Speaker 1: The volume. All right, welcome to him tonight here at
Speaker 1: the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody, Oh all of you guys
Speaker 1: had a great weekend. We are starting the top ten
Speaker 1: of our player rankings today with number ten Anthony Davis,
Speaker 1: going to do a very deep dive into ad some
Speaker 1: of the ups and downs of his career with relation
Speaker 1: to health, also with relation to his skill development. I
Speaker 1: even want to zoom out a little bit towards the
Speaker 1: end and talk about his perception of the center position
Speaker 1: versus the power forward position in some of the strengths
Speaker 1: and weaknesses of that approach, and some of the things
Speaker 1: we got to keep an eye out for him with
Speaker 1: the Dallas Mavericks in that regard. And then at the
Speaker 1: tail end of the show, one of the things we're
Speaker 1: going to start doing, since we're only doing one player
Speaker 1: at a time from this point forward, is we're going
Speaker 1: to start hitting some bigger picture basketball debate types of topic.
Speaker 1: And today we're actually going to start with one that
Speaker 1: was a raging debate online last week while while I
Speaker 1: was in Alaska, and I give you guys just a
Speaker 1: very quick, kind of like thirty thousand foot version of
Speaker 1: my opinion. But I wanted to kind of dive deeper
Speaker 1: into the concept, and it's about two basketball players, one
Speaker 1: of which is a champion, one of which is not. However,
Speaker 1: the player who's not a champion is a guy that
Speaker 1: I view as the better basketball player, and I want
Speaker 1: to kind of dive into that concept. It's Kyrie Irving
Speaker 1: versus Chris Paul and who I think is a better
Speaker 1: basketball player at their absolute peak. So we're going to
Speaker 1: dive into that at the tail end of the show.
Speaker 1: You guys are the joke before we get started. To
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Speaker 1: don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Speaker 1: Make sure you guys follow us there. In the last
Speaker 1: but not least, if you disagree with any of these
Speaker 1: rankings in any way, shape or form. Where you're doing
Speaker 1: Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of this series where you
Speaker 1: guys have the opportunity to explain why you disagree guy
Speaker 1: too high, guy too low, whatever it might be. Just
Speaker 1: right mail bag with the colon, write your elevator pitch
Speaker 1: just as concisely as possible, your basketball case for why
Speaker 1: you disagree with a ranking, or even if it's just
Speaker 1: something you want me to elaborate on a bit further.
Speaker 1: Put that in the YouTube comments and we'll get to
Speaker 1: those in our Friday mail bags throughout the remainder of
Speaker 1: this series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So number ten,
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis, as last season in review, played in just
Speaker 1: fifty one games. We're going to talk about ad and
Speaker 1: kind of his history with health here in a little bit.
Speaker 1: Came out guns blazing to start the year, as he
Speaker 1: was very heavily featured in JJ Redick's offense early in
Speaker 1: the season. In his first twenty five games, he averaged
Speaker 1: a super efficient twenty eight points per game to go
Speaker 1: with three point two steels plus blocks per game. He
Speaker 1: was legit playing at that top tier superstar level to
Speaker 1: start the season. Then he got a little banged up.
Speaker 1: You're starting to deal with a couple of nagging injuries,
Speaker 1: and he slowed down pretty significantly after that point. He
Speaker 1: averaged just twenty three points per game on lower efficiency
Speaker 1: over his final seventeen games as a Laker. Also, as
Speaker 1: he started to not perform as well on offense, he
Speaker 1: started to become less and less featured in the offense,
Speaker 1: which seemed to take him even further out of rhythm.
Speaker 1: It just was starting to look like more or less
Speaker 1: the offensive player that we had seen in previous seasons.
Speaker 1: But he did come out guns blazing to start the year,
Speaker 1: and then he ended up finally succumbing to a groin
Speaker 1: injury which kept him out the majority of the rest
Speaker 1: of the season. He ended up playing just nine games
Speaker 1: as a Dallas Maverick after the Lukadancics trade. Finished the
Speaker 1: year in the total of the fifty one games at
Speaker 1: twenty five points, twelve rebounds in four assists, three point
Speaker 1: four stocks per game, and his percentages fifty four percent
Speaker 1: from the field, twenty eight percent from three to seventy
Speaker 1: eight percent from the line, which amounts to fifty four
Speaker 1: percent an effective field goal percentage waited for threes and
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent in true shooting. This is where I
Speaker 1: want to start in the health arena for just a minute,
Speaker 1: because it's always an important context with AD. Eighty has
Speaker 1: a pretty low, large gap between what his potential ceiling
Speaker 1: is and what his potential floor is relative to some
Speaker 1: of these guys, Like there's a case to be made
Speaker 1: that he belongs in that Kawhi Leonard Joel Embard grouping
Speaker 1: closer to the bottom of this tier. I disagree because
Speaker 1: I think he's considerably more reliable than those two guys.
Speaker 1: But there are going to be people who disagree with
Speaker 1: this ranking based on the idea that Ad is not
Speaker 1: healthy enough, and there is some legitimacy to that argument.
Speaker 1: I was hopeful as a Lakers fan that after that
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four season, which if you remember, that was
Speaker 1: a return to form for Ad from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: his health. He played in seventy six games. He made
Speaker 1: the All NBA team second Team All NBA, which was
Speaker 1: his first time making an All NBA team since the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty season when they won the title, And so
Speaker 1: it looked like, is this gonna be the segment of
Speaker 1: AD's career where he kind of figures out the health
Speaker 1: stuff and he starts to be more available and he
Speaker 1: just couldn't in the following season, goes for fifty one game,
Speaker 1: suffers a growing injury soft tissue injury pretty simp similar
Speaker 1: to some of the injuries he had had early in
Speaker 1: earlier in his Lakers tenure. So if you zoom out
Speaker 1: in the four seasons surrounding Anthony Davis's seventy six game
Speaker 1: All NBA season, he averages forty six games played, thirty
Speaker 1: six games in twenty twenty one, forty games in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, fifty six and twenty twenty three, and fifty
Speaker 1: one in twenty twenty five. So now when I look
Speaker 1: at him relative to the Mbat Kawhi tier, first of all,
Speaker 1: Joel Embiid and Kawhi are both dealing with severe degenerative
Speaker 1: issues in their knees, issues that have completely dominated this
Speaker 1: phase of their careers and have been recurring in the
Speaker 1: same knee, and that makes them, in my opinion, significantly
Speaker 1: less reliable than an Anthony Davis who's just been dealing
Speaker 1: with some soft tissue related injuries and for the most
Speaker 1: part doesn't have any sort of big glaring like ooh
Speaker 1: that part of his body is likely to break down
Speaker 1: this season, So I think he's a little bit safer
Speaker 1: that and then another part of it is the motivation
Speaker 1: element with him being involved in the Luka Danchitz trade,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: think it's been a combination of three factors that have
Speaker 1: led to Anthony Davis's health issues. First of all, luck,
Speaker 1: like it or not, there is some kind of ethereal
Speaker 1: injury luck factor that's at play that affects all athletes.
