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All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FANDOL here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week. It is that time of year again. We are going to do our player rankings, one of my favorite things to do to deal with the hoop withdrawals over the summer we're gonna get it down to the top five players in the NBA. I'm gonna give you guys my criteria to start off. Then i'm gonna go over some of the guys that missed the cut and why, and then today we will be doing number through number twenty one. So before we get started, you guys know the drill. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you guys don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt S, you guys don't miss any show announcements or any other video content that I produced. And then, last but not least, if you miss some portion of the show and you can't get back to YouTube but you're driving around town or something, you can always find these in audio form on our podcast feeds shortly after they go up on YouTube, So you can find that under Hoops Tonight wherever you find your podcast. All Right, so this kind of thing is entirely subjective, so before we get started, don't get emotional about anything. If you disagree about anything, just drop it in the comments. I'd love to hear it. All of these guys are extremely close to each other because the league is at a in a in a era where there is more talent than we've ever seen in the game of basketball. The gap between the best player and the seventh best player is tiny, and on any given night, any of those guys can outplay each other. So if I have a guy ranked lower than you thought, tell me why you disagree. Don't get all emotional and upset, because that's the one thing that gets kind of frustrating with these lists is just how everyone thinks they've got it all figured out, and the truth of the matter is none of us do, and we're all just doing our best to get s and all of these guys are incredibly good, and we're just splitting hair. So my criteria, it's not a harder fast rule because every player is different, right, Like you know, Steph's roll on a team doesn't resemble Yokis roll on a team, or and Beads roll on the team. So you can't apply the same criteria uniformly across the board. But there are general things that I value that will lead to some of these decisions, so I wanted to lay those out. First of all, size is something that I value to a great degree in basketball. Steph is the exception to this rule. I spoiler alert, I have Steph very high on my list. Okay, but he's the one short guy up there, and he's not even that short. He's six ft three and he's pretty stocky and strong. But the main reason why is everything on a basketball court is easier when you're bigger, especially if you can move your feet, covering ground on the perimeter and rotations, skying for rebounds, being able to hold position in box outs, are in post ups, dealing with the physicality. That's arguably the biggest reason why I value size in the NBA. Think of it like this, Guys, we're gonna be watching on October seventeenth or sixteenth or whatever. It is, a season opening basketball game, probably on you know, one of the major networks that will probably involve the Warriors and someone else. Right when that happens, we'll be watching, and we'll probably be complaining about the refs and how tikie tack they are with their whistle, right, and it might be a topic of conversation through a good chunk of the season. But make no mistake, come June, there will be two teams in a complete and total blood bath. It happens every single year. The playoffs are extremely different from the regular season, and in that environment, size and strength does matter. Steph is just so exceptionally talented that he's a top ten player in NBA history in spite of the fact that he doesn't have a great set of physical tools. That playoff translatability is another huge part of this. The game just as different at that level. It's not just the physictality, it's the scheming. It's the level of defensive attention thrown to the stars, adding a great deal of value towards playmaking, which we'll get to in a minute. That ability to translate to the playoffs, that's something that I'm gonna value heavily on this list. If you've got a player that's a dominant regular season player, but he doesn't play as well in the playoffs or he doesn't get there, I'm gonna have him lower on my list. Availability is a big thing being available to your team. Don't have to dive any further into that defensive versatility. It's a huge difference between the ability to defend in one role in the ability to defend in multiple roles. That is a huge deal in the playoffs when scheming becomes a bigger role in switching becomes a bigger role. You're not just going to get to park under the basket and block shots. You're not just gonna get to guard little guards or guard big forwards. You're gonna have to guard both, and you're probably gonna have to cover a lot of ground in rotations. So defensive versatility is gonna matter a lot to me. And then, last, but not least, the two big offensive skills that I value are playmaking and three level scoring. The reason why is, well, let's start with three scoring. With the way that NBA teams guard. You know, all these offenses, because of analytics, are heading towards rim attempts and three point attempts. Why because the rim is the most efficient shot in basketball and the three point shot is the second most efficient shot in basketball when you account for shot value. But because of that, over the last few years, almost every defense in the league has leaned heavily in towards in towards prioritizing the three point line and the free throw in the in the basket right, they will chaotically chase guys off the three point line to give up a driving lane, knowing that they have a rotation set up at the rim, and they can make up for it on the back end. They will leave a massive opening in the middle of the floor to take away those threes and to take away the basket. That's why three level scoring is so important. The guys that are comfortable stopping short after running off the three point line to knock down a mid range jump shot, to knock down a float, or to score in the mid range, those sorts of things. That skill becomes immensely important in the postseason when you start playing teams that are scheming away all of the analytically, you know the shots at the analytics department wants you to take. So I do value three level scoring a great deal because of that. I do value playmaking a little bit more than three level scoring, though, and the main reason for that is the way that teams guard superstars in the playoffs. You saw this a lot with Jayson Tatum as the as the games went along uh in the in this particular playoff run, you saw it with Kevin Durant with the way Boston was guarding people. You see it all over the league. But teams throw the kitchen sink at the stars. They pack the paint, they send doubles and stunts, and they dare your role players to make shots. So having players that are great at making those reads when the defense is over playing them that I would say is arguably the most important skill on the offensive end of the floor in the NBA. So again, really quickly, I value size, what translates to the playoffs being available to your team, versatility on defense rather than one elite defensive skill, and three level scoring, and playmaking with a slight edge towards playmaking. That's my criteria. So for this Top twenty five, I started by just trying to come up with a list of players that I thought were in the running, and I ended up coming up with twenty nine players. So that means that there are four players that missed the cut. That's Chris Paul, Bradley Beale, Trey Young, and Zach Levine. I wanted to give a really