The Ringer NBA Show - The Top 25 NBA Players of the First 25 Games (Ep. 175)

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Justin Verrier, and Danny Chau parse through their article ranking the 25 best players in the NBA through the season thus far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to The Ringer NBA show. My name is Chris Ryan. Today I am joined by Justin Verrier. Hello. And Danny Chow. Hello. We are talking about an article on a web blog called Theringer.com. And it's top 25 players of the first 25-ish games.

You can find this post on The Ringer.com. Tons of other basketball content up there for you. But we did a list of the top 25 players of the league so far this season. So the sample size is small, which created an interesting list, I think. We had some basic, like, oh, yeah, of course. these guys are going to be at the top. But there was a lot of surprises. There was a lot of guys who maybe we thought might be higher, wind up being lower. We pulled the Ringer MBA staff. So the voting block is basically anybody who wrote or edited NBA content for the ringer.com.

Anyone we can find, really. Including Bill Simmons. Yes. So he had his list. Everybody submitted their top 25. It went into the Zach Cram machine. It came out with this 25. I think we're all relatively satisfied with it. I just want to run through the top 10 and then we can start talking about some surprises that we had on the list. You can find the full list on the ringer.com. It's very easy to find right there. Number one player, LeBron James. Number two, Hardin.

Number three, Yonis. Number four, Steph. Number five, KD. Number six, Kyrie. Number seven, boogie. Number eight, Anthony Davis. Number nine, Christopps, number ten, Joel Embed.

Justin. Somebody's missing from that top ten. They sure are. The reigning MVP. But he's right there. He's close by. He is. He's 11. But let's talk a little bit about, I think Westbrook's decline out of the conversation of, is he the best player, is maybe, it's one of the biggest conversations this year.

Right. It's interesting because the surprise I got out of Westbrook being 11 wasn't that he's fallen this much. It's that actually we all kind of were in a consensus about where he was in the league. I think we all had him at around 11 to 15. This year, though. Yes. Yeah. I mean, but do you think that an MVP falling out of the top 10?

That's a pretty steep drop, though, right? Of course. Of course. The 25 games next season. Yeah, but to Danny's point, I think it's the biggest surprise is that it's not surprising. I think if you read Jonathan Sharx's little blurb there for Russell Westbrook, it's basically like, yeah, this might even be too high. Right. And if you look at that team, it does feel like sometimes he is the engine to beat the Golden State Warriors, but other time he's the type of guy who could shoot them out of games that they probably should be winning, considering the talent they have now.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, I think that it's interesting that there's these new arrivals on the thunder, yet Westbrook is taking. the load in terms of the blame for the problems. And I think a lot of that has to do with the idea that if he's the point guard, it's sort of his responsibility as the floor general to move the ball and to install or at least execute whatever offense is supposed to be happening. And more often than not, the ball sort of stops with Russ. And that is kind of like the main issue with these guys.

Yeah, it's kind of the ugly side of all the good we saw last year. It's like if he wants to be the center of the universe, yeah, he can win MVP like that with certain guys around him. But now you have more talented players. and now you're starting to see the ugly side of it. And it's that he's not getting those guys involved. It's still very much a me-centric sort of situation. And I think 11 is appropriate, if not too high.

Yeah, I mean, I think when he had KD that he had five years of continuity or however many years of continuity to work with, they had the plays that they knew worked for the two of them, KD on the low block, that little two-man game that they would play. He hasn't really found that with George and Mello yet. Not yet. And that's kind of the mind-numbing aspect of this exercise, is that we're still kind of waiting to see what the thunder are.

And with how Russ is right now, it's too early to say whether or not he's not in the top 25. And there is certainly an argument that someone would make. I personally would not want to make it. Russ is my favorite player in the last five years. But there's an argument to be had that he might not even deserve to be in this top 25. It's Iversonian that's happening here. It just really reminds me of that. Here's the question.

Do you expect him, if we were to take this poll, let's say, 75% of the way through the season? Do you expect him to be higher or lower? I expect him to be right around the same. In the sense that I think that his season will get better and the Thunder season will get better, but it's going to be hard for him to maneuver his way into this list, especially with the best players in the league playing as well as their play.

