After a tumultuous debut season in Los Angeles, LeBron James would be sitting at home for the playoff for the first time ever (not really, but it sure felt that way). Forget the playoffs, this would be the first Finals without the King since 2010 (!), nine years ago.
LeBron’s absence provided an opportunity to every NBA star to stake their claim as the league’s best player. Thus, that title seemed to change hands on a nightly basis. One night, Kevin Durant pours in 40 points and he’s dubbed the best player on the planet. The next night, Giannis does something incredible and now he’s the best in the world. The next night, it’s Steph Curry, or Joel Embiid or James Harden or Kawhi Leonard. While I can’t say for certain who the best player on the planet is yet (the Finals may very well answer that question), the elite tier has shaped up quite nicely.
Now that the NBA Finals is set – Golden State versus Toronto – the picture of the NBA’s beset players seems much clearer. Only two of the league’s top players were absent from the postseason (LeBron and Anthony Davis). These playoffs revealed three tiers of NBA stars:
Tier 1 (Elite of the Elite): LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Stephen Curry
As Rob Perez wrote for The Action Network, Kawhi has firmly established himself in the elitist tier with LeBron, Durant and Curry. In reality, Kawhi has been there for a few seasons now. After all, he won the 2014 Finals MVP at twenty-two years old, a two-time defensive player of the year, and an annual MVP contender. The last time we truly saw Kawhi on the court – I’m not counting anything from last season – he seemed poised to take down the Warriors, until Zaza Pachulia literally took him out.
We allowed last season, when he sat out basically the entire season with a mysterious injury and demanded a trade out of San Antonio to cloud our judgement. We wondered if Kawhi was simply a product of the Spurs system; a player who thrived under Gregg Popovich, but someone who couldn’t succeed elsewhere. We were wrong.
In 18 playoff games, he has averaged 31.2 points, 8.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game with an unbelievable true shooting percentage of 62.3%. He delivered one of the most incredible moments in recent basketball memory with his quadruple-bouncing, series-clinching, curse-lifting buzzer beater in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. He dunked on the likely league-MVP to clinch a Finals berth.
I would rank LeBron-KD-Kawhi in no particular order above Curry, but within the same tier. Perez mentioned the defensive impact that those three players have is something that Curry’s physical limitations will prevent him from ever reaching. (I’m aware LeBron is not the defensive force he was in Miami, but he still has 75% of that when he wants.)
Each of these players has multiple Finals appearances as their team’s best player, an MVP (Finals or regular season) and will go down amongst the top 25 players of all time. I just wish Durant was healthy for the start of the Finals, so we would witness a three-way slugfest for the title of the league’s best player.
Tier 2 (So close to the top tier, but missing something): Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis
Giannis is easily the closest of this group to reaching Tier 1. He’s only missing one of two things (which aren’t mutually exclusive): postseason success or a more versatile offensive game. He looked genuinely nervous at time against the Raptors, as evidenced by his high turnover count and some egregiously missed free throws. I fully expect him to improve his shooting and ball handling this offseason, which will almost certainly elevate him to the top tier.
Harden’s multiple postseason failures keep his ceiling in the second tier. Everyone was prepared to forgive his previous choke jobs (notably, 2017 second round versus San Antonio when Harden scored 10 points in a 114-75 loss to the Spurs without Kawhi) if he could beat Golden State this season. Durant’s injury gave the Rockets, and Harden, the perfect opportunity, and they failed once again.
If the ball bounces another way (literally), perhaps its Joel Embiid who is preparing to face the Warriors in the Finals right now. Embiid has the talent, but needs to beef up his resume before he can be considered a Tier 1 player.
Before this postseason, I thought Denver was a regular season team and Jokic was a regular season player. Holy shit was I wrong. Despite his gummy bear-like frame, Jokic proved to be among the game’s truly elite playmakers. If any of his teammates bothered to show up in the second half of Game 7, his Nuggets would have beaten the Trail Blazers and made the Western Conference Finals.
As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”. Just like we did with Kawhi last year, I think the world has forgotten how spectacular Anthony Davis is at basketball. Davis fucked up this season for New Orleans, but I think he redeems himself in a major way in 2019-20.
Tier 3 (Stars, but can’t be the best player on a championship team): Paul George, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green
Each of these players are basically on the same level in my eyes. The latter three players have experience in the Finals that validate their star power, but never as alphas on a team. While the former three players have achieved an abundance of regular season success (including an MVP award), they’ve only reached mild forms of postseason success.
There’s probably a good chunk of additional players that would fall into a tier just below this, such as Karl Anthony Towns, Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Kemba Walker, Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry, Victor Oladipo, etc.
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