NBA Player Rankings #25-24: Jamal Murray makes cut, does Trae Young, James Harden, or KAT?

NBA Player Rankings #25-24: Jamal Murray makes cut, does Trae Young, James Harden, or KAT?

All right, welcome to Hoops tonight here at the volume. Heavy happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had a great weekend. I’m back in my Tucson studio. We uh booked a couple of vacations this summer. We’re going to Alaska in early August and then we’re doing the Pacific Northwest in September, which we’ve done a few years in a row now. We we love it up there. But we booked all of the flights out of Tucson and we have three dogs. So, we’ve been relying on some help to care for the dogs when we travel. So, I’m going to be like kind of hopping back and forth between the Tucson studio and the Denver studio over the course of August and early September. But then I’ll officially be a full-timer up there when we get into September. We are starting our player rankings today. The offseason’s basically done. We’re waiting around on some Warrior stuff and when that happens, we’ll obviously react when the time comes. But it is the official dead season of the NBA. And so, this is a great time. This is the fourth year in a row that we have uh uh taken a dive into player rankings. We do the top 25 players in the NBA. We go into extensive detail on each player, looking back at their last season, their strengths and weaknesses, what we can expect from them in the coming season. We get into rationale as to why guys are ranked where they’re ranked. We have some a ton of fun with it over the course of the summer. We don’t have Olympic basketball this year as a little bit of a break. We might get a little bit of a Euro basket as we get into late August, which I’m particularly excited about, especially on the heels of that Men’s Health magazine article this morning talking about Luca Donish getting into great shape. I’m going to have some more thoughts about that when we talk about Luca’s allegedly pending uh extension, which we will get to at some point over the over the course of the next week. But it’s a pretty dead summer, so lots of time for us to get into our player rankings. Today, what I’m going to do is I’m going to dive into our rules so that everyone understands the criteria we use. It’s something that is obviously an inexact science. It is like impossible to scientifically rank all of the players in the NBA because there’s no such thing as a metric that accurately captures a basketball player’s impact. And so, there’s a lot of subjectivity involved, but we just do the best we can and we try to stick to a set of rules. And so, I’m going to go over the specific rules that we use. Um, I use different rules each of the first three seasons. Last year, I kind of settled on a specific format that I really like. And so, for the first time, we’re actually repeating that format coming into this year’s rankings. I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the guys that didn’t make the cut this year and why, some specific guys who dropped out, why they dropped out, who my final cuts were. So, we’re going to do a bunch of that kind of stuff right off of the top and then we’re going to get into the first two players on the list today. So, number 25 and number 24. And then on Wednesday of this week, we’re going to get into the next four players on the list. So, six players total in the first couple of days of this week. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter_jasonlt so you guys don’t miss show announcements. Don’t forget about our podcast feed where you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It’s also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson’s doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. Make sure you guys follow us over there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We’re going to change the way we do our mailbags over the course of the next couple of months. I want to try to gear them towards the player rankings as much as possible. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask any other mailbag questions. You guys can ask whatever you want. But one of the things that’s fun about this is there is a lot of debate. You can argue, we’re going to talk about it with our tiers, but with the way these guys line up in tiers, I don’t see much of a gap between player five and player 14 on this list or player 15 and the 40th guy that didn’t make the list. I don’t see huge gaps there. You could argue players way up and down this list because how close these players are and how different they are in their archetypes and their specific value in different parts of the game of basketball. This is up for debate, right? So, what I want you guys to do is if you have a a specific ranking that you disagree with, a player you think is underrated, a player you think is overrated, whatever it is, in your mailbag question, make a quick elevator pitch as brief as possible, but make a basketball case for why you disagree with a player and where he’s ranked on this list. And in our Friday mailbags, we’ll just debate. I’ll read out your guys’ basketball case for why you feel differently. I’ll explain