20 NBA players who brought the most joy to watch in 2013
As someone who splits his writing time and energy between sports and music, there's one thing I definitely prefer about the latter milieu to the former--year-end listing culture. I love it. I start thinking about my end-of-year lists a couple weeks into February, if not earlier, and every time I hear a new song or album I like a good deal, I'm instantly thinking to myself "Hmm, I wonder if that could make a push for my top ten? Top 40?" Yeah yeah, our society cares too much about compressing things into list form, and it's killing the internet and journalism and probably some baby seals somewhere. Do not care. I was made for countdowning.
Year-end listing isn't really a part of the sports world, though. The overlapping structure of sports seasons makes it tough to view things within the lens of a calendar year, and also there's a sense of objectivity to evaluating sports that there really isn't to music (or movies, TV, or any other art or entertainment medium where there's no final score). I could argue that Jason Derulo's Tattoos was the album of the year if I really wanted to--probably unconvincingly, but you couldn't say I was wrong, exactly. If I tried to argue that Gerald Henderson was the basketball player of the year, you could probably dismiss that pretty easily without having to worry about being called an elitist or a snob or anything. The presence of stats in sports makes subjective list-making a tricky proposition.
I'm gonna try it, though. Because really, when I make a top albums of the year list, I'm not trying to say that those are the 20 greatest collections of songs released that calendar year, just that those were the 20 that I enjoyed the most. And the same is true with me in basketball--my enjoyment of a player is not inextricably tied to his success on the court, as there are MVP-caliber players that I have no real love for, as well as low-production role players that I can't get enough of.
So here are my top 20 NBA players of 2013--the dudes who brought me the most joy to watch this calendar year. You can't really argue with any of my selections, since there's no criteria used except my own weird whims and fixations, but if you wanted to show me your own list, that'd be pretty cool.
20. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks. Giannis is a little like that album you only heard once or twice a couple days before you submit your year-end list, and know that you haven't spent enough time with it to really give it that much credit, but dammit you really liked it and you know you're gonna be listening to it enough down the line to justify the selection retroactively. Don't let me down, The Alphabet.
19. Nene, Washington Wizards. Not that I don't love Bradley Beal and John Wall too, but it seems like Nene is always the key to the Wizards actually being really fun to watch--he gets healthy for a couple weeks, has a couple games where they run the offense through him and he looks like the league's most skilled big man, they start winning, and then he gets injured again. If he could stay healthy for a whole season, the Wizards would have a much better chance of doing something special, but they'd probably seem a lot less magical for it when they do put it all together.
18. Kirk Hinrich, Chicago Bulls. My two favorite things that happened this year were the Bulls snapping the Heat's regular-season winning streak, and the Bulls beating the Nets in Round One of the playoffs. I'm not even a Bulls fan, but I got such satisfaction out of those expenditures of NBA heart and hustle, of which Kirk Hinrich--who never seems to do anything all that well, but still felt like the most important player on the court for both--was perhaps the most emblematic figure, a guy who just found a way to get it done, logic be damned. When I heard he was out for Game Six of the Nets series, I wanted to vomit with sadness. He won't be the last Bulls player on this list.
17. Carmelo Anthony, New York Knicks. Melo tends to oscillate between the transcendent and the unwatchable so wildly, sometimes within the same game, that it's hard to put him too high on a list like this. Still, he gets on for that three-game, 131-point stretch in April when he was on that shooting roll that I don't ever remember seeing from another player before, arguably the most exciting hot streak of basketball I saw this year. It's enough to keep a Knicks fan warm on a cold 7-24 night from the field, I'd expect
16. Thomas Robinson, Sacramento Kings / Houston Rockets / Portland Trailblazers. I would be in favor of a rule saying that players like Robinson--who seam so freaking talented when you watch them and they're doing things, and you remember that it's been like a month since the last time you've actually seen them doing anything--must be traded once every two months, until they actually find the team that fits them. I'm still hoping his next stop's in Philly--at Brett Brown's pace and with more minutes than he could ever dream of on his first three teams, I'm convinced Robinson could put up All-Star-caliber numbers by the end of the season.
15. Brook Lopez, Brooklyn Nets. Just love that this Scooby of an NBA bro has somehow emerged as one of the league's most unstoppable players. What's more, it feels like he's still only scratching the surface of how dominant he can be. If we're heading to a place where one of the ten most valuable players in the league is a guy you could talk about Darkman with for a half-hour, I'm probably down.
