The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players of Last 25 Years: How Nikola Jokic reversed an NBA trend

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Jason Timpf continues his ranking of the top 25 players in the last 25 years by revealing No. 8, Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. After winning back to back league MVPs in 2021-2022, Jokic won the NBA Finals and Finals MVP in 2023, and is currently the best player in the NBA. #volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it.

With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume.

Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. We are live on Amp. So if you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast feeds, don't forget that Amp is the very first place that you guys can get these shows. We are continuing our top 25 players the last 25 years today with number eight, the NBA's reigning finals MVP, Nicola Yokic. We also have a couple mailbag questions we're going to be hitting off the top. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT. So you guys don't miss any show announcements.

And if for whatever reason you miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. Also, we're doing mailback questions over the next couple of weeks. So any questions about absolutely anything, drop in the YouTube comments and we'll be hitting them at the top of the the show before we get into each player on the list. Also, lastly, it may be the NBA offseason, but there is no shortage of events out there to attend from baseball games, which are damn near impossible to find on television, to even concerts and comedy shows. And the best way to get tickets to any of these is on Game Time, the fastest-growing ticketing app in the United States.

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Download the GameTime app. Last-minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So we have technically three mail-bag questions, but two of them are the same. we're going to hit those here at the top. The second one actually is going to be kind of part of the Nicola Yokic thing. So we're going to get going to get into Yokic pretty quickly. But our first question is from KJ.

The Great, how do you feel about what Noah Lyle said about the NBA World Championship thing? You guys probably saw this on social media over the course of the last couple of days. Trackstar says basically doesn't understand why NBA teams refer to themselves as world champions. So I think this debate is incredibly dumb. Why? Because I don't see many people refer to NBA teams as World Champions as World Champions. champions. Technically, I've seen it be done before. You'll see it sometimes on broadcasts, right? It's definitely a saying that has been used, but it's not like Americans who win the NBA championship

are walking around being like, I'm a world champion, I'm a world champion. No one refers to themselves like that. The vast majority of NBA players, the vast majority of NBA discourse refers to it as the NBA championship or winning the title or winning the championship. You don't say Steph is a four-time world champion. You say Steph is a four-time champion, a four-time NBA champion. So, like, to me, it's like getting mad about a problem that doesn't actually exist. But I do want to push back on a couple of different talking points that I've heard, because I've heard a lot of people say that the NBA is a domestic league.

I don't necessarily think that's true. I mean, technically it is, but the NBA is a global sport. Three of the top five players in the NBA right now, per my player rankings, are not Americans. A good portion of you guys who listen to this show are not Americans. The NBA does have a very big global appeal. Obviously, it is a domestic league in the most literal sense of the word because that's where the franchises are located,

but all of the best basketball players in the world end up there. There is a massive chasm between the NBA and the second best professional league. It functions essentially as the top professional league in the world, and it has a great global appeal. It's one of the big reasons why I'm an NBA optimist about the future for the NBA, even though the NFL kicks the shit out of the NBA and the television ratings every year. It's because it is appealing around the globe. And I do foresee a future for the NBA where it is much more of a global sport than it actually is.

So again, like, yeah, I agree in principle with the idea that referring to them as world champions as a domestic league is not necessarily semantically correct. I also think it's important to acknowledge the NBA for what it is, which is a global professional sports league that appeals around the the globe that draws all the best players in the world. And for a sport and basketball, that is very much a global game. And so I think that people are minimizing the NBA if they just simply refer to it as a domestic league because I don't necessarily think that's true. All right, we have two other mailbag questions that are very related to each other and also very related to today's player that we're ranking, Nicola Yochit.

So we're going to read the questions first and then we'll actually answer the question when we get further down the list. From Shibola Way, do you feel the NBA has gone too far in the emphasis on skill players? For example, shooting from three as opposed to slashing, rim running, and post play. And then secondly, from Rowe to Don, I understand you prefer to rank perimeter players separately from centers, but it just comes down to impact on winning. If you were a GM, who are you drafting first? Kobe or Duncan, Shack or Steph, which player has the greatest impact on winning?

