Tatum has consistently made his teams wayyy better when he's on the court, so I don't think it's that crazy.
Yeah I'm willing to fully believe in the "LeBron is cooked" category, despite him putting up good stats last season. The only reason I'd rate him over Embiid in this exercise is that if I ask myself which player do I feel like gives me a greater chance at a championship, I still lean towards LeBron because in a playoff series I have more confidence he can get to that extra level than Embiid.
I mean, Embiid lost in 6 to the 1 seed playing with a broken face and garbage teammates. The PHI team had 3 good players, 1 of them is poor man's Jalen Brunson and the other was a super gimpy, perennial choke artist Harden.
Embiid went out with a whimper. He averaged 20 ppg on 42% shooting and didn't contribute a ton defensively either. In the elimination game he shot 29% from the field and was outplayed by Bam throughout the series. Yeah he was injured but that is part of the problem with Embiid; he's injured a lot. If Tatum crashed out in the second round with that kind of performance people would not be high on him the way they are at the moment. Durant did it this season and his stock has definitely taken a hit because of it. It's a weird thing to just overlook, especially when you look at his history of underwhelming playoff performances.
I mean... not really. I can look at his performances and understand context. For the same reason I don't put much weight on Durant losing to a much better team. Would you feel the same about Embiid if he hadn't played hurt and they got swept? When people put too much weight on team performance over individual they end up making poor decisions. Tatum didn't crash out in the 2nd round because his teammates played great (also he was healthy). I didn't think less of him after 2021 when his team was all hurt and the Nets rolled him.
Embiid out of that group of eight has achieved the least as far as playoff advancement, and has played the worst in the playoffs, over his entire career. Him being injured during portions of that is a factor that you just can't ignore, because he is injured a lot. He's very good in the regular season, but in the playoffs, when good teams focus on trying to stop him, he's pretty underwhelming. He was very good in the Atlanta series and was let down by his cowardly teammates, who I certainly would never, ever, defend in a million years.
Yeah, the bar of proof that Tatum has for national pundit types (not you) is getting bizarre.
How can you possibly weight performance in a playoff series that heavily, and then put Embiid and Kevin Durant above Tatum? I don't even disagree that those two should be ahead; just noting that the thought process is complete bullshit.
For real. Embiid lays an egg in the playoffs and gets a pass. HE'S NEVER DONE ANYTHING IN THE PLAYOFFS!!!!
This is the same logical fallacy people fall into around Montana’s Super Bowl record relative to Brady’s….discounting earlier losses in a way that makes no sense.
Yeah Partnow is wildly inconsistent in when he cares about things. This feels a lot like he just made the list he liked then came up with justifications later.
There's not a good-faith way to rank Luka ahead of Tatum unless you really, really, really like raw assist numbers.
Totally, and this was my point wrt Tatum: it feels like a lot of stat-ish national media guys have simply decided that he isn't in that top tier, and will seize on whatever lets them not have to update their priors.
Good-faith is a good way to put it.
I think one case for Luka is the usage. Also, I do think for a lot of people they ignore the first month of every season where he works himself back into shape. I'd have Tatum above him right now, but I think that is the real case. Just like the case with some of the older guys who have injury or load management lulls, that when he's on he's a monster and he carries a league high load without any real degradation.
Nothing should be surprising with pundits. Disregarding that he played about 1000 minutes in the playoffs doesn't crack the top 10.
I appreciate that you're trying to make the case for Luka, and that's probably the best one.
Isn't he actually trending the right way on defense? I know it's popular to trash on his defense but he's not exactly Trae Young.
9/10 tiers aren't ranked so he and Butler are in the same tier. Also the labeling is wrong, it's 9-19 not 8-19 because Partnow appears to have broken his own rules on # of guys per tier to avoid dropping Kawhi into tier 2.
Yeah, I actually can see the case for Luka. It is largely usage, but also that he enables the entire offense...which is a little different though fairly well reflected by usage. He's an elite offense basically by himself; Tatum is not. Defense makes up a big part of the difference----and I also see the argument it more than makes up for it---but I'll be honest: I'd trade Tatum for Luka and I wouldn't trade Luka for Tatum.
I think Embiid is a bit different than Kawhi for 2 reasons:
If I were Boston, I would say no. If I were Dallas, I would say no. Building from scratch... it'd be a tough choice. But that's a different argument on who is better right now anyway.
He's certainly different than Kawhi in the degree of unavailability---Kawhi has played 109 games total the last three years, Embiid 170. But the gap between Embiid and Tatum is also pretty large (206) and Tatum is also playing about 4 MPG more. Add that in and he's played 7300 minutes in those three years vs Embiid's 5400. That gets even larger if you include playoff minutes. I believe Partnow was using a three-year sample, but could be mis-recalling.
I can see that argument. I can also see the case that some of the difference in minutes is about the team's choices, and some would say playing Tatum huge minutes for 76 games a year was a bad choice by BOS that may have cost them a ring. I think discounting guys with constant true injury issues like Kawhi who couldn't play no matter what, is important, and in say an MVP race I agree that minutes are important. If you're trying to make a more holistic ranking of players though, I don't know that a team bucking the general trend for managing the minutes of their stars is something that is positive. Tatum played the minutes he did because he's on the Celtics, if he was on say GS or PHI he would have played less because of how those organizations feel about the value of load management.
Of course you never hear anyone who claims Tatum “was awful in The Finals” ever mention that he was forced to run the offense 40 ft from the basket bc we didn’t have a PG to get the ball to him in his spots. Sigh.
I don’t think he’s cooked. He’s just not the LeBronimator anymore. Put him on the Celtics and they become an all time great squad. Put him on the Lakers and they’re a lottery team because he can’t carry a team to the playoffs by himself anymore.
Kinda/sorta but not really. Dallas’s entire defensive scheme is built around hiding Luka. It worked during the regular season when most teams are more focused on running their own sets. Didn’t work nearly as well in the playoffs when teams were actively trying to exploit mismatches.
I'd like to see Luka show up in shape one year before Brad ships out a growing, chiseled WING. Work ethic/habits count when talking about trades for young players. Tatum's $$$ is also friendlier.
Yeah, the whole "you can just run an offense around Luka and you can't through Tatum" is odd when we've seen Tatum+flotsam units do well for a couple years now.
Luka a sub-tier too high, Kawhi and Tatum should be swapped. Otherwise fine by Pelton's standard. Personally I probably swap Durant and Embiid, but that's because I think Durant and Embiid have trended in opposite directions on injury issues.
Well, I got it right (not counting Kawhi because I thought we had to pick 7 players, not 8).
It seems that what Tatum did against Durant in the playoffs is not boosting his stock but what he did in the finals is hurting his stock. That seems unfair. If the Celtics had managed to hold on to game 4 in the fourth quarter and then Tatum had one great game in a Celtics win in either game 5, 6, or 7 I wonder how much higher he'd be rated?
It is. Tatum is a top 8 player. (Kawhi is not.) I think you can make a reasonable argument that Durant deserves to stay a notch above Tatum on any ranking, but there isn’t really a reasonable case that Tatum sits below Lebron or Doncic and it’s a lot easier to support that he’s clearly a step ahead of them. At the same time, I have a hard time getting too upset about ranking Tatum 9th instead of 6th or 7th. I also expect Tatum to be a clear cut top 5 player after next year, and think he has an outside shot at serious MVP consideration.
I don't disagree but the case for Embiid over Jokic is defense. Embiid is an extremely impactful defensive player. Jokic is ... not, and his defensive limitations really limit what you can do schematically.
