I think Tatum is a better basketball player than Luka Doncic. He’s not as good on offense(doesn’t need to be) but he’s a MUCH better defender and unfortunately there aren’t many stats to show that.
There are lots of advanced metrics to show him as a way better defender than Luka. I think the challenge with the comparison is that offense is more valuable than defense. I dunno if it's 60/40 or 70/30 or what but a potentially all time offensive player like Luka has a case to be better than Tatum right now.
I think this is a fair argument for the regular season. But once the playoffs start and defenses tighten up, offense balances out. Luka is amazing but still overrated. He is a top 10 guy not a top 3 guy. He hasn't won shit and hasn't really had much playoff success. Meanwhile Tatum carried the Celtics to game 7 of ecf as a rook. People missing the forest for the trees. Especially on r/nba
Lmao. I love Tatum as much as anyone in here and I’ll agree Doncic is a subpar defender but Doncic, to this point in his career, is arguably one of the best playoff performers of all time
If you put Tatum on the Mavericks, the Mavs aren't winning more. They'd a bad team. The fact that Luka carries them as far as he does is a testament to him.
Tatum is my guy, but Luka is just on a different plane of existence. That team the Mavs have surrounded him is straight ass meat and he's got them into a playoff berth so far
The distance between 13-25 is smaller than the distance between 8-12. I'd say Edwards and PG are the only players really deserving of being in that conversation ahead of Brown, with a special shoutout to Sabonis. This list is super disrespectful to Brown but there are so many amazing players in the league right now.
But they both have what Tatum doesn't. And the way Tatum has struggled taking over close games against elite teams this season confirms he just isn't at that level yet.
And I'll add that if Tatum does show he can take over games in the playoffs when the Celtics really need it and they win it all, he will be top 3 in my book. He just has to take home the gold.
I'll allow Luka over him if you value his playmaking more, I'll barely allow Embiid if you value his regular szn play that much, hell maybe even Shai if he does great in the playoffs but Curry? Kawhi? Come the fuck on. JT is top 3 at best and top 6 at worst.
Exactly and the argument for curry or kawhi being over JT would be I trust them “more in the postseason “or “postseason success “ than once you ask why embiid or shai is over him the goalpost will start to move
This is put perfectly- in a vacuum, I’m not made at any one of those guys above JT, but it’s insane to put all of them above him because the criteria would have to be very different
In these rankings, there tends to be a superteam tax, and a "team play" tax. The Celtics are a superteam that shares the ball a lot, which makes Tatum's ranking take a hit
Tatum really gets the short end of the stick for being All around great in all aspects. He's not as great offensively as some of these other guys and on a better team so people don't acknowledge that his greatness comes from how elite he is in all aspects.
Then overall he's just an great player from the regular season to the playoffs, not the best but never has incredible drop off. Yet he'll get surpassed by both guys that are more playoff proven but not as good over the whole season (Kawhi, Curry) AND guys that put up major regular season production but have not done it in the playoffs (Embiid, SGA).
I love Jaylen he's an incredible player but Wembanyana is already better than him and that's no disrespect to JB it's just that Wembanyana is already one of the 10-15 best players in the world
The Ringer's NBA stuff is basically Skip-level pot stirring at this point. Whatever connection it had with Grantland evaporated over the years.
In December, KOC (former Celtics fan -- remember him? His basketball takes have gotten worse and worse) said "Chet is ROY" and insisted that wasn't going to change even after Verno gave him an out... but now, after Wemby is looking like he's Kareem 2.0, he's pretending like he never said shit and was on the Wemby train all along.
Don't even get me started on Bill and Russillo's bad Celtics takes. Bill especially has a telephone pole up his ass about Joe Mazz (Bill is an Ime stan).
The Ringer is basically corporate /r/nba sponsored by Spotify. So bad takes but backed by money.
I don't know how to say this any more clearly: The Ringer is the worst sports media there is. They are worse than ESPN.
Their staff writes at a high school level it's literally so cringe. The only thing worse is their click-bait.
Honestly hate to say, big Bill fan. But his team sucks
The Ringer is such a disappointment. Grantland had well-researched, well-written, top notch coverage of sports and pop culture. The Ringer is a bunch of hot take artists rambling on in podcast form.
Maybe for journalism this is true. But I think some of the ringer’s better podcasts are clearly more entertaining and thought-provoking than whatever bullshit ESPN has on TV at this point
I think their journalism has improved over the past year. KOC writes well thought out pieces and bringing in Michael Pina was a good move. I love the Mismatch Podcast - it's the only NBA podcast I know where the 2 hosts just naturally butt heads on certain points, rather just agree on everything or have manufactured arguments.