whether or not I agree with something you’re saying or I disagree. We’ll kind of have those Friday mailbags be more geared towards debating these rankings. So, make sure you guys drop your questions again under the full episodes. Write mailbag with a colon. Explain why you disagree and we’ll get to them in those Friday mailbags. All right, let’s talk some basketball. So, uh like I mentioned earlier, we’ve tweaked the criteria each of the first three years, but I really like the criteria we lose last year, so we’re going to run it back this year. Our criteria is actually very simple. Who is the best player to have on your team from the start of this coming training camp? So, October 2025 through the end of this year’s coming playoff run in June of 2026. That’s it. That’s the criteria. Now, it implies several things which we’ll get into, but it’s that simple. Who’s the best guy to lead your team from the start of this coming season to the end of this coming season? So, first of all, we are looking forward, not backward, but we’re obviously going to use the past to inform the future. This is not a list of just who had the best season last year. There are guys on this list, even near the top, who had better seasons than guys that will rank ahead of them in this list because I expect that dynamic to flip in this coming season. What else is valuable? availability and night-to-ight regular season impact is being weighed as a real factor here. Take just a random couple of players. Take Steph Curry and Anthony Edwards. If we’re playing one single playoff game or one single playoff series that starts tomorrow and everyone’s healthy, I think Steph’s a better player than Anthony Edwards. I just think he’s a better all-around basketball player with a better understanding of how to win in ex like very very tough playoff environments. But Anthony Edwards played 79 games every season like clockwork. And Steph literally just broke down against him in a second round series because Steph had to go pedal to the metal for three straight months to end the season because his team was trying to claw their way out of the playing tournament, right? And because he’s 37 years old, he’s just a little bit more susceptible to breaking down, right, than a 23 year old is. So when we’re comparing those two guys, it’s not just as simple as who is better. It’s a combination of all those factors. Steph and him just being a better basketball player when he’s healthy is going to weigh in Steph’s favor, but Anthony Edwards and his youthful exuberance and energy and durability is going to weigh in Anthony Edwards’s favor. And all of those factors put together is going to help uh place those players on this particular list. Also, guys like Jason Tatum, Damen Lillard, Tyrese Hallebertton, guys who were all on this list last year, they’re simply not on the list this year because they will not play. So, they do not bring any value between the start of October 2025 training camp and the 2026 playoff run. So, they will be removed from the list for this year and they will re-enter the list next summer when we’re discussing them as players that are going to play. That’s just the rules of this particular list. It also opens up space on this list for new guys to enter or for guys that used to be on the list to re-enter the list. That’s three spots that would typically be taken up by those guys that other guys will get to take up. But ultimately, the goal is to win an NBA championship. So, it’s not just night-to-ightight availability. It’s the combination of everything. Night toight availability, leadership, producing statistically at a high level throughout the season, and being able to thrive when everything shifts to playoff basketball, which as we all know, can be so very different. Not just in one or two playoff games, but through the end of a playoff series when teams make adjustments and start to figure out your strengths and weaknesses. and the on ball defenders get a little bit more keyed into your quirks and start to figure out how to guard you better or as you change from round to round and the circumstances around change and it just gets harder for you to succeed the way you were earlier in that playoff run. All of that stuff factors in. That’s why I love this criteria. That’s why I’m sticking with it. I think it accurately represents what the job is, which is to lead a basketball team from October through June and giving your team the best possible shot at the trophy. Last note, and I had to say this last year, and it’s just important for people to understand in terms of the way these rankings come together. I have the players separated into three tiers. There are top tier superstars. These are the guys who night toight play at the peak of modern basketball. Consistency is the expectation. It’s the norm. Then the second tier guys, second tier, secondary superstars. These are the guys who are capable on any given night of reaching the same level of the top guys in the league, but they struggle to maintain it. Whether it’s because they’re too old or they’ve dealt with injury concerns over their careers or just general youthful inconsistency from young players. We will see