Hoops Tonight - Top 25 NBA Players: Devin Booker & Suns time? Jaylen Brown SHUTS UP Celtics critics

Jason Timpf continues ranking his Top 25 NBA players with Jaylen Brown and Devin Booker. Jason discusses Brown's ascent during the 2023-2024 NBA season en route to winning NBA Finals MVP for the Boston Celtics as well as Booker's ability to operate as one of the top offensive engines in the league for the Phoenix Suns alongside Kevin Durant. Later, Jason answers listener question during an NBA Mailbag segment.

Watch players 17-16 here: https://youtu.be/U1zQsC8yf70

Timeline:

00:00 - Introduction

06:30 - Why Booker is higher than Brown

13:30 - #15: Jaylen Brown

27:30 - #14: Devin Booker

48:30 - NBA Mailbag

#Volume #Herd

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(01:43):
hoops and I you're at the volume heavy Thursday. Everybody
o ball. You guys are having a great end to
your week. So we are continuing our player rankings today
with number fifteen and number fourteen. We're also going to
have a mail bag at the tail end where we
go over your guys's arguments from our previous video number
sixteen and number seventeen. The kind of game plan for
the US this week. As we're doing fifteen and fourteen today,
we'll break out the mail bag tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm actually

(02:05):
recording thirteen and twelve, but that's going to run on Saturday.
That will run the mailbag from that on Sunday, and
then we're going to get into our Superstar tier, which
is eleven players deep at this point in NBA history
and we'll be starting that next week on Monday. You
guys are the Joe. Before we get started, it's subscribed
to Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more
of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS.

(02:26):
You guys, don't miss anyhow announcements. Don't forget about a
podcast feed reve you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight.
Don't forget it's helpful if you leave a rating in
a review on that front, and then don't forget to
keep dropping mail bag questions and those YouTube comments. I
want you guys to if you disagree with any of
these rankings, to argue why and break it down, and
we will get into it in the mailbag portions at

(02:47):
the tail end of these rankings videos then the last,
but not at least before we get started, I want to
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(03:08):
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(04:13):
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What time is it? Game Time? All right, let's talk
some basketball. So we're gonna mix things up a little
bit today because I want to get into the rationale

(04:35):
behind offense versus defense when it comes to valuing players.
Because the two players we have today at fifteen and
fourteen are Jalen Brown at number fifteen and Devin Booker
at number fourteen. These are two players that are pretty
hotly contested in terms of who people think are better.
I actually sent out a poll about this about two

(04:57):
weeks ago, a little over two weeks ago, and ninety
five hundred of you guys voted in. Sixty percent voted
for Devin Booker and forty percent voted for Jalen Brown.
But that was kind of towards the end. For a
long time, in the early phase of that poll, it
was really hovering right around that fifty to fifty mark,
maybe with a very slight edge to Devin Booker. This
is a hotly debated ranking between these two particular players,

(05:22):
and honestly, like to me, it was a pretty easy
decision to give Devin Booker the edge. And that comes
down to one of my overarching basketball philosophies, which is,
obviously I value the defensive end of the floor, but
I value the offensive end of the floor a little
bit more and there's a very specific reason why. So
I want to take some time to break that down

(05:44):
before we get into the individual players. So again we're
gonna mix these this up today. Before we get into
the individual players, we're gonna talk some big picture stuff.
So and again I have to emphasize this again as
a disclaimer, This doesn't mean I don't value defense. I've
played in and watched enough basketball games to know that
you have to defend in order to win. I'm not
underrating that. It's more about team construct in the role

(06:08):
of superstars within the context of offense and defense, especially
when you talk about the fact that when we're ranking players,
we're almost always talking about superstars and stars, right, So
the reason why I value the offensive end in these
discussions is simple. The defensive end mostly comes down to
executing a scheme forcing teams into certain types of shots.

(06:32):
No defense, even the most elite defenses, just shut teams down.
That's not how it works. You still give up a
lot of points. It's not like elite defenses just block
every shot you try to attend, right, They just try
to play you into your weaknesses and try to limit
your efficiency. So, for example, the Minnesota Timberwolves were the
best defense in the NBA this year, they still allowed

(06:55):
one hundred and eight points per one hundred possessions. The
Milwaukee Buck we're nineteenth in defense. That's a defense that
we most of us considered to be below average to bad. Right,
they allowed one hundred and fifteen points per one hundred possessions.
So we're talking about a difference of seven points over
a hundred possessions between a bad defense and the very

(07:17):
best defense. So on that end of the floor, it's
not about supreme talent just shutting people down. It's about
the coaching staff scouting the opponent and putting together a
smart game plan and then having a couple of guys
who can do the really tough jobs on defense. So
for instance, having who can guard the ball, just a

(07:41):
guy who can guard the person with the basketball, a
guy who can guard ball screens, so a big guy
that can navigate ball screen coverages, or another forward who's
like a low man who can help while also getting
out to shooters while also helping secure defensive rebounds. Those
are like the really hard jobs on the defensive end
of the floor. From there, you can actually make easier

(08:04):
jobs for weaker defenders. So I thought the best example
of this last year was the Dallas Mavericks, who were
in elite defense in the tail end of the season
and then that carried over into the postseason as they
made their run to the finals. Look at their roster build.
They had a guy who could guard the ball and
Derek Jones Junior. And obviously they had other guys for
bench units, but I'm mainly focusing on their starters. They

(08:25):
had a guy who can guard the ball and Derek
Jones Jr. They had a guy who could defend ball
screens and Derek Lively. And then Daniel Gafford was more
of a deep drop kind of rim protector, but he
also could do that job. But Derek Lively's an example
of a super versatile kind of pick and roll defender,
and then they had a Ford who could be their
low man in PJ. Washington. Those three guys did the
really hard jobs so that Kyrie and Luca had small,