Speaker 1: Some dudes just break down more, and it's not because
Speaker 1: of anything they're doing. It's just something that exists there,
Speaker 1: that injury prone factor, and AD is certainly one of
Speaker 1: those dudes who just happens to get hurt more than
Speaker 1: some of his peers. Secondly, conditioning, AD deserves some of
Speaker 1: the blame with respect to his injury history because it's
Speaker 1: been widely reported that, especially in the few years after
Speaker 1: they won the title, AD would show up to camp
Speaker 1: out of shape, it would take long stretches of the
Speaker 1: summer off, and it led to a situation where he
Speaker 1: wasn't as well conditioned to start seasons as some of
Speaker 1: his peers at the top of the league, and that
Speaker 1: certainly didn't help matters with his health. Right if you
Speaker 1: look at it as like a spectrum of possible outcomes
Speaker 1: within the regard or within the range of his injury
Speaker 1: prone nature. He's been tilting more towards the injured size
Speaker 1: a side of it in large part, I shouldn't say,
Speaker 1: in large part partially because of the fact that he
Speaker 1: didn't come into these seasons in as good as shape
Speaker 1: as he could have come in. Lastly, he put on
Speaker 1: an insane amount of muscle. This is a concept we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a lot about today with Ad, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a miscalculation on his part in terms
Speaker 1: of his development. The reason why is it flat out
Speaker 1: came at the expense of his foot speed. We've all
Speaker 1: seen the videos. When a video pops up of Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis playing basketball in that twenty twenty season, doesn't even
Speaker 1: look like the same guy. He looks considerably thinner, He
Speaker 1: was moving considerably better, and it made him a more
Speaker 1: dynamic player in a bunch of different ways. AD got
Speaker 1: shoved around in a couple of matchups, especially when he
Speaker 1: was playing center during that phase of his career, in
Speaker 1: that twenty twenty twenty twenty one stage, and so he
Speaker 1: decided he needed to bulk up, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was a classic example of over indexing on addressing a
Speaker 1: weakness rather than leaning into your strengths. That's not to
Speaker 1: say that you don't want to address your weakness, as
Speaker 1: certainly Ad should have put on some muscle, as every
Speaker 1: super thin player that comes into the league should. As
Speaker 1: we talk about Victor wemb Minyama, he'll face a similar
Speaker 1: decision in his career how much should he bulk up.
Speaker 1: Certainly needs to bulk up some, but he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to bulk up so much that it comes at the
Speaker 1: expense of his speed, which is the thing at his
Speaker 1: size that makes him such a transcendently great athlete. And
Speaker 1: what happened was is eighty's newfound muscle mass really wasn't
Speaker 1: helping him win as many physical battles as you'd think.
Speaker 1: Basketball is every bit is much about leverage and angles
Speaker 1: as it is about just pure strength and muscle mass.
Speaker 1: This is a big part of why I've been gravitating
Speaker 1: towards those like shorter, stockier wings over some of the longer,
Speaker 1: lankier wings, because it doesn't really like length is of
Speaker 1: the highest factor at the rim. It certainly helps on
Speaker 1: the perimeter when you're contesting shots I don't want to
Speaker 1: pretend it doesn't, but it has its largest impact on
Speaker 1: the game at the rim. And if you can win
Speaker 1: battles on the ground as a stocky athlete on the perimeter,
Speaker 1: that can prevent guys from even getting past you. That
Speaker 1: carries a lot of value in the league and prevents
Speaker 1: some of that length at the rim from being as
Speaker 1: much of a factor. That's why I gravitate towards some
Speaker 1: of those shorter, stockier wings, right, And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like eighty put on all this muscle, and then he
Speaker 1: still in the last few years would get bullied by
Speaker 1: jokicch and bullied by Sabonis at times, although he won
Speaker 1: that battle a couple times last year. Or like even
Speaker 1: guys like use of Nrkic sometimes would bury him on
Speaker 1: the offensive glass. Zubats gave him a lot of issues
Speaker 1: on the offensive glass. And then the problem was is
Speaker 1: even though he had all this muscle and he's still
Speaker 1: kind of struggling with some of these bigger centers, he
Speaker 1: also at the same time was not as capable of
Speaker 1: punishing those guys with his speed because he wasn't as
Speaker 1: fast as he used to be, and he lost a
Speaker 1: lot of that in the pursuit of that muscle mass,
Speaker 1: and I mean you got to factor that in with
Speaker 1: the injuries as well, Like it made him heavier, and
Speaker 1: if you're heavier, your lower body's going to struggle to
Speaker 1: hold up under the wear and tear of moving your
Speaker 1: body around. And so really, as we zoom out, the
Speaker 1: injuries have been the thing that has prevented Ad from
Speaker 1: reaching his individual ceiling, his ultimate potential, which was like
Speaker 1: there's a version of AD's career where he's healthier and
Speaker 1: he's thinner, and he holds up more, which allows him
Speaker 1: to be in the gym more, which allows him to
Speaker 1: develop more in terms of his skill set, which allows
Speaker 1: him to build more of a rhythm in the season
Speaker 1: and develop into something closer to the Yahnesses of the
Speaker 1: world and the hyper versatile bigs that ranked above him
Speaker 1: on this list that Joel emb when he was healthy,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a version of eighty's career where he
Speaker 1: had better health luck, and he too took a different
Speaker 1: approach in terms of how he built his body, and
Speaker 1: maybe he was a more skilled player that reached higher heights.