Kade Cunningham on certain nights look like he could be one of the best players in the world, but then he’s susceptible to inconsistency because he’s a young player, right? Those guys are still every bit as valuable on singular occasions, but they don’t bring the night toight value. That’s our second tier superstars. Our third tier stars, these are guys who are worth the max and near max contracts that they’re on. They bring enough impact to justify the money, but they probably can’t be the best player on a championship team. They need a lot of support, and they probably need a better player than them in order to reach the promised land. Within each of those tiers, the players are incredibly closely ranked. So, for instance, the guy that I have on 14th in this list could very easily be argued as high as five or vice versa. And everybody in that range can be argued anywhere in that range. Similarly, for the third tier spots, there are 11 players between 15 and 25. I considered 26 players for those 11 spots, which means there are 15 guys who did not make this list that absolutely have an argument to potentially be as high as 15. John Mor didn’t make my list. You could make a basketball case for him being as high as 15th on this list. So that what I’m trying to say is I totally understand if you guys disagree with the order. That’s part of the fun of this. That’s why it’s a debate. That’s why we’re doing those mailbags at the end of the week where I want you guys to argue so that we can get into it a little bit. So again, literally, if you disagree with anything that we have in this list, write it in the mailbag. make an elevator pitch, a quick breakdown of why you disagree, and we’ll get into it. That’s the whole fun of this. It’s supposed to be fun. If anything, this guys will just, this list will give you guys a better look at the way I see the game of basketball, just to help you guys understand why I rank players the way I the way I rank them, why I value specific skill sets over others, and so on and so forth. Now, before we get started, I’m going to list the 15 guys who didn’t make the list. Nothing says summer like long days, clutch plays, and And I’m going to explain who the final cuts were. And again, these are in no particular order. John Morant, Zion Williamson, Julius Randall, Demanis Sabonis, Alperin Shangon, Darius Garland, Demar D Rozan, Brandon Ingram, Zack Lavine, Fran Vagner, Tyler Harrow, Darren Fox, Tyrese Maxi, Carl Anthony Towns, and James Harden. Those are the guys that were in that list of 25 players that I considered for the final or 26 players that I considered for the final 11 spots. Couple of specifics that I want to get into. Just four specific guys I want to briefly touch on. First of all, both De’aran Fox and Tyrese Maxi were on this list last year in the 20s range and they fell off. Both of them substantially declined as jump shooters and that ended up limiting their effectiveness. Steering Fox went from having a pretty good shooting season to being below 30% on catch-oot jump shots this year. A Tyrese Maxi catchoot jump shot two years ago was worth 1.31 points down to 1.05 points in this last season. That’s 26 points per 100 catch and shoot jump shots worse. The two things that made these guys clear top 25 guys was their combination of elite downhill force with the jump shot to counter and the jump shot to play off the ball. And when their jumpers aren’t as dialed in, they’re simply not as effective. And so for those two guys, it was the decline in jump shooting that dropped them off the list. our final two cuts. As you can imagine, when I started with that 40, I started pulling guys off and eventually I got down to 27 out of the 25 I needed to grab or more like if you specifically with that final tier of 11, I was looking at 13 players for the final tier of 11. And I had to cut two guys. So the final two cuts ended up being James Harden and Carl Anthony Towns. So, on the one hand, it’s important to acknowledge I view both of those guys as top 27 players in the NBA or above the other 13 guys that I listed earlier. But the reason why I cut these two guys was specific to the playoffs. James Harden again in his last two playoff losses this year in game five and game seven against Denver didn’t even attempt 10 shots in either game. totaled just 18 points on five for 17 shooting in a in two games combined. Two must-win games combined. Consistently in James Harden’s career, when his back is against the wall, he simply loses his mojo. It’s not like he plays with his usual level of aggression and shots just don’t fall or he has a couple more turnovers than usual. He straight up loses everything that makes him James Harden in those big playoff games at the end of series. And it’s happened so many times over the course of his career that it’s something you literally have to plan for as an organization. I’m a big believer in James Harden and his value as a regular season offensive engine. We discussed this extensively already this summer with regards to the new contract that he signed. I even think his playoff struggles are a little bit more complicated. They’re kind of geared towards the tail end of series big