quick breakdown and why I did not include those guys in this list. So for CP three, we just had back to back playoff runs where he fell apart physically, you know, and that just needs to be planned on moving forward. Over the last five games of that Dallas series, he averaged nine points, six assists, and four turnovers, very unlike anything that we've seen from the Chris Paul era. As we heard after the series, he apparently had some sort of quad strain. When healthy, he's a top fifteen player. I think that goes without saying. His unique combination of scoring ability and pick and roll in his ability to pass the basketball puts him in that list. But he's just never healthy when it matters the most. It happened to him again the year before in the NBA Finals when he fell apart over the last four games. So as much as I value CP three and what he does when he's healthy, his lack of availability at least the peak version of himself drops him out of this list for me. And I think I just don't see a universe where he's more impactful on the biggest stages than the twenty five guys that are ahead of him. Bradley Beale injuries obviously are a big role. There has constantly been dealing with things on that front. And then lastly, it's just hard to evaluate Bradley Beale when he's never in a high stake environment anymore. And so again, like when I'm talking about how I value things that translate to the playoffs, and I just don't get to see Bradley Beale in the playoffs. I'm just naturally gonna fall back, and he's just naturally gonna fall back on my list. He has a very elite he has a he has an elite skill that I value a great deal, which is the ability to score the basketball at all three levels, like I talked about earlier. But again, it's just hard for me to translate that to compare him two guys that are fighting and scratching and clawing deep into the playoffs every single year. So I left him out of my list. Trey Young Uh He averaged fifteen points ont pcent from the field and eight percent from three against Miami. He had an eight point game, a nine point game, and an eleven point game against Milwaukee and Philly in the previous playoff run. The average eight, but it was a forty percent from the field, percent from three, any average five turnovers a game. So against the top, top, top tier defenses, the elite, super athletic defenses, he really struggles. And one of the things teams are figuring out is he's actually a little bit easy to guard because of how predictable he is. He comes off a high pick and roll and if you drop underneath, he's gonna pull up the three. So nobody does that. They chase him over the top. What he used to do is try to back up into you and draw fouls by falling backwards, but the refs removed that from his game. Teams have figured out that he struggles to finish over size underneath the basket. He only shot thirty percent in the restricted area against Miami, and he only shot fifty five percent from the restricted area in the playoffs the restrict As a point of reference to you, guys, that's about what Russell Westbrook shot in the restricted area this year for the Lakers. So it's really really bad. So they understand now that if you stay glued to him over the top of those screens and take away those floaters and short range shots and funnel him to the basket, he won't be able to score at the rim. And so it's kind of like a weakness of his that's been exposed. He's going to have to become a better rim finisher for him to reach his eventual ceiling, whatever that ends up being. But for the time being, I have him outside of my top twenty five. Uh. And then last but not not Lee Zach Lavine. So in in his first playoff series the average nineteen points per game on fifty percent effective field goal percentage, which is really not great. Um, he just needs to adjust to the playoffs. He needs to adjust to the different type of separation that you need to get scoring over physicality that's not present in the playoffs. And then most importantly, he's got the athleticism to be a more impactful defensive player. That's where he's gonna have to improve. Not an insult to any of these guys. Again, these were the twenty nine players that I picked that could be in the top twenty five. These guys just barely missed the cut. But again, the gap between Bradley Beal and you know, the twelve or thirteenth best player in the league is very small. That's just that, that's just the predicament that our league is in, all right, Number twenty five, Carl Towns. In the regular season, he averaged ten and four on sixty percent shooting. That's amazing, And in the playoffs he averaged two eleven and two on sixty two percent shooting. That's really damn good. He's one of the best scoring bigs that we have in the game, an excellent face up player. If he gets the ball with the with the with the live dribble triple threat you know, excuse me, not a live drible with a triple threat on the wing against the slow footed big, he's either going to jab step and pull up at three or he's going to rip through and go all the way to the room and finish. He's extremely difficult to handle in those spots on the floor. His ability to be efficient from the perimeter, one of the best perimeter shooting bigs that we have in the league. That will make him a really interesting fit next to Go Bear because he's gonna have to spend a great deal of his time on the perimeter or to allow Gobert to operate as someone who can screen and dive to the rim or sit in the dunker spot. But his defensive shortcomings. You know, last year they got hit into a certain extent because Minnesota's perimeter defense was so great, but he's actually pretty bad as a as a rim protector. And then as you slide Go Bear into that role. Yeah, that will fulfill that role. But with Carl Towns is the four next to Gobert. He's going to have to guard more in space. He's gonna have to guard quicker players, potentially some wings. He's gonna have to do a lot more in rotation. You can't slide Gobert into that role to guard the wings because that defeats the purpose of the trade to begin with. You want Gobert on the back line to help you protect the rim. So they're gonna have to put um Carl Town's into that specific role, and I think his defensive shortcomings will become even more glaring at that point. And then his last big weakness that I wanted to point out just inconsistency. You guys, remember that awful play in game he had with all the foul trouble, and then he had an eight point game in the first round. He just he struggles. He struggles with self control, you know, like some of the fouls that he was committing when he was in foul trouble in the playoffs. It's like, dude, where is your head at? You're just not paying attention to what's happening on the floor. You've got four fouls middle of the third quarter and your team misses a shot and you're just raking across the dude's arms for no particular reason. It's an easy foul, cahol, And now you've got to go to the bench before the end of the third quarter like that. That kind of stuff. Is it just it just doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Shot selection can get a little rough from time to time. You know the question with Carl Towns when you look at those numbers again, two eleven and two on shooting, that's a that's an incredible statistical achievement. But the question is he a winner or is he a good stats bad team guy. Good stats bad team guy is a real thing. I explained this to you guys when we did our when when I did my whole college basketball resume, thing like when I averaged almost sixteen points a game, our team was terrible, and then when I played on a good team, my scoring went way down because I was trying to score within a winning concept. It's completely different idea, right, And that's gonna be the thing for Carl Town's moving forward. It's going to be better for him to