Kyrie:
He has been getting a lot of talk but what I see is a really good player who has never been quite good enough to be the #1 on a team. He has had chances to be that guy, but always flaked out. He will make some shots, we know that, but I don't see him making enough shots in enough games to be the deciding factor in the series. He hasn't been any better than a good #2 for several seasons and in that time, there have been periods where he wasn't even that good.
Player Ranking:
I look at it as groups of 2:
Tatum/Brown vs Doncic/Irving
Porzingis/Horford vs Gafford/Lively
Holiday/White vs Washington/Jones
Pritchard/Hauser vs Green/Hardy (or Hardaway or Exum or Kleber?)
I am not sure there is any grouping of these pairs where I would rather have the DAL pair. But when I stack them up this way (and I know it isn't a perfect match positionally), I think we are going to need Porzingis/Horford and Holiday/White to all play better than the corresponding DAL pair. I think Porzingis is important. This stacking looks a lot different if it is Horford/Kornet or Horford/Tillman. We still may not lose the grouping without Porzingis, but we probably don't win it either.
Pritchard and Hauser may factor in but they will not play nearly the same minutes or have the same level of importance as the others.
The result is that I see us as best case having 6 of the top 8, but then the 9-12 go to DAL. As to 13-16, anyone's guess. If Hauser comes around, we could easily win that grouping.