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August 18, 2025 • 46 mins

Jason breaks down why he has Dallas Mavericks big man Anthony Davis, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, ranked as the 10th best player in the NBA heading into next season. He discusses his strengths as a defender and overall weaknesses, including his injury history, and why he's expecting such a big, full season after the Luka Doncic trade. Then he gives his take on the viral debate from last week: Chris Paul vs. Kyrie Irving.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to him tonight here at
the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody, Oh all of you guys
had a great weekend. We are starting the top ten

(00:21):
of our player rankings today with number ten Anthony Davis,
going to do a very deep dive into ad some
of the ups and downs of his career with relation
to health, also with relation to his skill development. I
even want to zoom out a little bit towards the
end and talk about his perception of the center position
versus the power forward position in some of the strengths

(00:43):
and weaknesses of that approach, and some of the things
we got to keep an eye out for him with
the Dallas Mavericks in that regard. And then at the
tail end of the show, one of the things we're
going to start doing, since we're only doing one player
at a time from this point forward, is we're going
to start hitting some bigger picture basketball debate types of topic.
And today we're actually going to start with one that
was a raging debate online last week while while I

(01:05):
was in Alaska, and I give you guys just a
very quick, kind of like thirty thousand foot version of
my opinion. But I wanted to kind of dive deeper
into the concept, and it's about two basketball players, one
of which is a champion, one of which is not. However,
the player who's not a champion is a guy that
I view as the better basketball player, and I want
to kind of dive into that concept. It's Kyrie Irving
versus Chris Paul and who I think is a better

(01:27):
basketball player at their absolute peak. So we're going to
dive into that at the tail end of the show.
You guys are the joke before we get started. To
subscribe to the Hoops and Not YouTube channel so you
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(01:48):
Make sure you guys follow us there. In the last
but not least, if you disagree with any of these
rankings in any way, shape or form. Where you're doing
Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of this series where you
guys have the opportunity to explain why you disagree guy
too high, guy too low, whatever it might be. Just
right mail bag with the colon, write your elevator pitch
just as concisely as possible, your basketball case for why

(02:09):
you disagree with a ranking, or even if it's just
something you want me to elaborate on a bit further.
Put that in the YouTube comments and we'll get to
those in our Friday mail bags throughout the remainder of
this series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So number ten,
Anthony Davis, as last season in review, played in just
fifty one games. We're going to talk about ad and

(02:29):
kind of his history with health here in a little bit.
Came out guns blazing to start the year, as he
was very heavily featured in JJ Redick's offense early in
the season. In his first twenty five games, he averaged
a super efficient twenty eight points per game to go
with three point two steels plus blocks per game. He
was legit playing at that top tier superstar level to

(02:51):
start the season. Then he got a little banged up.
You're starting to deal with a couple of nagging injuries,
and he slowed down pretty significantly after that point. He
averaged just twenty three points per game on lower efficiency
over his final seventeen games as a Laker. Also, as
he started to not perform as well on offense, he
started to become less and less featured in the offense,
which seemed to take him even further out of rhythm.

(03:13):
It just was starting to look like more or less
the offensive player that we had seen in previous seasons.
But he did come out guns blazing to start the year,
and then he ended up finally succumbing to a groin
injury which kept him out the majority of the rest
of the season. He ended up playing just nine games
as a Dallas Maverick after the Lukadancics trade. Finished the
year in the total of the fifty one games at

(03:34):
twenty five points, twelve rebounds in four assists, three point
four stocks per game, and his percentages fifty four percent
from the field, twenty eight percent from three to seventy
eight percent from the line, which amounts to fifty four
percent an effective field goal percentage waited for threes and
fifty nine percent in true shooting. This is where I
want to start in the health arena for just a minute,

(03:55):
because it's always an important context with AD. Eighty has
a pretty low, large gap between what his potential ceiling
is and what his potential floor is relative to some
of these guys, Like there's a case to be made
that he belongs in that Kawhi Leonard Joel Embard grouping
closer to the bottom of this tier. I disagree because
I think he's considerably more reliable than those two guys.

(04:17):
But there are going to be people who disagree with
this ranking based on the idea that Ad is not
healthy enough, and there is some legitimacy to that argument.
I was hopeful as a Lakers fan that after that
twenty twenty four season, which if you remember, that was
a return to form for Ad from the standpoint of
his health. He played in seventy six games. He made
the All NBA team second Team All NBA, which was

(04:39):
his first time making an All NBA team since the
twenty twenty season when they won the title, And so
it looked like, is this gonna be the segment of
AD's career where he kind of figures out the health
stuff and he starts to be more available and he
just couldn't in the following season, goes for fifty one game,
suffers a growing injury soft tissue injury pretty simp similar

(05:00):
to some of the injuries he had had early in
earlier in his Lakers tenure. So if you zoom out
in the four seasons surrounding Anthony Davis's seventy six game
All NBA season, he averages forty six games played, thirty
six games in twenty twenty one, forty games in twenty
twenty two, fifty six and twenty twenty three, and fifty