moments. He’s had some monster playoff games over the last few years mixed in with excruciatingly bad, but he’s had some awesome playoff games. He was great in game six against Denver, for example. But those playoff limitations ended up making him one of the final cuts this year. Carl Anthony Towns. It’s about the downright damaging lack of attention to detail on anything outside of his typical offensive game. I literally can’t get the image out of my head from game six against Indiana of him making poor pop roll decisions like rolling into the lane when there’s already multiple players in the dunker spot or you know uh crashing off the top of the key crashing the offensive glass when he has get back responsibility. He was screaming off the tape in game six as one of the main reasons why they got blown off the floor against Indiana in game six. or on defense, him just throwing some crazy hedge out 35 feet from the rim when the guard hasn’t even used the screen yet and the guard just simply rejects the screen and now Carl Anthony Towns is 35 ft away from the rim being completely useless while giving up a wide openen layup or a wideopen dunk. He is just so undisiplined outside of his offensive game that it massively undercuts his offensive production. And again, it’s a shame because he is a se he is a great offensive player and that separates him from even players above this list as an offensive player. He was eighth in playoff scoring this year among players who played at least 10 games. 59% true shooting. He made third team AllNBA this year for his regular season production. But again, as we mentioned in the criteria, the I like one of the things when we’re talking about getting through from October all the way through June, one of the important details is like, are you good enough on defense that we can at least run a functional defensive scheme with you on the floor? Can we scale up our defense to where it needs to get? One of the things we’re going to talk about when we gets to the first player on our list is I view two different kinds of bad defenders in the NBA. There’s bad defenders that have their athletic limitations. They’re small. They’re slow, whatever it might be, but they understand defense. They know where to be. They understand how to fill a role in a scheme. They can kind of see things coming. They have good defensive instincts. These are the guys that can scale up their defense in the postseason context even with their athletic limitations. Then there are bad defenders who like straight up don’t understand defense. It’s less about athleticism and there are great athletes that fall into this category, but they don’t know where to be. They have poor instincts. They make poor help recover to situations, leaving a shooter when they shouldn’t, not helping when they should, missing basic details like box outs and corner crashes or excuse me, uh, uh, crackdown uh, rebounding from the wing to try to help your bigs when they’re engaged in box outs. Like they’re just dis they’re undisiplined in the details. That is the kind of defender that you cannot scale up with in the postseason. If anything, it gets further exposed. and Cat falls into that second category of bad defender. And that for me was what ended up keeping him out of this list, making him one of the final cuts. But again, it’s important for me to acknowledge both Harden and Cat I had at 26 and 27 in this list. So on that note, let’s get started. Again, two players today, number 25 and number 24. Number 25, Jamal Murray. A player that was as high as number 16 two years ago after they won the title when he averaged a preposterous statline on the way to hoisting the trophy and then actually dropping out of the list last year after a brutal shooting performance outside of a couple of game winners in his playoff run. Last season in review for Jamal Murray, he played in 67 games, averaged 21 points, four rebounds, and six assists, 1.9 stocks. He He’s one of those guys who falls into that second or that first category of like players that has some athletic limitations, but that he understands defense. We’re going to get into that more later, but he is a good defensive playmaker. His 1.4 steals per game is the same as guys like Amen Thompson and Jimmy Butler. He’s a good defensive playmaker. his efficiency. He was 47% from the field last year, 39% from three, 89% from the line, 54% in effective field goal percentage, that’s field goals weighted for uh weighted for threes, and then 58% in true shooting, which weights his ability to get to the foul line. His play type data, we’re going to get into this. This is uh data for throughout this entire list. This data is from synergy, and it’s specifically about how efficient each player is at certain types of actions. So pick and rolls for examples, ISOs, postups, attacking closeouts for our big guy, scoring out a role man touches, things along those lines, right? In pick and roll, Jamal ran 857 pick and rolls last year and he got 1.09 points per possession, including passes. That’s in the 85th percentile. Out of the 23 players to run at least 800 pick and rolls last year, his 1.09 points per possession ranked sixth on that list. Jamal