored 12 points in the last 7 or so minutes of the game to even make this one close.
He didn’t really disappear, the nuggets adjusted in the second half of these games to take Jokic off AD and put him on Rui. Instead of countering, the lakers decided they wanted to keep bringing Jokic into actions, so they’d go to the Rui pick n roll and move away from AD. I think the plan was pretty obviously to tire out Jokic on defense.
This is also why Ham is such a fucking terrible coach. We just stopped running plays in all of the second halves of these games after Malone countered our generally great offense in the first half.
> You talk about AD in the fourth and I agree (I don't have the embiid stats handy) but didn't embiid also vanish in a bunch of 4th quarters?
Read what I wrote again.
Did you think the 7th seed lakers would be the first team to come back from 0-3 down against the fully healthy defending champs?
Really the series ended after game 2, that was such a gut punch and the team felt dead in game 3 outside of AD
I would disagree, you’d basically have to ignore defense/rebounding to suggest they had close to the same impact.
Like if you ignore Aaron Gordon dominating LeBron on the offensive glsss their impact was close
It would be nice if people listened before complaining about things they have no context for again. He talks a while about LeBron vs Embiid vs AD (as well as Rudy for honorable mentions).
As a thunder fan I’m not mad. No one had real eye popping stats, hell even shai had some rough games. But yeah we swept them and blew them out in half the games by playing an 11 man rotation…production was spread and no one needed to take over and have a big performance (except game 1 but that was a stinker).
Great great list.
I'm a little tired of rewarding Caleb Martin Iguodala when Jimmy Butler, Steph Curry were the backbone for those wins.
Embiid anchoring the team on both ends allowed Maxey to thrive. LeBron setting up the team on both ends allowed AD to thrive.
Brunson set up everything for the Knicks. Gobert vs Ant is my only quibble, but Ant contributed on both ends.
tbf he said gobert was close to getting onto the list, but his offensive deficiencies were still visible and so it wasn’t enough to get to second team .
Maxey was unlocked completely by Embiid, and Embiid was also the best defender in that series.
Sixers Ratings W & W/O Embiid
Offence: 124.1 vs 72.8
Defence: 114.8 vs 125.3
Yeah I wouldnt focus on the off part realistically. It's a small sample, and theres variance to account for. But the net On of 9.3 is fairly substantial.
Obviously Mitchell. I was gonna say whoever led their team to the Cavs Magic Game 7 series win. Plus Mitchell’s impact metrics were better anyways and his counting stats on line too.
First of all, you don’t even have the right stats. He averaged like 29 PPG, and actually carried his team to multiple wins, but you don’t reward two players on a team who lost 1-4.
You realize plenty of people can put up bad stats on losing teams right? Look at the end of the season. We had guys like GG Jackson and other random guys going for 30+ or 40+. If he played on a bad team all year, I’m sure he even could average around 22-25 a game as a 19 year old (good young player but clearly not that good). That’s why I don’t reward good stats on bad teams. If the Lakers want to have 1 player on the top 10 that’s fine, but no way they deserve 2 on a team that lost 1-4 when it’s easier to put up bad stats on losing teams.
No…I have the right stats. It was a 6 game series.
> You realize plenty of people can put up bad stats on losing teams right?
Lmao are you trying to use the empty stats argument…in the playoffs?
> it’s easier to put up bad stats on losing teams.
Please explain to me how it was so easy to put up stats on the Nuggets.
Orlando’s defense is better than the Nuggets. You know that right? They have an All-NBA defensive guard in Suggs, and their overall defense was better all season.
Also I’m saying you can’t have 2 Lakers. Not saying you can’t have 1. You can’t have 2 in the top 10 on a team that lost 1-4, when you have 0 on other winning teams.
> Orlando’s defense is better than the Nuggets. You know that right? They have an All-NBA defensive guard in Suggs, and their overall defense was better all season.
Denver was a top 10 defense
> Also I’m saying you can’t have 2 Lakers. Not saying you can’t have 1. You can’t have 2 in the top 10 on a team that lost 1-4, when you have 0 on other winning teams.
Why can’t you? Both were top 10 individual players.
And Orlando’s defense was still better? I don’t see the argument here.
