NBA Playoffs 2021

[celticsclay]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Wasn't KG 3rd in MVP that year?

I mean he literally already dismissed mvp voting as a measure so not sure of the point of this post

[Moranis]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take. 

[td450]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take.

There is no tidy rule. The NBA playoffs require winning multiple 7 game series, which usually squeezes out random variance due to lucky games. Having a player who can impose himself the under intense pressure more reliably than anyone else is just enough of an edge to win most of the time. That guy isn't always MVP.

There are lots of guys who are incredible, but not so reliable. The MVP hasn't been the safest bet to hit a big shot or make a big play in the last 30 seconds of an intense game in quite some time.

[nickagneta]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take.

So basically, when it suits your argument you will use MVP awards and votes to defend your opinion of a top 5 player and will dismiss MVP awards and voting when it doesn't suit your opinion?

That's what this comes off as Mo. Especially since I have seen you use MVP and it's voting in defending players in various Historical Drafts.

[celticsclay]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take.

So basically, when it suits your argument you will use MVP awards and votes to defend your opinion of a top 5 player and will dismiss MVP awards and voting when it doesn't suit your opinion?

That's what this comes off as Mo. Especially since I have seen you use MVP and it's voting in defending players in various Historical Drafts.

Very well said Nick and my thoughts exactly. The inconsistency on this is, quite simply, pretty funny. Tp

[Moranis]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take.

So basically, when it suits your argument you will use MVP awards and votes to defend your opinion of a top 5 player and will dismiss MVP awards and voting when it doesn't suit your opinion?

That's what this comes off as Mo. Especially since I have seen you use MVP and it's voting in defending players in various Historical Drafts.

Not at all.  I've been entirely consistent in all my posts.  That the MVP isn't an award given the to the best player and thus when determining who the best player is (or the top 5) it is a tool just like any other award, stats, etc.  The MVP is an award given to a player that is on a winning team, had a great season, and contributed greatly to his team winning.  Often the best player in the league wins the MVP just because those players are often on mega winners with great stats, but we often find players like Russell Westbrook winning the award because they had historical seasons when they aren't in fact the best player in the league (or in the case of Russ even a top 5 player).

As for the historical drafts, the MVP is actually far more important to those because we often select a season for a player in those things.  Since the MVP basically rates how good a season a player had, it has significantly more weight to that determination than just about anything else, since you can't win the MVP without having a great season.  The MVP is not however a great gauge of a ranking of the best player in the league or even the top 5 players.  There is so much more that goes into the award then just giving it to the best player.  That is why guys like James doesn't have 10+ MVP's because he was clearly the best player in the world for more than 10 years.  I've also never said it didn't have any weight at all, I said I don't put much stock in it for determining who the best player is, it isn't worthless in that discussion though either. 

[Goldstar88]

Milwaukee Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo (knee) to play in Game 1 of NBA Finals vs. Phoenix Suns



https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31773188/milwaukee-bucks-giannis-antetokounmpo-knee-play-game-1-nba-finals-vs-phoenix-suns-sources-say

[Moranis]

Be interested to see how Giannis actually looks.  Hopefully they aren't rushing him back out there too soon.

Makes me picking the Bucks in 6 more plausible though.

[celticsclay]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Chris Paul was not better than Kevin Garnett in 2008.  Paul had a great season and deserved his MVP votes (just as he did this year), but it isn't exactly controversial to say KG was a better player than him.  For the record, in 2008 I had KG 4th behind Duncan, James, and Bryant with Howard 5th.

And to be clear, I never said MVP wasn't a tool to be used, I said I don't put much stock in it as an actual determination of who the best players are because it isn't a measure of who the best player is, it is a measure of who was the most valuable.  Sometime that perfectly correlates to who the best player is, sometimes it does not.  In 2008, KG was the best player on a 66 win team that won the title.  He was the DPOY, 1st Team All NBA, 1st Team All Defense, and finished 3rd in MVP voting.  His numbers were down because he joined Pierce and Allen and played less minutes, not because he got worse as a player.  The year before in Minnesota he led the league in RPG at 12.8 per game while averaging 22.4 ppg, 4.1 apg, while throwing in 1.2 spg and 1.7 bpg.  For the 9 years before coming to Boston he averaged 22.4/12.6/5.0 while being one of the best defenders in the sport.  He didn't all of a sudden stop being that player just because he joined a team with 2 other HOFers and his touches and mpg dropped (his per 36 numbers were pretty much in line with the prior seasons).

The notion that KG was a top 5 player in 2008 is not controversial at all.  In fact, to argue otherwise is the controversial position to take.

So basically, when it suits your argument you will use MVP awards and votes to defend your opinion of a top 5 player and will dismiss MVP awards and voting when it doesn't suit your opinion?

That's what this comes off as Mo. Especially since I have seen you use MVP and it's voting in defending players in various Historical Drafts.

Not at all.  I've been entirely consistent in all my posts.  That the MVP isn't an award given the to the best player and thus when determining who the best player is (or the top 5) it is a tool just like any other award, stats, etc.  The MVP is an award given to a player that is on a winning team, had a great season, and contributed greatly to his team winning.  Often the best player in the league wins the MVP just because those players are often on mega winners with great stats, but we often find players like Russell Westbrook winning the award because they had historical seasons when they aren't in fact the best player in the league (or in the case of Russ even a top 5 player).

As for the historical drafts, the MVP is actually far more important to those because we often select a season for a player in those things.  Since the MVP basically rates how good a season a player had, it has significantly more weight to that determination than just about anything else, since you can't win the MVP without having a great season.  The MVP is not however a great gauge of a ranking of the best player in the league or even the top 5 players.  There is so much more that goes into the award then just giving it to the best player.  That is why guys like James doesn't have 10+ MVP's because he was clearly the best player in the world for more than 10 years.  I've also never said it didn't have any weight at all, I said I don't put much stock in it for determining who the best player is, it isn't worthless in that discussion though either.

So basically what Nick said then?

[hpantazo]

This Finals series is going to go 7. Should be fantastic.

[Goldstar88]

This Finals series is going to go 7. Should be fantastic.

Agreed. Should be a great series.

[hpantazo]

Giannis and Booker both with excellent 1st quarters.

The Bucks bench is overmatched by the Suns bench though.

[hpantazo]

Lopez getting abused.

[gouki88]

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.

Was paul top ten? I feel like top five is pretty arbitrary. I wouldn’t say anyone on the Celtics was top 5 on our most recent title team but definitely top ten.

KG was a top 5 player in 2008.

Disagree. You’ve really come up with some arbitrary rankings to continue this narrative. You already dismissed
Mvp voting as a measure so don’t waffle on that. He averaged 18 and 9 with elite defense. Top ten? Definitely, but top 5 very unclear

Lebron, kobe, howard and paul would seem to be clearly above him. Then what makes him clearly better than tim duncan that season? Stoudamire? Nash? Dirk? Clearly not black and white here.

Besides the point, but KG was unequivocally a top 3 player that year.

[hpantazo]

Budenholzer is just incapable of making in game adjustments.