is the quintessential modern NBA pick and roll player because he can make all of the shots and all of the reads out of every conceivable situation that he would run into playing pick and roll with Nicole Joic. So for instance, if you duck under a pick against Jamal in a ball screen or if you die on the pick and you let him get a clean look, he shot over 40% on off the dribble threes last year. You cannot go under or die on the pick against Jamal. If you get over the top, but you’re separated at all because you get caught a little bit on the pick or he just shed you with a move that sets you up for the pick. He can score effectively in the mid-range. He’s 46% on mid-range pullup twos and he’s just as efficient outside of 17 ft as he is inside of 17 ft. A very good mid-range jump shooter. 43% on floaters. So, he can make the shots in the short to mid-range that you get if you run into the pick. And then he finishes at the rim better than most guards. He was 60% at the rim last year, five attempts per game. That’s really good. And then he’s an underrated playmaker out of action. He’s averaged 6.2 assists per game in the three seasons since his knee injury at roughly a 3 to1 assist to turnover ratio. not an offensive engine like some of the other guys we will discuss on this list, but he can make the reads. But most importantly, this is the separator from Jamal for Jamal from many of the other players, even some guys that are above him on this list. In the event of a switch or a situation that calls for one-on-one, he is still one of the very best one-on-one players in the NBA. He ran 250 ISOs and postups last year, including passes, and generated 265 points out of them. That’s 1.06 point per possession, which is very good for one-on-one play. Specifically with ISOs, his 1.04 04 points per possession, including passes. Ranked 13th out of the 52 players to run at least 150 ISOs last year ahead of big names like Steph Curry, LeBron James, Jason Tatum, Donovan Mitchell. He is remarkably gifted at getting separation with dribble combinations and footwork. He can shoot step backs and side steps and turnaround jump shots over both shoulders. He can get wherever he wants to on the floor, get separation from defenders, and his shotmaking ability is incredible. And so that’s what makes him such an incredible twoman game partner with Nicole Joic. Joic is an excellent screener and he has great rollman gravity, right? Guys gravitate towards him on the roll. So, he gets good separation in ball screens. And in those situations, 40% on pull-up threes, 46% on pull-up twos, 43% on floaters, 60% at the rim. He’s very efficient making any shot that he might need to make coming off of action with Nicole Joic. But then if you switch, he’s going to be able to burn a big man or to post up a small. He’s got the versatility as a one-on-one player to fulfill the other side of the twoman game equation with Nicole Jokic. That is the separator. That’s what makes him so uniquely impactful alongside Nicole Joic relative to his like in a vacuum type of value. He doesn’t really have a weakness on offense. If you leave him wide open, he’s a great catch and shoot player who’s 41.4% 4% on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots last year. He can drive a closeout. He finishes extremely well on cuts for a guard. He shoots 71% on cuts because he’s a good rim finisher. In the playoffs, he had his lay uh his like ups and downs. This is worth mentioning with Jamal. But one of the things that’s kind of prevented his up and down shotmaking in terms of postseason consistency, he’s been so good late in games that it undoes most of the damage from that kind of inconsistent shooting. He’s hit in the last three playoff runs 16 clutch shots, including multiple buzzer beaters. He is one of the most dependable lategame shot makers in the NBA, which gives him a ton of post-season utility. Now, he has his downsides. Jamal can be a very frustrating player because of his lows. He’s notorious for coming into training camp out of shape and then playing his way into shape. His seasons tend to take on this repetitive flow where he gets in shape and plays really well in the middle portion of the season, but then his body starts to break down. He’s had to miss a decent chunk of time right before the postseason in each of the last two years. Those injuries end up then disrupting his rhythm and preventing him from getting to that level of consistency. Again, if you look during the title run, he averaged 26.6 rebounds and seven assists on 59% true shooting. He’s shown it before that for four playoff rounds, he can be a reliable scorer. he just hasn’t been able to replicate the necessary conditioning and you know that conditioning is directly related to you being able to sustain certain little bangup injuries that you might get over the course of the year. The stuff with defense with Jamal I’m less concerned with. Again, like we talked about earlier, there are two different kinds of bad defenders. Guys who just straight up don’t understand defense and are constantly in the wrong place. These are mistake makers. they incessantly make mistakes and it makes them impossible to bring or build