Speaker 1: But I do think all of those factors played a
Speaker 1: role in his injury history earlier in his career, so
Speaker 1: I have him in the top ten, ahead of guys
Speaker 1: like Kevin Durant and Donovan Mitchell. The question is why
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Speaker 1: see DKG dot co, slash audio. I'm obviously a huge
Speaker 1: believer in Anthony Davis's impact on basketball games. That goes
Speaker 1: without saying. Anybody who's listened to the show over the
Speaker 1: last few years knows I'm a huge believer in eighty,
Speaker 1: but it also extends into what I believe will be
Speaker 1: a revenge campaign from him. This year, both Anthony Davis
Speaker 1: and Luka Doncic will be ranked on this list higher,
Speaker 1: much higher than what their previous seasons justify. Ad has
Speaker 1: no case to be a top ten player based solely
Speaker 1: on last season, and Luka Doncic has no case to
Speaker 1: be a top five player based solely on last season.
Speaker 1: But we've already seen a completely different looking Luca in
Speaker 1: a game with Salave against Germany. There were three moves
Speaker 1: in particular, a euro step, a move driving a close out,
Speaker 1: and there was one more. I can't remember exactly what
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was just like a jab
Speaker 1: step behind the back, dribble off the right wing in
Speaker 1: the first half. But he had three moves in that
Speaker 1: game where I was like, that's a different guy. He's
Speaker 1: moving at a completely different speed than he moved in
Speaker 1: the past. Why Because he got embarrassed by the maps,
Speaker 1: completely embarrassed by the maps, and he's super pissed off,
Speaker 1: and he lost a bunch of weight and now he's
Speaker 1: on a mission to prove everybody wrong. And as we're
Speaker 1: looking towards next season, I'm factoring that in same goes
Speaker 1: for Ad, AD was similarly embarrassed. He was basically shipped
Speaker 1: off as trade filler in the dead of night. It
Speaker 1: was unprecedented for a Lakers star. It's unprecedented in the
Speaker 1: entire NBA. It was the craziest trade in the history
Speaker 1: of the MBA. How often do you see a superstar,
Speaker 1: not DeMar Derozen getting traded for Kawhi, but a superstar
Speaker 1: that gets moved in person of a better player in
Speaker 1: his prime because the team wanted the even better player.
Speaker 1: It's so rare, and so Ad has been similarly embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I think he wants to prove everyone wrong. I do
Speaker 1: think we will see Ad come into training camp in
Speaker 1: great shape relative to previous seasons from him, which I
Speaker 1: think will lead to him having a healthier season by
Speaker 1: his standards, which I think will have him in better
Speaker 1: rhythm in most of these games, which will allow him
Speaker 1: to show more of his offensive upside, which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about in a bit. That's really what separated
Speaker 1: him from that top tier. When Ad is a reliable
Speaker 1: twenty eight point per game score, the guy that you
Speaker 1: saw in the bubble, that guy's a top tier superstar.
Speaker 1: When he's not. When he's in the low twenties and
Speaker 1: he's more inconsistent offensively, that's when he's more of that
Speaker 1: second tier star like we have in this particular list.
Speaker 1: And so I actually look at AD and the reason
Speaker 1: why I put him at ten is I think we
Speaker 1: are going to get one of the better seasons from
Speaker 1: AD out of this phase of his prime. It's a
Speaker 1: big part of why I ranked him where I ranked him. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about AD as a basketball player. Rather than
Speaker 1: looking at his injury history and in the big picture,
Speaker 1: let's zoom in on his basketball traits and what sets
Speaker 1: him apart from his peers. We have to start with
Speaker 1: defense for AD, because that's his calling card. There's a
Speaker 1: similar range of outcomes for AD as a defender centering
Speaker 1: around his health. Because of his foot speed. Even the
Speaker 1: lesser foot speed version of AD has a really high
Speaker 1: floor as a perimeter defender. It's not the same guy
Speaker 1: from New Orleans, not the same guy from like twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but healthy Ad, even bigger, bulky, healthy Ad has real
Speaker 1: footspeed on the perimeter relative to his position, which brings
Speaker 1: a lot of upside. But as we talked about there's
Speaker 1: like these banged up versions of Ad, like that second
Speaker 1: chunk of last season with the Lakers or what you
Speaker 1: saw with Dallas, where it's like that's a d but
Speaker 1: he's clearly not moving very well even by his big
Speaker 1: bulky standards. Right. But what's crazy with Ad, and it's
Speaker 1: a big part of why I have him this high,
Speaker 1: is even lumbering Ad, even big bulky Ad that's out
Speaker 1: of shape and is just coming back from an injury.
Speaker 1: Even that guy has an incredibly high floor as a
Speaker 1: defensive player, and it starts with the shot blocking. Has
Speaker 1: a standing reach over nine feet, he has good leaping ability,
Speaker 1: and he has outrageous natural defensive instincts. He can anticipate
Speaker 1: what offensive players are going to do around the rim,
Speaker 1: guessing release points where they're going for layups. And as
Speaker 1: a result, even while constantly battling injury issues for the
Speaker 1: last five years and carrying all that extra weight, even
Speaker 1: with that, he still averaged two point one blocks per
Speaker 1: game over that five year span that we were referencing earlier.
Speaker 1: He was consistently banged up. Now, as we know, the younger,
Speaker 1: faster AD averaged two point five blocks per game for
Speaker 1: the seven seasons previous. Obviously, he can get to a
Speaker 1: higher level there. Even when he's healthy in rhythm, When
Speaker 1: he plays game after game after game after game, and
Speaker 1: he drops some of the excess weight he's carrying and
Speaker 1: he's in good shape, he can go on runs. He
Speaker 1: had a stretch five games last year with the Lakers
Speaker 1: where he averaged three point six blocks per game over
Speaker 1: a five game stretch. He can still get there. But
Speaker 1: the point is his floor is an outrageously good shot
Speaker 1: blocker and rim protector. He does it without committing fouls.