be at about twenty points per game efficiently but functionally doing really well on the defensive end of the floor, being a dominant physical presence on the interior as a rebounder, and you know, getting better with his decision making and his self control. Tying all those ends off is way more important than him being, you know, a thirty point per game guy that that can efficiently score in the postseason. We already know he can do all of that stuff. He's got to tie off the other areas of his game, the winning elements of his game, to no longer be a good stats, bad team guy. Right now, that's what he is. But I do believe he's capable of becoming a winner and hopefully getting alongside Rudy Gobert and playing in some more high stakes environments, like if they stay healthy, they're gonna make the playoffs. So Carl Town's will get more opportunities to show us that he's no longer a good stats, bad team guy. He just has to prove it. Number twenty four Donovan Mitchell regular season twenty four and five on fifty seven percent true shooting in the postseason this year kind of rough twenty six we're in six from the field and twenty percent from three. Not great, um, but to zoom out a little bit. Over his last three playoff runs, he's averaging thirty two, five and five on sixty one true shooting. He's as good of a playoff score as we've seen in the last few years. In those three playoff runs, he's attempting ten threes per game in shooting fort on them. That's as good of a volume three point shooter as you'll see around the league right now. So why is it that he's so low on this list despite those things that I just said, Well, he's kind of like at a crossroads right now. This crossroads is is he going to become the next Russell Westbrook or is he going to become the next Dwyane Wade. Now, obviously those are two absurd examples. Donovan Mitchell will never be Dwyane Wade. Dyane Wade is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. You know, in Russell Westbrook is I'm just talking in terms of the archetype. Is he gonna be the big athletic guard that in braces the things that makes him a winner, or is he gonna be the big athletic guard that becomes a guy who fills the stat sheet? But it just never materializes into winning basketball, and that that will come down to his ability to manage the game. We talked about this a lot on this show, but game management was a huge issue with the Boston Celtics as we got deeper into that playoff run. It's essentially understanding the value of the hundred possessions over the value of the one possession. Donovan Mitchell kind of gets a reactionary with the way he plays offense, like calls for a highball screen, and if the guy goes underneath, he's just pulling every single time, And if the guy chases him over the top, he's just going downhill every single time. And if he absolutely has to get rid of the basketball, he will, but he doesn't unless he absolutely has to, you know, and from and from that standpoint, him figuring out that it's not his job to create shots for himself thirty times a game. It's his job to create shots for his team sixty seven times per game. When he establishes that as his approach to the game, he'll start coming off of those ball screens not just thinking about whether or not he's open, but thinking about whether or not, you know, player A is in a rhythm, you know, depending on where he gets traded. Player B is in a rhythm how player sees hot. I need to keep feeding him, you know, like you know, my big man, he's starting to get a little worn out, and he hasn't gotten any touches, so maybe we need to get a post touch here, you know, like understanding the runs of the game, Like, okay, the other teams on an eight oh run, me taking a pull up three, even though I know I can make it, it's a lower percentage shot. Now is a great time to try to force a great look close to the basket so that we can stop this run, because if I miss this pull up three, it's even more deflating for my team. Him figuring out those things, those game management details, that's gonna be step one to him going the Dwyane Wade route rather than the Russell Westbrook route. And then the second part of it is the defensive end of the floor. When he was in college, he was a great defensive player, but he's almost completely like go of the row there. His defensive effort against the Utah Jazz, excuse me, against the Dallas Mavericks, and this year's playoff run was downright embarrassing. So if he doesn't learn to embrace that end of the floor again like the way Dwyane Wade did and like the way Russell Westbrook did not, then he will go to Russell Westbrook route. So those are the two things to look at, game management and commitment to the defensive end of the floor. If he can capture those two specific skills and and and develop them and dive into them in terms of his approach, he will go closer to the Dwyane Wade route. If he doesn't, he'll be the next Russell Westbrook, the next guy that puts up massive numbers and is constantly in the All Star Game and constantly on all NBA teams, and his team flames out in the first round of the playoffs. Number twenty three Pascal Siaka So in the regular season twenty nine and five on fifty seven percent true shooting, in the playoffs twenty three, seven and six on fifty six percent true shooting. Nice little consistency there. He's your classic two ways slashing wing that can play make a little bit right like we see so many of these guys in the league. You know, Tatum, Katie Kauai, Those kinds of things where it's like they can play make, but they're not great at it. Their best ability is just to score from the wing as a slasher or as a as a guy who can put the ball in the basket off the dribble as a jump shooter. Right, So what's the difference between him and those guys? Why is he twenty three and all those other guys I mentioned or top ten players in the league. Well, he he has the ability to shoot the basketball. He's not a bad shooter, but he's a very streaky shooter, and he quickly loses confidence in his jump shot and you can see it in his body language. So, and this is a phenomenon of scene with a lot of basketball players over the year. I personally had this phenomenal this weakness when I was when I was younger, when I was playing in college, Like when I had it going, like, man, it felt good every time it came off the hand, but I missed a couple and then like I got shaky because I didn't have like really good solid fundamentals to fall back on in terms of my shooting form, right, And so I had tendencies to go through long extended slumps where I couldn't shoot or couldn't make a shot or and then that would make me easy to guard, because then teams could play off of me and they'd let me shoot and I miss, or I'd drive into traffic and not have much success. Right, That's kind of what I see happened with Pascal Siakum a lot. And you saw this against the Sixers. Once they started playing off of him and he missed a couple of jumpers, you'd see him like take a pull up eighteen footer or and miss the hell out of it, like long and right and just carrying off the rim, and it's just it's almost like the entire arena kind of like has an awkward moment, and you can tell it. Just the confidence slips away from him, and then he becomes really one dimensional as a slasher. He really wants to drive left and then pound the basketball with his left hand and spin back to his right and finish at the rim. So if I don't have to guard him on the perimeter because he's in his head about his jump shot, and I could sit on that left hand to drive and be ready for the spin back to the right, I can contain him and that's what causes him to be less efficient and to not hit the scoring numbers as some of his peers can around the league. If he gets consistent with the jump shot. You know, I say this all the time. In the show My My high school coach