(08:48):
achievable roles and the MAVs were at awesome defense. It
wasn't until the Boston series that they kind of ran
into some issues, and even then it was usually just
for and I went over this extensively. After that series,
the Dallas defense fell apart for stretches for like a
quarter here or a half there, where Boston just ran
over them, and it was usually when they were rarely

(09:09):
deliberate about attacking Luca. But they had good stretches in
that series too, and overall statistically their defense performed pretty well.
So the point is you can use quality role players
and smart coaching to put together an elite defense. The
offensive end is much more complicated, and the reason why

(09:33):
is you are guaranteed to run into multiple elite defenses
along the way to the title, and those defenses are
guaranteed to have a smart game plan and to execute
it well. They are going to play you into your
lower percentage shots. Right. Those problems cannot be solved with
quality role players and smart In a smart game plan,

(09:54):
it requires elite, high end offensive talent to break down
those types of defenses, either by making the tough shots
that the defense is trying to get you to make,
or by bringing two to the ball, which breaks down
the base defensive scheme and forces them to be in rotation,
so that now your offensive role players have easy jobs

(10:17):
like knocking down open shots or attacking a closeout. So again,
like those specific problems on the defensive end that a
defense presents to an offense, they can only be solved
by superstar offensive talent, Whereas, like we saw with Dallas,
you can create an elite defense even with defensively limited stars.

(10:41):
So to put it very simply, it's a lot easier
to create an elite defense around a defensively limited star
than it is to create an elite offense around an
offensively limited star. That's why I have guys like Luka
and Nikola Jokic over Yannis. That's why I have a
guy like Shaye Yelojas Alexander over Jason Tatum. And that's

(11:03):
why I have Devin Booker over Jalen Brown. Now, to
be clear, Jalen Brown is not a weak offensive player
and Devin Booker is not a weak defensive player, right,
But the best and most useful superpower that either of
those guys has is Devin Booker's ability to consistently generate

(11:24):
quality shots for his team in the half court. So
if I was a GM and I needed to build
a championship team from scratch with the first pick in
an open draft of the NBA's players, I would have
an easier time constructing a championship team around Devin Booker
as my first pick than around Jalen Brown. It's not

(11:45):
an exact science, to be clear, Like I have guys
that are defensive minded stars that are very high on
this list that we just haven't even got to yet.
I mean, you saw how hig I've bam adebio for instance.
So it's not an exact science. But when all things
are equal, that's a differentiator for me, and that's why

(12:06):
I have Devin Booker over Jalen Brown. So on that note,
hopefully that's clear. If you guys have any questions about that,
drop in the mailbag, and we can get into it
more later on in the series. If you disagree with me,
make a basketball case for it, put it in YouTube
and on the comments that we can break it down
a little bit more since we got some time here
over the summer. Jalen Brown number fifteen last year, played

(12:27):
in seventy games, averaged twenty three points per game, five
point five rebounds on three point six assists. That was
actually a career high and assist for Jalen Brown, and
that was despite his usage being the lowest since twenty twenty,
So career high and assists with a proportionally lower usage
rate right also his fewest turnovers per game since twenty twenty.

(12:47):
And the main thing that I think is really cool
about this is Jalen heard all of the slander last
summer and he went into the gym and he made
himself a much better ball handler last summer. It's one
of the big things I talked about with Colin Coward
after the two disappointing losses in the finals and in
the Eastern Conference Finals. I said to him, like, the
Celtics are are more poised to benefit by Jalen Brown

(13:08):
just getting better than they are trying to trade him.
And I thought they made the right decision by staying
committed to this core and like here's the thing. He
went into the gym and he worked on that handle,
and you can really tell the difference in a couple
of really key areas. Specifically, he just looks like he's
reading the floor a little bit more patiently, And a

(13:30):
big part of that is the ability to protect the ball.
When a ball pressure defender forces you to get squeamish
with your handle, all of a sudden, your attention comes
inward towards regaining control of the ball. But once you
have control of the ball, you can stop worrying so
much about the pressure and take time to see what's

(13:51):
happening around you. And that I thought was abundantly evident
in that career high and assist in that fewest turnover
since twenty twenty, all under a load usage. You can
literally see his confidence with especially with that left hand
coming to fruition. I thought it was cool that he
iced Game two of the Finals with that left handed
drive by Mexic Lee, but to put him up seven

(14:12):
with thirty seconds left, that was the thing that he
was criticized for. And he rode that specific skill to
a huge bucket in a big moment in an NBA
Finals game. And so that honestly is the big piece
of improvement I thought that we saw from Jalen Brown
this year. He just got better at handling the basketball,
which allowed him to protect the basketball so that he

(14:35):
could focus outward on seeing the floor and making reads
from there. He also got one point seven stocks per game.
That's the second highest mark of his career. I'm going
to rip through some shooting numbers real quick. He shot
forty nine point nine percent from the field, thirty five
point four percent from three to seventy percent from the line.
That amounts to fifty six percent an effective field goal
percentage waited for threes and fifty eight percent true shooting percentage.

