Leonard is every bit on KD's and LBJ's level, and it really humors me someone thinks that Giannis, right now, is better than him. That is ludicrous, Leonard is a far superior player.
Heck, I could very well pick Leonard over KD if push came to shove.
Giannis is the only player in NBA history to finish in the top 20 in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals. This year he is averaging basically 29 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, and 1.3 blocks with a TS% of 62.1. Giannis is better than Leonard right now and the gap is only going to increase. I wouldn't be all that surprised if entering next season Giannis was considered the best player in the world as he is still just 23 and has gotten exponentially better every single season.
Giannis is no threat at all from outside. You have to guard Leonard everywhere on the court. That is pretty significant.
It really does. The Bucks still play very ugly basketball and mostly stand around and watch him play and do what they can off that. He doesn't do much off ball.
Yeah I think Giannis has the chance to be an incredible basketball player. Right now though he shoots 27% from 3 and averages nearly 3 turnovers a game. Players that are absolute superstars and top 5 players don't have their teams struggling around .500. This is especially true when they have some other capable talent on their team. Middleton and Bledsoe are not chopped liver. Delladova, Henson, Snell would all be in the rotation on most playoff teams (and Delladova obviously has on a great team).
Meanwhile Leonard has been defensive player of the year 2x and on an all defensive team the last 4 seasons, a finals MVP, led the league in steals all while playing for a team that routinely wins 50-60 teams (and their clear best player the last few seasons). His scoring average has gone up every season he has been in the league! He doesn't get acclaim or many endorsements cause he is very humble and soft spoken and never argues with the refs or complains about things to the media. Yet somehow we have the take that he is overrated and worse than a 23 year-old that can't shoot on a .500 team. Incredible.
Just for some reference, this year Giannis' TOV% is 10.8%. Kevin Durant is 13.4, Lebron James is 16.8. In Michael Jordan's 5th season (same as Giannis) he was 11.9. Larry Bird ended his career with a TOV% of 12.7 and was only below 12.4 twice. Magic Johnson finished his career at 19.4%.
When you run your team's offense you are going to commit turnovers because you pass a lot, you shoot a lot, you dribble a lot, etc. One of Leonard's main offensive flaws is that he doesn't run the Spurs offense (it is also one of the main reasons that Spurs win at nearly the same rate without him on the floor). He is much more an off the ball player. That is why he doesn't get to the line as much as other elite players, that is why he doesn't get assists, and that is why he doesn't turn the ball over.
This is a pretty classic argument tactic of yours (particularly in a losing argument). Myself and many other mentions that Giannis can't spread the floor, that Leonard has been recognized by his peers and the league as the best defensive player in the game, that he had the best statistics of anyone in last year's playoffs before being hurt and that his scoring has improved every single season, that a team doing good when a player is out doesn't lessen their talent (see hayward, celtics). You ignore all those others points by everyone and latch onto the fact that I pointed out Giannis is averaging a lot of turnovers and muddle the argument with some stats from high usage players and their turnovers.
Do you genuinely think that Pop, referencing him with all-time great, and just about every poster that has spoken on the subject on this board is wrong and you are the only one that can figure out how overrated Leonard is? This really feels like I am debating with Skip Bayless.
I believe Leonard is the 4th best SF and likely the 5th best player in the world (I'd put Curry ahead of him as well and would listen to arguments on Harden, Davis, and Westbrook, but no one else). I'm not saying he isn't a great player, I'm saying he isn't better than James, Durant, Giannis, or Curry.
And I've never said Giannis was a good 3 point shooter, what I've said is that even with his poor 3 point shooting, he is still in the midst of a better overall shooting season (i.e. TS%) than any season in Leonard's career. He is able to do that because he is a better all around offensive player than Leonard in that, he creates offense for himself and his teammates, like Leonard cannot do. And Giannis was 2nd team all defense last year finishing in the top ten in both blocks and steals and he is a better all around defender this year than he was last year.
Hayward played 5 minutes on the Celtics. If Hayward had played this whole season and the Celtics won 70% of their games, and then Hayward missed the following season with basically the same team and that team won 70% of their games, you could certainly argue that Hayward wasn't nearly as valuable to the team's success as you might have believed. Given the Jazz went from a pretty good team to a poor team when Hayward was removed, you can see how valuable Hayward was to the Jazz's success. All we have with Leonard is a team that wins 76.6% of the games he plays and that same team that wins 73.1% of the games he doesn't play (over the last 3 seasons and because Kawhi misses so much time it is actually a pretty good sample size for both).
For the record, Giannis was quite good in the playoffs last year averaging 24.8 p, 9.5 r, 4 a, 2.2 s, 1.7 b with a TS% of 56.3% (and he even shot 40% from three). Let's not pretend that Giannis is the reason the Bucks went 2-4 in the playoffs. And yes Kawhi was better in the playoffs last year than Giannis was, but he also plays on a much better team (as evident by their record both last year and this year without Kawhi).