Speaker 1: He does it without giving up too many unnecessary offensive
Speaker 1: rebounds by chasing stupid shots that he has no chance
Speaker 1: of blocking. He is a rock solid, foundational rim protector
Speaker 1: in this league, even when he's banged up. He's also
Speaker 1: an excellent defensive rebounder, a career eleven rebounds per game
Speaker 1: in twelve point three rebouls game. Over his last three seasons,
Speaker 1: he led the entire league in rebounding in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: He was third in rebounding in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 1: even the banged up version of Anthony Davis last year
Speaker 1: was seventh in overall rebounding. He has had occasional issues
Speaker 1: giving up certain types of offensive rebounds on like Duccans
Speaker 1: to certain types of centers, so guys like Zubat's so
Speaker 1: Bonis yokicch even Nurkic sometimes like we talked about, But
Speaker 1: even factoring in that down mark, there's no way to
Speaker 1: look at Anthony Davis as anything other than a monster
Speaker 1: rebounder and one of the very best rebounders in the
Speaker 1: entire NBA. And that's part of the appeal for a
Speaker 1: player like Anthony Davis on a list like this, his
Speaker 1: floor no matter what Dallas is gonna get, even if
Speaker 1: he's banged up and only plays fifty games. For fifty games,
Speaker 1: they're going to get a rock solid defensive anchor, a
Speaker 1: guy who can protect the rim at an elite level
Speaker 1: and rebound at an an elite level. And when you
Speaker 1: can do those two things, it just makes it so
Speaker 1: much easier for a basketball team to build around that
Speaker 1: and to function around that. We used to talk about
Speaker 1: this for eighties bad games, right like even the slower moving,
Speaker 1: banged up version of AD. He'd have these like bad
Speaker 1: games where he'd have twelve points, fourteen rebounds, and three blocks,
Speaker 1: and people would rightfully complain that, like, yeah, that inconsistently inconsistency,
Speaker 1: especially on offense, is what would separate him from guys
Speaker 1: like Yannis, And that would be fair. If you're comparing
Speaker 1: him to Giannis, you're gonna frequently run into things that
Speaker 1: are frustrating. I'm not going to argue against that. But
Speaker 1: in those games, he was still doing so much dirty work,
Speaker 1: like he'd have twelve, fourteen and three, and people would
Speaker 1: be complaining and like to quote Pete Zayas and again,
Speaker 1: if you're a Lakers fan, I think Pete and Darius
Speaker 1: have the best team specific Lakers podcast. You guys got
Speaker 1: to check it out. Pete taught me so much about
Speaker 1: what I know about the modern NBA, and I just
Speaker 1: think he's awesome. You guys have to go check out.
Speaker 1: It's a Laker film room podcast. But Pete, you would
Speaker 1: always say, like everyone's yelling at Ad when he's trying
Speaker 1: to move the couch by himself, and it's like, how
Speaker 1: about we help him move the couch, and then we
Speaker 1: start complaining about whatever else he's doing, And it's the truth.
Speaker 1: Like Ad had to carry such an insanely heavy load
Speaker 1: as a defensive player and as a rebounder for that
Speaker 1: Lakers team. You know, like we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: him overall as a ceiling as a defensive player. But
Speaker 1: like a lot of times people will say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Ad doesn't have these accolades, he doesn't have the Defensive
Speaker 1: Player of the Year, the racked up first Team All Defensivewards,
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. And you want to
Speaker 1: know why. It's because people for years have had their
Speaker 1: brains broken by the idea of basketball being a team sport.
Speaker 1: It is a team sport, and the Lakers were consistently
Speaker 1: fielding rosters utterly devoid of defensive talent, where Ad is
Speaker 1: carrying everything on that end of the floor. And we
Speaker 1: talk about it all the time, the speed with which
Speaker 1: a dribble penetrator gets past his man. If it's a
Speaker 1: straight lines, straight line, sprinting drive, it breaks any defense,
Speaker 1: let alone a defense that's anchored by any elite defensive
Speaker 1: player like Anthony Davis. The Lakers were a trash defense
Speaker 1: and they were still hitting mediocre, you know, in that
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen to twenty four range of defensive ratings
Speaker 1: because Anthony Davis was anchoring everything on that end of
Speaker 1: the floor. Their second best defender was like an old
Speaker 1: Lebron who, as we all know, especially when he doesn't
Speaker 1: believe a team can win the title, will take some
Speaker 1: time off on that end of the floor in the
Speaker 1: regular season. I think AD is a grossly underappreciated defensive
Speaker 1: player overall. It's a big part of why I have
Speaker 1: him so much higher on this list than many people will.
Speaker 1: Everything we just discussed is AD's floor as a defensive player. Elite,
Speaker 1: top tier in protector, elite top tier rebounder. That's the floor.
Speaker 1: The ceiling for AD as a defensive player is the
Speaker 1: best defensive player in the NBA, at least before Victor
Speaker 1: wemen Yama came around. Like, I'm gonna reference non Wemby
Speaker 1: a few times here because he has come in and
Speaker 1: broken everything. But as you guys have noticed, we haven't
Speaker 1: even gotten to Wemby yet on this list. I'm a
Speaker 1: huge believer in what Victor wm Minyama can do, but
Speaker 1: I believe before Wemby that the healthy, in shape Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis was the best defensive player in basketball. He was
Speaker 1: a frightening rim protector that would break offenses. Like even
Speaker 1: just last year, like I talked about, he had a
Speaker 1: five game stretch towards the beginning of the year when
Speaker 1: he was healthy and in shape, where he averaged three
Speaker 1: point six blocks per game. That's outrageous. But he'd also
Speaker 1: bring crazy scheme versatility, and this is what sets him apart.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of guys like Joel Embiid or
Speaker 1: great rim protectors when they can sit back and protect
Speaker 1: the basket or sit in a deeper drop coverage, but
Speaker 1: as soon as you ask them to do anything else,
Speaker 1: it falls apart. Like you know, I think Game seven
Speaker 1: in that playoff series against the Celtics, where he's just
Speaker 1: getting pulled out to the perimeter and just cooked repeatedly,
Speaker 1: over and over again by Jason Tatum. With ad you
Speaker 1: could ask him to be a deep drop coverage big
Speaker 1: and he'd crush at that. But you could also ask
Speaker 1: him to come up to the level and contest pull
Speaker 1: up shooters or as guys are coming downhill, reaching in
Speaker 1: on the on the guard as he's working downhill. He's
Speaker 1: always been a high steels guy. He had sixteen games
Speaker 1: last year with multiple steals. But again he's also an
Speaker 1: awesome switching big. Maybe not as good as a guy
Speaker 1: like bam At a bio but near that level and
Speaker 1: in conjunction with his A plus plus plus rim protection.