(14:55):
Good not great. Other ways to improve his true shooting
percentage just raising that three point volume and getting to
the line more. That's most of the high true shooting
guys guys that are over sixty percent other than the
big bullyball guys around the rim. Most of them are
guys who shoot a lot of threes and guys who
get to the foul line a lot shooting percent energy
one point zero four points per jump shot, one point

(15:16):
zero eight in catch and shoot situations. He was actually
a little better when he was open, which is kind
of interesting in the context of the conversations we had
about Donovan Mitchell, like Jalen Brown, likes to slow himself
down when he's open and shoot more of like a
like a less athletic shot, which is interesting considering how
good of an athlete he is. But I think that
manifests in him just being a little bit more accurate
when he's open Versus the guys that really elevate on

(15:38):
their shot. They're almost a little better when they're guarded
because they don't slow themselves down, they get that lift
that they need. He was zero point nine to nine
points per shot off the dribble. That's completely respectable, one
point zero nine in face up. Had a really good
jab step jumper last year. Shot forty seven percent on floaters,
but not super high volume. He took about two every
three games, and then he was sixty two percent at

(15:58):
the rim, which is solid for a wing, fifty eight
percent on layups. Playtype data pers energy. He was in
the eighty fifth percentile for pick and roll players. He
actually got one point zero eight points per possession including passes,
which is excellent, but only four hundred and thirty reps,
so he's relatively low volume. Most of that was him.
He personally shot forty eight percent field goals in pick
and roll situations and ISO two hundred and seven points

(16:20):
on two hundred and six possessions including passes that was
sixty sixth percentile, and then in the post two hundred
and thirteen points on two hundred and two possessions including
passes that was in the fifty seventh percentile. He personally
shot fifty six percent in the post up area of
the floor. Big part of that was he was the
best fadeaway jump shooter in the league last year. And
this is where I want to kind of get into

(16:41):
the late season run because Jalen Brown's early part of
the season, and a big part of this too is
just you're adding in a couple of new players. It
kind of tweaks some of the ball handling responsibilities. It
messes with your head a little bit. Jalen Brown really
started to come around at the tail end of the season.
His scoring ramped up to twenty six points per game
in his last nineteen season games, and I actually thought

(17:02):
he was the best player on the Celtics in the
playoff run. I think we all agree Tatum is the
best player on the team, Like if you're in a
vacuum evaluating the roster and who's the most valuable player
if like everyone was available for trade, obviously Tatum is
the guy that would get the most in return. He's
the best player. But Tatum was in a bad shooting slump,
and Jalen Brown just played better basketball than Tatum over

(17:24):
the course of those two months. A simple stat to
demonstrate that Jalen Brown shot over fifty percent in fourteen
of the playoff games, Jason Tatum shot over fifty percent
in three of them, and Tatum averaged twenty five. Jalen
Brown averaged twenty four. So Jalen Brown basically matched Tatum
scoring efficiency or scoring volume and was far more efficient

(17:44):
and far more reliable on a night in, night out basis,
And both of them played massive defensive roles. Tatum was
obviously the guy guarding the center and making a lot
of that stuff work, But Jalen Brown is a guy
guarding the ball, and like we've talked a lot about
how you put Tatum on the center that alleviates your
center to then row him off of a bat above
the break shooters, so we can help at the rim.

(18:04):
But the other part of that is you switch pick
and roll right. So like if you bring the center
up into the ball screen, Tatum just switches. But in
order for that to work, you need your point of
attack defender to be able to switch on to centers,
and Jalen Brown is big enough to do that. I mean,
Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum both were monumentally important on
the defensive end of the floor, and so like I mean,
I just thought Jalen Brown in this particular two month

(18:24):
stretch played better and that's why he deserved different Eastern
Conference Finals MVP, and that's why he deserved finals MVP.
All that said, separate point on Tatum, I do think
this Tatum slump is temporary, and I do think he's
gonna have a huge bounce back year. We're gonna get
more into that when we get into our top ten
when we start talking Tatum. But the point is that
Jalen Brown was playing at an extremely high level over

(18:45):
the final third of the season and in the playoffs,
and for me, it really felt like he went up
a level in three main areas because like, if we
were tiering players last year, I had Jalen Brown in
that next tier below with all those other guards that
we hit at the start of the list. I didn't
think he was good enough to be the best player
on a championship team. He has gone up an entire

(19:06):
tier he is now. I mean, to put it simply,
he's in this tier, which is players that can be
the best player on a championship team as long as
they have overwhelming support. And we literally know that because
he just was. He just was the best player on
a championship team with overwhelming support around him. So he
actually kind of perfectly fits the definition of this tier

(19:27):
of players. But the main basketball improvements that put him
into that tier, the three improvements are Number One, he
got more committed to defending at the point of attack
right around halfway through the season. And I mean, he
did it periodically over the previous seasons, but he really
seemed to take a more intentional approach to guarding the

(19:47):
other team's best player every night around halfway through the
year and just applying a lot of ball pressure and
being super physical. And he's just awesome at it. He's big,
he's strong, he attacks the basketball, he applies physicality without
committing too many fouls, he has the length to apply
back pressure. He can switch on to Biggs. Like I
talked earlier in the Jason Tatum defensive scheme, I thought

(20:09):
it was the best defensive season Jalen Browns had in
a long time. So that was piece number one, just
recommitting and inflicting his athleticism on the defensive end of
the four. Number two his feel for the game. Talked
about this earlier. Being able to handle the ball more
allowed him to see beyond his defender and make better reads.
And so even though his usage went down, his assist
totals went up and his turnovers went down. That's a

(20:29):
really strong indicator that he took a leap in terms
of just his overall feel for the game. And a
lot of that too, is just experiences being in a
lot of these situations, been there, done that, you derive
confidence from that. And then, lastly, short to mid range
shot making. He was the best turnaround fadaway jump shooter
in the league last year. Did a good job of

(20:50):
initiating contact and getting good separation with his athleticism as
he'd drift away from the rim, but also staying balanced
so that he can knock the shot down and he
made several in big moments in the NBA five. In
Game three, he had that deep seal over Luca where
he just fade over his right shoulder quick in the
fourth quarter, and then the huge shot late it was
I want to say it was a three point game
with like a minute left and he got Tim Hardaway

(21:12):
Junior on a switch and just drove at him and
got into that like kind of fifteen foot area by
the elbow and like pump faked and then just leaned
back and elevated over the top and knocked it down.
Those were huge shots that Jalen Brown worked really hard
for a long time to develop. And so between the
overall feel for the game, the improvement as a shot maker,
and then the commitment to the defensive end, those three

