Right now I think Giannis is still probably a better player than Tatum, but if I'm starting a franchise I'd take Tatum.
For one thing he's younger and plays more than Giannis does, but the main reason is his skill set allows you to build the team pretty much any way you want. You can go with a high usage guard and play Tatum off ball. Tatum isn't an elite distributor, he needs to get much better in that department, but he's good enough to run offense through as the ball handler. You can go with any kind of center next to him, rim running, shooting, ect. Giannis needs a little more of a specific mix next to him to make a team work (although when it works, IT WORKS).
Now let me sit back and watch as Giannis makes this post look stupid.
Yeah, this is pretty much where I am. I think you probably can’t go wrong with any of Tatum, Giannis, or Doncic with Ja, Embiid, and Jokic in the 1B category. But as a starting point, JT is just so versatile and can play with anyone.
Something that Scal has been saying recently is really important here. Unlike the other elite players like Giannis and Luka, Tatum really doesn’t have a significant, exploitable area of weakness. Giannis isn’t a shooter, so you can exploit that somewhat defensively. That’s why we’ve had so much success against him over the years given our scheming and use of Al. Doncic on the other hand is a below average defender and can be picked on defensively.
Tatum doesn’t have an exploitable weak area like that. While not quite the passer or playmaker as the others, he’s developed that area enough to be good at it where it’s not something that he can be exploited with. He’s also clearly the best shooter of the bunch and arguably the best outright and most efficient scorer of the bunch, too.
Lastly, I think JT’s health, durability, and overall skill-based game puts him over the top. Luka has already shown that he may not be the most durable long-term, even with his game not be predicated on explosiveness or athleticism. Alternatively, Giannis is highly reliant on his athleticism and size, and unless he develops a more skilled shot, he’ll peak and fall relatively early due to an over reliance on his athleticism.
So, yeah, I’m comfortable with taking JT over the others.
In the 7 game series last year, without his 2nd best player to take some pressure off, Giannis averaged 33.9 ppg, 14.7 rpg, and 7.1 apg. If that is slowing someone down, sign me up for that.
Sure, but on an inefficient 45% shooting, 25% three point shooting, and 67% free throw shooting. His lack of shooting allows you to single coverage him and play back on him, and it clearly worked for us. You play back on him, let him get his, and shut down the rest of the team, which we've had major success with on him over the years.
You simply can't do that to someone like Tatum. He'd score 50 on you every night, and when the team naturally adjusts to play up on him to take away the shooting it opens up the lane and opportunities for everyone else.
Hence, as I said, a weakness in Giannis' game that can be exploited that isn't there for Tatum.
That is because Middleton wasn't there. Giannis dominated Boston in the 2019 playoffs, when he wasn't nearly as good as a player. Even last year during the regular season he shot well over 50% against the Celtics, even without hitting a single 3. Middleton makes a fair amount of difference to the Bucks because he is the only other player on that team that can both create a shot for himself and for his teammates basically at will. Holiday is a solid #3 guy, but he isn't Middleton.
Tatum shot only 42.9% against the Bucks with 27.6 ppg, 6.3 rpg, and 5.4 apg.
Giannis was quite simply better than Tatum even in that series. Boston as a team was better, but Giannis was pretty clearly the best player in the series and it wasn't all that close. That is supported by the advanced metrics. GmSc for example, Giannis was 23.4 while Tatum was 18.5.
Giannis is the best player in the world and I don't think anyone is close to him. There are really only 2 players you could even consider ahead of Giannis in this sort of thing, Jokic and Doncic. And I think if you put this on any site that wasn't a Celtics fan site, the numbers would bear that out. Tatum just isn't in that class of player right now. He doesn't have top 10-20 all time player potential, which those 3 have (and in the case of Giannis who is already a top 20 player all time).
There's several questionable arguments and assumptions in this post.
First, you're selectively going back to the 2019 playoffs to talk about Giannis dominating the C's - you know, the completely dysfunctional Kyrie year that he literally quit on the team in the middle of the series - while ignoring the fact that both in 2022 and the prior year before your 2019 example in 2018 we dominated Giannis by exploiting the obvious shooting limitations that Giannis has. So that's pretty arbitrary (but purposeful) selective examples you're using there.
Second, you continue to focus on last year's playoffs when we're focusing on the present and the future ten years or so. Tatum has clearly taken another step even since the playoffs, which typically happens after a formative experience like a Finals run. With him being significantly younger than Giannis, without an obvious weakness like him (shooting), likely to be much more durable with a game and skillset that will age better, and being on a similar elite level right now, I'm going Tatum.
Third, it's a bit bold to claim that there's some major gap between Giannis and Tatum right now this year, which the statistics simply don't back up. Sure, I give Giannis the slight edge right now, but it's hardly this major gap that you're positing.
But, again, the entire argument is about who you would rather start a franchise around right now and, say, the next ten years. There's a pretty solid argument that Tatum is a better bet to start your franchise around than Giannis at this point in time, including a more versatile and encompassing skillset, lack of significant weak area in his game, likely better durability and aging of his game, significantly younger, etc.
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