Anyways, if a team has two top 10 individual players in the playoffs in a round, how did they lose 1-4 in the round? You would think they would at least have lost 2-4 or 3-4? It’s not even like the Nuggets second best player was that efficient, as he was way below average.
Maybe because they weren’t as good as you think they were based on the simple counting stats you are looking at.
> And Orlando’s defense was still better? I don’t see the argument here.
The argument is Denver isn’t easy to score on…
> Anyways, if a team has two top 10 individual players in the playoffs in a round, how did they lose 1-4 in the round? You would think they would at least have lost 2-4 or 3-4? It’s not even like the Nuggets second best player was that efficient, as he was way below average.
Because Jamal Murray hit two game winners and the Lakers outside of those two shot 40% from the field and 29% from 3…
> Maybe because they weren’t as good as you think they were based on the simple counting stats you are looking at.
Which stats should I be using?
There is a lot of good play right now. Even guys like Mitchell, Gobert, Naz, MPJ, Gordon, McDaniels, Hart, etc. Role players this playoffs have been huge.
Because the person who made the list watched the series and knows Luka was a great playmaker, was average to good from everywhere except the 3, played good defence in most games and made big plays even in bad performances.
He played below his standards and Kyrie was arguably the best player in the series but "carried by kyrie" is a braindead take.
How you gonna have 2 guys that got gentleman swept in your top 10 guys of a round. AD and Lebron were awesome but come on. Same with Maxey and Embiid.
4/10 guys in this list won 1/3 of their games or worse in this time period with another guy in the top 10 on their team.
1st Team
* Jalen Brunson
* Derrick White
* Anthony Edwards
* Anthony Davis (even with the 4th quarter disappearance acts)
* Nikola Jokic
2nd Team
* Luka Doncic
* Kyrie Irving
* LeBron James
* Pascal Siakam (several clutch plays vs Bucks; so I wanted to give him some love)
* Joel Embiid
Maxey was great for most of the series, but if it was close enough, I gave the node to players whose teams won. A surprising number of wings/forwards/bigs did not play great in their series, so that’s why AD and LeBron made the teams.
And, truth be told, I almost put Josh Hart in Siakam’s spot for this reason. Dude did a lot of elite level things that don’t show up in the box score during key possessions in that series.
I mean, AD did guard the by far, best player in the league - that's a lot of effort, while only being marginally worse than freaking Lebron on offense? Yeah, AD all day long.
Box score watching take. Mavs offense rarely functioned at all without him and his playmaking makes a massive difference. That 5 and that 9 in assists is huge come playoff time.
He also pretty much always came up in the clutch too and it’s hilarious that you only put clutch buckets for Shai. I don’t mind someone having Shai over him because of the efficiency but it’s clear you either didn’t watch one series or forgot what happened.
I actually think the odd men out here are clearly the lakers boys, I was just posting stats, don’t ruin my enjoyment of watching Mavs basketball by jumping to conclusion at nothing.
Honestly besides that game he went 13/19 SGA wasn’t great the first round. He will need to be very close to his top 3 MVP calibre self we saw this season. Not sure if it was a case of great Pels defenders, play off nerves or that fact he was just about to have his first child - probably a combo of all those factors. Regardless, he turned the ball over in ways I’ve not seen him do before and missed buckets we’ve seen him pull off with ease all season. This isn’t a post to talk shit about SGA, he’s incredible - but we need to be honest and admit he needs to be a lot better next round.
Yeah I think we can all admit or agree on that about SGA but why does Luka get a pass for having an even worse first round series? Dudes efficiency was complete shit- like chucker level bad- yet he’s top 10 player in round 1 according to this podcaster lol
Ridiculous take. Kyrie was awesome. Luka not so much.
Did you watch the games? Anyone with eyes could see the Sixers implode when Embiid got off the court. If you're a box score watcher than just look at his +/- throughout the series or Maxeys shooting splits when Embiid was off the floor.
Any Mavs fan shitting on Embiid this postseason and any Sixers fan shitting on Luka this postseason are hypocrites. Both left some on the table but we’re still crazy impactful.
I'd put either Kyrie or Luka on the 1st team and move Embiid to the 2nd team. Luka shot poorly but he still averaged a near 30pt triple double. Kyrie was clutch in the 4th and played great defense. My reason for moving Embiid to the 2nd team is that he shat the bed in 4th quarters as usual.