(21:34):
things vaulted Jalen Brown up a tier as a player,
and he clearly demonstrated that he's capable of being the
best player on a championship team as long as you
give him the necessary amount of support. I actually thought like,
if you look back at this Celtics season, his story
in Al Horford's story to me were the two coolest
overall elements to the Celtics title. Run al Horford obviously,

(21:55):
just because he was a rock solid fringe star slash
super high level role player on a lot of good
teams for a long time and he just never got
over the hump and then he finally does and so
that was a really cool moment for Al Horford. But
the Jalen Brown piece is awesome. I mean, catches a
world of slander after that disappointing playoff run against Miami,

(22:16):
He's getting open. I mean we've got Jimmy Butler talking
about him on Instagram. Obviously, the public opinion turned against
him in a lot of different ways, and he got
in the gym, got better in one finals MVP the
following year. That's really cool. I'm happy for Jalen and
it's just awesome to see him this high on this
list and in this tier of players.

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Speaker 1 (23:21):
Number fourteen. Devin Booker last year sixty eight games played,
twenty seven point one points per game, four point five
rebounds per game, six point nine assists per game, just
two point six turnovers, and one point three stocks per game.
The shooting splits forty nine point two percent from the field,
thirty six point four percent from three, eighty eight point
six percent from the line. That all adds up to
fifty five percent in effective field goal percentage weighted for threes,

(23:44):
and sixty one percent in true shooting percentage, which also
includes foul shooting. His overall jump shooting or shot making
numbers from Synergy. You got one point zero seven points
per jump shot one point zero eight and catch and
shoot situations. Kind of a weird split between one he
was guarded and when he was open. He was zero
point nine to one when guarded, but one point two
eight when unguarded. That's just a really bizarre split. I

(24:08):
would imagine that's mostly an outlier. He got one point
zero seven points per pull up jump shot. That was
the second best high volume jump shooting performance in the
league last year. A little trivia for you guys, So
there were nine players in the NBA who attempted at
least five hundred pull up jump shots and also got
at least one point per pull up jump shot. Number one,

(24:29):
take a guess, it's Luka Doncic, Number two, Devin Booker,
as we said, number three, Kevin Durant, number four, Steph Curry,
number five, Jalen Brunson, number six, Shay Gilders, Alexander number seven,
Fred Van Vliet on the list that was a surprise
to me. Number eight Dejonte Murray also a surprise to me,

(24:52):
and number nine Damian Lillard. And those are in order
of efficiency. So that was actually your top nine high
volume pull up sho shooters last year. That all got
over five hundred attempts in over one point per shot.
Devin Booker did shoot just thirty six percent on floaters
and made only twenty one in the whole season. Not
really a part of his game. He prefers to get
into that like pull up jump shot even really close

(25:13):
to the rim. So I mean it's not like he
needs a floater, he just has a different shot that
he goes to there. Really surprising here, this is a
stat that I think would shock most NBA fans. Devin
Booker shot sixty five percent at the rim last year,
including sixty four percent on layups. He made three point
five per game. That's pretty high volume. As a matter

(25:34):
of fact, there were only four players in the league
that were six six or less sixty six or shorter
that made more shots per game in the restricted era
in more shots per game in the restricted area, Tyres Maxi,
Jalen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards. That's it among the
smaller guys, So like those are all freaky out. Tyres

(25:54):
Maxey one of the fastest guys in the league. Jalen
Brown one of the best all around athletes in the league.
Donovan Mitchell one of the best all around athletes in
the league, Anthony Edwards potentially the best athlete in the league.
That's the list that Devin Booker, a guy who's not
a great athlete, has put himself on getting to the
rim and not just there with volume, but with the
efficiency to boot. And so I actually went back and

(26:15):
I watched a bunch of his rim attempts this morning
because I was like, how is it that he's so
damn efficient? And it comes down to a couple of
different things. One similar to Steph Curry, really good at
weaponizing the high hesitation. This is a move that I
talked about a lot with the kids that I'm training
in high school. It is a bridge move from the
high hesitation. You can go to anything from there. So

(26:35):
just imagine that you're guarding me and I do it
between the legs, dribble into the high hesitation. I'm just
sitting there kind of pausing for a second. Now, technically,
by the rule book, it's a carry. But one of
the things I always tell the kids is at every level,
as long as you look like you know what you're
doing and you can control the basketball like you look
like a good ball handler, they're usually gonna let you

(26:57):
get away with it, right, Like we all see that
high hesitation in every level of basketball, where the hand's
like kind of on the side of the ball and
the ball kind of comes to a rest for a second.
If you're sloppy with it, they'll call you for a carrot.
But if you have it on a string and you
have it under control, they'll usually let you get away
with it. But once you get there, you can go
to any move right. I'm sitting in the high hesitation.

(27:18):
Guys too far far back, boom, I rise up into
a jump shot. The guy is coming up too close
on the jump shot, maybe on my right shoulder. I
push ahead to drive to the basket. If I need
to cross over, I can cross. I can go between
the legs, I can go behind the back, or if
I need to create additional separation, I can in and
out to a step back, or I can go between

(27:39):
the legs and to a step back. Like we talked
about with Donovan Mitchell, that high hesitation is your bridge
move to everything right, But in order to get a
defender to commit to one thing or the other, you
need to have a threat right. So like for really
good downhill guys, they get into their high hesitation and
the defenders so far back on their heels because they're
terrified that he's just gonna hit the jets and go

(27:59):
right by them, so they can easily get to high
hesitation pull up jump shots. Right. We talked about this
with Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards gets really high quality pull
up jump shot looks because dudes are on their heels
because of how athletic he is. Right, Devin Booker gets
the reverse form of that. He gets in that high hesitation.
And I watched so many clips today where like the
big guy and pick and roll, like he'll come off