So we are getting an MVP LeBron season. We are getting, when he is sort of allowed to show it, an MVP caliber Durant season. Steph, I think, has had weirdly an up- and down shooting season somewhat, but like, I mean, I've seen games where it's just like, oh, Steph's like, obviously his hand was hurt for a while, and now he's got the ankle injury, but it's still the engine of the Warriors. Like, if all the great players are playing at their best, it's hard for us to break into that top

five. And of course, we haven't even said Hardin, who's maybe the most dynamic offensive player in the league. Yeah, it's a very LeBron thing to do to take the temperature of the entire league and be like, oh, I'm just going to do this better than everyone else. Yeah. It's kind of like when Taylor Swift was getting into, like, EDM and some of those other other things and just made it just completely popular and brought it to a bigger audience.

And that's LeBron's season this far. I think Danny and I were the only two to put Hardin number one. We did the voting before LeBron had those insane shots against the Sacramento Kings, basically won that game for the Cavs. But I don't know, do you still feel comfortable with Hardin won? Or would you redo it? Sure. No, I absolutely have complete confidence in Hardin and Dan Tony.

Look, every podcast you guys have me on, I'm just going to. just talking about the Rockets. Talk about my stand-up for... Somebody's got to do it. Apparently, because we have Houston bias here. A couple of other things. I think that Janus was obviously the story of like the first month of the season.

Do you think that he's too high, though? At number three above the Warriors guys. I think this is the problem with a list of individual talents as opposed to just a collective. Like obviously, Steph and KD lead to more wins. But Janus is just production-wise and what he's doing with the guys around him

is just simply amazing. Like, especially on the defense event, he's probably a top five defender at this point, if not higher. Also, a top five offensive player, I mean, to a certain extent, it's just like too much to kind of overlook, even though the team is kind of middling right now, kind of like in that middle ground of it. Yeah, for sure. I'm really not going to put, you know, kids defensive strategies and everything that he's been putting out into the press. Like he's been saying some like really wild shit. Like what? It was a fouling situation in a recent game where he's, you know, he's.

He was just like, yeah, they were just trying to take twos when they should have taken three. So we were just going to foul them make the game that much quicker. It was just like, why are you giving them free points? Yeah, right. Interesting. Third dimension. Yeah, I'm not going to put that against what Janus has done this season. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, who's his best teammate? Probably blood so. Right. And they've been together for like, what, a couple weeks? Yeah. So it's really tough to accurately assist. Middleton dog?

I want to talk a little bit about representation from teams. So obviously in the entire tent top 25, the four of the five, Warrior starters made it, sorry Zaza, but there are two Pelicans in the top 10. Yes, not the right order, one might say. Well, here's the thing is most GMs in this league, no matter how analytically based they make their decisions, are still looking to put as many top-tier talents on the floor at the same time.

That was what Drew San Presti's summer. That's why the pelicans made the move for boogie in the first place. They are actually getting the very best versions of Anthony Davis and Boogie Cousins before Anthony Davis's was a groin or pelvis or whatever. abductor. Abductor. But we're seeing also the limitations of what happens, I think, when you have a top-heavy team like this, right? I mean, the pelicans are probably better than we thought they were going to be.

Can you talk a little bit as somebody who's obviously spent a lot of time in New Orleans and watched the Pelicans a lot over the years? How you're feeling about the Twin Towers offense and where these guys rank? I'm a little bit surprised that it's been better than it has been, but not totally shocked. I think going into the season, the one thing I kept saying is if they're going to win and they're going to have any degree. of success is just by sheer talent alone, by putting on the floor two top ten guys. And this list kind of almost, it's kind of almost obvious. You just have two top ten guys. You're going to have moderate success at the very least.

I don't know what their ceiling is, though. I feel like their ceiling might even be like fifth seed tops, because a lot of the guys they have on their team, as we discussed yesterday, and we're always discussing about them. They just don't have the right guys around them. What would the right guys be, just shooters? Yeah, or just. More Darius Millers. Yeah, I mean, Darius Miller and Etouan Moore are their two shooters and they've played really well this year.