a good defense around. Then there’s the guys that are limited athletes and because of their offensive focus, they might have a lot of like laziness in the regular season where it’s less about them not understanding where to be, but them just being like, “Ah, it. We’ll try it again on the next possession or we’ll do it at the end of the game when we need to.” Right? There are a lot of guys who fall into that category. Jamal falls into that category. And in that category, these are guys that have high IQ, that do understand defense, do know where to be, do know when to rotate, when not to, how to fulfill a role in a defense. Those guys can scale up their defense when they need to. And it’s absolutely worth mentioning that the Nuggets have been able to scale up their defense to where they need to get in the playoffs, winning the title in 2023. Last year, they did about as good a job guarding Oklahoma City as anybody in that playoff run because of their intelligence, their overall cumulative intelligence on the defensive end of the floor. And Jamal Murray was part of that and he’s a good defensive playmaker. But the conditioning stuff is real and it obviously comes with inconsistency that has hurt his team at times over the years. That’s what prevents Jamal from reaching his potential. Again, I’ve had him as high as number 16 on this list two summers ago after they won the title. He is capable of getting back to that level if he can work on those conditioning details and maximize his talent over the course of an entire season. For all the talk about, you know, Nicole Joic never playing with an all-star, an allNBA player, we all know that Jamal Murray can get to that level. Maybe not all NBA, but he certainly can get to that all-star level as one of the top, you know, 16 to 25 players in the NBA. He just has to maximize through his conditioning to start seasons. But even in his current state as a basketball player, he’s one of the most valuable players in the league, especially in his very specific role alongside Nicole Joic, which is his ability to score and playmake out of every conceivable situation, including switches. It’s truly unique. There’s not a lot of guards, including the next guy we’re going to discuss on this list, that have that level of versatility, and it’s what allows Jamal to come in at number 25 on this year’s list. Number 24, Trey Young. Last season in review, he played in 76 games. Averaged 24 points, three rebounds, and 12 assists, 1.4 stocks. Decent steals guy over the course of the last couple seasons. His efficiency, 41% from the field, 34% from three, 88% from the foul line, represents 49% in effective field goal percentage, 57% in true shooting. This is a lot having to do with his free throw rate. He has a high free throw rate and he shoots the ball well when he gets to the foul line. That allows him to have a high true shooting percentage relative to his actual ability to put the ball in the basket. play type data. Consistently one of the highest volume pick and roll players in the NBA. He ran over 2,000 pick and rolls last year, including passes. For perspective, when I’ve done the high volume pick and roll list each summer, I typically have the cuto off at a thousand. He’s ran over 2,000. Shay Gildas Alexander ran the second most last year, 1410. So, a massive gap in pick and roll volume between Trey and the rest of the league. Trey ran 2,78 pick and rolls last year, generating 2200 points. It’s 1.06 points per possession. That’s very good. On the high volume list, out of the 13 players to run at least a thousand pick and rolls, his 1.06 points per possession ranked eighth. Now, before we go any further, I want to shout out Tyrese Hallebertton and Damen Lillard here. Those two guys actually came in at number one and number two on this list as the most efficient pick and roll players in the NBA, but obviously they didn’t make the list this year because of their Achilles tears. I want to particularly draw attention to Tyrese Hallebertton. He ran over 1500 pick and rolls last year uh including the playoffs and got 1.13 points per possession which was far and away number one in the NBA in total efficiency. I’ve talked a lot about Tyrese Hallebertton’s uh like kind of like offensive engine capabilities and just how uniquely valuable it is in the modern NBA that he can constantly set guys up with advantages. And I just wanted to shine a light on Tyrese for a second because like again including the postseason, massive volume, over 1500 pick and rolls. His efficiency was three points better per 100 possessions than anyone else in the NBA. It’s just one of the very best offensive engines in the sport. I just wanted to take a minute to shout out Tyrese Salbertton. With Trey, it’s important to acknowledge he’s playing with less offensive talent than many of the high volume pick and roll guys in the league. The Hawks ranked 18th in spot of efficiency. They were a bottom half catch and shoot team. They generated more role man touches than anyone in the league, but they were very mediocre at finishing them. This is not a team that surrounds Trey Young with super highlevel offensive talent. Trey was a remarkable offensive