(28:20):
the ball screen and he'll get into that mid range.
He'll just look at the rim and sit in a
high hesitation, and the big will get up out of
his stance and like stand upright and then come up
and then he'll just go right around him and he'll
kind of sleep a slip inside and shoot a little
finger roll off the glass or something like that. A
lot of times in he'll do it too, where like
the big guy will stay back, but the guard will

(28:41):
recover and kind of get back in front, but Devin
Booker will kind of sit in that high hesitation until
the guy comes all the way over and then he'll
just cross back over between his legs and he's right
back to the basket right And then a big part
of his passing too, so by using his shooting as
a threat, it's the fear of his pull up jump shot.
Like we talked about. He was the second best pull
up jump shooter in all of basketball last year. So
as a defender, whether it's on the ball or the

(29:02):
big guy, you're keyed in on that. So when he
gets into his high hesitation, you're overplaying up, which allows
him to get passed. And then the second piece of it,
the passing piece. Devin Booker is one of the most
underrated passers in the league. That'll end up putting him
in situations where guys don't want to help, and then
he can get all the way to the rim. But
those are the main things that I saw in terms
of getting those opportunities from there. Using his body at

(29:23):
the rim, he doesn't try to go like he doesn't
try to like jump with you and finish as high
as possible. He gets into your chest and just kind
of gets that little bit of separation and leans back
and knocks down a shot, or he'll get into your
chest and then stretch out with his left hand like
he just uses his body well. And then the last
piece of it is off ball situations, understanding the angles

(29:44):
that are available when you're attacking closeouts. I talk about
this all the time with the kids that are trained,
but it's the concept of baked in driving lanes. Very
simply put. If I'm on the left wing and Kevin
Durant's on the right wing, and my man is helping
down at the nail, meaning like he is somewhere between
me and Kevin Durant. If Kevin Durant throws me a
rifle pass, the defender is closing out at my right

(30:07):
closing out at my right shoulder. So if I catch
and just immediately ripped to the left, I'm gonna have
a baked in driving lane. And I was amazed at
how many of the rim attempts Devin Booker got last year.
We're just him running his lane in transition and then
catching and ripping on the catch and just getting an
easy driving lane. Or so and so's got the ball,
whether it's Bradley Beel or Devin Booker or useif Nurkic

(30:29):
and they draw a second defender, they draw nail, help
swing and he'll just catch and rip again. Like usually
when you're talking about the super efficient scorers in the league,
it's not because they make every single tough shot they make.
It's like the best pull up jump shooters in the
league might get one point zero five one point one
point points per pull up jump shot. Right, they're not
getting the offensive ratings that you see where teams are

(30:50):
getting one twenty offensive rating, one twenty two offensive rating.
In order to hit those efficiencies, you need to capitalize
on the easy stuff. The same thing goes for these players,
these guys that are up over sixty percent through shooting.
It's not because they just make every tough shot they make.
They take four or five really tough shots per game,
and they make two of them, and then they take

(31:12):
four or five kind of like coverage beater types of shots, right,
Like guys in a drop coverage he dies on the screen.
Guys in a drop coverage I get a wide open
midrange jump shot, Like those are coverage beaters, right, And
then like the other seven to eight shots that you take,
they're all like in the flow, like transition driving layup,
offensive rebound, putback, driving a close out, shooting a wide

(31:33):
open catch and shoot three. That actually makes up like
that shoult make up like half your offense, right, And
so the guys that end up being super efficient are
usually the guys that like shoot seventy percent on that stuff,
and then they shoot forty percent or whatever on everything else.
But that's okay. Those are the tough shots. Those are
usually late in the shot clock. Those are usually, oh,
they're defending the ball screen two on two. I have
to make this shot because that's what the defense is giving, right,

(31:54):
Like the easy stuff is so underrated when it comes
to efficiency, and these guys that hit thesevolume scoring numbers
and keep their percentages high, and a big part of it,
like I was amazed at Devin Booker today, is just
like how many easy layups he gets every game just
by understanding the angles that are available when he's driving closeouts.
And again, sixty five percent for a I mean he's

(32:15):
sixty six or the six to eight wingspans. I don't
want to sit here and talk like he doesn't have
physical tools, but at his you know, particular lack of
athletic burst compared to some of the guards at the
top of the league. He gets to the rim as
much and is more efficient than most of them, And
that's pretty that's pretty impressive under the circumstances. I'm going
to really quickly go through play type data and then

(32:36):
we'll talk a little bit about Devin Booker on the
defensive end of the floor. So he was one of
the top pick and roll play makers in the league
last year. He got one point one to five points
per possession on one thousand and thirty two possessions under
a high volume list. Out of the fifteen players to
run at least a thousand, Devin Booker ranked third. So
he's one of the best pick and roll players in
the league. We know what he does is a score.
I just talked about it at length, but passing a
couple things. First of all, a lot of those like

(32:58):
five those five out quick decisions. I had a mail
bag yesterday talking about like high level offensive players being heliocentric.
Devin Booker is a great example of a really high
level offensive shot creator that does it in a five
out context. And when you watch these thousand pick and
rolls that Devin Booker runs, and I've watched several dozen
of him this morning. When you watch those videos, he's

(33:19):
not pounding the air out of the basketball like Luca.
He brings about the floor, ball screen, comes, comes flying
off the screen, makes a read. That's what he does.
It's it makes him easy to play with because he
makes a quick decision. It also leaves a lot of
time on the tail end of the shot clock for
guys to make for guys to make plays. The second
piece of it is he takes the easy stuff that

(33:39):
is available. So like if he comes off and Kevin
Durant's man is just syncing in a little bit, he'll
just throw the ball right into Kevin rant shooting pockets
so that he can shoot a three. If he's driving
on the right wing and there's nail help off the
left wing, just throw the swing pass. It's there, Just
take it. He's got the high level stuff. He can
make the skip passes, he can read the low man.
But those easy reads that are able, those go a