And still, they're only 13 and 12. I think that's the issue there. I mean, when they stagger those two bigs, which they've done a very good job of, I think you need guys to fill in around them. It's almost like they need to not only have one good team with both of those guys in the court. They need two other teams just to feature them when one is off the floor. Yeah. Anthony Davis's sort of successor at Kentucky, Carl Anthony Towns, did not make. this list, which is maybe the biggest shock of all. Most of the unicorns made the list. Yokic

made the list. Christops, obviously, in the top 10. But Kat is now the punching bag of the NBA Dejure. Talk a little bit about his season and talk about why you think he didn't make this list. I just think when you are the focal point of a Tom Tibido offense and defense and you just completely ignore one side of the ball and Jimmy Butler is on your ass for not being on rotations and being where you're supposed to be, it's kind of hard to say that he's had as impactful a season as Jimmy Butler, who is, I think, 15th or 16th on our list. 17th. His scoring numbers are down, but it's not the scoring that people are reacting to.

It's the defense. Yeah, I mean, there's too many clips now. It's very Harden-esque, like, a year or two ago, where it's like the thing you see most of towns is him not getting his ass back on defense. And I think it's starting to catch up to him, and I think it's warranted because he's just kind of loafing out there. And for a guy with that much talent, especially in today's NBA, where he came in already able to shoot, unlike Anthony Davis,

some of the kind of unicorn predecessors, he really should be in the MVP discussion, like every year at this point. The reverse of this is sort of Horford. So Horford placed very high in this list, 13th. Right. The numbers are never eye-popping, but it's everything else that is. This basically happens with Horford every time he's on a team that really looks like an Eastern Conference elite.

he's a reflection of the team. So if the team is going to look good, he's going to look good because whenever a team is doing good with him on the team, he's the guy who's basically in every single avenue. He's a win factory.

Basically. Yeah. I get very bulls, Derek Rose era vibes from the Celtics these days. That's a mixed blessing. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean,

they're better in every way than those sort of team. But there are a team that wins on defense and Horford is the crux of that of what they do there. and Kyrie Irving is almost kind of the Isaiah Thomas light. He's kind of more of a blend where he has more capabilities on the defensive end,

but he's still the guy scoring the points, and thus is going to get the shine, going to get all of kind of the accolades for that reason. But Horford, I might argue, is their most important player. Yeah, I would say you're exactly right. I'd be very curious to see if he misses any time and his tendency to get injured once a season at least what that Celtics team looks like without him

because they didn't reinforce up front. You know what I mean? They didn't go shopping for bigs. Getting somebody to back Horthord up down the stretch could be something Danny Inge looks into at the trade deadline. Yeah, all of their bids right now are very, we're here to set hard picks and we're here to grab rebounds, which they didn't do last year. But they don't have a guy who's going to be as dynamic from, you know, the top of the arc, creating from the top of the circle. Yeah, the bulls thing, not really sure. The Bulls didn't really have that as much offense as as these Celtics do, although the Celtics aren't playing as well on offense as we mean.

maybe thought they would be at the beginning of the season. A couple of other things that I think are notable is the, you guys can't see this because you didn't see our individual ballots, but there was, I think Lillard was one of the most divisive people. He wound up at 15. Portland's having a fine season, if not exceptional. He's averaging almost 26 points a game. Is he underrated or overrated?