(05:21):
one in twenty twenty five. So now when I look
at him relative to the Mbat Kawhi tier, first of all,
Joel Embiid and Kawhi are both dealing with severe degenerative
issues in their knees, issues that have completely dominated this
phase of their careers and have been recurring in the

(05:42):
same knee, and that makes them, in my opinion, significantly
less reliable than an Anthony Davis who's just been dealing
with some soft tissue related injuries and for the most
part doesn't have any sort of big glaring like ooh
that part of his body is likely to break down
this season, So I think he's a little bit safer
that and then another part of it is the motivation
element with him being involved in the Luka Danchitz trade,

(06:05):
which we'll get to in a little bit. But I
think it's been a combination of three factors that have
led to Anthony Davis's health issues. First of all, luck,
like it or not, there is some kind of ethereal
injury luck factor that's at play that affects all athletes.
Some dudes just break down more, and it's not because

(06:25):
of anything they're doing. It's just something that exists there,
that injury prone factor, and AD is certainly one of
those dudes who just happens to get hurt more than
some of his peers. Secondly, conditioning, AD deserves some of
the blame with respect to his injury history because it's
been widely reported that, especially in the few years after

(06:46):
they won the title, AD would show up to camp
out of shape, it would take long stretches of the
summer off, and it led to a situation where he
wasn't as well conditioned to start seasons as some of
his peers at the top of the league, and that
certainly didn't help matters with his health. Right if you
look at it as like a spectrum of possible outcomes

(07:06):
within the regard or within the range of his injury
prone nature. He's been tilting more towards the injured size
a side of it in large part, I shouldn't say,
in large part partially because of the fact that he
didn't come into these seasons in as good as shape
as he could have come in. Lastly, he put on

(07:27):
an insane amount of muscle. This is a concept we're
going to talk a lot about today with Ad, which
I thought was a miscalculation on his part in terms
of his development. The reason why is it flat out
came at the expense of his foot speed. We've all
seen the videos. When a video pops up of Anthony
Davis playing basketball in that twenty twenty season, doesn't even
look like the same guy. He looks considerably thinner, He

(07:48):
was moving considerably better, and it made him a more
dynamic player in a bunch of different ways. AD got
shoved around in a couple of matchups, especially when he
was playing center during that phase of his career, in
that twenty twenty twenty twenty one stage, and so he
decided he needed to bulk up, and I thought it
was a classic example of over indexing on addressing a

(08:10):
weakness rather than leaning into your strengths. That's not to
say that you don't want to address your weakness, as
certainly Ad should have put on some muscle, as every
super thin player that comes into the league should. As
we talk about Victor wemb Minyama, he'll face a similar
decision in his career how much should he bulk up.
Certainly needs to bulk up some, but he doesn't want

(08:31):
to bulk up so much that it comes at the
expense of his speed, which is the thing at his
size that makes him such a transcendently great athlete. And
what happened was is eighty's newfound muscle mass really wasn't
helping him win as many physical battles as you'd think.
Basketball is every bit is much about leverage and angles

(08:53):
as it is about just pure strength and muscle mass.
This is a big part of why I've been gravitating
towards those like shorter, stockier wings over some of the longer,
lankier wings, because it doesn't really like length is of
the highest factor at the rim. It certainly helps on
the perimeter when you're contesting shots I don't want to
pretend it doesn't, but it has its largest impact on

(09:14):
the game at the rim. And if you can win
battles on the ground as a stocky athlete on the perimeter,
that can prevent guys from even getting past you. That
carries a lot of value in the league and prevents
some of that length at the rim from being as
much of a factor. That's why I gravitate towards some
of those shorter, stockier wings, right, And that's the thing.

(09:36):
Like eighty put on all this muscle, and then he
still in the last few years would get bullied by
jokicch and bullied by Sabonis at times, although he won
that battle a couple times last year. Or like even
guys like use of Nrkic sometimes would bury him on
the offensive glass. Zubats gave him a lot of issues
on the offensive glass. And then the problem was is

(09:58):
even though he had all this muscle and he's still
kind of struggling with some of these bigger centers, he
also at the same time was not as capable of
punishing those guys with his speed because he wasn't as
fast as he used to be, and he lost a
lot of that in the pursuit of that muscle mass,
and I mean you got to factor that in with

(10:19):
the injuries as well, Like it made him heavier, and
if you're heavier, your lower body's going to struggle to
hold up under the wear and tear of moving your
body around. And so really, as we zoom out, the
injuries have been the thing that has prevented Ad from
reaching his individual ceiling, his ultimate potential, which was like
there's a version of AD's career where he's healthier and

(10:43):
he's thinner, and he holds up more, which allows him
to be in the gym more, which allows him to
develop more in terms of his skill set, which allows
him to build more of a rhythm in the season
and develop into something closer to the Yahnesses of the
world and the hyper versatile bigs that ranked above him
on this list that Joel emb when he was healthy,