Stop copying out by wanting two different lists, Rowe from the top rope. We're going to talk about Nicole Yokic because in the early part of that segment, I have some stuff that I think is going to help us answer both of those questions. So table that. Basically what I'm looking at there is why do I rank Biggs and Perimeter Players separately? And is there a case to be made that the league is leaning too heavily into skill and not into size and strength and trying to physically impose your will on a basketball game? We're going to get to that in a little bit.

To start, though, number eight, in our top 25 players the last 25 years, our reigning finals MVP, Nicola Yokic. His accolades. Best player on a championship team in 2003. Three-time first team all-MBA, five-time all-MBA overall, back-to-back regular season MVP in 2021 and 2022, and then you won the NBA Finals MVP in 2023.

Really quick for those people who wonder why have Janice and Yokic so high, even though they're so early in their careers and guys behind them that have these longer resumes, because Janice and Yokic both had a definitive claim to be the best player in the world at one point in time, when I get to guys like Dirk and KG, I'm just not sure that they ever had that type of case, right? So even though they have longer resumes with more sustained success, and even though they are champions,

I think that Janice and Yokic reached a higher echelon in terms of the way they were measured against their peers than those guys did. So that's why I have them as high as I do. Nicole Yokic's claim to fame, in my opinion, is he's the first center to be able to anchor a championship team in the modern era. So one of the big reasons why I value perimeter players over centers, typically in this era, and one of the reasons why I rank them differently is I fundamentally view them as different positions. I would make it akin to like a quarterback versus a running back, right? And maybe that's not a perfect example, but the point is, is they fundamentally operate so differently within the offense that it doesn't make sense to compare a running back

with a quarterback. The responsibilities on a basketball court that are fulfilled by a center are incredibly different than the responsibilities that are fulfilled by perimeter players. Largely, a perimeter player can bring the ball in from the back court and get to where he wants to on the floor without needing someone to feed him the basketball in a specific spot. Nicole Yokic is actually uniquely one of the few centers in NBA history who doesn't really need to be set up in his spots in order to be effective. He can get to wherever he needs to get because he is that nimble, because he sees the floor that well, because he dribbles the ball that well. But we did have an era where big men ruled the league. And we're going to talk

about that right now. MJ was kind of like this weird perimeter player dominance in an era ruled by centers. Like if you look at the 90s, it's like Patrick Ewing, Carl Malone, Hakeem Alon, David Robinson, DeKalbue, Matumbo, into the early 2000s, Tim Duncan, Shack, Kevin Dirk Novitsky, these big guys ruled the league during those eras. As a matter of fact, we had a championship team anchored by a power forwarder center in 1994 with Hakeem Ongoan, 1995 with Hine-Nin 1995 with Tim Duncan, 2000 with Shaq, 2002 with Shaq, 2003 with Duncan, 2005 with Duncan, 2007 with Duncan, and 2008 with Kevin Garnett. In a 15-year span, the team that hoisted the trophy was anchored by the best player being a big

man, 10 times in 15 years. So in that era, the center was the most valuable archetype of player. And you saw that in the results. But then the league changed. The league got smaller. The league got faster. There's a lot more pace to the game. There's a lot more spacing the floor and having to cover a lot of ground.

And as a result, slower plotting players started to have a lot less success in the NBA. And you saw that in that following era. After that, 2009, best player on the championship team, Kobe. 2010, Kobe, 2011, Dirk, there's your outlier. 2012, LeBron. 2013, LeBron. 2014, Duncan, but again, he wasn't really a superstar player at that point. Tony Parker and Kauilander were equally, or were similarly important to that team.

2015, Steph Curry, 2016, LeBron James, 2017, KD, 2018, KD, 2019, Kauai, 2020, LeBron, 2021, Janice, who I consider to be a perimeter player in 2022, Steph. Right? So we had a 14-year span where only twice did we see a big man anchor or championship team. And the Dirk Novitsky team in 2011 was anchored by Tyson Chandler as an athletic center who fits more of a modern center mold, right? And Dirk Novitsky effectively was just an isolation score on that team, a post-up score. He was a tip of a spear. And then in 2014, dunk in the gap between him and the other players on his team was remarkably small. So we didn't have, for a 14-year span, we didn't have a single physically dominant big man

lead a team to a championship. And you guys know how I evaluate the game of basketball. I respond to new information, right? And so, like, you guys notice I had last year in my player rankings, I had Yokic at 7 and MB at 8. That's why. Because I was looking at modern NBA. history, a decade and a half sample where big guys just didn't win.