14. Andre Drummond, Detroit Pistons. Maybe should be a shared credit with Brandon Jennings, because there's no point guard in the league better at clanking long jumpers or leaving layups on the rim or throwing errant alley-oop passes than Jennings, and no big man better at slamming those mistakes back down than Drummond. These two were just destined to play basketball together; I haven't been this excited about a tantalizingly fraught-with-peril guard/big combination since Blake Griffin's first days in proto-Lob City with Baron Davis.
13. Paul George, Indiana Pacers. I'm still not sure how exciting Paul George exactly is to watch on a game-to-game basis--he's a little more plodding than electric a lot of the time, though it is cool when he hits a bunch of threes in a row--but just watching him go at LeBron in the playoffs, and in their couple regular-season showdowns this early season, that has made for some pretty special NBA viewing. It's so rare that a player as good as LeBron should get a legitimate adversary in his prime, and George is certainly looking like that.
12. Michael Carter-Williams, Philadelphia 76ers. Again, only 15 games to work with here, but c'mon--22 points, 12 assists, seven rebounds and nine steals. In his debut game. Against the Heat. In a win. The fact that the Sixers didn't make him take off his jersey after the game in order to immediately hoist it to the rafters is a slight that I hope MCW doesn't hold too hard against them when it comes to negotiating his eventual contract extension.
11. Jimmy Butler, Chicago Bulls. It's something about his facial expression, I guess--just unflappable, unimpressed, like he was born on the court of the United Center during a particularly heated Bulls-Knicks game in the mid-'90s and had already seen it all. He always seemed like a True Bull, and once he started playing like one, I became convinced he was the missing piece to them being able to take down the Heat and assume the Eastern Conference throne. Really, though, it was probably just the look. And the hair. I'll never forgive him for cutting it, that thing was singular.
10. Reggie Jackson, Jeremy Lamb and Steven Adams, Oklahoma City Thunder. THUNDERBENCH! I found it extremely amusing over the off-season when there were people who actually predicted that the loss of Kevin Martin would materially affect this team's contention status, but that was mostly just League Pass prejudice on my part--Martin has got to be one of the least-exciting, most-frustrating players in the league to watch an entire unit's offense run through. Much prefer these young'ns, whose development into one of the league's most formidable bench trios--athletic, creative, ballsy as all hell--has turned OKC back into a must-watch for me.
9. Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder. Of course, this guy has a lot to do with that too. Watching Nice Guy KD evolve into Angry KD over the years has been one of my favorite ongoing subplots in the Association--there are times now when it seems like even Russell Westbrook is like "chill bro, just a game." His first half against the Rockets in Game One after Russ went down remains one of my favorite moments of the year, and watching him grow as a passer to the point where in a couple years, his stat lines might actually be able to go toe-to-toe with LBJ's (assuming he's not working on shooting 70% for the year by then, which wouldn't actually shock me at this point) has been pretty special. Get this man a title before he kills someone, please.
8. Pablo Prigioni. Fun there for like a week when Mike Woodson was actually forced to play Prigioni for starters' minutes. Prigioni was a League Pass delight both last season and this, for his once-a-game, set-your-watch knack for picking up backcourt steals, for his lurching, stilted drives that made Andre Miller seem like Eric Bledsoe, for his sneaky marksmanship abilities behind the arc and especially for his utter unwillingness to take any shots with a defender within ten feet of him. You know he still has an Offensive Rating of 124 for this season? Get well soon, Petey Pab.
7. Tim Duncan. Mostly for that unbelievably heroic first half against the Heat in Game Six--25 points and eight rebounds before the break, in what would have undoubtedly gone down as one of the all-time great NBA close-out performances had the Spurs actually managed to, y'know, close it out. My heart still breaks for Timmy when I think of that missed bunny over Shane Battier in Game Seven--and I think about it a lot, though probably not 1/100th of the amount that he does--and even though he's off to a slow start this season, I get overjoyed now when he has a turn-back-the-clock game of Duncan Dominance, like in his 20-20 outing (including the game-winning jumper) against the Hawks some weeks ago.
6. Mike Conley. As someone who's been riding for the Grizzlies since the future of the team was going to be Rudy Gay and OJ Mayo, I was kvelling for so much of Memphis' run to the Western Conference Finals, but particularly the evolution of Conley, who not that long ago was considered one of the dumbest signings in the league, and now really has to be included on any list of the top ten point guards alive. Going toe-to-toe with Chris Paul, posting a couple near-triple-doubles against the Thunder...and not like you'd notice it on this season's injury-struck, increasingly-depressing Grizz squad, but hes actually having a career offensive year, averaging personal bests in scoring, shooting and PER. I don't even notice his physical resemblance to Big Sean anymore, and that's mostly a positive thing.