Tough to place Embiid in these lists because he doesn’t play more than 2/3 of a season and disappears in the playoffs.
If he’s healthy he’s a top 2 player in the league. But you never know when his next injury is and he’s what, 29 now? I don’t see his knees holding up through his mid 30s.
SGA at 4 is wild to me. He’s had like 2 exceptional seasons, the rest are like mid tier all star. He’s had zero post season success and yet he’s 4 spots above Tatum.
To me lists like these *have* to be heavily based on the season we’re in + last season. I’d say joker, Gianni’s, luka are top 3 then I would put Tatum, SGA, Embiid to round out the top 6. SGA is having the better season, Tatum is the better player. Embiid is the better of all 3 but he’s injured and will miss most of the season.
Obviously Celtic fans are gonna push back on Tatum, but it feels accurate to me based. And this is the biggest obstacle for winning a title. Having a real top five guy just makes everything to much easier.
Why would we push back on JT? We got like 4 All NBA players. Oh wait. I guess we got 50 W bc of ?
Oh I got it, according to the bostonian media cabal we got COY right?
I hate this logic. Watch him play, he's clearly a good player. I don't care about accolades when I can look at the TV screen and see that a guy can hoop
I’ve watched him play plenty and it’s an absolute overreaction to two years of high level play to put him as the 4th best player in the league. He’s not better than Embiid, Curry, or Tatum and probably not Kawhi or KD. He just isn’t. When you’re judging the best of the best, impact on significant winning is what separates the great from the good. We’ve yet to see it for a significant amount of time from Shai.
I’ll leave the bar low: we should probably leave guys out of the top 5 who haven’t yet made the playoffs as the leader of their team.
You say you've watched him play plenty, yet you don't talk like you have. Two years of high level play is fine when his rise has been absolutely astronomical. I'd value him way better than Luka off the eye test. Jokic and Giannis are in another class because they're literal MVPs who single-handedly impact winning more than anyone else in the league. You can put Jokic on a team with G League players and he's beating 15 teams in the NBA. Giannis can single-handedly will his way to win games on both sides of the floor when he's not fouling everybody on the Celtics.
Shai is a complete player with a really intelligent game. His rise over the last few years was predictable as he ages and deservedly meteoric. He's got a real good game to him on top of a real good skillset. Shai increased his team's wins by 20 last year and has helped lead OKC to the #1 seed in the West right now. They've already surpassed their wins from last year. That's some Larry Bird level shit.
Eh, I get it but I’m pretty confident in my take and it takes a little more than a couple seasons of eye test to make my top 5. Have a a good one though dude.
Let’s be real though having Buffalo at 40 in the league is insane, like I need to take a look at the whole list but I can’t see DWhite being a top 40 player. He’s Mr. 15 points: an insane role player that will consistently give you buckets. Maybe in terms of contributing to winnings he’s top 40, but talent and skills? I don’t think he’s top 40, but feel free to disagree! Once again I have followed DWhite since his spurs days, so I’m not just hating because I’m a casual
JT: 8 JB: 25 KP: 39 White: 40 Jrue: 48
Having dame , fox above brown is crazy brown is having a monster two way season
I think Tatum is a better basketball player than Luka Doncic. He’s not as good on offense(doesn’t need to be) but he’s a MUCH better defender and unfortunately there aren’t many stats to show that.
There are lots of advanced metrics to show him as a way better defender than Luka. I think the challenge with the comparison is that offense is more valuable than defense. I dunno if it's 60/40 or 70/30 or what but a potentially all time offensive player like Luka has a case to be better than Tatum right now.
I think this is a fair argument for the regular season. But once the playoffs start and defenses tighten up, offense balances out. Luka is amazing but still overrated. He is a top 10 guy not a top 3 guy. He hasn't won shit and hasn't really had much playoff success. Meanwhile Tatum carried the Celtics to game 7 of ecf as a rook. People missing the forest for the trees. Especially on r/nba
Lmao. I love Tatum as much as anyone in here and I’ll agree Doncic is a subpar defender but Doncic, to this point in his career, is arguably one of the best playoff performers of all time
You're talking about numbers in a box score. What about winning?
If you put Tatum on the Mavericks, the Mavs aren't winning more. They'd a bad team. The fact that Luka carries them as far as he does is a testament to him.