(34:00):
long way. Similar to what I was talking about with
the shot making piece, you gotta take advantage of the
easy passing reads that are available. Don't make the game
harder than it needs to be. If there are easy
opportunities that are there, you got to jump on them.
As a matter of fact, he got a lot of
hockey assists where he would just make the read that
led to the read that led to the bucket. NBA
dot Com refers to these as secondary assists, and the

(34:23):
way they count them is if you pass to a
guy who then immediately makes another pass within one second
without dribbling to the guy who makes the shot, they
call that a secondary assist, and Devin Booker had eighty
four of them this year, which was the seventh most
in the entire NBA, even in just sixty nine games played.
So like Devin Booker again, when it comes down to

(34:45):
pick and roll, he's just one of the best shot makers,
shot creators, and shot makers in the league. And then
we know what he's like on the ball. You know
he can hit the pull up three if you die
on the screen or if you go underneath. He's excellent
at putting the defender in jail and then taking quick
sidestep fifteen footers. We talked about everything that he does
at the rim, using weaponizing, the high hesitation dribble. He's
just one of the best at what he does in

(35:06):
the league. ISO situations one point zero eight points per
possession on three hundred and thirty two reps. He also
made a high volume list. Out of the twenty four
players to run at least two hundred and fifty, he
ranked ninth. He only ran seventy seven post ups last year,
but did get one point zero eight points per possession,
which is very good. Now, looking at the playoff series,
I thought he had a little bit more of a

(35:26):
rough series against Minnesota than the box score numbers would
lead you to believe. Like he averaged twenty eight, three
and six on sixty six percent through shooting. So so
you look at that on the surface and you're like, oh,
he was awesome, But he was the primary ball handler
for the most part, and I thought he missed a
lot of the easy reads that he was making during
the regular season. Now, if you want to see evidence
of this, I did at least two film sessions during

(35:48):
the playoff series that went extensively into breaking this concept down.
But the gist of it is the Suns, And if
you want to see those videos again, you just want
to go back on our feed and scroll back to
the Sun's Timberwolve series and just looked to the look
for the film session videos I did around that time.
But to put it simply, the Sons were at their
best as a drive in kick team, meaning they were

(36:09):
when they were taking catch and shoot threes and driving
into layups or taking easy fifteen footers off of close
out situations. They were at their worst when they would
just take turns, taking pull up jump shots off of
ball screens or ISOs. Right, and it really seemed to
come together for them right around the end of the
end of the year, like post All Star break aus.
A matter of fact, post All Star they were seventh.

(36:29):
The Sons were seventh in assist percentage. Sixty six percent
of their made field goals were assisted. That dropped all
the way down to fifty six percent in the first
round series against Minnesota, I thought Minnesota was successful at
speeding Devin Booker up and forcing him to kind of
lose sight of the bigger picture a little bit. Again,
we talked about this earlier, but like when you speed
an offensive player up with good ball pressure, they don't

(36:52):
see the rest of the floor. They're primarily focused on
surviving their individual matchups. So like that's one of the
benefits of ball pressure when you make a ball handler
feel uncomfortable, doesn't see the bigger picture as much, doesn't
see the four as much, and he can start to
make mistakes. Not to be clear, I don't think Devin
Booker was the reason Phoenix lost or got swept. I
think it mostly came down to the physical mismatch. Minnesota

(37:12):
was just a lot bigger and a lot stronger, and
they just basically bullied Phoenix on both ends of the floor.
Is it was a roster issue. I'm just saying. I
also didn't think it was the best playoff series that
Devin Booker played, and I thought the box score numbers
were a little bit deceiving in that regard. In summery though,
Devin is one of the best half court shot creators
in the league. To the mailback question the other day,
like we talked about, he does it in a five

(37:33):
out context. He doesn't dribble the air out of the basketball,
He comes down the floor, uses ball screen, makes a
quick read. He was top five and pick and roll.
He was top ten in ISO and the main reason,
the main reason that I have him ahead of other
elite half court shot creators, the guys like Donovan Mitchell
and Jalen Brunson, who I had multiple people complain about
me having Devin Booker over them in the comments yesterday.

(37:55):
The main reason why I have him over those guys
at the defensive end of the floor, and it's especially
impressive because he's not particularly explosive, but he is six '
six with a six to eight wing span that goes
a long way to giving you a fighting chance. There
are two main areas that I want to hit with
Devin Booker on the defensive end of the floor. First
is off ball communication, and I did a bunch of

(38:16):
film sessions on this towards the tail end of the year,
but especially when Phoenix was starting to get going there
at the end, they were really trying to ramp up
on defense, and you can see Devin taking a personal
responsibility for their lack of communication that they were having before.
He was in a lot of and usually it's their center.
Usually it's the center that it operates as their primary communicator.

(38:36):
But Devin Booker was taking a lot of those off
ball like kind of backline communication responsibilities, calling out coverages,
pointing guys out, telling him where they need to go,
and that sort of thing takes a lot of effort
and takes a lot of mental focus and uses energy,
but it goes a long way towards helping a unit defend,
and Devin Booker took that responsibility on the second piece
of it was on ball competitiveness. We saw some of

(38:57):
this with Phoenix and we saw a lot of it
with Team USA. But you can ask Devin Booker to
guard the other team's best guard. You can ask him
to apply ball pressure and to fight over the top
of screens. Now, Phoenix doesn't need him to do They
usually will use a guy like a Kog to do
something like that, but when they would go to their
more skilled lineups, they could ask Booker to do that.