Speaker 1: For a while there before Wemby came around, I thought
Speaker 1: healthy Ad was the best defensive player in the world.
Speaker 1: I thought the twenty twenty three series against Golden State
Speaker 1: was the classic example of how even in this big,
Speaker 1: bulky version of Ad, when he's healthy, is the best
Speaker 1: non wenbe defender in the world. He can completely stifled
Speaker 1: Golden State's offense to the point where every single decision
Speaker 1: that Steve Kerr made, every lineup decision, every floor geometry decision,
Speaker 1: everything Steve Kerr was doing was geared around getting Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis away from the action and away from the rim.
Speaker 1: And then, in the pivotal moment of the series in
Speaker 1: Game four, when Steph was still causing so many problems
Speaker 1: for the Laker defense with what he was doing in
Speaker 1: pick and roll, Anthony Davis at the end of that
Speaker 1: game twice switched the screen, got onto Steph and got
Speaker 1: two key stops. He forced him into an extremely difficult
Speaker 1: one legged fade away from the mid range and a
Speaker 1: super deep three because Steph on the second look there
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not even gonna try to go around
Speaker 1: this guy, I'm just going to pull from out here,
Speaker 1: and it was like a thirty footer that he ended
Speaker 1: up missing. That was the differentiator. Steve Kerr kept trying
Speaker 1: stuff and Ad just literally had a defensive answer for
Speaker 1: everything they did, even Steph on any island. And so
Speaker 1: that's a big part of why I have Ad at
Speaker 1: ten this year. Even with his health variants, he's going
Speaker 1: to be one of the top two or three defense
Speaker 1: and rebounding foundations in the entire NBA, and the high
Speaker 1: end is potentially the best defender in basketball other than
Speaker 1: Victor Weinmanyam. That's an extremely high floor for a guy
Speaker 1: before we even get to the offensive end. And then
Speaker 1: on the offensive end, while he can be frustrating and
Speaker 1: inconsistent as an on ball player, he's an excellent play finisher,
Speaker 1: which makes him on every single night a very useful
Speaker 1: offensive player. Again, twenty five points per game last year
Speaker 1: on fifty nine per century shooting, that's nothing to roll
Speaker 1: your eyes at. He had three forty point games, eleven
Speaker 1: thirty five point games, and nineteen to thirty point games.
Speaker 1: He was a super efficient role man in ball screens
Speaker 1: on one hundred and ninety reps as a Laker in
Speaker 1: ball screens, he got one point two to three points
Speaker 1: per possession, which is all. He'shot forty two percent pick
Speaker 1: and pop threes. This is an interesting idea. It's something
Speaker 1: I wish the Lakers would have used more. It was
Speaker 1: better for their spacing as well. Eighty is not a
Speaker 1: good jump shooter, but for whatever reason, there's something about
Speaker 1: the rhythm of pick and pop, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it could be just how open he would get, but
Speaker 1: there was like a rhythm for him with pick and
Speaker 1: pop where he shot well out of it. He was
Speaker 1: fifteen for thirty six last year on pick and pop threes.
Speaker 1: He was also excellent on floaters fifty two percent last year.
Speaker 1: And then he's a ridiculous vertical spacing threat. He's got
Speaker 1: magnet hands. He catches everything with nine foot standing reach
Speaker 1: and plenty of mobility even at his larger size to
Speaker 1: finish everything above the rim. So he was flat out
Speaker 1: just an awesome pick and roll threat as the screener
Speaker 1: last year. He was also a solid post player. Was
Speaker 1: little down year over year last year, just one point
Speaker 1: zero four points per possession including passes, which is just
Speaker 1: above average. Nothing to write home about, but above average.
Speaker 1: The previous year, though he was very good when he
Speaker 1: was healthier. He was one point zero nine points per
Speaker 1: possession including passes out of the post, which is the
Speaker 1: seventy first percentile, shoots over fifty percent on hook shots.
Speaker 1: That's the thing with ads above fifty percent on both
Speaker 1: hook shots and floaters, not yokic territory, he's going to
Speaker 1: be up over sixty percent on those. But Ad among
Speaker 1: biggs in the NBA is as good as short range
Speaker 1: finisher as you'll find outside of the yokch types in
Speaker 1: the league. It was mainly a passing issue that kept
Speaker 1: him from really reaching his lead his ceiling as a
Speaker 1: post player in twenty twenty four when he shot out
Speaker 1: of the post again. That was the year that he
Speaker 1: played super well and got one point zero nine points
Speaker 1: per possession. In twenty twenty four, he had a score
Speaker 1: percentage when he'd shoot out of the post of fifty
Speaker 1: four percent, meaning if you toss the ball to Ad
Speaker 1: and he was able to get a shot up, he
Speaker 1: was going to score well over half the time. It
Speaker 1: was a super reliable play type. But over the years,
Speaker 1: even though he made some slight improvements as a passer,
Speaker 1: he never got good enough at it to become a
Speaker 1: guy that you could just lean on for high, high
Speaker 1: volume out of the post, the way you could with
Speaker 1: the guy like Embiid, who is so good at scoring
Speaker 1: out of the post that even his playmaking issues didn't
Speaker 1: matter as much. And a guy like Jokic's obviously one
Speaker 1: of the best post players to ever touch the floor. Right,
Speaker 1: there was just a tier. The eighty was clearly a
Speaker 1: tier below because he can never quite figure out the
Speaker 1: passing element of it to make his scoring ability worth
Speaker 1: it to be a super high volume post up player.
Speaker 1: He always just seemed to get spooked by double teams.
Speaker 1: The big thing I would always talk about is it
Speaker 1: would look like he was trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: the ball rather than trying to find the kill pass.
Speaker 1: Like he'd catch the ball out of a double team
Speaker 1: in the post and he would dribble out and throw
Speaker 1: to a guy who's being guarded by throwing an over
Speaker 1: the top pass just to like get rid of the ball,
Speaker 1: and he'd throw the pass to a guy who's thirty
Speaker 1: thirty five feet from the rim. Whereas, like you watch
Speaker 1: the best post players in the league, they work aggressively
Speaker 1: into the double and try to pass through the defense
Speaker 1: to the weak side where there's usually a wide open
Speaker 1: player or a wide open cutter. They make the kill pass.