engine for a group of pretty young and pretty flawed offensive players. Yet, they still had a 115.2 offensive rating when he was on the floor last year. that would crack the top 10 among teams in the NBA. Their offense cratered to eight points worse per 100 possessions when he was off the floor. For Trey, he falls into that category of relentless advantage creation. the con the a concept we’ve discussed with respect to James Harden you know uh uh Nicole Joic Luca Donic Tyrese Hallebertton this idea of these players that just set up their teammates with a massive volume of possessions where they have the ball with a player sprinting at them rather than the player standing directly in front of them and that manifests with easier opportunities that even flawed basketball players can capitalize on. Trey is a relentless advantage creator. It is that rather than versatility that he brings to the table. A guy like Jamal brings that versatility, the ISO play, the ability to beat switches, things along those lines. For Trey, it’s the singular talent of advantage creation. Trey Young is not a very good ISO player. He shot just 30% from the field last year. from the field out of ISO, just 0.8 points per possession. He wasn’t good, including passes either. He’s not an ISO player. He’s not nearly the tough shot maker that Jamal Murray is. He doesn’t get to the rim a ton. He misses more than half the time when he gets there. So, he is vulnerable to switching schemes. That’s the big offensive weakness for a guy like Trey Young. but he provides a reasonable faximile of what Tyrese Hallebertton brings to the table as a lead guard, excellent transition passing, kick ahead passes that unlocks the athletes on this Hawks roster. I’m specifically super excited to see a full season of a healthy Jaylen Johnson and Zachary Rristache running the wings. Those are two of the best floor runners in the NBA. Obviously, more athletic depth with Tyson Daniels and Nquille Alexander Walker. Trey is relentless with kick ahead passes. That is going to be a super high value ad for the Hawks this year. That is what I mean when I say like that reasonable faximile of what Tyrese Hallebertton brings to the table. But he’s also the quintessential pick and roll player against like traditional coverages. Like if you’re chasing Trey over the top of screens instead of switching, he’s got everything you need to succeed there. He’s a good drop coverage score like with his pull-up three-point shooting. is a perfect example of the difference between him in ISO versus at a ball screen. So envision a pull up three. So an off the dribble three. In a ball screen, it’s probably going to be because you dribbled off the screen and the guy got hit because he got hit. Big man’s too far back. There’s an opening for him to settle into a pull-up three. A pull-up three out of ISO. The defender is squared up with him and he has to make some kind of move to get separation. A side step, a step back, something along those lines. Maybe a hesitation dribble, pulling the ball further away from the basket, whatever he needs to do to get that pull-up three out. Very different type of shot. Trey Young was below 20% on pull-up threes out of ISO last year. He was 37% on pull-up threes out of pick and roll. That is a perfect example of that dynamic that I’m talking about. The same thing goes with two-point shooting. What does a two-point jump shot look like? or two-point shot of any kind look like out of a ball screen. It’s a floater because the guard got caught on the screen and the big’s too far back or a little mid-range pullup, something along those lines. They are open shots that are being conceded in the action. Whereas a two-point shot out of ISO, that’s more of I’ve got to get separation from an onball defender. Trey Young shot 36% on twos out of ISO last year, 46% on twos out of ball screens. That’s kind of the dynamic with Trey. That’s what makes him so susceptible to to switching schemes. That’s why their front office went out to go get a guy like Chris Porzingis to help give him an ability to have some resilience against pick and roll switching. But against traditional coverages, he scores the ball plenty well enough to unlock his greatest strength, which is that he’s one of the great passers in the NBA. He’s incredibly gifted in ball screens at looking off backline defenders with no look passes that open up angles for bounce passes and lobs to bigs that are on the roll or cutting along the baseline. He can make skip passes to the corner with either hand. He’s a great left-handed passer. That ability to relentlessly create advantages for his teammates is what puts him into that special category of elite offensive engines in the NBA. Let’s go back to the Jamal Murray example. Jamal Murray can credibly make the reads. He can reach a certain floor as a playmaker that can allow him to run a bench group or to be a reasonably good lead ball handler, right? But Jamal could never come close to leading a team like this Hawks team to the offensive uh heights that Trey Young has lifted them to. It’s not something he’s capable of doing because he’s not the relentless advantage hunter and creator that Trey Young