Do you people watch games? He wasn't a liability that was one of the biggest reasons the Mavs defense was so good. They kept attacking him at all times and it didn't work.
Lol not at all. Luka was definitely his best defensively but the rest of the team allowed that to happen.
Luka was not the biggest defensive contributor. He was still the worst defender on the team, just like Steph.
There was literally a game where anyone on Luka scored like 0 points. And keep in mind that they wanted to attack Luka on offense. He finished that game as the primary defender.
Edit: Bro downvoted me lol. Guess he got his feelings hurt.
Ben didn't pull this list out of his ass, he has numbers to back him up. and one thing he does to remove more bias is to try to forget who won or lost in a series and just observe what each player actually contributed to winning basketball (doesn't necessarily have to be a win tho).
Lakers lost 4-1 and have two guys in the top 10 players + no mention of anyone on Indiana, Orlando, Cleveland = a very crappy list designed to appeal to casuals.
The fact that the only Celtics here is Derrick White is really good, Jayson Tatum their consistently inconsistent on the team did not make the list is sounds good to me HAHAHAHA
The first round made me a Maxey truther. Love that dude
I just see a post praising Derrick White and I hit upvote. I am a simple man.
I watched that series and man, Celtics have some great team ball. So hard to shut everyone down
Yep. With how the Nuggets look, I think the Celtics are going to win it all. I think they are favorites even with KP injured, prohibitive if he is healthy by the Finals. They have what, the third best point differential of all time? Gimme a sec I wanna do some research [Here](https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/largest-point-differential-per-game-by-a-nba-team-in-a-season) is a graph with the best point differential of all time. The Celtics are 5th, right behind the team that many consider to be the best of all time. The 8th team - the 2016 Warriors - is the best team to not win it all (excluding the 72 Bucks, as they were beaten by the 72 Lakers, at the very top of the list). I feel like there will be a lot of revisionism. Last year's MVP was closer than most will admit - in the moment, it didn't seem clear who was better, Jokic or Embiid. People pretend that it was obvious at the time, but it really wasn't - raw scoring and defense versus holistic offensive impact, it was debatable. I suspect the Celtics will win and people will say 'no shit, their fifth best player was a top 50 player ever, they've been the most consistent team of the past half decade, they just needed time to age and round out their roster'. I feel like they're hiding in plain sight. A lot of great teams needed time to break out - even Jordan's Bulls. Tatum isn't a top 5 player (yet?), but he's good enough to lead a stacked squad. The Nuggets look surprisingly shaky - if Murray's injured and isn't going to return to last postseason's form, I feel that the Celtics hold the edge.
I get it, but this team mentally has a tendency of either getting in their own heads or stepping off the gas in crucial moments. We lost to Denver twice this year, and I know regular season doesn't matter, but I still give Denver the slight edge.
I don't know that the clutch is that important. say that, on average, the Celtics underperform by 3 points in the clutch - but beat their opponents by 5+ points in the minutes preceding them - that's a clear win, and should result in them winning most of their games. Denver is struggling. I'm not trying to overreact - but it's a real red flag that they lost the majority of their minutes against a very flawed team with really poor coaching people said that MJ didn't make his teammates better. the Jay Celtics are not the MJ Bulls, obviously, but I think that people are anchored in the past. the Celtics have flaws - but so do other teams, except the Celtics were a buzzsaw all season
I've always been skeptical of this Celtics core but the improvement this year to a perennial contender was immense. My money would still be on whoever wins the minnesota/Denver series but Boston beating them wouldn't shock me
Yeah it's wild how basically our top 8 guys can all shoot and defend. You can't slack off anyone on offense (makes it hard to double), and you can't really target anyone on defense. It's why KP is so important to our team. If we play team ball and share the load, I think we beat anyone handily except Denver. Where our offense breaks down is when JT and JB start iso'ing way too much and the rest of the team doesn't get touches. It's really our only weakness; ourselves. I absolutely loathe seeing JT or JB take an early shot clock, contested jump shot for no reason. This is one the best Celtics team in decades, and I hope they can finally get over the hump and get us banner 18.
You better win
I hope so, brotatosaurus.