Speaker 1: The pass that make it makes it so that you
Speaker 1: cannot double him. That was the thing that Ady never
Speaker 1: was quite able to figure out, and so because of that,
Speaker 1: because he was a little sketchy as a ball handler overall,
Speaker 1: it just it just never amounted to a legitimate offensive
Speaker 1: engine type of player the way Joel Embiid was able
Speaker 1: to get or the way that nikolea Jokic was able
Speaker 1: to get. That really is the differentiator for Anthony Davis
Speaker 1: between him as a second tier star in the top
Speaker 1: tier stars at the top of the league. The second
Speaker 1: piece of it was the jump shot. The jump shot
Speaker 1: just never came around to what it was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about, he shot well on picking pops,
Speaker 1: but overall last year he was a zero point nine
Speaker 1: points per shot on jump shots. He's okay from short
Speaker 1: range forty nine percent inside of seventeen feet and that's fine,
Speaker 1: but that's notably still under a point per shot, and
Speaker 1: he shot just forty three percent on long twos outside
Speaker 1: of seventeen feet, which is only zero point eighty six
Speaker 1: points per shot, and he was below thirty percent from three,
Speaker 1: so even from three he was below a point per shot.
Speaker 1: So again like him not developing as either a great
Speaker 1: jump shooter or an elite ball handler playmaker, because like Jannis,
Speaker 1: never became an elite jump shooter, but Jannis has become
Speaker 1: an elite ball handler playmaker as a monster frontcourt defensive weapon,
Speaker 1: and that is what allowed Giannis to become like a
Speaker 1: perennial MVP candidate in the way that Anthony Davis has
Speaker 1: not been able to figure out. If he could have
Speaker 1: become an elite jump shooter, you know, a la Dirk Noovisky,
Speaker 1: that becomes a thing that can carry him up to
Speaker 1: he didn't, you wouldn't even need to be as good
Speaker 1: as Dirk just if he became an elite jump shooter
Speaker 1: relative to most play finishers, just like a knockdown pick
Speaker 1: and pop big or something like that, he could have
Speaker 1: been a guy that could have entered into that top
Speaker 1: tier because of how gifted he was defensively. If he
Speaker 1: could have just figured out how to become a top
Speaker 1: not a top tier, but a very good on the
Speaker 1: ballplayer as a ball handler playmaker, he could have entered
Speaker 1: into that tier, but he ended up being neither. And
Speaker 1: again you can factor in injuries into that equation. Equation,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth mentioning like Ad has never really
Speaker 1: been able to work on his game as much as
Speaker 1: some of his peers because he's been banged up. That
Speaker 1: has been what's kept him from entering into that superstar
Speaker 1: tier outside of the twenty twenty season. In that twenty
Speaker 1: twenty season, when he shot like Kevin Freakin Durant in
Speaker 1: the bubble, I had him as the fourth best player
Speaker 1: in the world, and I think that was like the
Speaker 1: absolute peak. It was a skinnier version of AD that
Speaker 1: was a better defensive player and just a ridiculous shot
Speaker 1: maker out of the high post in ISO situations and
Speaker 1: it just and he shot really well from three too,
Speaker 1: famously hit a game winning three against the Denver Nuggets
Speaker 1: in that Western Conference final series. So he was just
Speaker 1: another level of a jump shooter. That's kind of an
Speaker 1: example of what I was talking about, like jump shooting
Speaker 1: AD plus elite defense, top tier superstar. If he could
Speaker 1: have figured out the playmaking piece, because he has shot
Speaker 1: making out of the post, he could have got there.
Speaker 1: But he just never was able to figure those pieces out.
Speaker 1: But still, when you look at the big picture, you
Speaker 1: can basically bank on Ad to give you at least
Speaker 1: twenty five and twelve next year, and you can bank
Speaker 1: on him being an excellent defensive, rebounder and rim protector.
Speaker 1: That's the floor. What a strong foundation for the rest
Speaker 1: of your team to build on. And he's still a
Speaker 1: good post up threat and a top tier rollman weapon
Speaker 1: that you can build around. On offense. On any given night,
Speaker 1: he can explode for forty points. And that's the low end.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a range of potential outcomes here
Speaker 1: where he hits higher because of his motivation level, and
Speaker 1: I think we're going to get there. So for me,
Speaker 1: I had Anthony Davis at number ten this year. Now,
Speaker 1: before we move on to the Chris Paul Kyrie debate,
Speaker 1: I did want to give a bonus AD topic regarding
Speaker 1: him playing the power forward for the Dallas Mavericks. He's said.
Speaker 1: I saw another quote just the other day of him
Speaker 1: talking about how he views himself as a power forward
Speaker 1: more than the center. And again, like I want to
Speaker 1: start like this, I don't want to say that Ady
Speaker 1: can't play power forward. I actually think in the modern NBA,
Speaker 1: having two big looks is an important punch that you
Speaker 1: can throw in certain situations. So for instance, like the
Speaker 1: Thunder being able to lean heavily into Hartenstein and Chat
Speaker 1: in the Denver series was a huge part of how
Speaker 1: they were able to make things very difficult for Nicole Jokich.
Speaker 1: And so I think you should have that look. But
Speaker 1: then as you can see, like then when the Thunder
Speaker 1: got into later playoff rounds, they went away from the
Speaker 1: two big look like they didn't use it as much
Speaker 1: against the Pacers because the speed would have been an issue, right,
Speaker 1: And so like the point is is, like you want
Speaker 1: to have that as a punch, but it can't be
Speaker 1: your like foundational thing that you try to do. And
Speaker 1: this is where I get a little concern about the
Speaker 1: overall team construct of the Dallas Mavericks, especially with all
Speaker 1: the centers that they have on staff right now. The
Speaker 1: problem is Ad is fast, even big bulky Ad is
Speaker 1: fast for a center, but he's not fast compared to
Speaker 1: power forwards. Old Lebron is a much better athlete than
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis in terms of foot speed and quickness and
Speaker 1: changing ends of the floor. Aaron Gordon in the Western Conference.