(39:18):
For Team USA, he was guarding the best player on
the other team every night. He can navigate screens, he's
got good footwork, he's got good attention to the detail
in the game plan. He puts consistent effort in on
that side of the floor. You can actually have I
remember when I was talking earlier about the tough jobs.
You can't ask Donovan Mitchell or Jalen Brunson to do
one of the tough jobs. You have to craft them
the easier jobs, which both teams did. We talked about

(39:41):
Cleveland putting usually putting Donovan Mitchell on like an off
ball shooter and asking him to dig down and use
his athleticism to close out right, Jalen Brunson, same sort
of thing, a lot of hedging and recovering, holding up
in ISO just because he's big and strong. But they
weren't asking him to do a tough job. You can
ask Devin Booker to do a tough defensive job. You
can ask him to be your primary point of attack defender.

(40:03):
That's a real value add within the context of trying
to build a roster that can win the title. He
gives you similar offensive juice as those guards while also
giving you real defensive value, and that to me was
the main differentiator. Brunson doesn't hurt you. Mitchell helps you
a little bit. Booker can actually take a significant defensive role,

(40:26):
and that's what sets him apart ETHO. All right, moving
on to the mailbag. I only have about five questions today,
since we're going one video at a time now. Feel
like sixteen I got a lot of questions like this
about Brunson. Feels like sixteen is way too low for Brunson.
He was top five in MVP votes last year and

(40:48):
was one of the best playoff performers, if not the best.
Variations of that question talking about top five and MVP,
the sheer amount of scoring volume that he did in
the postseason, all that kind of stuff. Here's how I'm
gonna try to explain it. Before I go any further.
Don't forget that I primarily am using tiers to demonstrate

(41:09):
a large gap in value. Okay, so all of these
guys are in the same tier, so I don't see
large gaps between them. So I could see Brunson as
high as twelve or as low as seventeen, and all
of those are pretty close to me, so that to

(41:29):
be clear, Like, it's the eleven guys at the top
of the league, the superstar tier that I think Brunson
has no case over. But I understand the case, the
case for Brunson over Booker. I prefer Booker, but I
understand the case. I understand the case for Brunson over
to the two guys recovering tomorrow or on Saturday, I
should say, but to upfront explain, you know, just the
format of this particular list these tiers. The guys are

(41:52):
all kind of close. So a lot of this just
has to do with the sheer amount of talent that's
in the league. The two guys I had ahead of
him today are the defending Eastern Conference Finals MVP in
the defending Finals MVP, and Jalen Brown, a guy who's
one of the best two way players in the game,
Devin Booker, who's a similar level of half court shot creator.
He's a career twenty eight points per game in forty

(42:14):
seven playoff games on over sixty percent true shooting, and
he was the best player on a team that made
it to within two wins of an NBA championship, and
he's a substantially more impactful defender. That's the guy that
you want to put I mean that, let's just put
it this way. If you think Brunson's better than Booker,
I respect that, But Booker's got a damn good case

(42:35):
to be better, right. And then the two guys were
hitting on Saturday, They're both like, we're not gonna get
I'm gonna try. You guys can probably guess who they are,
but I'm gonna try not to reveal it. The two
guys that we got on Saturday are like Bona fide
superstars who have health issues and when they are healthy
are both clearly better than Jalen Brunson. So and then

(42:57):
the other guys are the eleven superstar guys that I have,
and trust me, you're gonna have a really hard time
bumping any of those guys for Jalen Brunson. So it's
mostly just a product of the sheer amount of awesome
players that we have in the league, the kind of
guys that used to look at the screen and go like,
oh man, that's a top ten player. By the way,
I made this mistake. I'm pretty sure there was a
day during the regular season where I was like, holy shit,

(43:19):
Jalen Brunson's playing like a top ten player. But then
you actually sit down and you start writing names down
and you're like, oh shit, there's just a lot of
really good players. So, like I mean to put it simply,
like what used to be top ten is now kind
of like top seventeen, what used to be top twenty

(43:39):
five is now kind of like top forty, top forty five.
Like we talked about we did that forty five player
list at the start, there are a lot of guys there.
Paul George not even on my list. Trey Young not
even on my list. There's a lot of really, really
good basketball players in the NBA, and that is the
main thing that is driving this. Like I could bump

(44:00):
him over any of the eleven. I explained to you
guys why I thought Booker was better. I explained to
it to you guys, why I thought Jayleen Brown was better. Again,
I can. I can personally see the reasoning for Brunson
as high as twelve, but for me, he happens to
be at sixteen. One other way to look at it,
I think Brunson is the best small guard in the
league other than Steph and that's a hell of an

(44:22):
accomplishment in the league that has this type of guard depth.
I have Jalen Brunston over Donovan Mitchell. I have Jalen
Brunson over Tyres Halliburton. I have Jalen Brunson over Tyres Maxey.
I have Jalen Brunson over John Morant. I have Jalen
Brunson over Damian Lillard. I Jalen Brunson over Daron Fox.
I have him over Kyrie Irving, I have him over
Trey Young. I have Brunson over all those guys right now.
It's just the guys that have above him are bigger athletes,

(44:44):
and you know, obviously I view that as value, and
there are guys above him that bring the same at
least similar type of offensive shock creation without some of
the downsides that come from having a guard that's small.
Here's another follow up question, how the heck is a
top five MVP vote getter last season sixteenth on this
list Steph Curry ahead of Brunson at this point is crazy.