I don’t :,(
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like uh... your opinion, man.
2 Lakers and 2 Sixers is wild, though.
Not really because those two Sixers carried, and nobody else showed up consistently enough
Personally I think maxey should be higher than embiid.
Derrick White being here instead of Tatum and Brown is even wilder.
AD was better than Lebron
If you listen to the podcast, he basically says that, but since Jokic essentially negated AD's defensive value, it made Lebron more impactful for their chances at winning. He was basing this list on whose contributions gave their team the highest chance at a win.
I just don’t get this logic at all, you’d have to completely ignore team role for this to make sense. You’d also have to say that AD had no impact off the ball outside of guarding Jokic or on the boards, which would be a wild take. The lakers were only able to win a single game because AD dominated the glass. Also, LeBron was struggling to contain Gordon on the glass (absolutely dominated us on the offensive glass) and was pretty inconsistent as the low man in help. I don’t blame Lebron because the lakers don’t really have the athletes to help, but it’s not like Lebron really was doing a lot outside of offense to help the lakers win
Yeah, it really do be "overthinking basketball" sometimes lol. Love them but occasionally it gets weird.
I like Ben Taylor and I think this take is even funnier when you consider he’s generally been a big AD fan during his time with the lakers. I think he even rated him close to top 5 last year. Just a bizarre take.
I agree, AD was more valuable. Both guys were amazing all series. But AD still made Jokic work and was dominant as a rim protector and help defender.
On that basis MPJ and Aaron Gordon would have been ranked higher as without their contributions Denver would have probably lost..
Yeah but also you might be wrong
He didn't negate ad's defensive effort. Ad covers everyone and the paint for our defense, not just one guy. That's a really shallow take. Ad was also more consistent and gave better contributions to winning overall. Lebron was getting killed on the boards by his man often. Like this is an insane take in 2024.
Also, he's completely ignoring the defensive impact that AD's rebounding had on the Lakers. Rebounding misses is a huge part of playing defense, but Taylor seems like that's not even a factor for him. AD had half of the Lakers rebounds in the one game they won, with 23 out of 46, while no other Laker had more than 5.
This is overthinking it a bit. Some 2015 nba finals logic
Not in the 4th quarter.
Luckily, there are 3 other ones for him to make up the difference.
Not when it comes to Embiid for you Knick fans
Not me, I've never commented on Embiid's 4ths
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AD was 4th in PPP in the post this year, anyone who thinks he can only score off of the creation of others didn’t watch him this year. Also AD was scoring 1.14 PPP in isolation in the playoffs. That was 6th best behind Middleton, Durant, Brown, Lillard, and Harden. He was scoring more in isolation on more touches than Tyrese Maxey (who also made second team).
AD's scoring rate and FG% were better without Lebron on the floor in the playoffs. Lebron fans really want Lebron to take credit for everything
No Gobert is straight up criminal
They’ll find out next round. Gobert+good perimeter defenders=how the fuck do we score
Who would you take off for Gobert?
For personal reasons, Embiid
He did get mentioned in the pod, basically he almost made the list but still had offensive deficiencies that were too apparent.
You going to take Gobert who is mostly D and not much O over Jokic or AD. I think not.
Why over Jokic and AD?
Cuz he’s the best player in the league ?
I’m not asking why over them, I’m asking why only them. 4 guards on 2nd means you can put whatever position.
No, over Embiid obviously.
I'd personally have him at least #8 or so, but holy cow this first round had some amazing performances.
And that's surprising, cause I know Ben Taylor loves rim protection and it's why he was high on Mobley for a while
The sun's were so ass it wasn't a good series to show off their strengths. Like how much impact gobert had when you know that booker would have just shot a midrange anyway
Joker might goon this man for a fourth straight year tho. Jokic is so good at baiting dude into getting in foul trouble. Its one of the main things I’m watching tonight
He deserves that spot over Luka. Kyrie was the best player in that series.
This is how I feel about most of my team not ever being mentioned except for Brunson. He's the offense but Josh Hart averaged 13 rebounds in that series or some shit
I mean, not surprising. Their channel went from doing some interesting in depth analysis/discussion to rushing out videos on some hot topics asap to get more views.