is. Conversely, if the roles were reversed and Trey was in Denver, he wouldn’t be as successful with Jokic as Jamal Murray is. Jokic doesn’t need Trey’s relentless advantage creation. He’s a relentless advantage creator himself. There’s a redundancy there, a diminishing return. And Trey isn’t nearly as gifted as a tough shot maker. So Trey’s vulnerability to switching would be a ceiling lowering effect in that Denver Nuggets offense in a way that Jamal is not. That’s why I always talk about your specific value relative to your specific situation. Basketball is more art than science in that particular way. My belief in the Hawks as a team this year lies in the unique way that Trey Young accentuates this particular group. The roster is chock full of talented young athletes, but none of them are particularly good at all at breaking down a set defense. They will not be able to score when Trey Young is off the floor. But each of the players on that roster can score if they have an advantage given to them. Zachary Rashace and Jaylen Johnson are two of the best transition floor running wings in the league. They can score effectively there. Both of them are improving as spot up jump shooters and as closeout attackers. The Alexander Walker is an excellent catch and shoot player and has a little bit of close closeout attacking of his own. Dyson Daniels is super raw but has some tools and has good touch in the short range and a lot of things that will allow him to score with openings and Yaka Kongu can score on the roll and Chris Porzingis should again help them be able to deal with Trey’s biggest offensive weakness which is his vulnerability to switching in Washington three years ago 1.13 points proposed up including passes first year in Boston 1.31 last year in Boston 1.23. He is a reliable, efficient on an island postup player, especially against advantages that come out of switches which teams will inevitably deploy because that’s the best way to uh to kind of contend with what Trey Young does. Now, on the defensive end, I think Trey falls into the high IQ player that has good defensive instincts and knows where to be. He’s just especially lazy and especially limited as an athlete. And that puts him at the very bottom of that type of defensive player. Most famously recently, his putrid effort at the end of that playin game against Miami where he’s just kind of floating around and watching the Heat grab multiple offensive rebounds that ends in a dagger by DaVon Mitchell along the left wing. Right. Although it’s worth mentioning the game was basically out of reach at that point, but he does understand defense. He does know where to be and I have seen him at various points over the course of the last few years be a serviceable defender for short stretches. He’s a quick guard. He can cover ground in rotation. And like we mentioned earlier, he does understand where to be, but his limitations are so loud because of his lack of physical tools. And so that kind of prevents him from getting to the same level of the other great offensive engines in the NBA. like Tyresese Hallebertton for instance ha like is in that category but is much more active more consistently and has like legitimate length so he can be a defensive playmaker in a way that Trey Young can’t be. So that prevents him from getting higher on the like you guys know how much I value offensive advantage creation and Trey has always been like on the outside looking in on this list or barely cracking this list in large part because those defensive shortcomings are so loud with his physical limitations. But I still think advantage creation is one of the most valuable traits for an NBA player to have and Trey brings it in spades. and I’m especially excited to see him play with this young and deep Hawks team this year. So, he comes in at 24 on this year’s player rankings list. All right, guys. That’s all I have for today. As I mentioned, we are going to have four more on Wednesday, then we’ll go three at a time through till we get to the top 10. And then we’re going one at a time through the top 10. We’re going to have mail bags on Fridays throughout the way. We’re going to stretch this out. There’s no reason to rush. We got lots of time to kill before we get into September and we start our season previews. So again, anything you disagree with, a player I didn’t have on the list that you think should have been ranked, a player that I listed today that you think is too high or too low, whatever it might be, drop it in the mailbag questions. Provide a brief like kind of concise elevator pitch for why you feel that that ranking should be different and we will get to them in our mailbags throughout the remainder of this list. Again, I appreciate you guys for rocking with us and supporting the show, and I will see you guys on Wednesday.

Jason kicks off his summer NBA player rankings countdown list by explaining the criteria, the players that just missed the cut, and how he has Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young, New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, and Los Angeles Clippers guard James Harden ranked.

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