they played professionally in Italy for like seven years, the one that I I'm an assistant coach with UM he talks about how there's the shooters and there's makers, and everyone's a shooter, but who's a maker? That the makers they never get in their head about when they're missing. They always feel like the next one's going in. They never lose confidence. If Seacom can get to that level, that's where you'll see twenty three points per game become twenty eight points per game because of the consistent success with the jump shot, which will open up his slashing opportunities and make him so much harder to guard. Number twenty two Chris Middleton twenty five and five on fifty eight percent true shooting in this regular season, and then he was hurting the playoffs. He only played I think one and a half games Classic three level scorers. Very His specific skill is when he can get smaller defenders on him. He's really good at working them down to five to fifteen feet and making you know, pull up mid range jump shots, turn around jump shots over both shoulders, hook shots, and push shots in the lane. He's your classic miss smatch attacking wing. He's got every single pull up jumper in the book. Um, sidesteps, step backs, turnovers over his left shoulder, turn turnarounds over his right shoulders. Uh um, you know, uh, drifting shots in the lane, one like fadeaways. He's got it all right. He even has one of the best transition pull up jump shots that I've seen in basketball. You guys, all you Bucks fans have seen this where you know, the Bucks are on a little bit of a run. They're up you know, seven oh run, and they get a stop and Middleton just will dribble the ball up the floor with some pace and then just stop at the three point line and rise up and knock it down. It's kind of a unique skill that he has. Only handful of guys in the league do that really well. Kevin Durant another guy who's excellent at that specific skill. Um, but you know, just just a really really talented three level score. The specific things that hold him back once again. The things that keep him down here in twenty two as opposed to much higher on the list is he's inconsistent. You guys remember this from the title run. It was like either he was magnificent and damn near saving the team or he was like a complete no show. And those are the things that he has to iron out. I think that's offinite stuff for him. He just doesn't quite have that. You. He almost needs to have that irrational confidence to where he feels like he has it every night. Um, he's not quite the defensive player that Pascal Siakam is, but it's close. So that's why I have him above him there, because he's a much better offensive player. The big question here that that that I wanted to um to kind of approach for some fun. Is Chris Middleton over or underrated due to his proximity to Janice. We hear about this specific topic a lot. You'll have people who dislike Janice who will talk about how Chris Middleton is the best player on the team, right, which is absurd, And then you'll have Johannes fans who will say somewhat of the opposite, right. I tend to think that He's properly rated in the sense that he's not a superstar. He's not a guy that is better than Jannie or at that level, but he is underrated in the way that he specifically complements Janice's skill set. I think Janice is the best player in basketball spoiler alert will get there in the end, you guys, it's not even a spoiler upset it on like a half dozen shows over the last couple of months. Um. But Janice has all of these tremendously elite skills, but he has one specific weakness. When the when you're in a half court set in the team really packs the paint, he struggles to shoot over the top. Okay, Chris Middleton has that skill down to a t. That's his greatest strength. So Chris Middleton's best strength complements Janice's best weakness, therefore making him immensely valuable. Like I talked about earlier, specifically that skill set punishing smaller defenders to score in the mid to short range is one of the most valuable skills in the game of basketball. So the way I look at it, Chris Middleton is properly rated a player that deserves the recognition that he gets and it's just crazy people on both sides that are talking on either end. Just think of it this way, guys, Like Game seven UM against the Brooklyn Nets, it was Chris Middleton who hit the big shot right against UH. I think it was Game one against Miami last year they swept him in a crazy first game. It was Chris Middleton who at the big shot that closed the deal. That is specific skill is so immensely valuable to Milwaukee because they're so great everywhere else and they just need someone that can make shots over the top, and Chris Middleton does that for them. Alright, last, but not least, Number twenty one, Anthony Edwards. So you average five and four on fifty six percent true shooting in the regular season, four and three on six true shooting in the postseason. That's incredible. So going up from one to twenty five points per game and going up from fifty six to true shooting, why does that happen? Why does his game translate so well to the playoffs? And again, I know that's only one playoffs series, but that was against a very good Memphis defense, and I believe that is replicable. I believe he will continue to do that over the years. So why is that? It's size and strength. The very first thing that I pointed out in our criteria at the top of the show his ability to slash past anybody because he's six ft five or six ft six whatever. He is built like a truck, ridiculous first step, and if you get in front of him, he'll just bullyball you to go through you. It's almost like a miniature Lebron in that sense. That combination of size and strength and first step makes him a devastating physical physical a devastating physical specimen to deal with defensively. Then you combine that with the fact that he's already at this age a proficient pull up jump shooter. You guys probably remember me talking about this a lot during the postseason. He shot eight pull up jump shots per game in this playoff run and made him That's that's awesome, that that is as incredibly efficient pull up jump shooting. That combination of efficient pull up jump shooting with his size and strength and slashing ability will make him a devastating playoff player for years to come. I'm very very high on Anthony Edwards. That's why I have him at twenty one even though he's only played two NBA seasons. A couple of things, what what what is it gonna take for Anthony Edwards to take the leap? Well, first of all, you only had three assists per game in the playoffs. So some of the similar stuff that I was talking about with Donovan Mitchell, learning game management, understanding that it's not your job just to create shots for yourself, but it's your job to be the offensive engine for a basketball team for forty eight minutes. When he understands that, he'll start coming off of these actions and and looking for teammates and being mindful of the rhythm and and all those things that I talked about earlier with Donovan Mitchell, him taking advantage of game management and then committing to the defensive end of the floor. He doesn't have long to go, Guys. I think Anthony Edwards could very easily be a top ten player in the league this year if things break right. If not, it'll happen in the next two or three years. I'm extremely I'm extremely high on Anthony Edwards alright through twenty one all wrapped up. I believe on Thursday we will have twenty through sixteen and that one is going to be a super entert hating one because I definitely have some ones in there that you guys will either agree with or disagree with vehemently, so it should be some fun. All right, guys, That's all I have for today. I appreciate your support as always, and I'll see you in a couple of days. The volume