(11:03):
for example, there's a version of eighty's career where he
had better health luck, and he too took a different
approach in terms of how he built his body, and
maybe he was a more skilled player that reached higher heights.
But I do think all of those factors played a
role in his injury history earlier in his career, so
I have him in the top ten, ahead of guys

(11:23):
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(13:11):
see DKG dot co, slash audio. I'm obviously a huge
believer in Anthony Davis's impact on basketball games. That goes
without saying. Anybody who's listened to the show over the
last few years knows I'm a huge believer in eighty,
but it also extends into what I believe will be
a revenge campaign from him. This year, both Anthony Davis

(13:34):
and Luka Doncic will be ranked on this list higher,
much higher than what their previous seasons justify. Ad has
no case to be a top ten player based solely
on last season, and Luka Doncic has no case to
be a top five player based solely on last season.
But we've already seen a completely different looking Luca in

(13:58):
a game with Salave against Germany. There were three moves
in particular, a euro step, a move driving a close out,
and there was one more. I can't remember exactly what
it was. I think it was just like a jab
step behind the back, dribble off the right wing in
the first half. But he had three moves in that
game where I was like, that's a different guy. He's
moving at a completely different speed than he moved in

(14:19):
the past. Why Because he got embarrassed by the maps,
completely embarrassed by the maps, and he's super pissed off,
and he lost a bunch of weight and now he's
on a mission to prove everybody wrong. And as we're
looking towards next season, I'm factoring that in same goes
for Ad, AD was similarly embarrassed. He was basically shipped
off as trade filler in the dead of night. It

(14:42):
was unprecedented for a Lakers star. It's unprecedented in the
entire NBA. It was the craziest trade in the history
of the MBA. How often do you see a superstar,
not DeMar Derozen getting traded for Kawhi, but a superstar
that gets moved in person of a better player in
his prime because the team wanted the even better player.

(15:06):
It's so rare, and so Ad has been similarly embarrassed.
I think he wants to prove everyone wrong. I do
think we will see Ad come into training camp in
great shape relative to previous seasons from him, which I
think will lead to him having a healthier season by
his standards, which I think will have him in better

(15:27):
rhythm in most of these games, which will allow him
to show more of his offensive upside, which we're going
to talk about in a bit. That's really what separated
him from that top tier. When Ad is a reliable
twenty eight point per game score, the guy that you
saw in the bubble, that guy's a top tier superstar.

(15:48):
When he's not. When he's in the low twenties and
he's more inconsistent offensively, that's when he's more of that
second tier star like we have in this particular list.
And so I actually look at AD and the reason
why I put him at ten is I think we
are going to get one of the better seasons from
AD out of this phase of his prime. It's a

(16:08):
big part of why I ranked him where I ranked him. Now,
let's talk about AD as a basketball player. Rather than
looking at his injury history and in the big picture,
let's zoom in on his basketball traits and what sets
him apart from his peers. We have to start with
defense for AD, because that's his calling card. There's a
similar range of outcomes for AD as a defender centering

(16:28):
around his health. Because of his foot speed. Even the
lesser foot speed version of AD has a really high
floor as a perimeter defender. It's not the same guy
from New Orleans, not the same guy from like twenty twenty,
but healthy Ad, even bigger, bulky, healthy Ad has real

(16:50):
footspeed on the perimeter relative to his position, which brings
a lot of upside. But as we talked about there's
like these banged up versions of Ad, like that second
chunk of last season with the Lakers or what you
saw with Dallas, where it's like that's a d but
he's clearly not moving very well even by his big

(17:11):
bulky standards. Right. But what's crazy with Ad, and it's
a big part of why I have him this high,
is even lumbering Ad, even big bulky Ad that's out
of shape and is just coming back from an injury.
Even that guy has an incredibly high floor as a
defensive player, and it starts with the shot blocking. Has

(17:31):
a standing reach over nine feet, he has good leaping ability,
and he has outrageous natural defensive instincts. He can anticipate
what offensive players are going to do around the rim,
guessing release points where they're going for layups. And as
a result, even while constantly battling injury issues for the
last five years and carrying all that extra weight, even

(17:52):
with that, he still averaged two point one blocks per
game over that five year span that we were referencing earlier.
He was consistently banged up. Now, as we know, the younger,
faster AD averaged two point five blocks per game for
the seven seasons previous. Obviously, he can get to a
higher level there. Even when he's healthy in rhythm, When

(18:14):
he plays game after game after game after game, and
he drops some of the excess weight he's carrying and
he's in good shape, he can go on runs. He
had a stretch five games last year with the Lakers
where he averaged three point six blocks per game over
a five game stretch. He can still get there. But
the point is his floor is an outrageously good shot

(18:34):
blocker and rim protector. He does it without committing fouls.
He does it without giving up too many unnecessary offensive
rebounds by chasing stupid shots that he has no chance
of blocking. He is a rock solid, foundational rim protector
in this league, even when he's banged up. He's also
an excellent defensive rebounder, a career eleven rebounds per game

