You can quibble with the order and whether he's Top 5 or not. The reality is there isn't much separating the Top 8 players in the NBA right now and you can put them in any order:
•both LeBron and KD, the two greatest players of the last decade, are coming off of potentially career-altering injuries. In LeBron's case, he's also going into Year 17, there is no precedent for someone his age with a severe injury coming back at the same level, plus he was already declining slightly...
In KD's case, he is about to miss an entire season of basketball, which will effectively disqualify him from best player arguments when the season tips off. There is a HUGE possibility his best years are behind him, as most guys with his injury are never the same...
•Kawhi is great but maybe hasn't fully matured in his game, and while he deserves benefit of the doubt, we a)haven't seen him beat a KD-led team as a #1 in the playoffs, and b)haven't seen him beat a LeBron-led team as a #1 in the playoffs...
As great as Kawhi is, he still has a lot to prove. Kawhi has been a Top 10 player for only four years, three if you take away the season he missed. He had some advantages in his favor other guys don't get. He's the best player right now by circumstance, but if you really watch him play, you can't come away convinced that there's any significant gap between him and the field, something you could obviously say about the two guys whose legacy he's chasing...
•Giannis, Embiid, and Harden have all been exposed as pretenders to varying degree. Harden is an outstanding player but the book is out on him. Embiid has best player potential but can be bullied and looked really soft at points of the last two playoffs...
Giannis media hype train has been going hard for two years to call him the best player alive, then he gets a squad to the ECF and gets backdoor swept while disappearing for 4th quarters and being severely shut down...
For everything we think these guys can be, not a single one of them has proven it yet. Harden has been a Top 5 guy in the regular season for half a decade---->then the playoffs come and remind us of his ceiling...
•Steph is the true wild card but just has physical limitations guys like KD, Bron, and Kawhi don't have. I'm not positive Kawhi us that much greater as a player, but Steph also has a habit of being s better regular season guy than a playoff guy...
•everybody has called AD top 5 for several years. He's clearly one of the 5 most dominant guys, but his leadership is questionable and we haven't seen it translate to team success....
..........
These are the Top 8 guys in the NBA right now. You can make an argument for all of these guys as Top 5. There is no huge divide....
If guys are talking about legacy, the Top 4 guys are LeBron, KD, Steph, and Kawhi, in that order. Otherwise, and rightfully so, if guys are just going off the last time our eyes watched any of these guys play, you can literally number these nikkas in any order...
FOH