That's the question I think everybody kind of confronts. And people who like Lillard, I think don't put up very good arguments for him. Right. I don't know what it is about him that kind of makes him this divisive figure because I think he's

just got a lot of confidence in his abilities to lead that team and it doesn't complain too much about the talent around him and he's in probably the most dynamic back court

in the west in some ways I mean like I know that Steph and Clay would probably say something about that but I enjoy watching McCollum and Lillard a lot if we're saying

that this is just a snapshot of these 25 or so games is there much difference between what Lillard has done and what Victor Aladipo was done? Like, if anything, I might push Lillard ahead simply because of reputation. Right. We tried to tell people, like, try to put aside

just everything that these guys have done in their careers, but it's really tough to just make them to... Which is why O'Odepo made 22, after basically being a role player for the first few years of his career. Right, but I mean, we just came off a game the other week where first game after Anthony Davis goes down and the Pelicans blew the blazers off the floor. Yeah. In Portland. And it's not really a good

sign because they are that team this year where They're kind of just treading water. Nurkich, if anything, has really been the difference there. They're just the same teams. They've just gotten incrementally better, and they've had a little bit more success as a result of that. But I don't know. He hasn't really changed for me much since what he has been doing.

Is there something about him that's empty calories? I mean, there's just a kind of perception that when you have Lillard as the head of an offense, you're getting a kind of steff light. And that's cool. That's fine. But he doesn't quite have the same command, the same gravity. and as a result I don't really know

where the ceiling is for what the ceiling is for the team if Lillard's your best player Yeah that's why everybody got so excited when he went out and McCollum ran point last year right because it was something new Yeah it was like this different look for them

And it was like oh what if C.J. was this score first point guard but he has such like a different game There's a feeling about Lillard when he's powering like up the court where he's just like this guy is just like looking for that three pointer as soon as he can get it and with McCollum there's that weird

old school, slow-mo Gumby element to his game that I think changes the way that that offense feels.

It would have been interesting if Portland had gotten someone like Mello because I think it really would have allowed us

to look at Lillard in a different context. Yeah. Whereas it's almost West Brookian where I think in order for him

to be successful, he needs to have the ball in his hands, he needs to be running the show, but then on the same side,

you're saying, well, that team has a defined ceiling because he isn't Steph, he's Steph-like. Yeah.

Let me ask you this. if Kauai Leonard had been playing this season, if the Spurs had been at full strength this season, not asking you to project where Kauai would be, I'm curious where you think Lamarcus Aldridge would be, because he wound up being 16. I had him very high. I think I had him at like 10 or 11.

I had him at 11. Yeah, and this is quite a rehabilitation job for him. He has 22.6 per game, 0.8 boards, 2 assists, a 52% effective field goal percentage. Like, he is what they bought a couple years ago. is that now. And this Spurs team is just doing one of those classic like Nobans talking about them.

They're third in the West, 17 and 8 without some of their best players. What do you think of Aldridge's season and where he wound up on this list? What was it? Six months ago? Not even. We were talking about this guy

had to be traded to the point where... They tried to trade. I think Aldridge was talking about that. Right. Pop had to sit him down. Probably got a nice Keante and they hashed this out over some tapas.

And now here we are. And he's the focal point of a high level NBA offense. It's unbelievable. It just speaks to, again, the system here. I mean, what Pop and Brad Stevens are able to do is borderline amazing. And I'm curious, I know Danny is too, because we've been talking a lot about this recently, just like, what do they do when they have to put Kauai in there? I wonder if Alder just goes back to the guy he was. I'm not sure if he does. If only because they're starting to feature him more as a guy who can space the floor.

He's always shown that he had three-point range, but this is the first year as a a spur that he's actually taken them. He's shooting 39%. Powell's shooting about 43% from 3. That really opens up the floor, and I really, really want to see what Kauai can do as a four playing next to one of these guys, where he can kind of make up for a lot of their deficiencies on defense.

I had written about this today on the ring or about the spurs. Get those clicks? Oh, yeah. It was mostly about Kauai, mostly about Pops. But I think Lamarcus is having a career season, and it's really a testament to, everything that Pop has been able to build around him and really instill in him that confidence

to be the guy he was. And this is why the Spurs of the Spurs is that in the absence of Kauai, pop has road tested 12 guys, you know, and just is like experimenting with all these different combinations of players, still getting random dudes rest on any given night. But you're getting to Jean-Termur,

you're getting Kyle Anderson, you're getting all the guys who came in to replace Deadman and Simmons. I can't even name them all. Joffrey and whatever, random year. Europeans he's found. And that allows him, you guys are talking a little bit, you were talking a little bit

about, like, they need to have a Boogie Davis lineup, and then they need to have lineups that work with Boogie and Davis separately. Pop can do that with Lamarcus and Kauai get to going into the second half of the season. He can have a starting lineup. He can have a Lamarcus-centric lineup. He can have a Kauai-centric lineup. He can do all sorts of stuff. And Rudy Gay and Colin Anderson have filled in really admirably for Kauai during this absence.