They just didn't. The perimeter players won. And the league had shifted through pace and through spacing, drive and kick, tons of movement required by the players on the floor had shifted towards perimeter players. And having a guy who could initiate your offense from a perimeter at a higher level than all of his peers was actually the best way to go about winning championships. I do fundamentally see those two archetypes is different.

And so I do, like for me personally, that's why I rank them differently. Now, to Mr. Roe, the guy who laid down the criticism there, I agree with your larger point, which is who contributes most to winning. Like it shouldn't matter what position. And you're right. And there are football teams in NFL history where the running back contributed more to winning than their quarterback did. but in this particular era, it's extremely rare for a big man to have impact on winning

the way that big men did during the decade and a half prior. But that's what makes Yokic so interesting. He literally reversed that trend by dominating regular seasons for a few years and then proving that a slower-footed center could succeed in an NBA championship. Right? So, like, as we look at NBA history, there are these partitions, there are eras as the game has changed. And so I do think that those two archetypes do matter. And we have seen, as the NBA has shifted, different archetypes rule different eras.

In this era right now, I tend to lean towards perimeter players. Maybe Yokic ends up being the blip. Maybe he ends up being a trend. We don't know. Now, I would argue personally, that Yokic's unique case. as a perimeter player are what allowed him to be the first center to reverse that trend. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

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A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

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Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jette. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. They're finishing that sentence.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How did Yokic dominate this playoff run? By being completely unguardable offensively. How is he completely unguarded offensively?

By basically being the offensive fulcrum of the team in two-man games starting from the perimeter with Jamal Murray and by making plays out of the post. But in many cases, he's bringing the ball up the floor. In many cases, he's the one making most of the decisions. It's not like dumping the ball down to Tim Duncan on the block. It's fundamentally different. He operates functionally like a point guard for the team. And so I would argue it's more Nicola Yokic's ability to do both to be a perimeter player

and be the center that. has allowed him to break that mold. And I do think the league is going to continue to favor perimeter players, including perimeter players like Yokic, as we kind of move into the future here. Now, to the second mailback question, the idea that, you know, are we leaning too heavily on skill, the reality is, it doesn't matter whether or not you're a skilled team or a physically imposing team or some combination of the both. It's how good are you at them?

We think about the statement, styles make fights, right? Which essentially means like matchups matter, right? But to me, I've always looked at it differently. It's not about the styles that make the fights. It's which style wins the fight. If a big, strong team plays an overly skilled team, but the overly skilled team is more skilled than the big strong team is good at being big,

then the skilled team will win. But if the big strong team is better at physically imposing their will on games, then the skilled team is capable of using their skill to impose their will on games, then the big team is going to win. And we've seen that recent NBA history. We've got the Warriors teams from like 2017, 2018, 2018, 2015. They were not physically imposing teams. But they won with skill, and then they've won with skill.

defended at an extremely high level, but not in terms of physicality, but just work and rotations and guys like Clay Thompson and Steph Curry committing to the defensive end and containing at the point of attack. They weren't bullying teams. But then we go into this era where big teams kind of rule, right? Like the 2020 Lakers were huge. The 2021 bucks were huge. The 23 nuggets were huge. But when you have this random team in there in 2022 with the Warriors, that was relatively small and killed teams with high-level skill. So like the reality is, is, the question is not whether or not a team is leaning into the wrong thing. It's, you should lean into what you're good at. Like, if you were a team

that has a ton of size, lean into that as your archetype. If you have a team that has a lot of skill, lean into that as your archetype. And if you are an extremely skilled team, I believe you can win with skill. And if you're an extremely big physically imposing team, I think you can win with that. So hopefully that answers that particular question. Now, Nicole Yokic's archetype. 6-11 center with 7-3 wingspan, 284 pounds. Big dude. Super nimble.

