As has been noted numerous times, the NBA probably more than any other major sports league is boosted by 'star' labels, player vs. player debates and endless discussion of where exactly a star player ranks among his peers.
Is Player X a top-five player? Top-10? Top-20? Top-30? Is Blake Griffin better than Kevin Love among power forwards? And are both of those guys better than LaMarcus Aldridge? Heck, Paul George vs. Carmelo Anthony has dominated daily discussion here at theScore offices for almost a year now.
But for the most part, fun as they may be, those debates end as fruitless wastes of time. At the end of the day, while each party can cite various numbers and statements, trying to prove that George's defense is worth more than Anthony's offense, or vice versa, is almost an impossible task. Same goes for actually trying to decide on a No. 1 power forward or a No. 2 point guard behind Chris Paul.
There are just so many comparable NBA stars in that echelon right now that each player's worth can be magnified or skewed by their supporting casts, team fits and other external factors. In addition, outside of LeBron James and Kevin Durant (and maybe Chris Paul), you can pick out a flaw or two in each of those next level stars to make the popular case that any number of them aren't 'best player on a championship team' material.
On Monday, an interesting read from Kevin Pelton over at ESPN on the Top 10 players by the numbers included a factoid that really stuck with me, followed by a reasonable statement:
The difference in WARP between Durant and Anthony Davis (fifth, at 14.5) is larger than the gap between Davis and the 20th-best player. The top 10 is an arbitrary standard, and the difference between finishing eighth and 12th is mostly a matter of taste.
It's so true when you really take the time to sit back and think about it.
We can all watch the games, look at the numbers and come to the incredibly easy conclusion that LeBron James and Kevin Durant are in a league of their own, head and shoulders above not only the rest of the NBA, but above even fellow superstars. It's not opinion. It's fact.
The difference between those two and the next group of players is almost surely greater than the difference between whoever you think is the fourth or fifth-best player in the world and who you consider the 10th or 15th-best. And trying to decide between the players in that next level can vary based on tastes, how you interpret a plethora of numbers, as well as performance from year to year, month to month, week to week or even game to game. The margins are that small.
So perhaps the real debates shouldn't be trying to accomplish the impossible task of picking a 'better' player between Love and Griffin, Noah and Howard, George and Anthony, Westbrook and Curry, or whoever the argument of the week is between, but rather separating players into tiers and then deciding whether a player merits entry into the next tier of stars.
We all know the players mentioned in this post and a few others are in that next tier after James and Durant. On any given night or during any given hot streak, one of Paul, Love, Griffin, George, Anthony, Parker, Howard, Harden, Noah, Aldridge, Westbrook, Curry, Wade, Davis, Bosh, Nowitzki, Duncan, Gasol, Lillard, Cousins and maybe even another player or two can look like a top-five NBA talent.
At their worst, you can probably drop some of those guys into the 15-25 range. But for the most part they're all there, and they're all capable. Debating where exactly most of these players fall in precise rankings is largely dependent on the performance of each over the last few weeks or months.
The interesting debate to me, then, is who else should be included in that Tier 2 class, and which of those mentioned players perhaps don't belong? For example, Goran Dragic and Kyle Lowry have both been among the 10-20 most valuable players in the league this season, but have they done enough in your mind to gain entry into that Tier 2 club? Are you prepared to cite Lowry, for example, as a 'top-20' player in writing?
Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins are young phenoms, but is it too early to include them among some of those more proven and battle tested Tier 2 vets?
Player vs. player debates are part of the fun of being an NBA fan and watching a league where the absolute best players make more of a difference than in any other sport. But most of the times those debates are between two stars so evenly matched that the argument is more about a preference in style of play than anything else. The real debates to be had, and on that note the untapped debates to be had, revolve around which tier of fellow players a star belongs to and whether or not a lesser player has made the leap to the next tier or whether a more reputable player has fallen a rung.
There are James and Durant, a list of superstars, a follow-up list of top-25 stars, and then a mammoth list of probably another 30-40 players who can be borderline All-Stars in any given season. Have some fun with organizing about 60 NBA players into those three tiers after The Big Two. It may be time consuming, but no more so than trying to decide who exactly is the seventh-best player in the Association.