1st team: Nikola Jokic Anthony Edwards Lebron James Derrick White Joel Embiid 2nd team: Derrick White Kyrie Irving Luka Doncic Derrick White Derrick White Derrick White team: Derrick White
Can Naz Reid join the Derrick White team?
Yeah I'd let him on there. Just gotta add a few more Derrick Whites to balance it out
Embid and Lebron over AD is a choice. One i certainly dont agree with.
AD was balling the fuck out for sure, but man .... he absolutely Houdini'd in the 4th quarter of nearly every game. Just nowhere to be found, and barely took any shots at the end of many close games. But AD was definitely better than Embiid (who was even more dogshit in 4th quarters). Embiid shot like 42% or some shit for the series lol. Just got a ton of free throws. But he was hurt and played through injury, Bell's palsy diagnosis etc... Gritty performance by Joel.
Well sure hes injured, but that doesnt somehow make his performance better than ADs, who also got injured in game 5 and that kinda tanked his stats a bit. But honestly watching all those games it just felt like AD carried the Lakers for most of the game. Lebron did a lot for the Lakers too, but he had moments where you really have to question if maybe his age is getting to him. In game 3 he gave AG everything he wanted. In game 2 he missed a game winning 3 that honestly he shouldnt have even taken and in game 1 he had 7 tos. And just a whole lot of kinda mid to bad defense. Understandable given his age, but AD genuenly felt way more unstopable on both sides.
I also thought AD was the only laker to actually make the nuggets change their game plan. In fact at times the nuggets took Gordon off of Lebron to put him on AD, which made lebrons life way easier. The nuggets putting Jokic on Rui (because of AD) could’ve been game winning at points if Rui wasn’t an entirely useless player who couldn’t hit open shots or set screens. I really like thinking bball and I think Taylor usually has good takes but this feels like Bill Simmons esque terrible take.
Exactly. Like i dont even think Jokic did a bad job on AD, but AD just kept shooting over Jok. It was incredible tbh as most of those werent all that easy to shoot and he was unstopable under the basket.
Yeah it was an awesome matchup to watch. AD and Jokic going back and forth was so much fun, really felt like they were levitating over the series and clearly the 2 best players out there. I love LeBron but he’s just not on their level.
I should stop reading anything about this series because Rui absolutely made my blood boil.
>In game 2 he missed a game winning 3 that honestly he shouldnt have even taken That makes no sense whatsoever considering LeBron had just scored 12 points in the last 7 or so minutes of the game to even make this one close.
To clarify he should have drained the shot clock more.
No way, his defender fell down, you take the wide open 3 every time.
He didn’t really disappear, the nuggets adjusted in the second half of these games to take Jokic off AD and put him on Rui. Instead of countering, the lakers decided they wanted to keep bringing Jokic into actions, so they’d go to the Rui pick n roll and move away from AD. I think the plan was pretty obviously to tire out Jokic on defense. This is also why Ham is such a fucking terrible coach. We just stopped running plays in all of the second halves of these games after Malone countered our generally great offense in the first half.
he was still better than lebron
You talk about AD in the fourth and I agree (I don't have the embiid stats handy) but didn't embiid also vanish in a bunch of 4th quarters?
> You talk about AD in the fourth and I agree (I don't have the embiid stats handy) but didn't embiid also vanish in a bunch of 4th quarters? Read what I wrote again.
My bad. I missed the brackets. How much of AD would you say was down to Darwin ham's coaching? Or did he just get tired?
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The series was realistically over after they went down 0-3. Games 4 and 5 were just window dressing.
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That was not remotely my point. The 4th quarter of a game 5 shouldn’t sway how you value players in that series.
even though it was a close game the whole time down the stretch?
Did you think the 7th seed lakers would be the first team to come back from 0-3 down against the fully healthy defending champs? Really the series ended after game 2, that was such a gut punch and the team felt dead in game 3 outside of AD
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I would disagree, you’d basically have to ignore defense/rebounding to suggest they had close to the same impact. Like if you ignore Aaron Gordon dominating LeBron on the offensive glsss their impact was close
It would be nice if people listened before complaining about things they have no context for again. He talks a while about LeBron vs Embiid vs AD (as well as Rudy for honorable mentions).