And they've both shown that they're like stalwarts in this Spurs office. offense. Let's rewind back to before the season start, like the eve of the season. How shocked are you that Andre Drummond is at 18? Pretty shocked. I think he's always had the talent. I'm actually the worst person to ask because I've literally been watching this kid since he was in high school.

Yukon alum, great institution. But obviously what he's been doing, it's really turned around the Pistons. He's the only reason I think that they've been able to have some success there. Danny wrote about it really eloquently, just like how he's been able to operate from the high post, even though he doesn't. doesn't have much of a shooting game. And just having someone that big, that athletic in today's NBA, I feel like it's kind of a swing in the other direction.

And we had been going with all these stretchy, versatile shooting guys where if you can keep up with them, I think it's still an advantage to be massive and that talented. I actually had them pretty low. And I did write eloquently about it, I guess. But it's something where they've lost four in a row at this point. Teams are starting to kind of sniff it out. the dribble handoff is definitely going to be a central aspect of the Pistons offense going forward,

but he's been killing teams that don't necessarily have the defensive fundamentals. Once you bring it into the playoffs, I really wonder how, you know, it still works when Drummond really still can't do anything outside 15 feet. Right, right. And if they can't stress the floor with him, what do they do? Guys, let's talk a little bit about sustainability. because I want to know, do you think that this top three that we have of LeBron, Harden and Janus, is that the MVP race? Do you think that we're going to be talking about those guys, those three names at the end of the year? Can Janus sustain these numbers?

And do you think that it's going to be the Harden LeBron year or will one of the warriors get in there? Barring injury, I think those guys are going to be on the top five ballot. I think the two guys underneath them, Steph and KD, those are the ones I would pinpoint is potentially jumping over them, especially, let's say Steph's injury lingers. Maybe they play it a little safe. Maybe it's more of a month, maybe even longer than. Katie gets triple doubles every night like he did the other night. I think then we're starting to talk about Katie,

not necessarily on the all defensive team as he would like us to, but more in the MVP discussion. I kind of think it's a two-man race. I think this is the year that all of Rockets fans have been waiting for for the last three years when James Hardin finally gets his hands on that trophy. Well, this is really fascinating, right? Because it's either a make-good for last year for Hardin or it's a made-good for the last few years for LeBron.

Right. Sure. You know what I mean? It's like in some ways I look back and I'm like, man, we really screwed up by not giving it to LeBron in any point in the last couple years. But by that same token, it's like Hardin is playing this season like a guy who feels like he deserves to have that trophy in his hands. Is there anybody here that you think is just playing out of their mind and is going to level off? Whether it's Embed, whether it's any of the Pelicans guys, whether it's Ben Simmons, who I think that we're all like blown away by. But we don't necessarily know if it's going to be sustainable.

over the course of year. Although actually, the way he plays just looks like he's just like, yeah, I'm in my 60 year. I know how to do this. Yeah, you do worry about him hitting the rookie wall. Yeah, and I guess a little bit of also just people being like if you sag on this guy, although I feel like they have been sagging on him and it hasn't worked. I do wonder about like maybe

because he's such a physical player, maybe the toll on his body starts to add up, especially because this is his first season and those sort of things kind of, I think you need to figure out how to deal with them before you can really kind of manage them. I would look at cousins. His technicals are already starting to rise, and then you're going to get into the part of the season

and post-trade deadline even beforehand where you're looking at, is he going to play this night? If he gets two more technicals, do we have to cover for him? And I think even if he's still putting up this level of production, even if he's still on the Pelicans, I think that's going to mar his just general perception in the league.

