Justin Verrier

I ultimately went with Jokic just because toward the end there, he had such an emphatic statement.

And for all the reasons Kyle's laying out, he's still probably the best offensive player.

But in totality, it seems like Shea just has it, especially this year in terms of resume.

I just don't really know what to do with Wemby at this point because he's clearly the defensive player of the year.

We'll get there eventually.

But yeah.

And that's the thing.

It gets into this old argument where it's like, how much do you weigh defense versus offense?

Where it's like, Wemby literally warps the way people play basketball now.

And he does it so regularly.

And I just don't know how to account for that because all the empirical stuff, the statistical stuff, isn't as caught up on the defensive side as it is the offensive side.

And so I almost wonder if there were these big honking statistics for Wemby to suggest how much he suppresses another team's offense.

There's stuff.

but it's just not to the level of sophistication or packaged in a way that's easy to understand for the layman.

And so I put Wemby at third, but I would hear arguments for him at two, especially considering what we said with Jokic, Rob, with the two months where he just wasn't there.

Yeah, I would say that LeBron tilting things more toward playmaking as your like go to guy, as opposed to the more Jordan Kobe mindset of like scoring above all was it's more about approach or something that like the best players that we prioritize rather than I think what Kyle is saying is more just like changing the geometry of the court to a certain degree.

I guess Harden would be the last guy to throw out there, but was what he did just iterating on the space and the shooting that Steph kind of set forth.

He's his own thing.

Like he kind of like was groundbreaking in terms of heliocentric.

I mean, much to the detriment of like watching basketball, I would say, but like probably those five guys.