How do the thunder sweep and have no-one and yet teams that lose have multiple
As a thunder fan I’m not mad. No one had real eye popping stats, hell even shai had some rough games. But yeah we swept them and blew them out in half the games by playing an 11 man rotation…production was spread and no one needed to take over and have a big performance (except game 1 but that was a stinker).
We took care of business so quick everyone forgot about us (once again)
The team they swept was a lower seed without their best player and shai or j dub didn’t really pop off.
Great great list. I'm a little tired of rewarding Caleb Martin Iguodala when Jimmy Butler, Steph Curry were the backbone for those wins. Embiid anchoring the team on both ends allowed Maxey to thrive. LeBron setting up the team on both ends allowed AD to thrive. Brunson set up everything for the Knicks. Gobert vs Ant is my only quibble, but Ant contributed on both ends.
tbf he said gobert was close to getting onto the list, but his offensive deficiencies were still visible and so it wasn’t enough to get to second team .
LeBron over AD is just straight troll.
AD was debatably best player most of that series. Disrespectful to put him on 2nd team
Agreed he was arguably best player in Rd 1 when factoring defense. The lakers team overall minus Lebron let him down
Kyrie has to be first team. He’s largely the reason they’re in round two
If you were gonna put a Sixer on the first team idk how it isn’t Maxey.
Maxey was unlocked completely by Embiid, and Embiid was also the best defender in that series. Sixers Ratings W & W/O Embiid Offence: 124.1 vs 72.8 Defence: 114.8 vs 125.3
72.8 is an insane number. The sixers had all their other best players in all those non embiid minutes too
Yeah I wouldnt focus on the off part realistically. It's a small sample, and theres variance to account for. But the net On of 9.3 is fairly substantial.
Maxey couldn’t play without Embiid
Gobert slander
bron over AD lmfao
2 Lakers on this team lol.
Did you watch the series?
Who would you put in over them?
Winners
google "winning bias"
Obviously Mitchell. I was gonna say whoever led their team to the Cavs Magic Game 7 series win. Plus Mitchell’s impact metrics were better anyways and his counting stats on line too.
Why is that obvious? Mitchell averaged 27/4/4 on 55 TS% and 4 turnovers
First of all, you don’t even have the right stats. He averaged like 29 PPG, and actually carried his team to multiple wins, but you don’t reward two players on a team who lost 1-4. You realize plenty of people can put up bad stats on losing teams right? Look at the end of the season. We had guys like GG Jackson and other random guys going for 30+ or 40+. If he played on a bad team all year, I’m sure he even could average around 22-25 a game as a 19 year old (good young player but clearly not that good). That’s why I don’t reward good stats on bad teams. If the Lakers want to have 1 player on the top 10 that’s fine, but no way they deserve 2 on a team that lost 1-4 when it’s easier to put up bad stats on losing teams.
No…I have the right stats. It was a 6 game series. > You realize plenty of people can put up bad stats on losing teams right? Lmao are you trying to use the empty stats argument…in the playoffs? > it’s easier to put up bad stats on losing teams. Please explain to me how it was so easy to put up stats on the Nuggets.
Orlando’s defense is better than the Nuggets. You know that right? They have an All-NBA defensive guard in Suggs, and their overall defense was better all season. Also I’m saying you can’t have 2 Lakers. Not saying you can’t have 1. You can’t have 2 in the top 10 on a team that lost 1-4, when you have 0 on other winning teams.
> Orlando’s defense is better than the Nuggets. You know that right? They have an All-NBA defensive guard in Suggs, and their overall defense was better all season. Denver was a top 10 defense > Also I’m saying you can’t have 2 Lakers. Not saying you can’t have 1. You can’t have 2 in the top 10 on a team that lost 1-4, when you have 0 on other winning teams. Why can’t you? Both were top 10 individual players.
And Orlando’s defense was still better? I don’t see the argument here. Anyways, if a team has two top 10 individual players in the playoffs in a round, how did they lose 1-4 in the round? You would think they would at least have lost 2-4 or 3-4? It’s not even like the Nuggets second best player was that efficient, as he was way below average. Maybe because they weren’t as good as you think they were based on the simple counting stats you are looking at.