I don't know about Oladipo, you guys. Oh, yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. I enjoy watching the Pacers. I enjoy everything that they've been doing. Oladipo has been the biggest surprise of the season. for me, other than, I guess, Aaron Gordon, who is an honorable mention. Yeah, we'll get to that.

Yeah. Man, he's shooting like 46% from three, and it's 25 games in the season. I don't know what to make out of this. Yeah, that's a really good shot. Oladipo is one where if the usage continues and he continues to get these transition buckets, you could see him still in the list, but there's got to be some regression. There was a stat I'd seen, I think it was tweeted on the basketball reference Twitter, that he currently has the highest PER of any pacer, like, period?

Like, it was higher than any of the Reggie Miller years, the Danny Graham. Higher than Antonio Davis? Yeah. One thing that, you know, we can be in a little bit of a bubble here because we're always looking for storylines. We're looking for things to get excited about by watching basketball. And we've really sold the farm on this idea of this younger generation of unicorn players. Do you think that that is our media bias in play?

because nine of these guys are 25 or younger. Janice, Kyrie, Anthony Davis, Porzingis, and Bede, Simmons, Drummond, Ola Dippo, and Yokic. That's the new generation of NBA players that we're going to be watching for the next 10, 15 years. Are we just freaked out by these guys or are they actually making their case

to be part of the NBA elite this season? It could be. We obviously gravitate toward what's fresh and new and all these guys are doing things that we've never seen before. But at the same time, I think that's just the way the league is going. so it almost is the perfect context incubator, whatever you want to say, for those type of players.

It's like we're in the live ball era now. Yeah. Where such a dramatic shift has happened where a different type of player is obviously going to shine. And that player just happens to be younger because they got a jump start. Like we were talking with Towns, he already knew how to shoot threes going into the league. Right. And we look back at the GM survey that came out in the summer. The question that Colleen Anthony Towns won again after winning it last year was if you were to start a franchise

as today and could sign any player in the NBA, who would it be? That's really fascinating. Towns was at 29% this season. Last season, it was at 48%. Wow. So think about how much has changed since then. That's wild. Let's talk a little bit about the guys on the outside looking in, the honorable mentions, and Isaac, if we could cue up some really maudlin Drake. We don't have rights to that. Let's talk about the Raptors because I had to I had to Rosen and Lowry on my ballot, so don't come at me, Canada. But they did not make our top 25, despite Toronto putting together another competent, you know, what are they? The Raptors are good.

15 and 7 plus 7.5 differential. Awesome offense. Again, they're trying to modernize. Kyle Lowry is draining threes. But these guys didn't get on. Why? Are we just too used to it? I think for me personally, I think I just don't find the Raptors all that intriguing

is just like an aesthetic entertainment value sort of thing. And I think the one flaw of all of these rankings, whether it's this one, which is more of a specific snapshot of this season or kind of the NBA rank type of things, is it's more it catches the zeitgeist or kind of the public perception more than saying, really honing in on where these guys are in the league, I think. And I think it's just Toronto is kind of stuck in this cycle where they just keep doing the same thing over and over.

Danny's going to tell me otherwise. But they're doing the thing that we just ask of great teams. They're a top five offense and a top 10 defense. Just to make it clear, Kyle Lowry and DeMardo Rosen are 26 and 27. So they just barely missed the cut. I think the stink of the early season for Kyle Lowry kind of brought him down. Him being like, I kind of wish I was on the Spurs.

Didn't help. Exactly. And for me, when I'm watching this Raptors team, the excitement that I get from this experience is watching them develop their youth. And it's not necessarily Kyle Lowry and Demarderosen having to, put the team on their back. And that's something refreshing. Yeah, that's true.