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All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FANDOL here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week. It is that time of year again. We are going to do our player rankings, one of my favorite things to do to deal with the hoop withdrawals over the summer we're gonna get it down to the top five players in the NBA. I'm gonna give you guys my criteria to start off. Then i'm gonna go over some of the guys that missed the cut and why, and then today we will be doing number through number twenty one. So before we get started, you guys know the drill. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you guys don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt S, you guys don't miss any show announcements or any other video content that I produced. And then, last but not least, if you miss some portion of the show and you can't get back to YouTube but you're driving around town or something, you can always find these in audio form on our podcast feeds shortly after they go up on YouTube, So you can find that under Hoops Tonight wherever you find your podcast. All Right, so this kind of thing is entirely subjective, so before we get started, don't get emotional about anything. If you disagree about anything, just drop it in the comments. I'd love to hear it. All of these guys are extremely close to each other because the league is at a in a in a era where there is more talent than we've ever seen in the game of basketball. The gap between the best player and the seventh best player is tiny, and on any given night, any of those guys can outplay each other. So if I have a guy ranked lower than you thought, tell me why you disagree. Don't get all emotional and upset, because that's the one thing that gets kind of frustrating with these lists is just how everyone thinks they've got it all figured out, and the truth of the matter is none of us do, and we're all just doing our best to get s and all of these guys are incredibly good, and we're just splitting hair. So my criteria, it's not a harder fast rule because every player is different, right, Like you know, Steph's roll on a team doesn't resemble Yokis roll on a team, or and Beads roll on the team. So you can't apply the same criteria uniformly across the board. But there are general things that I value that will lead to some of these decisions, so I wanted to lay those out. First of all, size is something that I value to a great degree in basketball. Steph is the exception to this rule. I spoiler alert, I have Steph very high on my list. Okay, but he's the one short guy up there, and he's not even that short. He's six ft three and he's pretty stocky and strong. But the main reason why is everything on a basketball court is easier when you're bigger, especially if you can move your feet, covering ground on the perimeter and rotations, skying for rebounds, being able to hold position in box outs, are in post ups, dealing with the physicality. That's arguably the biggest reason why I value size in the NBA. Think of it like this, Guys, we're gonna be watching on October seventeenth or sixteenth or whatever. It is, a season opening basketball game, probably on you know, one of the major networks that will probably involve the Warriors and someone else. Right when that happens, we'll be watching, and we'll probably be complaining about the refs and how tikie tack they are with their whistle, right, and it might be a topic of conversation through a good chunk of the season. But make no mistake, come June, there will be two teams in a complete and total blood bath. It happens every single year. The playoffs are extremely different from the regular season, and in that environment, size and strength does matter. Steph is just so exceptionally talented that he's a top ten player in NBA history in spite of the fact that he doesn't have a great set of physical tools. That playoff translatability is another huge part of this. The game just as different at that level. It's not just the physictality, it's the scheming. It's the level of defensive attention thrown to the stars, adding a great deal of value towards playmaking, which we'll get to in a minute. That ability to translate to the playoffs, that's something that I'm gonna value heavily on this list. If you've got a player that's a dominant regular season player, but he doesn't play as well in the playoffs or he doesn't get there, I'm gonna have him lower on my list. Availability is a big thing being available to your team. Don't have to dive any further into that defensive versatility. It's a huge difference between the ability to defend in one role in the ability to defend in multiple roles. That is a huge deal in the playoffs when scheming becomes a bigger role in switching becomes a bigger role. You're not just going to get to park under the basket and block shots. You're not just gonna get to guard little guards or guard big forwards. You're gonna have to guard both, and you're probably gonna have to cover a lot of ground in rotations. So defensive versatility is gonna matter a lot to me. And then, last, but not least, the two big offensive skills that I value are playmaking and three level scoring. The reason why is, well, let's start with three scoring. With the way that NBA teams guard. You know, all these offenses, because of analytics, are heading towards rim attempts and three point attempts. Why because the rim is the most efficient shot in basketball and the three point shot is the second most efficient shot in basketball when you account for shot value. But because of that, over the last few years, almost every defense in the league has leaned heavily in towards in towards prioritizing the three point line and the free throw in the in the basket right, they will chaotically chase guys off the three point line to give up a driving lane, knowing that they have a rotation set up at the rim, and they can make up for it on the back end. They will leave a massive opening in the middle of the floor to take away those threes and to take away the basket. That's why three level scoring is so important. The guys that are comfortable stopping short after running off the three point line to knock down a mid range jump shot, to knock down a float, or to score in the mid range, those sorts of things. That skill becomes immensely important in the postseason when you start playing teams that are scheming away all of the analytically, you know the shots at the analytics department wants you to take. So I do value three level scoring a great deal because of that. I do value playmaking a little bit more than three level scoring, though, and the main reason for that is the way that teams guard superstars in the playoffs. You saw this a lot with Jayson Tatum as the as the games went along uh in the in this particular playoff run, you saw it with Kevin Durant with the way Boston was guarding people. You see it all over the league. But teams throw the kitchen sink at the stars. They pack the paint, they send doubles and stunts, and they dare your role players to make shots. So having players that are great at making those reads when the defense is over playing them that I would say is arguably the most important skill on the offensive end of the floor in the NBA. So again, really quickly, I value size, what translates to the playoffs being available to your team, versatility on defense rather than one elite defensive skill, and three level scoring, and playmaking with a slight edge towards playmaking. That's my criteria. So for this Top twenty five, I started by just trying to come up with a list of players that I thought were in the running, and I ended up coming up with twenty nine players. So that means that there are four players that missed the cut. That's Chris Paul, Bradley Beale, Trey Young, and Zach Levine. I wanted to give a really