(18:58):
in twelve point three rebouls game. Over his last three seasons,
he led the entire league in rebounding in twenty twenty three,
He was third in rebounding in twenty twenty four, and
even the banged up version of Anthony Davis last year
was seventh in overall rebounding. He has had occasional issues

(19:18):
giving up certain types of offensive rebounds on like Duccans
to certain types of centers, so guys like Zubat's so
Bonis yokicch even Nurkic sometimes like we talked about, But
even factoring in that down mark, there's no way to
look at Anthony Davis as anything other than a monster
rebounder and one of the very best rebounders in the
entire NBA. And that's part of the appeal for a

(19:41):
player like Anthony Davis on a list like this, his
floor no matter what Dallas is gonna get, even if
he's banged up and only plays fifty games. For fifty games,
they're going to get a rock solid defensive anchor, a
guy who can protect the rim at an elite level
and rebound at an an elite level. And when you

(20:02):
can do those two things, it just makes it so
much easier for a basketball team to build around that
and to function around that. We used to talk about
this for eighties bad games, right like even the slower moving,
banged up version of AD. He'd have these like bad
games where he'd have twelve points, fourteen rebounds, and three blocks,

(20:23):
and people would rightfully complain that, like, yeah, that inconsistently inconsistency,
especially on offense, is what would separate him from guys
like Yannis, And that would be fair. If you're comparing
him to Giannis, you're gonna frequently run into things that
are frustrating. I'm not going to argue against that. But
in those games, he was still doing so much dirty work,

(20:46):
like he'd have twelve, fourteen and three, and people would
be complaining and like to quote Pete Zayas and again,
if you're a Lakers fan, I think Pete and Darius
have the best team specific Lakers podcast. You guys got
to check it out. Pete taught me so much about
what I know about the modern NBA, and I just
think he's awesome. You guys have to go check out.
It's a Laker film room podcast. But Pete, you would

(21:06):
always say, like everyone's yelling at Ad when he's trying
to move the couch by himself, and it's like, how
about we help him move the couch, and then we
start complaining about whatever else he's doing, And it's the truth.
Like Ad had to carry such an insanely heavy load
as a defensive player and as a rebounder for that

(21:26):
Lakers team. You know, like we're going to talk about
him overall as a ceiling as a defensive player. But
like a lot of times people will say, like, oh, well,
Ad doesn't have these accolades, he doesn't have the Defensive
Player of the Year, the racked up first Team All Defensivewards,
and all this kind of stuff. And you want to
know why. It's because people for years have had their
brains broken by the idea of basketball being a team sport.

(21:49):
It is a team sport, and the Lakers were consistently
fielding rosters utterly devoid of defensive talent, where Ad is
carrying everything on that end of the floor. And we
talk about it all the time, the speed with which
a dribble penetrator gets past his man. If it's a
straight lines, straight line, sprinting drive, it breaks any defense,

(22:12):
let alone a defense that's anchored by any elite defensive
player like Anthony Davis. The Lakers were a trash defense
and they were still hitting mediocre, you know, in that
you know, fifteen to twenty four range of defensive ratings
because Anthony Davis was anchoring everything on that end of
the floor. Their second best defender was like an old

(22:35):
Lebron who, as we all know, especially when he doesn't
believe a team can win the title, will take some
time off on that end of the floor in the
regular season. I think AD is a grossly underappreciated defensive
player overall. It's a big part of why I have
him so much higher on this list than many people will.
Everything we just discussed is AD's floor as a defensive player. Elite,

(22:57):
top tier in protector, elite top tier rebounder. That's the floor.
The ceiling for AD as a defensive player is the
best defensive player in the NBA, at least before Victor
wemen Yama came around. Like, I'm gonna reference non Wemby
a few times here because he has come in and
broken everything. But as you guys have noticed, we haven't
even gotten to Wemby yet on this list. I'm a
huge believer in what Victor wm Minyama can do, but

(23:20):
I believe before Wemby that the healthy, in shape Anthony
Davis was the best defensive player in basketball. He was
a frightening rim protector that would break offenses. Like even
just last year, like I talked about, he had a
five game stretch towards the beginning of the year when
he was healthy and in shape, where he averaged three
point six blocks per game. That's outrageous. But he'd also

(23:42):
bring crazy scheme versatility, and this is what sets him apart.
There are a lot of guys like Joel Embiid or
great rim protectors when they can sit back and protect
the basket or sit in a deeper drop coverage, but
as soon as you ask them to do anything else,
it falls apart. Like you know, I think Game seven
in that playoff series against the Celtics, where he's just
getting pulled out to the perimeter and just cooked repeatedly,

(24:04):
over and over again by Jason Tatum. With ad you
could ask him to be a deep drop coverage big
and he'd crush at that. But you could also ask
him to come up to the level and contest pull
up shooters or as guys are coming downhill, reaching in
on the on the guard as he's working downhill. He's
always been a high steels guy. He had sixteen games
last year with multiple steals. But again he's also an

(24:28):
awesome switching big. Maybe not as good as a guy
like bam At a bio but near that level and
in conjunction with his A plus plus plus rim protection.
For a while there before Wemby came around, I thought
healthy Ad was the best defensive player in the world.
I thought the twenty twenty three series against Golden State
was the classic example of how even in this big,

(24:52):
bulky version of Ad, when he's healthy, is the best
non wenbe defender in the world. He can completely stifled
Golden State's offense to the point where every single decision
that Steve Kerr made, every lineup decision, every floor geometry decision,
everything Steve Kerr was doing was geared around getting Anthony
Davis away from the action and away from the rim.

