[Lowe] “The top 4 players when everyone’s healthy are indisputably Luka, Jokic, Giannis, and Embiid in some order. This year, SGA, if you look at the MVP ballot and the 1st Team All-NBA voting, is 5th. That’s it, that’s the top 5. Tatum is 6th-8th depending on your mileage on the other superstars.”
by AashyLarry
28 Comments
I don’t know how anyone can disagree with this take lol, felt obvious this year
This whole segment is actually about giving the Celtics credit and criticizing the fact that this EXACT sound bite is the only thing people pay attention to. OP is the problem
Do you guys think Luka, Jokic, Giannis, Embiid, and SGA on a team together would be a good team?
OP sucks. this is clickbait bullshit
Tatum’s best ability is availability.
it seems like if you lose to Curry at some point you get way bigger punishment in perception about you
“When healthy” well some of these guys haven’t been healthy for the playoffs in multiple years and that’s a problem. Honestly would take Tatum over Embiid just because Embiid is never healthy and hasn’t exactly had many playoff success even with good rosters. Sga I’m not ready to crown him over Tatum yet. If the Celtics win and Tatum plays well to earn finals mvp, I don’t see a huge deal of him being ranked the 4th best player in the league. Health matters, not sure why it’s ignored lol.
Brushing over the “when everyone is healthy” part real fast
Not counting Embiid, Sga and Tatum. Who do people put in their 6-10 range? Or 7-10?
Also where is Steph?
Stop putting Embiid in these discussions
,,when healthy” is doing a looot of work here, when’s the last time embiid was healthy for the playoffs? same shit for kawhi. Fuck talent, I want a star who I know is gonna play, so in that regard, no way am I putting embiid in the top 5. Tatum over him, easily.
Even though Tatum hasn’t won a ring yet. I would much rather be in his position. Extremely competitive team each year and ECF or finals appearances . Eventually he’ll get over the hump and it might be this year imo. Hate the fact he’s a Celtic but Tatum don’t need to be top 3 in the league. He’s perfectly fine how he is.
So if Tatum wins, the excuse is that he’s got a great team, and if he loses, it’s because he’s not a great player?
Tatum will never get into top 5 conversation because he’s a team player who lets everyone gets theirs. We saw when Kyrie was here, how he didn’t gel with JB and JT, wrecked the team and left.
Would Celtics have a great team if Tatum was not accommodating, and instead decided to chase points and MVPs instead of the title? No. Because JB will not be happy, KP won’t, and we’ll have a repeat of the Kyrie saga again.
How many of that top 5-8 can sacrifice for the team and still put MVP numbers? Luka and Jokic sure. Giannis too. But SGA? Brunson? Embiid who was literally begging for an MVP?
Meanwhile Tatum gets criticized for letting JB or KP takeover when just a couple of seasons ago, the criticism was that he and JB don’t share the ball enough. So basically no way he’s keeping all the talking heads happy.
And now he is not being credited for staying healthy even. Amazing how the excuses keep piling up for someone like Embiid just because he keeps stat padding.
Ah yes, the magical world where injuries don’t exist.
I don’t really get why this is such a big discussion. Why does it matter whether Tatum is the 5th best player or the 8th?
I don’t get this downplaying of availability when ranking top players. The GOAT of the sport clocked 80+ games season after season.
It’s iffy for me. Tatum out of those top 5 guys is really only met on both sides of the ball by Giannis and is just an ironman of a player. When everyone is healthy, sure he may be like top 6-8 in the league, but this is basketball. I think Tatum out of all of those guys is the one I would want to plug and play in almost any lineup in the league. Guy can just do a little bit of everything and it makes him so valuable to any team. The discourse about this top 5 shit is annoying. Tatum is great, and all the other top 5 guys are great. Don’t need to make multiple segments on national television saying the same thing.
Media narrative after this series is going to be wild.
Mavericks win:
– Luka is the new best player in the world.
– Kyrie top 2 “robin” ever. (Pippen or McHale get bumped)
– Tatum is a fraud.
– Js will never get over the hump.
Boston win:
– Tatum and Brown now undisputed top 5/10 respectively.
– Brad Stevens best front office guy ever.
– Kyrie can’t win without LeBron, redemption arc is over.
I’m not sold on SGA being better than Tatum
Tatum edges out the guys on this list because he’s already this good and he’s only 19
Embiid over Tatum is absurd
Those top 5 in my head are the young superstars in today’s league.
I don’t understand how what Lowe is saying is wrong. I don’t get it, was this supposed to provoke rage from Celtics fans? I just nodded my head while he spoke.
Notable, however, that among the sparse examples of the team without the best player winning the series are a number of Celtics series the past few years. (Vs. Embiid ‘23, Giannis ‘22, Durant ‘22)
Zach looks so pretty with all that makeup on
zach lowe’s takes are always so good man. can’t believe they have him at espn
Is anyone else just completely tired of the Tatum “discourse” right now? Like do we really have to keep agonizing about whether he’s the 6th best player in the league or the 4th? It’s just so repetitive and uninteresting
Top 5 were all born outside the US.
That’s great and all, but the Wolves didn’t have the best player and beat the Nuggets, and the Knicks didn’t have the best player and beat the 76ers, Pacers didn’t have the best player and beat the Bucks and Knicks.
Then go back to last year, Celtics didn’t have the best player against the 76ers and beat them, Heat didn’t have the best player and beat the Bucks and Celtics.
Do great players win a lot of the time and can be the difference? Sure, yeah. But is it always the case? No.
A lot of these series I listed are because these guys played great but got a lot of help from the team as a collective. Did the Thunder lose to the Mavs because SGA was just much worse than Doncic? No. It’s because the Mavs locked everyone else up and held Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and Josh Giddey below their season averages and what they averaged against the Pelicans.
That will be the test of the series, how well the Mavs can defend all the Celtics options and limit guys besides Tatum and Brown going off. It will be incredibly difficult to beat them if you have Tatum and Brown combining for 50 and you get Derrick White and Porzingis also giving you another 40 or something. Similarly, the Celtics will have a really hard time if Luka and Kyrie are going off and they get consistent help from Washington, Gafford, Lively and DJJ.
Imo the difference here is Luka is more likely to play consistently great than Tatum which is why most consider him a better player, but if Luka plays even below average, the Mavericks have almost no chance because the Celtics are collectively a better team.
Go back and look at all the Wolves 3P attempts in Game 5 that were Luka’s responsibility. Even though they got killed that game, that was still a hole in the Mavs defense. Celtics are going to kill the Mavs on the open looks they generate and the volume of 3’s they shoot unless the Mavs make great defensive adjustments or the Celtics go completely cold. The Mavs defense is going to be the deciding factor in the series, not “which superstar carries their team”
If the Mavs play great defense and lock down the Celtics, they’ll win. If they can’t stop the Celtics and it’s just a barrage of offense from Boston’s top 6, the Celtics will win. Regardless of the whole Luka vs Tatum thing