So I don't necessarily see those two guys taking their games to the next level, although Demardorosin is having the best shooting season of his career. It's definitely more about the periphery in that case. Did you consider putting Kevin Love on your ballot? I did not. Although

I know he's playing really well lately. Averaging a double-double. Excited about him. The two main game that he's developing with Abron is probably three years late. You know, I I mean, but this is watching those guys play a screen and roll, it's unguardable because it allows LeBron's spaced pass and it gives Kevin Love like an open lane to the basket and he's actually

still a pretty good finisher. He can really bang down low. To your point, though, about just like us gravitating toward what's new and some of these younger guys, Kevin Love does seem pretty passe, even though he was kind of like one of the first models. He was the model T for the stretch four. And he was putting up the numbers that were so, we're going so nuts over it. AD and Boogie putting up, but he was doing

like weird 40 and 20 nights back in Minnesota. Right. The fact that he can't operate as the ball handler in those situations most of the time, I think it just speaks to how far the game has come even in the past two, three years. Embed is in here. Drummond is in here. But we didn't have guys like Marcus Saul, who recently

went down with an injury and has had kind of an up and down season, but was considered an all-MBA talent what, like a season ago, two seasons ago? Two weeks ago. No Hassan Whiteside. No DeAndre Jordan. What's going on with the centers, Danny? Honestly, I don't know. Were any of these guys on your list?

Did you have any... No? None of them were. We've moved to a point in the game where a lot of these guys... Yeah, exactly. Especially with DJ who's just loafing through some of these Clipper games. And I don't blame him. Yes.

Because things have gotten very dower very quickly. But there were times where I didn't even know if he was town's level engaged. And what was going on, though. Yeah. Speaking of guys who have Clippers associations, I will say that one person who did not make this is Point God, Chris Paul. And if he keeps playing like he's played in the last two weeks, he might get in the top 10, I think. Right. He looks like PED Paul.

Like, he is going nuts. And it's so efficient and it's so fun to watch. Ten assists in under 30 minutes per game. Yeah. I think he's James Hardin's MVP. Yeah. Because he's basically allowed Hardin to just keep doing what he's doing and really hasn't disrupted any of the flow whatsoever. I think they've managed to just bypass any potential kind of.

early era, heat, big three sort of drama. And it's kind of impressive. It's why we don't talk about the Rockets because there isn't much intrigue. They're just really fucking good. Any other guys who've had injuries earlier in the season, be it Gobert, be it Kauai, who you could see jumping into top 20, top 25, even top 10?

A healthy Kauai is probably their top five. It would definitely bring Lamarters down. With Gobert, it's an interesting case because, yes, he's been injured. But even when he was on the court, the Jazz haven't really figured out what to do with him in favors and they were actually doing better with favors

as the sole big man because they were able to place the floor and now they're having to refigure things out with that team and it's just not going as well as maybe they'd hoped but... Yeah, they had like a nice little 7 and 3 run and I think that now that they've stumbled a couple of games right because they're

trying to figure that out. The defense was good too without Gober which really kind of caught my eye. The one guy I want to end with is somebody who we haven't seen this year is Isaiah Thomas, just because he's another Russ-type guy who in a situation last season was probably one of the stories of the season, gets traded for Kyrie Irving, has this hip problem, could come back. I've heard, we've heard, like, around Christmas, he certainly seems to be ready to come

back. Is it the best version of Isaiah Thomas, a top 25 player in the NBA? Probably. I wonder how much we're going to just hold the games they didn't play against him at this point. I kind of don't buy the argument full sale just because I was in B'd, Rookie of the Year voter. I think if you can be that good in just a condensed amount of time, that's value. Yeah.

And it's just not your fault that your body didn't really kind of do it. But I think he could make the list, but I can't imagine jumping, like, let's say, in the top 15. Sure. I wouldn't put him in my top 20. He would probably be in the borderline of top 25. The defensive issues are always going to be there. Sitting right next to Kyle Lauer. And yeah, with the Cavs, that's their biggest glaring issue. And you're not getting an upgrade from, you're not getting an upgrade from Kyrie in that situation. Absolutely.

I don't know. All right, guys, let's wrap it up there. Thanks for joining me. You can read the top 25 players of the first 25-ish games post on the ringer.com. You can also check out an awesome bill column about NBA trades that need to happen. We have tons of stuff on the site this week for NBA heads. So please check it out. Check out Ringer NBA show almost every day on the Ringer podcast network.

Thanks for joining us.