(45:07):
Brunson will be putting his team in championship contention this season.
Curry will lead his team to the lottery. Make it
make sense, dude, tired of the Brunson disrespect. To put
it simply, Jalen Brunson will contend for a championship this
year because he also has Julius Randall og N and
Obi McHale bridges in high level two way players like

(45:27):
Dante DiVincenzo and Josh Hart. Curry might end up in
the play in or the lottery. Just I'm not even
gonna talking about it. Just go ahead and pull up
Golden State's roster for this season and you'll find out
really quickly why the Knicks are gonna do more than
the Warriors are going to do in all likelihood this season.
It doesn't have anything to do with Jalen Brunson or
Steph Curry. I do think Jalen Brunson had a better

(45:50):
and more productive regular season last year, but a big
part of that was him being surrounded by more talent.
That Warriors team, similar to the Lakers, similar to the Suns,
just doesn't have any role players that can play both
ends of the floor effectively. That's the main issue that
they have. It's a major roster issue. To put it like,
I'll put it even more aggressively. If the Knicks today

(46:14):
traded Jalen Brunson straight up for Steph Curry, the Knicks
title odds would skyrocket because Steph is a better basketball player.
It's not an insult to Brunson. He's Steph fucking Curry,
and that's why I can't like put him up on
that particular level. Next question one more Brunson. One bro
miss the mark here. He gained a huge boost an

(46:36):
audience for the way he covered the Knicks and Brunson
all of last season, only to rate him sixteenth best player. Nah,
it's it's my job to be authentic and tell you, guys,
exactly how I feel, not to propagandaize to your fan base.
So I'm just not gonna do that. Me ranking Brunson
sixteen doesn't change how much I love watching him play basketball,
or the simple fact that we're gonna be covering the

(46:57):
Knicks very closely this year. It's a player ranking, and
it really only matters in the summer when we're talking hypotheticals.
As soon as we get into the regular season. In
the playoffs, it's like, can Brunson with this supporting cast
beat this star with his supporting cast? These two teams
facing against each other. The player rankings go out the
window in October, Guys like this is not I can't

(47:21):
just sit up here and lie and say things that
I don't believe to appeal to a fan base, especially
on something as simple and foolish as player rankings, which
don't really matter in the grand scheme of who gets
to hoist hilario'brian trophy at the end of the day.
I have three more wait, yeah, three more questions. The
problem with arguing that the Laker slash Lebron greatly benefited

(47:44):
from the break in twenty twenty is that there's no
proof whatsoever besides feelings. They weren't limping into the break,
they weren't injured at all, they didn't look tired or slow.
They actually were just about to hit a good stride
beating the Bucks and Clippers back to back. This is
in relation to a question we had two days ago,
basically insinuating that we don't know if Lebron can make
it through a playoff run, and then I kind of

(48:04):
piggybacked off that with another take that I had received
from a buddy of mine a few weeks back, that
the twenty twenty Lakers benefited from the break because they
looked like they were gonna break down. And what I
said two days ago was that that's just completely theoretical.
Lebron's never missed a playoff game. But this is a
really good additional point, which is that in March, when

(48:25):
they beat the Bucks and Clippers back to back and
Lebron literally looked like the MVP, I thought he should
have won the MVP that year. They were cooking with
gas and actually ramping up, and it actually kind of
fell in line with most Lebron teams that tended to
ramp up around March for the playoff run. So like, yeah,
I think that retroactively looking at the Lakers is as

(48:47):
a team that should have broken down is based entirely
on fantasy. All Right, two more bail back question. We've
seen that the Olympics and specifically Lebron's performance have impacted
Jason's view on the all time king of Lebron's place.
That being said, did the Olympics impact how you see
players in the context of the NBA And did any
of these rankings in these videos change because of the Olympics.

(49:08):
So the short answer is no. But I did go
look at the list after the Olympics before I decided
did not make any changes, and so the reason is simple,
I didn't. I don't think Jason Tatum's shooting slump is
going to last through next season. I would venture to
guess that his jumper will be fixed by training camp.
The Olympics were pretty damn close to the finals, and
I guarantee you he took some time off after the

(49:30):
finals as he should have. He played basketball into mid June,
so I doubt he was as polished for the Team
USA as some of his peers. I think Tatum is
going to get back in the gym this summer, and
I think he's going to fix a shot and I
think he's going to look great, So I didn't factor
that in. Two. I know Embiid is better in Philly's
offensive system, and I already knew Joel Embiid didn't know
how to play, read and react basketball, so that I

(49:52):
didn't learn anything new about Embid. I already knew that stuff,
So that wasn't something that I was gonna change my
opinion about him when he's going to be playing for
the Sixers and he's gonna have the dam ball all
the time. Three. I have always felt like Steph, Cady
and Lebron are still some of the very best players
in the world in a small sample size. I felt

(50:12):
that way before the Olympics, and I'm not surprised at all.
I was disappointed in how some of the young guys played,
but I expected Steph, cad and Lebron to play as
well as they did. They're just three of the greatest
winners of all time, and so of course they're gonna
figure out and they're still playing at or near that level.
They just at their ages, they can't superhero their way

(50:33):
through an eighty two game season like they used to,
and they can't overcome some of the limitations that their
rosters have. Again, all three of those rosters don't have
any two way role players, guys that play both ends
of the four really well. Outside of their stars. That's
a problem, and that's why they struggle in the eighty
two game season, and at their age, they can't overcome that.

(50:56):
In the Olympics, it's a shorter window and it's just
an easier grind, and so they were able to handle it. So, Yeah,
I took a look at my list after the Olympics.
I just didn't change my mind on anything because most
of that was stuff that I already had established. Last question,
calling Lebron substantially better than Tatum in a two week
stretch is ridiculous. And here's all I'm gonna say to that.

(51:17):
Just for a second in your head, just close your
eyes and imagine Lebron James playing basketball with Drew Holliday,
Derek White, Jalen Brown, Christops Porzingis, Al Horford, Sam Houser,
and Peyton Pritchard. Just imagine it for a minute and
you'll pretty quickly come to the same conclusion. That I did.
All right, guys. That is all I have for today.
As always, a sincerely appreciate you for supporting the show.

(51:38):
We are going to be back on Saturday. Oh I
have this mail bag will run as a breakout tomorrow Saturday,
I'll run the thirteen and twelve, and then starting next
week we're going to be getting into the top eleven,
which is just an incredible list of players that was
incredibly difficult to rank and I'm excited to break it
down and to debate it with you guys. I will
see you guys. Then the volume