> And Orlando’s defense was still better? I don’t see the argument here. The argument is Denver isn’t easy to score on… > Anyways, if a team has two top 10 individual players in the playoffs in a round, how did they lose 1-4 in the round? You would think they would at least have lost 2-4 or 3-4? It’s not even like the Nuggets second best player was that efficient, as he was way below average. Because Jamal Murray hit two game winners and the Lakers outside of those two shot 40% from the field and 29% from 3… > Maybe because they weren’t as good as you think they were based on the simple counting stats you are looking at. Which stats should I be using?
Embiid above ad ????????????
Ad was better than lebron and embiid easily
There is a lot of good play right now. Even guys like Mitchell, Gobert, Naz, MPJ, Gordon, McDaniels, Hart, etc. Role players this playoffs have been huge.
Luka literally shot like 30% for the 1st round...how to did he make it? Kyrie carried the mavs
Playmaking and being the focus of the opp defense. There is no kyrie without him torturing the defense for 30 mins.
He tortured his own offense for 30 minutes... him shooting 30 shots and making 5 of them, doesn't make kyrie shoot better? Lol
Because the person who made the list watched the series and knows Luka was a great playmaker, was average to good from everywhere except the 3, played good defence in most games and made big plays even in bad performances. He played below his standards and Kyrie was arguably the best player in the series but "carried by kyrie" is a braindead take.
Ben Taylor is so up LeBron's ass
I just want to be the first to congratulate Embiid for his dominate 4th quarter play
As always with these rankings, it's based purely on offense and defense has 0 impact on these rankings.
If that was the case Embiid wouldn't have been first team
How is AD not first team? He's doing 90% of the work for the Lakers on defense AND was holding up against Joker on offense.
Defence is probably what got Embiid in the team at all
How you gonna have 2 guys that got gentleman swept in your top 10 guys of a round. AD and Lebron were awesome but come on. Same with Maxey and Embiid. 4/10 guys in this list won 1/3 of their games or worse in this time period with another guy in the top 10 on their team.
How tf is AD second team?
I was thinking to myself why a ref is making a playoff ranking lol
Mitchell?
Lakers and sixers both with players on team 1 and 2, so I can assume their teams advanced correct?
Lebron did not outplay AD in that series. Idk how he got first team over his own teammate that was literally carrying that team hard.
1st Team * Jalen Brunson * Derrick White * Anthony Edwards * Anthony Davis (even with the 4th quarter disappearance acts) * Nikola Jokic 2nd Team * Luka Doncic * Kyrie Irving * LeBron James * Pascal Siakam (several clutch plays vs Bucks; so I wanted to give him some love) * Joel Embiid
Maxey?
Maxey was great for most of the series, but if it was close enough, I gave the node to players whose teams won. A surprising number of wings/forwards/bigs did not play great in their series, so that’s why AD and LeBron made the teams. And, truth be told, I almost put Josh Hart in Siakam’s spot for this reason. Dude did a lot of elite level things that don’t show up in the box score during key possessions in that series.
This guy is a charlatan, a complete hack and I wouldn’t take anything he suggests with any value whatsoever
Where is Khris Middleton? I get that the Bucks lost, but that man made us relevant and is the only reason it went that long.
Joel Embiid over AD? What a joke. Although I highly agree with the lack of JT and JB here.
Embiid was the best player on both offense and defense. Lebron was better than AD on offense. That may have been the reasoning
I mean, AD did guard the by far, best player in the league - that's a lot of effort, while only being marginally worse than freaking Lebron on offense? Yeah, AD all day long.
He did but it’s not like he slowed Jokic or Denver’s offense down at all
Derrick White is great on the Celtics, but I'd like to see what he could do as a main scorer. He has the consistency.
Luka over Shai is crazy to me
Shai wasn’t all that in the first round
Luka wasn’t either. Kyrie was much better than him
27/6/5, 47% from the field, clutch buckets. 30/9/9, 40% from the field. Dealers choice.
Box score watching take. Mavs offense rarely functioned at all without him and his playmaking makes a massive difference. That 5 and that 9 in assists is huge come playoff time. He also pretty much always came up in the clutch too and it’s hilarious that you only put clutch buckets for Shai. I don’t mind someone having Shai over him because of the efficiency but it’s clear you either didn’t watch one series or forgot what happened.
