Crazy year. Of the Final 4 teams, with Giannis and Kawhi missing all or some games, who was the best player left playing and how does that player rank as top players?
CP3 at maybe top 25-30?
Is Paul George top 20 good?
Is Booker?
Is Trae?
This "Covid Era" of the NBA has thrown conventional rules about who wins titles out the window except one....health. The healthiest teams seem to be the best in this Era. At least for this year, so much for the idea that you need a top 5 player to win it all. You just had to be good AND healthy.
Sadly for the Celtics, like other teams that played a long time in the bubble, they were far from healthy.
It was never about stacking up on conventional top 5 players (there are like 10-11 of them in the league right now so it's really not only 5 guys) - it was always about assembling the best team, and you can achieve that without that level of player.
My eleven superstars (in order of position):
Guards: Curry, Doncic, Harden, Lillard
Wings: Durant, Leonard, Antetokounmpo, James
Bigs: Jokic, Embiid, Davis
But honestly Young, Paul, Mitchell, Beal, Butler, George, Tatum and Towns are also guys who can lead a team on the offensive end. The NBA is incredibly talented. Injuries unfortunately have had a big impact this year (even moreso than before), still there's a lot of parity right now.
And for the near future I believe the combo of Tatum/Brown can be sufficient to win a title when there's more defined roles, cohesion, teamplay and less injuries than we saw this season.
Kinda what I was leading into. That having those stars is less important than team quality, especially as the league is trending more to parity. So, yeah, a Tatum-Brown centric team can win it all. And soon, if the team is built right.
or it is just a weird year creating an abnormal number of injuries and isn't able to be duplicated. I mean the Heat went to the finals last year and got swept in the 1st round. Boston was in the ecf and out in a non competitive 1st round series.
And if Giannis plays and Milwaukee wins, the champion will fall right in line with history yet again.
So what if Giannis wins? The point is that right now, there are no truly dominant players, with the possible exception of Kevin Durant, and he has perhaps a 2 year window and some very talented but also very sketchy co-stars.
Tatum and Brown will be better next year, and they are both already at a stage where they are able to play big against anyone. LeBron may not be over yet, but the LeBron age is over.
If the Bucks win with Giannis, then the Bucks fall perfectly in line with basically all but 3 champions in history i.e. they have a top 5 player on their team. If the Suns win, they would become just the 4th team in history to win a title without a top 5 player. They happen every so often. The last time was the 14 Spurs, but that was a team with 4 HOFers in various stages of their careers (TD, Manu, Parker, Kawhi) plus one of the greatest coaches in history. Before the Spurs it was the 04 Pistons. Before them it was the 79 Sonics. That is it at least imo, some might argue the 78 Bullets or the 11 Mavericks, though I've always felt Hayes and Dirk were top 5 players those seasons. That's it. Every other champion had an unquestioned top 5 player and many had more than 1.
I'm just not going to put much historical stock in the last 2 seasons. The bubble was just weird, with the huge break and no home court. And this year was a shortened season with less time off between games and a shortened off season, which has lead to BY FAR the most stars being injured and missing playoff games. Even some that didn't miss games have been hampered (including Paul). I just don't think you can read anything into these past two seasons. Now if next year is a more typical season with significantly less star injuries in the playoffs and we still see a team like the Suns make the Finals, then maybe we can start talking about new trends and how things are different.
What are your criteria for who is a top 5 player and who isn't?
If we look at the top 5 finishers in the MVP voting this season, they are:
Jokic
Embiid
Curry
Giannis
CP3
So, based on that alone, the Suns have a top 5 player, plus a young star in Booker and a young developing star in Ayton. So wouldn't the Suns also fulfill that criteria and then some?
MVP voting is rarely about who the best player is. If it was Lebron would have at least 10 MVP's. As such, it isn't a great measure of who the 5 best players actually are. Now there is certainly some subjectivity in it, but I think most people generally regard Giannis, Durant, Lebron, and Kawhi as the 4 best players in the league. The 5th spot is certainly up for debate and I think you could make reasonable arguments that any of Jokic, Embiid, Curry, Harden, Davis, or Doncic is the 5th best player in the world. No one would put Chris Paul in that category. He had a wonderful season and deserved the MVP votes, but he isn't a top 5 player in the world just as IT4 wasn't when he finished in the top 5 for Boston a few years back either. Almost every year there are players that finish in the top 5, that basically no one would actually consider a top 5 player. Heck, some of them have actually won the award like say Russell Westbrook.