Has some of the best footwork I've ever seen from a big man in terms of just being sharp with his pivot foot and not traveling, getting to his spots without getting bumped off of his base. Outrageous hand-eye coordination. I actually think it's safe to say at this point that no big man has ever demonstrated. Better touch on short-range, push-shots,

and hook shots than Nicole Yokochoch has. He's one of two players in the NBA that I currently consider to be unguarded. There isn't a single NBA center that has demonstrated the ability to consistently make Yokic look uncomfortable in single coverage. Even guys like Rudy Gobert and Dremont Green and Anthony Davis, they might get a block every once in a while or steal every once in a while. They might make some plays, but in a large sample size, Yokic is going to get comfortable in single coverage against those guys. So if you leave Nicole Yokic in single coverage, he's going to score two out of three times. in two-man game, if you stay glued up to Yokic, he's such a damn good screener that Jamal Murray's going to come off

and get a wide open pull-up jump shot. If you guard it in a traditional drop coverage, you're going to give up a pocket pass to Nicole Yokic and he's going to make that floater two out of three times. So you have to send multiple defenders against him in post-up situations. You have to guard pick and rolls three on two. And he happens to be one of the best passers in the league. with outstanding shooting on the back end to make you pay consistently.

He is fundamentally unguarded. There is no answer. You have to either choose to get killed in two-on-two and one-on-one coverage or to leave his teammates open and let him beat you from three. The only way is to try to outscore him, them, by punishing Yokic on the other end for his slow-footedness, right? But the problem is, is he's worked really, really hard in his career to kind of mitigate those issues.

Like he, what are the things that, I've talked about this on the show before, but like, why do I think slow-footed center struggle in the NBA? Transition, pace, getting up and down the floor, guarding in space when team space you out, right? Those are the two big reasons that big men struggle typically in the modern NBA. But as we look closer at it, like, Yokic is actually one of the best transition bigs in the league. The dude just sprints every time he has, every time he needs to. And is he the fastest sprinter in the world? No. But when he sprints consistently, he's going to mitigate most of the transition damage that you could do.

And I'd even take it a step further. Yokic's transition sprinting is actually starting to cause problems for the people he's going against, who don't run the floor, which is a lot of the bigs in the NBA. And then they just found a way to guard with him in pick and roll. They were like, hey, if we're going to use you at the level of the screen, you got to have active hands so that you can make things a little more difficult to pass. pass out of so that we can have a better chance to rotate on the back end, right? That's what he's done.

He's worked really hard to be an active high pick and roll defender with his hands, getting hands on pocket passes, deflecting or making harder skip passes. He's turned himself into an average defensive player, which is mitigated damage done on that end, which has made it so that his offensive gifts can rise to the surface, right? and so now it's even harder than ever to try to outscore them on the other end of the floor. Crowning achievement for Nicola Yocch was winning the 2003 NBA Championship. Average 30 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 assists on 63% true shooting. Made two threes per game on 46% shooting.

Again, this was a perimeter player, guys. He's a perimeter player functionally operating as a center. He lit up Rudy Gobert in the first round, lit up D'Andre Aiton in the second round, up Anthony Davis in the third round, lit up bam at a bio in the fourth round. Legitimately, three of the top five defenders at his position, and none of them could do anything to stop him. The Nuggets never even felt like they were remotely in danger.

Even when Phoenix got it to 2-2, you just knew they were going to get their ass kicked in 5 and 6, and they did. He left absolutely no doubt. Not only did he clearly demonstrate that he's the best basketball player alive, he reversed two seemingly unbreakable NBA trends. One, again, a 14-year span where we did not have like a legitimate, bona fide superstar center leading a team to an NBA championship. 14 years in a row, he broke that trend.

And then it had literally been decades since a non-defending champion who wasn't a top 10 defense won an NBA championship, and he broke that trend as well. So not only is he the best player in the world, but he's shattering what our established norms are in the NBA. The biggest what if Nicole Yokic's career, in my opinion, is what if Jamal Murray did not tear his ACL in the 2021 season? Yokic was playing at a similar level in those two years

and just didn't have the talent necessarily to push teams over the top. 2021 in particular was a wide open year. That's a year they could have got it. 2022, they were super competitive with the Warriors, obviously just lacked that top-end talent, especially in late game situations. It's very possible that we could be a lot further along in the Yokic train had he had some better luck with his teammate in his ACL.

All right, guys, that is all I have for today. We will be back tomorrow with number seven. As always, I appreciate you guys, and we will see you then. Volume. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters.

or street or sidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all. embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.

Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. It was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.