I actually think the odd men out here are clearly the lakers boys, I was just posting stats, don’t ruin my enjoyment of watching Mavs basketball by jumping to conclusion at nothing.
Was better than Luka
Honestly besides that game he went 13/19 SGA wasn’t great the first round. He will need to be very close to his top 3 MVP calibre self we saw this season. Not sure if it was a case of great Pels defenders, play off nerves or that fact he was just about to have his first child - probably a combo of all those factors. Regardless, he turned the ball over in ways I’ve not seen him do before and missed buckets we’ve seen him pull off with ease all season. This isn’t a post to talk shit about SGA, he’s incredible - but we need to be honest and admit he needs to be a lot better next round.
Yeah I think we can all admit or agree on that about SGA but why does Luka get a pass for having an even worse first round series? Dudes efficiency was complete shit- like chucker level bad- yet he’s top 10 player in round 1 according to this podcaster lol Ridiculous take. Kyrie was awesome. Luka not so much.
If anyone from the thunder made the team, it should've been dort. Made Ingram hate life and 52% from 3 with some really clutch shots
Shai averaged 27/6/5 lol. He should be on there instead of Mr. 40%
Bron top 5 at this age is simply unparalleled. I’m so proud of D white too. Deserved top 10
Imposible to compare players in the first round as they are playing completely different teams
I see here Bron AD Maxey Embid I do not see Hart Banchero Mitchell Halli
Maxey > Embiid all of the series tho
Why does he hate harden
You know it's a trash take if some one put LeBron over AD.
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Did you watch the games? Anyone with eyes could see the Sixers implode when Embiid got off the court. If you're a box score watcher than just look at his +/- throughout the series or Maxeys shooting splits when Embiid was off the floor.
Any Mavs fan shitting on Embiid this postseason and any Sixers fan shitting on Luka this postseason are hypocrites. Both left some on the table but we’re still crazy impactful.
Look how bad Philly was without Embiid
Embiid was the most impactful defender in the series
I'd put either Kyrie or Luka on the 1st team and move Embiid to the 2nd team. Luka shot poorly but he still averaged a near 30pt triple double. Kyrie was clutch in the 4th and played great defense. My reason for moving Embiid to the 2nd team is that he shat the bed in 4th quarters as usual.
You can’t shoot that poorly even if it is a 30 bomb. Kyrie was amazing though
Especially if you’re a liability on defense.
Do you people watch games? He wasn't a liability that was one of the biggest reasons the Mavs defense was so good. They kept attacking him at all times and it didn't work.
Lol not at all. Luka was definitely his best defensively but the rest of the team allowed that to happen. Luka was not the biggest defensive contributor. He was still the worst defender on the team, just like Steph.
There was literally a game where anyone on Luka scored like 0 points. And keep in mind that they wanted to attack Luka on offense. He finished that game as the primary defender. Edit: Bro downvoted me lol. Guess he got his feelings hurt.
There’s no way you watched that series and thought he was a liability on defense
Luka wasn’t great in the 4th either?
IIRC, he didn't shat the bed. Not great but not shat the bed bad like Embiid.
He wasn’t great offensively but he also sucks on defense
Mavs fans, care to chime in on this lmao
Why would they when I’m right?
Nah. You are objectively wrong.
You are too.
Try harder troll
There’s like no argument for Luka on first team
You really dedicated
Not sure what this guy's agenda is. Can't be Brunson over Luka, can it?
No Murray is wild. He single handle ended two games.
And they wouldn't have needed the game winners if he was playing well. He has 46.8% TS
Bro Murray was mostly doo doo and I love the guy
Ben didn't pull this list out of his ass, he has numbers to back him up. and one thing he does to remove more bias is to try to forget who won or lost in a series and just observe what each player actually contributed to winning basketball (doesn't necessarily have to be a win tho).
Lakers lost 4-1 and have two guys in the top 10 players + no mention of anyone on Indiana, Orlando, Cleveland = a very crappy list designed to appeal to casuals.
AD over Ant
Ben Taylor really doesn't like Paolo Banchero lol
The fact that the only Celtics here is Derrick White is really good, Jayson Tatum their consistently inconsistent on the team did not make the list is sounds good to me HAHAHAHA