(25:16):
And then, in the pivotal moment of the series in
Game four, when Steph was still causing so many problems
for the Laker defense with what he was doing in
pick and roll, Anthony Davis at the end of that
game twice switched the screen, got onto Steph and got
two key stops. He forced him into an extremely difficult

(25:36):
one legged fade away from the mid range and a
super deep three because Steph on the second look there
was like, I'm not even gonna try to go around
this guy, I'm just going to pull from out here,
and it was like a thirty footer that he ended
up missing. That was the differentiator. Steve Kerr kept trying
stuff and Ad just literally had a defensive answer for

(25:57):
everything they did, even Steph on any island. And so
that's a big part of why I have Ad at
ten this year. Even with his health variants, he's going
to be one of the top two or three defense
and rebounding foundations in the entire NBA, and the high
end is potentially the best defender in basketball other than
Victor Weinmanyam. That's an extremely high floor for a guy

(26:22):
before we even get to the offensive end. And then
on the offensive end, while he can be frustrating and
inconsistent as an on ball player, he's an excellent play finisher,
which makes him on every single night a very useful
offensive player. Again, twenty five points per game last year
on fifty nine per century shooting, that's nothing to roll

(26:43):
your eyes at. He had three forty point games, eleven
thirty five point games, and nineteen to thirty point games.
He was a super efficient role man in ball screens
on one hundred and ninety reps as a Laker in
ball screens, he got one point two to three points
per possession, which is all. He'shot forty two percent pick
and pop threes. This is an interesting idea. It's something

(27:04):
I wish the Lakers would have used more. It was
better for their spacing as well. Eighty is not a
good jump shooter, but for whatever reason, there's something about
the rhythm of pick and pop, and a lot of
it could be just how open he would get, but
there was like a rhythm for him with pick and
pop where he shot well out of it. He was
fifteen for thirty six last year on pick and pop threes.
He was also excellent on floaters fifty two percent last year.

(27:26):
And then he's a ridiculous vertical spacing threat. He's got
magnet hands. He catches everything with nine foot standing reach
and plenty of mobility even at his larger size to
finish everything above the rim. So he was flat out
just an awesome pick and roll threat as the screener
last year. He was also a solid post player. Was
little down year over year last year, just one point

(27:47):
zero four points per possession including passes, which is just
above average. Nothing to write home about, but above average.
The previous year, though he was very good when he
was healthier. He was one point zero nine points per
possession including passes out of the post, which is the
seventy first percentile, shoots over fifty percent on hook shots.
That's the thing with ads above fifty percent on both
hook shots and floaters, not yokic territory, he's going to

(28:09):
be up over sixty percent on those. But Ad among
biggs in the NBA is as good as short range
finisher as you'll find outside of the yokch types in
the league. It was mainly a passing issue that kept
him from really reaching his lead his ceiling as a
post player in twenty twenty four when he shot out
of the post again. That was the year that he

(28:29):
played super well and got one point zero nine points
per possession. In twenty twenty four, he had a score
percentage when he'd shoot out of the post of fifty
four percent, meaning if you toss the ball to Ad
and he was able to get a shot up, he
was going to score well over half the time. It
was a super reliable play type. But over the years,

(28:49):
even though he made some slight improvements as a passer,
he never got good enough at it to become a
guy that you could just lean on for high, high
volume out of the post, the way you could with
the guy like Embiid, who is so good at scoring
out of the post that even his playmaking issues didn't
matter as much. And a guy like Jokic's obviously one
of the best post players to ever touch the floor. Right,

(29:10):
there was just a tier. The eighty was clearly a
tier below because he can never quite figure out the
passing element of it to make his scoring ability worth
it to be a super high volume post up player.
He always just seemed to get spooked by double teams.
The big thing I would always talk about is it
would look like he was trying to get rid of
the ball rather than trying to find the kill pass.