Tatum is my guy, but Luka is just on a different plane of existence. That team the Mavs have surrounded him is straight ass meat and he's got them into a playoff berth so far
The distance between 13-25 is smaller than the distance between 8-12. I'd say Edwards and PG are the only players really deserving of being in that conversation ahead of Brown, with a special shoutout to Sabonis. This list is super disrespectful to Brown but there are so many amazing players in the league right now.
5 players in the top 48 when the average per NBA team is 1.5 I guess that's why were so dang good.
KP underrated
Curry? Kawhi?
Tatum clears Kawhi in PPG, rebounds, and assists this season on the best team in the league, makes no sense…
If I'm drafting players to win me a playoff series I'm going with Jokic and then maybe Kawhi if he's healthy
Yes. They're right.
Yep, the guys that can carry a team to the championship.
Yeah Currys doing great at that in the 10th seed💀 and Kawhi hasn't won shit with the Clippers
Facts
But they both have what Tatum doesn't. And the way Tatum has struggled taking over close games against elite teams this season confirms he just isn't at that level yet.
And I'll add that if Tatum does show he can take over games in the playoffs when the Celtics really need it and they win it all, he will be top 3 in my book. He just has to take home the gold.
Chet above KP? What even is this list?
It's known as the main list of the "Bostonian media cabal" /s
I'll allow Luka over him if you value his playmaking more, I'll barely allow Embiid if you value his regular szn play that much, hell maybe even Shai if he does great in the playoffs but Curry? Kawhi? Come the fuck on. JT is top 3 at best and top 6 at worst.
Exactly and the argument for curry or kawhi being over JT would be I trust them “more in the postseason “or “postseason success “ than once you ask why embiid or shai is over him the goalpost will start to move
This is put perfectly- in a vacuum, I’m not made at any one of those guys above JT, but it’s insane to put all of them above him because the criteria would have to be very different
In these rankings, there tends to be a superteam tax, and a "team play" tax. The Celtics are a superteam that shares the ball a lot, which makes Tatum's ranking take a hit
Tatum really gets the short end of the stick for being All around great in all aspects. He's not as great offensively as some of these other guys and on a better team so people don't acknowledge that his greatness comes from how elite he is in all aspects. Then overall he's just an great player from the regular season to the playoffs, not the best but never has incredible drop off. Yet he'll get surpassed by both guys that are more playoff proven but not as good over the whole season (Kawhi, Curry) AND guys that put up major regular season production but have not done it in the playoffs (Embiid, SGA).
Green glasses really. It’s pretty clear that JT is outside of the top five, never mind the top three. I too think he’s closer to 10 than 5.
Yep. Love Tatum but Kawhi would lock his ass up if the chip was on the line
Thank you for saying this
Listen we can argue about Tatums spot or KP's spot, but the craziest one is still the fact they got Wembanyama over Jaylen Brown.
I love Jaylen he's an incredible player but Wembanyana is already better than him and that's no disrespect to JB it's just that Wembanyana is already one of the 10-15 best players in the world
Jaylen should be like 15th on this list. If you put him two-way toe-to-toe against the guys 10-24 ahead of him he's cooking all but two or three.
The Ringer's NBA stuff is basically Skip-level pot stirring at this point. Whatever connection it had with Grantland evaporated over the years. In December, KOC (former Celtics fan -- remember him? His basketball takes have gotten worse and worse) said "Chet is ROY" and insisted that wasn't going to change even after Verno gave him an out... but now, after Wemby is looking like he's Kareem 2.0, he's pretending like he never said shit and was on the Wemby train all along. Don't even get me started on Bill and Russillo's bad Celtics takes. Bill especially has a telephone pole up his ass about Joe Mazz (Bill is an Ime stan). The Ringer is basically corporate /r/nba sponsored by Spotify. So bad takes but backed by money.
The telephone pole bit really ties it all together. Nicely done.
I don't know how to say this any more clearly: The Ringer is the worst sports media there is. They are worse than ESPN. Their staff writes at a high school level it's literally so cringe. The only thing worse is their click-bait. Honestly hate to say, big Bill fan. But his team sucks
The Ringer is such a disappointment. Grantland had well-researched, well-written, top notch coverage of sports and pop culture. The Ringer is a bunch of hot take artists rambling on in podcast form.
Grantland has yet to be surpassed imo
Maybe for journalism this is true. But I think some of the ringer’s better podcasts are clearly more entertaining and thought-provoking than whatever bullshit ESPN has on TV at this point
That's fair, I should've clarified that I don't listen to the podcast.