quick breakdown and why I did not include those guys in this list. So for CP three, we just had back to back playoff runs where he fell apart physically, you know, and that just needs to be planned on moving forward. Over the last five games of that Dallas series, he averaged nine points, six assists, and four turnovers, very unlike anything that we've seen from the Chris Paul era. As we heard after the series, he apparently had some sort of quad strain. When healthy, he's a top fifteen player. I think that goes without saying. His unique combination of scoring ability and pick and roll in his ability to pass the basketball puts him in that list. But he's just never healthy when it matters the most. It happened to him again the year before in the NBA Finals when he fell apart over the last four games. So as much as I value CP three and what he does when he's healthy, his lack of availability at least the peak version of himself drops him out of this list for me. And I think I just don't see a universe where he's more impactful on the biggest stages than the twenty five guys that are ahead of him. Bradley Beale injuries obviously are a big role. There has constantly been dealing with things on that front. And then lastly, it's just hard to evaluate Bradley Beale when he's never in a high stake environment anymore. And so again, like when I'm talking about how I value things that translate to the playoffs, and I just don't get to see Bradley Beale in the playoffs. I'm just naturally gonna fall back, and he's just naturally gonna fall back on my list. He has a very elite he has a he has an elite skill that I value a great deal, which is the ability to score the basketball at all three levels, like I talked about earlier. But again, it's just hard for me to translate that to compare him two guys that are fighting and scratching and clawing deep into the playoffs every single year. So I left him out of my list. Trey Young Uh He averaged fifteen points ont pcent from the field and eight percent from three against Miami. He had an eight point game, a nine point game, and an eleven point game against Milwaukee and Philly in the previous playoff run. The average eight, but it was a forty percent from the field, percent from three, any average five turnovers a game. So against the top, top, top tier defenses, the elite, super athletic defenses, he really struggles. And one of the things teams are figuring out is he's actually a little bit easy to guard because of how predictable he is. He comes off a high pick and roll and if you drop underneath, he's gonna pull up the three. So nobody does that. They chase him over the top. What he used to do is try to back up into you and draw fouls by falling backwards, but the refs removed that from his game. Teams have figured out that he struggles to finish over size underneath the basket. He only shot thirty percent in the restricted area against Miami, and he only shot fifty five percent from the restricted area in the playoffs the restrict As a point of reference to you, guys, that's about what Russell Westbrook shot in the restricted area this year for the Lakers. So it's really really bad. So they understand now that if you stay glued to him over the top of those screens and take away those floaters and short range shots and funnel him to the basket, he won't be able to score at the rim. And so it's kind of like a weakness of his that's been exposed. He's going to have to become a better rim finisher for him to reach his eventual ceiling, whatever that ends up being. But for the time being, I have him outside of my top twenty five. Uh. And then last but not not Lee Zach Lavine. So in in his first playoff series the average nineteen points per game on fifty percent effective field goal percentage, which is really not great. Um, he just needs to adjust to the playoffs. He needs to adjust to the different type of separation that you need to get scoring over physicality that's not present in the playoffs. And then most importantly, he's got the athleticism to be a more impactful defensive player. That's where he's gonna have to improve. Not an insult to any of these guys. Again, these were the twenty nine players that I picked that could be in the top twenty five. These guys just barely missed the cut. But again, the gap between Bradley Beal and you know, the twelve or thirteenth best player in the league is very small. That's just that, that's just the predicament that our league is in, all right, Number twenty five, Carl Towns. In the regular season, he averaged ten and four on sixty percent shooting. That's amazing, And in the playoffs he averaged two eleven and two on sixty two percent shooting. That's really damn good. He's one of the best scoring bigs that we have in the game, an excellent face up player. If he gets the ball with the with the with the live dribble triple threat you know, excuse me, not a live drible with a triple threat on the wing against the slow footed big, he's either going to jab step and pull up at three or he's going to rip through and go all the way to the room and finish. He's extremely difficult to handle in those spots on the floor. His ability to be efficient from the perimeter, one of the best perimeter shooting bigs that we have in the league. That will make him a really interesting fit next to Go Bear because he's gonna have to spend a great deal of his time on the perimeter or to allow Gobert to operate as someone who can screen and dive to the rim or sit in the dunker spot. But his defensive shortcomings. You know, last year they got hit into a certain extent because Minnesota's perimeter defense was so great, but he's actually pretty bad as a as a rim protector. And then as you slide Go Bear into that role. Yeah, that will fulfill that role. But with Carl Towns is the four next to Gobert. He's going to have to guard more in space. He's gonna have to guard quicker players, potentially some wings. He's gonna have to do a lot more in rotation. You can't slide Gobert into that role to guard the wings because that defeats the purpose of the trade to begin with. You want Gobert on the back line to help you protect the rim. So they're gonna have to put um Carl Town's into that specific role, and I think his defensive shortcomings will become even more glaring at that point. And then his last big weakness that I wanted to point out just inconsistency. You guys, remember that awful play in game he had with all the foul trouble, and then he had an eight point game in the first round. He just he struggles. He struggles with self control, you know, like some of the fouls that he was committing when he was in foul trouble in the playoffs. It's like, dude, where is your head at? You're just not paying attention to what's happening on the floor. You've got four fouls middle of the third quarter and your team misses a shot and you're just raking across the dude's arms for no particular reason. It's an easy foul, cahol, And now you've got to go to the bench before the end of the third quarter like that. That kind of stuff. Is it just it just doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Shot selection can get a little rough from time to time. You know the question with Carl Towns when you look at those numbers again, two eleven and two on shooting, that's a that's an incredible statistical achievement. But the question is he a winner or is he a good stats bad team guy. Good stats bad team guy is a real thing. I explained this to you guys when we did our when when I did my whole college basketball resume, thing like when I averaged almost sixteen points a game, our team was terrible, and then when I played on a good team, my scoring went way down because I was trying to score within a winning concept. It's completely different idea, right, And that's gonna be the thing for Carl Town's moving forward. It's going to be better for him