(29:31):
Like he'd catch the ball out of a double team
in the post and he would dribble out and throw
to a guy who's being guarded by throwing an over
the top pass just to like get rid of the ball,
and he'd throw the pass to a guy who's thirty
thirty five feet from the rim. Whereas, like you watch
the best post players in the league, they work aggressively
into the double and try to pass through the defense

(29:51):
to the weak side where there's usually a wide open
player or a wide open cutter. They make the kill pass.
The pass that make it makes it so that you
cannot double him. That was the thing that Ady never
was quite able to figure out, and so because of that,
because he was a little sketchy as a ball handler overall,
it just it just never amounted to a legitimate offensive
engine type of player the way Joel Embiid was able

(30:14):
to get or the way that nikolea Jokic was able
to get. That really is the differentiator for Anthony Davis
between him as a second tier star in the top
tier stars at the top of the league. The second
piece of it was the jump shot. The jump shot
just never came around to what it was in twenty twenty.
Like we talked about, he shot well on picking pops,
but overall last year he was a zero point nine
points per shot on jump shots. He's okay from short

(30:38):
range forty nine percent inside of seventeen feet and that's fine,
but that's notably still under a point per shot, and
he shot just forty three percent on long twos outside
of seventeen feet, which is only zero point eighty six
points per shot, and he was below thirty percent from three,
so even from three he was below a point per shot.
So again like him not developing as either a great

(31:00):
jump shooter or an elite ball handler playmaker, because like Jannis,
never became an elite jump shooter, but Jannis has become
an elite ball handler playmaker as a monster frontcourt defensive weapon,
and that is what allowed Giannis to become like a
perennial MVP candidate in the way that Anthony Davis has
not been able to figure out. If he could have
become an elite jump shooter, you know, a la Dirk Noovisky,

(31:23):
that becomes a thing that can carry him up to
he didn't, you wouldn't even need to be as good
as Dirk just if he became an elite jump shooter
relative to most play finishers, just like a knockdown pick
and pop big or something like that, he could have
been a guy that could have entered into that top
tier because of how gifted he was defensively. If he
could have just figured out how to become a top
not a top tier, but a very good on the

(31:45):
ballplayer as a ball handler playmaker, he could have entered
into that tier, but he ended up being neither. And
again you can factor in injuries into that equation. Equation,
I think it's worth mentioning like Ad has never really
been able to work on his game as much as
some of his peers because he's been banged up. That
has been what's kept him from entering into that superstar
tier outside of the twenty twenty season. In that twenty

(32:05):
twenty season, when he shot like Kevin Freakin Durant in
the bubble, I had him as the fourth best player
in the world, and I think that was like the
absolute peak. It was a skinnier version of AD that
was a better defensive player and just a ridiculous shot
maker out of the high post in ISO situations and
it just and he shot really well from three too,
famously hit a game winning three against the Denver Nuggets

(32:26):
in that Western Conference final series. So he was just
another level of a jump shooter. That's kind of an
example of what I was talking about, like jump shooting
AD plus elite defense, top tier superstar. If he could
have figured out the playmaking piece, because he has shot
making out of the post, he could have got there.
But he just never was able to figure those pieces out.
But still, when you look at the big picture, you

(32:49):
can basically bank on Ad to give you at least
twenty five and twelve next year, and you can bank
on him being an excellent defensive, rebounder and rim protector.
That's the floor. What a strong foundation for the rest
of your team to build on. And he's still a
good post up threat and a top tier rollman weapon

(33:10):
that you can build around. On offense. On any given night,
he can explode for forty points. And that's the low end.
And I think there's a range of potential outcomes here
where he hits higher because of his motivation level, and
I think we're going to get there. So for me,
I had Anthony Davis at number ten this year. Now,
before we move on to the Chris Paul Kyrie debate,
I did want to give a bonus AD topic regarding

(33:31):
him playing the power forward for the Dallas Mavericks. He's said.
I saw another quote just the other day of him
talking about how he views himself as a power forward
more than the center. And again, like I want to
start like this, I don't want to say that Ady
can't play power forward. I actually think in the modern NBA,
having two big looks is an important punch that you
can throw in certain situations. So for instance, like the

(33:53):
Thunder being able to lean heavily into Hartenstein and Chat
in the Denver series was a huge part of how
they were able to make things very difficult for Nicole Jokich.
And so I think you should have that look. But
then as you can see, like then when the Thunder
got into later playoff rounds, they went away from the
two big look like they didn't use it as much
against the Pacers because the speed would have been an issue, right,

(34:13):
And so like the point is is, like you want
to have that as a punch, but it can't be
your like foundational thing that you try to do. And
this is where I get a little concern about the
overall team construct of the Dallas Mavericks, especially with all
the centers that they have on staff right now. The
problem is Ad is fast, even big bulky Ad is
fast for a center, but he's not fast compared to

(34:38):
power forwards. Old Lebron is a much better athlete than
Anthony Davis in terms of foot speed and quickness and
changing ends of the floor. Aaron Gordon in the Western Conference.
Like even Kevin Durant for the Houston Rockets moves better
than Anthony Davis does. Right, So, like at the five,
his speed is an asset at the full, or his

(35:00):
speed is a liability. Similarly, his offensive skill, his short
range shot making, his ball handling ability at the five,
it's an asset. At the four, it's a liability. And
one of the things that happens is is if you
get him on the floor at the four, you start
to dip below these kind of like mandatory minimums in

