Is Joe Ingles a top 10 SF?

[RodyTur10]

For fun, picking up a discussion from last nights game thread.

Wow, people are still acting like, "who's this Joe Ingles guy"?

Seriously???

Ingles is one of the top 10 SF's in the game right now. Anybody still sleeping on him is missing out.

The guy is averaging like 12ppg and shooting 90% tonight. He is not top-10 SF.

He averages 12/4/4, is one of the best shooters in the league and gets over 1.5 steals per game. There’s an argument for top 15, maybe too 10 IMO.

Here's how I rank the best small forwards in the NBA right now. Past Doncic it's all really close. Obviously very hard to rank Hayward, who we all hope to get better in time. I've only taken the players in to consideration that make their most minutes at SF, which would be fair to KGs Knee's statement. So guys like Wiggins (SG, when Butler plays), Tatum (starting PF), Warren (starting PF), Crowder (back-up PF) and Ingram (moved to SG) are left out.

In general you can see a swift by the NBA going smaller. Some players (Butler, Middleton, Barton, J.Harris, Moore) actually started their careers as shooting guards. And there are a couple of teams who don't have a capable starting small forward. Who the best SF is in the league is a discussion in itself, you can make arguments for Durant, James and Leonard. I chose Kevin Durant. I got Ingles at 11, but like I said differences are marginal.

1 Kevin Durant (Golden State), 2 LeBron James (LA Lakers), 3 Kawhi Leonard (Toronto), 4 Jimmy Butler (Minnesota)

5 Khris Middleton (Milwaukee), 6 Paul George (Oklahoma City), 7 Danilo Gallinari (LA Clippers), 8 Luka Doncic (Dallas)

9 Otto Porter (Washington), 10 Will Barton (Denver), 11 Joe Ingles (Utah), 12 Bojan Bogdanovic (Indiana)

13 Robert Covington (Philadelphia), 14 Rudy Gay (San Antonio), 15 Joe Harris (Brooklyn), 16 Trevor Ariza (Phoenix)

17 Gordon Hayward (Boston), 18 E'Twaun Moore (New Orleans), 19 Taurean Prince (Atlanta), 20 Nicolas Batum (Charlotte), 21 Bogdan Bogdanovic (Sacramento)

[jambr380]

I think it is close, but would have to say with his age, he is trending just outside the top 10 although he is probably at 10 right now. An excerpt from my, "Do you wish we had never signed Hayward?" thread a few weeks back:

I was just trying to ask the question, if you had it to do all over again, would you make a different decision? One of my main reasons for being in the middle is because Danny has been on one of the greatest GM runs of all-time. If he wasn't able to sign Hayward, he surely would have made other dramatic moves. Can't we assume another impact player, say of Joe Ingles' caliber, probably would have pushed us to the Finals. That would have been exciting! And it still would have allowed us to sign our own FAs when the time comes next spring.

https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=97887.0

I am giving that thread some more time before returning to it, but yeah, if I could go back in time and knew what I know now, I think I would have signed Ingles (plus one of J. Simmons, Ja. Green, Tyreke Evans, etc) for $52M/4 yrs over Hayward at $128M/4 yrs (or really, $43M/yr over three since he never played last year).

It was a slam dunk of a decision at the time and Danny has been incredible, but the Hayward signing (and the money it took to sign him) might be what ultimately prevents us from competing for a championship. Of course I am confident he can get back to the level of a Joe Ingles level player, but that is a lot of money tied up for a player of his caliber. Let's all hope Hayward can return to the level of George/Butler - that would be incredible!

[coco]

Not in the sense of top 10 dominant.  We made him look top 10

He is good, but not dominant good....