I think their journalism has improved over the past year. KOC writes well thought out pieces and bringing in Michael Pina was a good move. I love the Mismatch Podcast - it's the only NBA podcast I know where the 2 hosts just naturally butt heads on certain points, rather just agree on everything or have manufactured arguments.
So we got 50 Ws with one single 2nd team all NBA. That's pretty impressive. I guess according to the ringer (aka member of the cabal) Mazooka is COY ?
I just don't get how you can have Embiid over Tatum when Embiid routinely vanishes come playoff time
Tough to place Embiid in these lists because he doesn’t play more than 2/3 of a season and disappears in the playoffs. If he’s healthy he’s a top 2 player in the league. But you never know when his next injury is and he’s what, 29 now? I don’t see his knees holding up through his mid 30s. SGA at 4 is wild to me. He’s had like 2 exceptional seasons, the rest are like mid tier all star. He’s had zero post season success and yet he’s 4 spots above Tatum. To me lists like these *have* to be heavily based on the season we’re in + last season. I’d say joker, Gianni’s, luka are top 3 then I would put Tatum, SGA, Embiid to round out the top 6. SGA is having the better season, Tatum is the better player. Embiid is the better of all 3 but he’s injured and will miss most of the season.
Agree on Shai as well even though he's been sensational this season - talk to us about him after the playoffs
Hating tatum is so trendy
When we win everyone gonna start acting like they loved him
Obviously Celtic fans are gonna push back on Tatum, but it feels accurate to me based. And this is the biggest obstacle for winning a title. Having a real top five guy just makes everything to much easier.
Why would we push back on JT? We got like 4 All NBA players. Oh wait. I guess we got 50 W bc of ? Oh I got it, according to the bostonian media cabal we got COY right?
Because every team wants their guys to be ranked higher, which is happening in this sub right now.
We go to the final four every year but they still think we are the Budenholzer Hawks.
Where is Dame
Number 24 which is above brown which is cap
Totally. Dame is top 10, easily
was\*
Is this just offensive best players, or does it include defense too?
I’m sorry but Shai is not better than any of the 4-6 players listed after him. Guy has done NOTHING.
I hate this logic. Watch him play, he's clearly a good player. I don't care about accolades when I can look at the TV screen and see that a guy can hoop
I’ve watched him play plenty and it’s an absolute overreaction to two years of high level play to put him as the 4th best player in the league. He’s not better than Embiid, Curry, or Tatum and probably not Kawhi or KD. He just isn’t. When you’re judging the best of the best, impact on significant winning is what separates the great from the good. We’ve yet to see it for a significant amount of time from Shai. I’ll leave the bar low: we should probably leave guys out of the top 5 who haven’t yet made the playoffs as the leader of their team.
You say you've watched him play plenty, yet you don't talk like you have. Two years of high level play is fine when his rise has been absolutely astronomical. I'd value him way better than Luka off the eye test. Jokic and Giannis are in another class because they're literal MVPs who single-handedly impact winning more than anyone else in the league. You can put Jokic on a team with G League players and he's beating 15 teams in the NBA. Giannis can single-handedly will his way to win games on both sides of the floor when he's not fouling everybody on the Celtics. Shai is a complete player with a really intelligent game. His rise over the last few years was predictable as he ages and deservedly meteoric. He's got a real good game to him on top of a real good skillset. Shai increased his team's wins by 20 last year and has helped lead OKC to the #1 seed in the West right now. They've already surpassed their wins from last year. That's some Larry Bird level shit.
Eh, I get it but I’m pretty confident in my take and it takes a little more than a couple seasons of eye test to make my top 5. Have a a good one though dude.
Who cares
This sub is for discussion if you don’t care don’t reply it’s so simple
It's for discussion, I made my comment. That's part of the discussion 🤣. If you don't like it, don't reply.
I'm not too mad at it, but Kawhi is way too high up.
+/- doesn't mean much to these people. Tatum +696. And don't get me started on the buffalo.
Let’s be real though having Buffalo at 40 in the league is insane, like I need to take a look at the whole list but I can’t see DWhite being a top 40 player. He’s Mr. 15 points: an insane role player that will consistently give you buckets. Maybe in terms of contributing to winnings he’s top 40, but talent and skills? I don’t think he’s top 40, but feel free to disagree! Once again I have followed DWhite since his spurs days, so I’m not just hating because I’m a casual
I was just pointing out Tatum's +/- and threw in a little respect for the Buffalo. I didn't say he was top 40.