(35:20):
certain areas of skill set. You put ad at the
four next to a Derek Lively or Daniel Gafford, all
of a sudden, your team doesn't really have much ball
handling on the floor. You put Anthony Davis at the
four by a Derek Lively, all of a sudden, your
team doesn't have much jump shooting on the floor, all
of a sudden, even just overall foot speed. Like we

(35:43):
didn't talk about this earlier, but one of the few
weaknesses Anthony Davis has on the defensive end is he
is not a good transition big. He falls on the
ground a lot. He complains that the refs a lot,
and he doesn't run back on defense. I've seen Biggs
beat Anthony Davis just literally by running him up and
down on the floor. Like, even at the center position,

(36:03):
he can sometimes struggle as a changing ends type of
floor runner, so like at the four, it can become
a serious problem. So again, I don't hate the idea
of the MAVs having two big looks, and you could
even talk me into starting games that way, but to me,
at least half and all of your at least half

(36:25):
of your total minutes and all of the clutch time,
big picture moments asign from maybe against Denver, you're gonna
need Anthony Davis at center because same with Cooper Flag.
Cooper Flag has a ball handling skill, speed advantage against fours,
but he's gonna run into some issues against threes right away.

(36:48):
In the NBA, he'll improve, But like Cooper Flag can
handle the ball, but how much is this handling gonna
be a factor if there's not a lot of surrounding
ball handling, Like like what if they end up starting
Klay Thompson, We'll see what ends up happening. But like
Clay Thompson's not a guy who dribbles the ball a
lot you could run into some issues in terms of

(37:09):
your aggregate ball handling on the floor with Anthony Davis
at the floor. It's just something to keep an eye
on as we watch the MAVs next year. All before
we get out of here today, I want to spend
a few minutes talking about Chris Paul versus Kyrie Irving.
So this is an interesting debate because Kyrie Irving kind
of has a stranglehold on basketball culture, and I don't

(37:32):
think that's an accident. I think he's one of the
top three or foremost aesthetically appealing basketball players I've ever watched.
He's just so much fun to watch when he's chaining
together dribble combinations and he's showing outrageous footwork and some
of the wildest finishes I've ever seen. Yeah, every once
in a while, I'll see the clips from like Game

(37:53):
five or Game seven, a Game seven in particular of
the of the NBA Finals in two thousand and sixteen.
He had this play where he got it either got
a defensive rebound or got outlet pass, and he threw
this like straight up wicked push ahead dribble that had
this crazy, like voodoo backspin on it. Because it came
out of his hands at like this sharp angle forward,

(38:15):
hit the ground and then just bounced straight back up
so that he could catch it on the run. And
he got into a euro or a high gather and
went like left hand way out wide while getting fouled,
like super high off the glass, and it just like
perfectly kissed off the glass and went into the basket,
and you're just like, oh my god, that was one
of the craziest, most beautiful basketball players I've ever seen.

(38:39):
Like he has that certain aesthetic appeal that just has
the basketball culture and his stranglehold. He also has one
of the most iconic shots in NBA history on his
resume with the step back three over Steph Curry to
win the twenty sixteen finals. He's a champion, which Chris
Paul is not. Those are the things that I think
drive a lot of the momentum. Bed Kyrie Irving as

(39:01):
a player who could be considered as better than Chris Paul.
But I think Chris Paul at his peak, was just
a better basketball player than Kyrie Irving's did a lot
of talk about defense. I think Kyrie Irving is actually
a little bit underrated as a defender famously in those stretches.
If you remember, Kyrie defended well, chasing around screens and
staying attached to shooters, and he was never a guy

(39:24):
that would be super focused over the course of regular seasons.
But I never felt like Kyrie was a substantial weak
point on the defensive end of the floor when I
was rooting for him during those years with the Cavaliers.
So Chris Paul is a more decorated defender, and certainly
in his prime, was a more committed regular season defender.
But to me, I'm not looking at the defensive end

(39:45):
as much of a differentiator between those two. To me,
the difference is simply the archetype. Kyrie Irving is a
score and one of the very best to do it,
but Chris Paul is a legitimate offense eve Ent. I
think you see this sort of issue when you look
at years like when Kyrie Irving was trying to lead

(40:06):
those Boston Celtics teams, which in retrospect like that was
why he left Cleveland, if you guys remember, he kind
of wanted an opportunity to lead his own team, and
when he got there, you find out pretty quickly that
I talk about this idea all the time. With respect
to scores versus offensive engines, the name of the game
is not to generate thirty points on sixty percent through

(40:27):
shooting for yourself. You got to generate. You're taking eighty
ninety shots in a game as a team, and you're
gonna be on the floor for call it eighty percent
of that. So you're you're gonna need to generate for
your team, you know, sixty seventy shots, maybe not all
in points and assists, but an advantage creation. You're gonna