5. Stephen Curry. Much like the rest of the country, I delighted in Steph's year-long shooting clinic, though for whatever reason I never really rooted for his Warriors team--probably due more to my weird aversion towards Klay Thompson and my general dislike of Mark Jackson than anything Curry-related. The 54-point outing in MSG will go down as one of the most uniquely stupefying displays of basketball prowess I have ever witnessed--at least, until Curry does it again, which you have to think will happen at some point in 2014 (if we're all good little boys and girls, anyway). I remember actually getting angry at him on occasion this year for some of the shots he was making, like "STOP NULLIFYING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS WITH YOUR SHOOTING, STEPHEN!!! WE NEED THOSE FOR OUR UNIVERSE TO FUNCTION!!"
4. Nate Robinson. For the Nate Robinson Game--the Bulls' Game Four, triple-OT comeback from 15 down with minutes to go against the Nets, if May is already that distant a memory--as undeniable at the top of the charts as "Blurred Lines" was this spring and summer. I've written so much about that game that I've already writte In a blurb about it where I talk about how much I've already written about it. It was the most fun I can remember having watching a basketball game that didn't involve my home team--and maybe just period. It's why I'm still hoping the bummer Bulls can find a way to creak into the playoffs, even if it's hard to imagine Mike Dunleavy being able to replicate this kind of performance now that NateRob's gone Mile-High.
3. Kawhi Leonard. My attitude towards Kawhi reflects my shifting attitude towards the Spurs over the years. Six seasons ago, when the Spurs were still the NBA's reigning dynasty, I would've looked upon the Kawhi Leonard reckoning with disdain and terror, because he is just so goddamn Spurs--efficient, emotionless and so, so much better than you would ever think he would be on another team. Woulda been nice if he could've gone 2-2 from the line that one time, but considering what a badass he was the entire finals, and especially Games Six and Seven where he was never less than the third-best player on a court featuring at least a half-dozen future Hall-of-Famers, you can't really hate at all. Now, I actually find myself hoping that Kawhi is the key to extending the Spurs run for the rest of the decade, which would've made 2008 Me chug an entire bottle of Robitussin.
2. Jeff Green. I still got you, Jeff. The basketball world has fallen in and out of love with Jeff Green so many times--underachieving, overachieving, career nights in big games and total no-shows in others--that it's hard to blame them from thinking that its just never gonna happen 100% with this guy. But damn, even on his worst nights, I look at Jeff Green and I still believe in my heart of hearts that he's a star. After this year, anyway, where I watched him shut down peak LeBron for the majority of a 4th quarter and overtime--a line item maybe only three or four players in the entire league have on their resume--then go off for 43 on 14-21 shooting against him a couple months later, not to mention averaging a 22/7/4 on 54% shooting for a an eight-game stretch in March and April. (And the playoffs! He averaged over 20 a game!)
I have no clue what it could possibly take Jeff Green the real-life player to match Jeff Green the idealized version in my head, but until he's 36 and playing out the string as a veteran-minimum signing off the bench for the Knicks, I'll still believe he's just one season, just one roster change, just one team away from getting there. Don't give up Jeff, you still have friends.
1. Kobe Bryant. I feel a little weird putting Kobe #1 on this list so recently after my last weirdly gushy piece about him, but I'm sorry, there's just no way anybody else was gonna end my countdown this year. The Kobe Bryant, Point Guard and Kobe Bryant, Volume Passer experiments, the jaw-dropping comeback wins (and consecutive 40/10 stat lines) against the Hornets and Raptors, the woah-there dunks against the Nets and Hawks, the duel with Damian Lillard in Portland, and then the final hurrah in Golden State, before he limped off the court for the last time that season and I seriously thought I might cry over an NBA game for the first time in my life.
Kobe's had better calendar years than this one for sure, but none more endearing than I can remember, none that made even the haters take stock of just how much this guy's meant to the league for almost two decades now, and how much emptier it seems when he's on the shelf. Putting Kobe #1 on an NBA list in 2013 is kinda like putting the new album by Bob Dylan at the top of your list--boring, safe, predictable. But hey, sometimes Bob Dylan just happens to release your favorite album of the year, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. (Remember Time Out of Mind? Good-ass album.)