Speaker 1: Like even Kevin Durant for the Houston Rockets moves better
Speaker 1: than Anthony Davis does. Right, So, like at the five,
Speaker 1: his speed is an asset at the full, or his
Speaker 1: speed is a liability. Similarly, his offensive skill, his short
Speaker 1: range shot making, his ball handling ability at the five,
Speaker 1: it's an asset. At the four, it's a liability. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens is is if you
Speaker 1: get him on the floor at the four, you start
Speaker 1: to dip below these kind of like mandatory minimums in
Speaker 1: certain areas of skill set. You put ad at the
Speaker 1: four next to a Derek Lively or Daniel Gafford, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, your team doesn't really have much ball
Speaker 1: handling on the floor. You put Anthony Davis at the
Speaker 1: four by a Derek Lively, all of a sudden, your
Speaker 1: team doesn't have much jump shooting on the floor, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, even just overall foot speed. Like we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about this earlier, but one of the few
Speaker 1: weaknesses Anthony Davis has on the defensive end is he
Speaker 1: is not a good transition big. He falls on the
Speaker 1: ground a lot. He complains that the refs a lot,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't run back on defense. I've seen Biggs
Speaker 1: beat Anthony Davis just literally by running him up and
Speaker 1: down on the floor. Like, even at the center position,
Speaker 1: he can sometimes struggle as a changing ends type of
Speaker 1: floor runner, so like at the four, it can become
Speaker 1: a serious problem. So again, I don't hate the idea
Speaker 1: of the MAVs having two big looks, and you could
Speaker 1: even talk me into starting games that way, but to me,
Speaker 1: at least half and all of your at least half
Speaker 1: of your total minutes and all of the clutch time,
Speaker 1: big picture moments asign from maybe against Denver, you're gonna
Speaker 1: need Anthony Davis at center because same with Cooper Flag.
Speaker 1: Cooper Flag has a ball handling skill, speed advantage against fours,
Speaker 1: but he's gonna run into some issues against threes right away.
Speaker 1: In the NBA, he'll improve, But like Cooper Flag can
Speaker 1: handle the ball, but how much is this handling gonna
Speaker 1: be a factor if there's not a lot of surrounding
Speaker 1: ball handling, Like like what if they end up starting
Speaker 1: Klay Thompson, We'll see what ends up happening. But like
Speaker 1: Clay Thompson's not a guy who dribbles the ball a
Speaker 1: lot you could run into some issues in terms of
Speaker 1: your aggregate ball handling on the floor with Anthony Davis
Speaker 1: at the floor. It's just something to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on as we watch the MAVs next year. All before
Speaker 1: we get out of here today, I want to spend
Speaker 1: a few minutes talking about Chris Paul versus Kyrie Irving.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting debate because Kyrie Irving kind
Speaker 1: of has a stranglehold on basketball culture, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's an accident. I think he's one of the
Speaker 1: top three or foremost aesthetically appealing basketball players I've ever watched.
Speaker 1: He's just so much fun to watch when he's chaining
Speaker 1: together dribble combinations and he's showing outrageous footwork and some
Speaker 1: of the wildest finishes I've ever seen. Yeah, every once
Speaker 1: in a while, I'll see the clips from like Game
Speaker 1: five or Game seven, a Game seven in particular of
Speaker 1: the of the NBA Finals in two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: He had this play where he got it either got
Speaker 1: a defensive rebound or got outlet pass, and he threw
Speaker 1: this like straight up wicked push ahead dribble that had
Speaker 1: this crazy, like voodoo backspin on it. Because it came
Speaker 1: out of his hands at like this sharp angle forward,
Speaker 1: hit the ground and then just bounced straight back up
Speaker 1: so that he could catch it on the run. And
Speaker 1: he got into a euro or a high gather and
Speaker 1: went like left hand way out wide while getting fouled,
Speaker 1: like super high off the glass, and it just like
Speaker 1: perfectly kissed off the glass and went into the basket,
Speaker 1: and you're just like, oh my god, that was one
Speaker 1: of the craziest, most beautiful basketball players I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Like he has that certain aesthetic appeal that just has
Speaker 1: the basketball culture and his stranglehold. He also has one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic shots in NBA history on his
Speaker 1: resume with the step back three over Steph Curry to
Speaker 1: win the twenty sixteen finals. He's a champion, which Chris
Speaker 1: Paul is not. Those are the things that I think
Speaker 1: drive a lot of the momentum. Bed Kyrie Irving as
Speaker 1: a player who could be considered as better than Chris Paul.
Speaker 1: But I think Chris Paul at his peak, was just
Speaker 1: a better basketball player than Kyrie Irving's did a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about defense. I think Kyrie Irving is actually
Speaker 1: a little bit underrated as a defender famously in those stretches.
Speaker 1: If you remember, Kyrie defended well, chasing around screens and
Speaker 1: staying attached to shooters, and he was never a guy
Speaker 1: that would be super focused over the course of regular seasons.
Speaker 1: But I never felt like Kyrie was a substantial weak
Speaker 1: point on the defensive end of the floor when I
Speaker 1: was rooting for him during those years with the Cavaliers.
Speaker 1: So Chris Paul is a more decorated defender, and certainly
Speaker 1: in his prime, was a more committed regular season defender.
Speaker 1: But to me, I'm not looking at the defensive end
Speaker 1: as much of a differentiator between those two. To me,
Speaker 1: the difference is simply the archetype. Kyrie Irving is a
Speaker 1: score and one of the very best to do it,
Speaker 1: but Chris Paul is a legitimate offense eve Ent. I
Speaker 1: think you see this sort of issue when you look
Speaker 1: at years like when Kyrie Irving was trying to lead
Speaker 1: those Boston Celtics teams, which in retrospect like that was
Speaker 1: why he left Cleveland, if you guys remember, he kind
Speaker 1: of wanted an opportunity to lead his own team, and
Speaker 1: when he got there, you find out pretty quickly that
Speaker 1: I talk about this idea all the time. With respect
Speaker 1: to scores versus offensive engines, the name of the game
Speaker 1: is not to generate thirty points on sixty percent through
Speaker 1: shooting for yourself. You got to generate. You're taking eighty
Speaker 1: ninety shots in a game as a team, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna be on the floor for call it eighty percent
Speaker 1: of that. So you're you're gonna need to generate for
Speaker 1: your team, you know, sixty seventy shots, maybe not all
Speaker 1: in points and assists, but an advantage creation. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have your twenty five to thirty that you pour in
Speaker 1: as an on ball score for a guy like Chris
Speaker 1: Paul Moore, like in that you know, eighteen to twenty
Speaker 1: four kind of range, although Chris Paul had big score games.