to be at about twenty points per game efficiently but functionally doing really well on the defensive end of the floor, being a dominant physical presence on the interior as a rebounder, and you know, getting better with his decision making and his self control. Tying all those ends off is way more important than him being, you know, a thirty point per game guy that that can efficiently score in the postseason. We already know he can do all of that stuff. He's got to tie off the other areas of his game, the winning elements of his game, to no longer be a good stats, bad team guy. Right now, that's what he is. But I do believe he's capable of becoming a winner and hopefully getting alongside Rudy Gobert and playing in some more high stakes environments, like if they stay healthy, they're gonna make the playoffs. So Carl Town's will get more opportunities to show us that he's no longer a good stats, bad team guy. He just has to prove it. Number twenty four Donovan Mitchell regular season twenty four and five on fifty seven percent true shooting in the postseason this year kind of rough twenty six we're in six from the field and twenty percent from three. Not great, um, but to zoom out a little bit. Over his last three playoff runs, he's averaging thirty two, five and five on sixty one true shooting. He's as good of a playoff score as we've seen in the last few years. In those three playoff runs, he's attempting ten threes per game in shooting fort on them. That's as good of a volume three point shooter as you'll see around the league right now. So why is it that he's so low on this list despite those things that I just said, Well, he's kind of like at a crossroads right now. This crossroads is is he going to become the next Russell Westbrook or is he going to become the next Dwyane Wade. Now, obviously those are two absurd examples. Donovan Mitchell will never be Dwyane Wade. Dyane Wade is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. You know, in Russell Westbrook is I'm just talking in terms of the archetype. Is he gonna be the big athletic guard that in braces the things that makes him a winner, or is he gonna be the big athletic guard that becomes a guy who fills the stat sheet? But it just never materializes into winning basketball, and that that will come down to his ability to manage the game. We talked about this a lot on this show, but game management was a huge issue with the Boston Celtics as we got deeper into that playoff run. It's essentially understanding the value of the hundred possessions over the value of the one possession. Donovan Mitchell kind of gets a reactionary with the way he plays offense, like calls for a highball screen, and if the guy goes underneath, he's just pulling every single time, And if the guy chases him over the top, he's just going downhill every single time. And if he absolutely has to get rid of the basketball, he will, but he doesn't unless he absolutely has to, you know, and from and from that standpoint, him figuring out that it's not his job to create shots for himself thirty times a game. It's his job to create shots for his team sixty seven times per game. When he establishes that as his approach to the game, he'll start coming off of those ball screens not just thinking about whether or not he's open, but thinking about whether or not, you know, player A is in a rhythm, you know, depending on where he gets traded. Player B is in a rhythm how player sees hot. I need to keep feeding him, you know, like you know, my big man, he's starting to get a little worn out, and he hasn't gotten any touches, so maybe we need to get a post touch here, you know, like understanding the runs of the game, Like, okay, the other teams on an eight oh run, me taking a pull up three, even though I know I can make it, it's a lower percentage shot. Now is a great time to try to force a great look close to the basket so that we can stop this run, because if I miss this pull up three, it's even more deflating for my team. Him figuring out those things, those game management details, that's gonna be step one to him going the Dwyane Wade route rather than the Russell Westbrook route. And then the second part of it is the defensive end of the floor. When he was in college, he was a great defensive player, but he's almost completely like go of the row there. His defensive effort against the Utah Jazz, excuse me, against the Dallas Mavericks, and this year's playoff run was downright embarrassing. So if he doesn't learn to embrace that end of the floor again like the way Dwyane Wade did and like the way Russell Westbrook did not, then he will go to Russell Westbrook route. So those are the two things to look at, game management and commitment to the defensive end of the floor. If he can capture those two specific skills and and and develop them and dive into them in terms of his approach, he will go closer to the Dwyane Wade route. If he doesn't, he'll be the next Russell Westbrook, the next guy that puts up massive numbers and is constantly in the All Star Game and constantly on all NBA teams, and his team flames out in the first round of the playoffs. Number twenty three Pascal Siaka So in the regular season twenty nine and five on fifty seven percent true shooting, in the playoffs twenty three, seven and six on fifty six percent true shooting. Nice little consistency there. He's your classic two ways slashing wing that can play make a little bit right like we see so many of these guys in the league. You know, Tatum, Katie Kauai, Those kinds of things where it's like they can play make, but they're not great at it. Their best ability is just to score from the wing as a slasher or as a as a guy who can put the ball in the basket off the dribble as a jump shooter. Right, So what's the difference between him and those guys? Why is he twenty three and all those other guys I mentioned or top ten players in the league. Well, he he has the ability to shoot the basketball. He's not a bad shooter, but he's a very streaky shooter, and he quickly loses confidence in his jump shot and you can see it in his body language. So, and this is a phenomenon of scene with a lot of basketball players over the year. I personally had this phenomenal this weakness when I was when I was younger, when I was playing in college, Like when I had it going, like, man, it felt good every time it came off the hand, but I missed a couple and then like I got shaky because I didn't have like really good solid fundamentals to fall back on in terms of my shooting form, right, And so I had tendencies to go through long extended slumps where I couldn't shoot or couldn't make a shot or and then that would make me easy to guard, because then teams could play off of me and they'd let me shoot and I miss, or I'd drive into traffic and not have much success. Right, That's kind of what I see happened with Pascal Siakum a lot. And you saw this against the Sixers. Once they started playing off of him and he missed a couple of jumpers, you'd see him like take a pull up eighteen footer or and miss the hell out of it, like long and right and just carrying off the rim, and it's just it's almost like the entire arena kind of like has an awkward moment, and you can tell it. Just the confidence slips away from him, and then he becomes really one dimensional as a slasher. He really wants to drive left and then pound the basketball with his left hand and spin back to his right and finish at the rim. So if I don't have to guard him on the perimeter because he's in his head about his jump shot, and I could sit on that left hand to drive and be ready for the spin back to the right, I can contain him and that's what causes him to be less efficient and to not hit the scoring numbers as some of his peers can around the league. If he gets consistent with the jump shot. You know, I say this all the time. In the show My My high school coach