(40:48):
have your twenty five to thirty that you pour in
as an on ball score for a guy like Chris
Paul Moore, like in that you know, eighteen to twenty
four kind of range, although Chris Paul had big score games.
But then you're gonna have your assists like you're into
twelve times a game, or you spoon fed a guy
a wide open three or a cut which is going
to lead to a bucket. But for the offensive engine types,

(41:08):
it's also the twenty to thirty to forty times a
game where you got into an action early in a
set and you made a read that got a guy
a close out or shifted the defense side to side
or did something to generate an advantage that your team
then capitalized on with two or three additional sequences that
led to an open shot. That's why I'm so I

(41:30):
gravitate so much towards offensive engines. They simply generate so
much more offense for their team relative to what things
look like in the box score. Like a guy like
Tyrese Halliburton, he's gonna average, you know, sixteen seventeen points
per game and you know, eleven twelve assists. Whatever it
is that he puts up and it's not gonna look
like it manifests some great offensive output, but he generates

(41:53):
so many advantages that the Pacers playoff for extended stretches
of each possession, and he gets into it early in
the possession that like, for whatever reason, when he's off
the floor, the Pacers suddenly don't score it nearly as
effective a level. That is the value of it being
an offensive engine. With the guy like Kyrie Irving is
a score, there's a certain level of variants. Yeah, he

(42:13):
made all those day and pull up jump shots against
the Golden State Warriors, and it was the reason that
they were able to push over the top and win
the title when he hit the shot against Steph Curry.
But he also looked great for three rounds with the
Dallas Mavericks in twenty twenty four, and then what happened
against Boston. Suddenly he couldn't make those pull up jump shots.
They weren't going in. And by the way, that's he

(42:36):
was going against really good defenders who made it tougher.
But we've seen Kyrie Irving hit really tough shots. There's
just a lot of variants. Specifically with tough shot making,
there's a heavy make miss factor, and sometimes they don't
go in, and then when they don't go in, what's
your offensive value that you're bringing to the table. And
Kyrie Irving was is a good passer, but he is

(42:59):
not the type of offensive engine that a guy like
Chris Paul was. So you get into it, you get
a little more complicated. It's like, Okay, well, Chris Paul's
not good enough to win the title as your number
one option. I'm not. I actually do believe that if
Chris Paul was on better teams when he was in
his prime, he would have had a really good chance. Now,
like the twenty twenty two with the Suns, he was

(43:21):
so old his body was breaking down at the end
of the NBA Final series. But like, if you go
back to the mid twenty tens, if he was on
one of the better rosters in the NBA, I absolutely
think Chris Paul was good enough to win the title.
But it didn't happen for whatever reason. Okay, Kyrie Irving
did get one playing alongside the greatest basketball player ever,

(43:44):
it's not the same. And as we go to the
number two piece, Yeah, I do think Kyrie Irving is
flat out an awesome option to have as your second
best player when you're alongside a superstar player that can
handle a lot of that like upside and terms of,
you know, managing the load of offensive shot creation. But

(44:05):
like just look at it as the reverse for a
Chris Paul. So he's a shot creator, so you wouldn't
want to pair him with another shot creator. I do
think there were some diminishing returns when you put a
guy like Chris Paul with a James Harden, or if
you were to put him with a Luka Doncic or
even a Lebron James, because they kind of do a
lot of the same things. We've talked a lot about that.
With the idea of the Lakers potentially trying to pair

(44:26):
Luca with Jokic, I just don't think that that's nearly
as good a team as it looks like on paper
because those skill sets overlap too much. So for a
guy like Chris Paul. If Kyrie Irving got to play
with Lebron James at the peak of his powers and
get a title there, I do believe that if in
twenty sixteen you swapped Russell Westbrook for Chris Paul, I

(44:50):
think that Thunder team is absolutely a legitimate championship team.
Now would they have beat Lebron who knows? Would they
have beat Steph who knows? But like I think, if
you paired CP three with Kevin Durant for six years
in the heart of their primes, I think they get
a title because you would be pairing Chris Paul's offensive

(45:13):
engine nature with the tip of the spear scoring that
Kevin Durant provides. So, yeah, Chris Paul didn't have a
title the way that Kyrie Irving does, and he doesn't
have the cultural resonance that a guy like Kyrie Irving does.
And yeah, he's got a couple of tough black marks
on his resume in terms of rough playoff moments, but
so does Kyrie, and like, ultimately, when I look at it,

(45:37):
I just think Chris Paul is a better basketball player
than Kyrie Irving because they're more even as defenders than
people think. But Chris Paul is much better at generating
offense for his entire team than Kyrie Irving is, and
that is an example of why I gravitate towards those
offensive engine types more than the scoring types. All right, guys,

(45:57):
it's all I have for today is always a sincerely
percent you got for supporting us and supporting the show.
We will be back with number nine on Wednesday, as
well as another one of these kind of debate topics
at the tail end. I will see you guys then
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Hosts And Creators

Colin Cowherd

Colin Cowherd

Jason McIntyre

Jason McIntyre

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