Speaker 1: But then you're gonna have your assists like you're into
Speaker 1: twelve times a game, or you spoon fed a guy
Speaker 1: a wide open three or a cut which is going
Speaker 1: to lead to a bucket. But for the offensive engine types,
Speaker 1: it's also the twenty to thirty to forty times a
Speaker 1: game where you got into an action early in a
Speaker 1: set and you made a read that got a guy
Speaker 1: a close out or shifted the defense side to side
Speaker 1: or did something to generate an advantage that your team
Speaker 1: then capitalized on with two or three additional sequences that
Speaker 1: led to an open shot. That's why I'm so I
Speaker 1: gravitate so much towards offensive engines. They simply generate so
Speaker 1: much more offense for their team relative to what things
Speaker 1: look like in the box score. Like a guy like
Speaker 1: Tyrese Halliburton, he's gonna average, you know, sixteen seventeen points
Speaker 1: per game and you know, eleven twelve assists. Whatever it
Speaker 1: is that he puts up and it's not gonna look
Speaker 1: like it manifests some great offensive output, but he generates
Speaker 1: so many advantages that the Pacers playoff for extended stretches
Speaker 1: of each possession, and he gets into it early in
Speaker 1: the possession that like, for whatever reason, when he's off
Speaker 1: the floor, the Pacers suddenly don't score it nearly as
Speaker 1: effective a level. That is the value of it being
Speaker 1: an offensive engine. With the guy like Kyrie Irving is
Speaker 1: a score, there's a certain level of variants. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: made all those day and pull up jump shots against
Speaker 1: the Golden State Warriors, and it was the reason that
Speaker 1: they were able to push over the top and win
Speaker 1: the title when he hit the shot against Steph Curry.
Speaker 1: But he also looked great for three rounds with the
Speaker 1: Dallas Mavericks in twenty twenty four, and then what happened
Speaker 1: against Boston. Suddenly he couldn't make those pull up jump shots.
Speaker 1: They weren't going in. And by the way, that's he
Speaker 1: was going against really good defenders who made it tougher.
Speaker 1: But we've seen Kyrie Irving hit really tough shots. There's
Speaker 1: just a lot of variants. Specifically with tough shot making,
Speaker 1: there's a heavy make miss factor, and sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: go in, and then when they don't go in, what's
Speaker 1: your offensive value that you're bringing to the table. And
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving was is a good passer, but he is
Speaker 1: not the type of offensive engine that a guy like
Speaker 1: Chris Paul was. So you get into it, you get
Speaker 1: a little more complicated. It's like, Okay, well, Chris Paul's
Speaker 1: not good enough to win the title as your number
Speaker 1: one option. I'm not. I actually do believe that if
Speaker 1: Chris Paul was on better teams when he was in
Speaker 1: his prime, he would have had a really good chance. Now,
Speaker 1: like the twenty twenty two with the Suns, he was
Speaker 1: so old his body was breaking down at the end
Speaker 1: of the NBA Final series. But like, if you go
Speaker 1: back to the mid twenty tens, if he was on
Speaker 1: one of the better rosters in the NBA, I absolutely
Speaker 1: think Chris Paul was good enough to win the title.
Speaker 1: But it didn't happen for whatever reason. Okay, Kyrie Irving
Speaker 1: did get one playing alongside the greatest basketball player ever,
Speaker 1: it's not the same. And as we go to the
Speaker 1: number two piece, Yeah, I do think Kyrie Irving is
Speaker 1: flat out an awesome option to have as your second
Speaker 1: best player when you're alongside a superstar player that can
Speaker 1: handle a lot of that like upside and terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, managing the load of offensive shot creation. But
Speaker 1: like just look at it as the reverse for a
Speaker 1: Chris Paul. So he's a shot creator, so you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to pair him with another shot creator. I do
Speaker 1: think there were some diminishing returns when you put a
Speaker 1: guy like Chris Paul with a James Harden, or if
Speaker 1: you were to put him with a Luka Doncic or
Speaker 1: even a Lebron James, because they kind of do a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things. We've talked a lot about that.
Speaker 1: With the idea of the Lakers potentially trying to pair
Speaker 1: Luca with Jokic, I just don't think that that's nearly
Speaker 1: as good a team as it looks like on paper
Speaker 1: because those skill sets overlap too much. So for a
Speaker 1: guy like Chris Paul. If Kyrie Irving got to play
Speaker 1: with Lebron James at the peak of his powers and
Speaker 1: get a title there, I do believe that if in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen you swapped Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul, I
Speaker 1: think that Thunder team is absolutely a legitimate championship team.
Speaker 1: Now would they have beat Lebron who knows? Would they
Speaker 1: have beat Steph who knows? But like I think, if
Speaker 1: you paired CP three with Kevin Durant for six years
Speaker 1: in the heart of their primes, I think they get
Speaker 1: a title because you would be pairing Chris Paul's offensive
Speaker 1: engine nature with the tip of the spear scoring that
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant provides. So, yeah, Chris Paul didn't have a
Speaker 1: title the way that Kyrie Irving does, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: have the cultural resonance that a guy like Kyrie Irving does.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's got a couple of tough black marks
Speaker 1: on his resume in terms of rough playoff moments, but
Speaker 1: so does Kyrie, and like, ultimately, when I look at it,
Speaker 1: I just think Chris Paul is a better basketball player
Speaker 1: than Kyrie Irving because they're more even as defenders than
Speaker 1: people think. But Chris Paul is much better at generating
Speaker 1: offense for his entire team than Kyrie Irving is, and
Speaker 1: that is an example of why I gravitate towards those
Speaker 1: offensive engine types more than the scoring types. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: it's all I have for today is always a sincerely
Speaker 1: percent you got for supporting us and supporting the show.
Speaker 1: We will be back with number nine on Wednesday, as
Speaker 1: well as another one of these kind of debate topics
Speaker 1: at the tail end. I will see you guys then