they played professionally in Italy for like seven years, the one that I I'm an assistant coach with UM he talks about how there's the shooters and there's makers, and everyone's a shooter, but who's a maker? That the makers they never get in their head about when they're missing. They always feel like the next one's going in. They never lose confidence. If Seacom can get to that level, that's where you'll see twenty three points per game become twenty eight points per game because of the consistent success with the jump shot, which will open up his slashing opportunities and make him so much harder to guard. Number twenty two Chris Middleton twenty five and five on fifty eight percent true shooting in this regular season, and then he was hurting the playoffs. He only played I think one and a half games Classic three level scorers. Very His specific skill is when he can get smaller defenders on him. He's really good at working them down to five to fifteen feet and making you know, pull up mid range jump shots, turn around jump shots over both shoulders, hook shots, and push shots in the lane. He's your classic miss smatch attacking wing. He's got every single pull up jumper in the book. Um, sidesteps, step backs, turnovers over his left shoulder, turn turnarounds over his right shoulders. Uh um, you know, uh, drifting shots in the lane, one like fadeaways. He's got it all right. He even has one of the best transition pull up jump shots that I've seen in basketball. You guys, all you Bucks fans have seen this where you know, the Bucks are on a little bit of a run. They're up you know, seven oh run, and they get a stop and Middleton just will dribble the ball up the floor with some pace and then just stop at the three point line and rise up and knock it down. It's kind of a unique skill that he has. Only handful of guys in the league do that really well. Kevin Durant another guy who's excellent at that specific skill. Um, but you know, just just a really really talented three level score. The specific things that hold him back once again. The things that keep him down here in twenty two as opposed to much higher on the list is he's inconsistent. You guys remember this from the title run. It was like either he was magnificent and damn near saving the team or he was like a complete no show. And those are the things that he has to iron out. I think that's offinite stuff for him. He just doesn't quite have that. You. He almost needs to have that irrational confidence to where he feels like he has it every night. Um, he's not quite the defensive player that Pascal Siakam is, but it's close. So that's why I have him above him there, because he's a much better offensive player. The big question here that that that I wanted to um to kind of approach for some fun. Is Chris Middleton over or underrated due to his proximity to Janice. We hear about this specific topic a lot. You'll have people who dislike Janice who will talk about how Chris Middleton is the best player on the team, right, which is absurd, And then you'll have Johannes fans who will say somewhat of the opposite, right. I tend to think that He's properly rated in the sense that he's not a superstar. He's not a guy that is better than Jannie or at that level, but he is underrated in the way that he specifically complements Janice's skill set. I think Janice is the best player in basketball spoiler alert will get there in the end, you guys, it's not even a spoiler upset it on like a half dozen shows over the last couple of months. Um. But Janice has all of these tremendously elite skills, but he has one specific weakness. When the when you're in a half court set in the team really packs the paint, he struggles to shoot over the top. Okay, Chris Middleton has that skill down to a t. That's his greatest strength. So Chris Middleton's best strength complements Janice's best weakness, therefore making him immensely valuable. Like I talked about earlier, specifically that skill set punishing smaller defenders to score in the mid to short range is one of the most valuable skills in the game of basketball. So the way I look at it, Chris Middleton is properly rated a player that deserves the recognition that he gets and it's just crazy people on both sides that are talking on either end. Just think of it this way, guys, Like Game seven UM against the Brooklyn Nets, it was Chris Middleton who hit the big shot right against UH. I think it was Game one against Miami last year they swept him in a crazy first game. It was Chris Middleton who at the big shot that closed the deal. That is specific skill is so immensely valuable to Milwaukee because they're so great everywhere else and they just need someone that can make shots over the top, and Chris Middleton does that for them. Alright, last, but not least, Number twenty one, Anthony Edwards. So you average five and four on fifty six percent true shooting in the regular season, four and three on six true shooting in the postseason. That's incredible. So going up from one to twenty five points per game and going up from fifty six to true shooting, why does that happen? Why does his game translate so well to the playoffs? And again, I know that's only one playoffs series, but that was against a very good Memphis defense, and I believe that is replicable. I believe he will continue to do that over the years. So why is that? It's size and strength. The very first thing that I pointed out in our criteria at the top of the show his ability to slash past anybody because he's six ft five or six ft six whatever. He is built like a truck, ridiculous first step, and if you get in front of him, he'll just bullyball you to go through you. It's almost like a miniature Lebron in that sense. That combination of size and strength and first step makes him a devastating physical physical a devastating physical specimen to deal with defensively. Then you combine that with the fact that he's already at this age a proficient pull up jump shooter. You guys probably remember me talking about this a lot during the postseason. He shot eight pull up jump shots per game in this playoff run and made him That's that's awesome, that that is as incredibly efficient pull up jump shooting. That combination of efficient pull up jump shooting with his size and strength and slashing ability will make him a devastating playoff player for years to come. I'm very very high on Anthony Edwards. That's why I have him at twenty one even though he's only played two NBA seasons. A couple of things, what what what is it gonna take for Anthony Edwards to take the leap? Well, first of all, you only had three assists per game in the playoffs. So some of the similar stuff that I was talking about with Donovan Mitchell, learning game management, understanding that it's not your job just to create shots for yourself, but it's your job to be the offensive engine for a basketball team for forty eight minutes. When he understands that, he'll start coming off of these actions and and looking for teammates and being mindful of the rhythm and and all those things that I talked about earlier with Donovan Mitchell, him taking advantage of game management and then committing to the defensive end of the floor. He doesn't have long to go, Guys. I think Anthony Edwards could very easily be a top ten player in the league this year if things break right. If not, it'll happen in the next two or three years. I'm extremely I'm extremely high on Anthony Edwards alright through twenty one all wrapped up. I believe on Thursday we will have twenty through sixteen and that one is going to be a super entert hating one because I definitely have some ones in there that you guys will either agree with or disagree with vehemently, so it should be some fun. All right, guys, That's all I have for today. I appreciate your support as always, and I'll see you in a couple of days. The volume