2021-22 NBA "REGULAR" SEASON THREAD

meanwhile, can someone please check on russ

I think my guy is officially broken mentally now pic.twitter.com/bcZ4EZhjSd

— ⚡️ (@TheWestbrookEra) January 10, 2022

thats how hes done every presser for the last like 8 years

i guess, maybe it's the moment being so bleak that makes that look despondent

just an all-time weirdo being weird

in case you missed it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lQBUcCQJ0M

cp3 finally turned up at #30 on that athletic top 75 countdown. stays underrated

stays underrated

There are players who excel at the game and there are players who revolutionize the game. CP3 excels at hoops, but he has not influenced the way the game is played. Considering the number of excellent players with very long careers means he has plenty of competition for a spot on that list. And the true revolutionaries, like Wilt, Big O, Maravich, or Steph belong in all the top spots. 30 is pretty damn good, considering.

fwiw Maravich was #73 of 75 on the same list

i was gonna say that you must be being sarcastic if you think chris paul should be among the top 25 players in the history of the nba

when it comes to comparing players across 75 years of hoops, opinions are all over the place. I like mine.

whether someone is “revolutionary” (what?) is at best in the eye of the beholder and not really relevant to their place on an all time list. cp3’s peak was MVP-level and his continued all-NBA play into his age 36 season has been done by only a handful of inner-circle all time greats, which is his company. the playoff stuff is passé at this juncture, obviously. the overall conversation around his reputation has gotten a bit more informed in the past year or so (unsurprisingly since he made his first finals) which is nice to see

where do you put him alltime, ballpark

at most three point guards ahead of him (magic, oscar, steph)

prob 20th or so, out of his contemporaries only behind lebron, KD, duncan, steph, giannis, kobe, and wade, probably passing guys like garnett and dirk, and just as a personal judgment call ahead of various guys who were good when there were like 12 teams and they played the finals on tape delay

it will come down to how you value peak vs longevity tho which there is no real agreed upon way to do with basketball, like his total value over his career is going to dwarf some guys we all will agree were better than him (look at B-R’s win shares for one example). also funny that every time they invent a new stat he’s one of the best in it

CP3 is easily a better player than Kobe

Wade as well

total top of my head but tell me who you would pull from this 25 to put in chris paul: jordan, magic, bird, kareem, wilt, duncan, david robinson, russell, shaq, kobe, giannis, durant, wade, curry, oscar robertson, moses malone, karl malone, stockton, olajuwan, pippen, elgin baylor, dr j, iverson, rodman, isaiah

okay xp nevermind then, we're disagreeing here

you can make reasonable arguments for both sides on both of those guys imo, just will be a tough fight due to ring disparity

i like chris paul a lot but i don't think that he's a better player than wade or kobe or even kyrie

likely a better teammate than the latter two

lmao yeah cp3 is better than kyrie

kyrie is not even in the same conversation man, completely different caliber of player

honestly never heard someone rate kyrie, the world is full of wonders

it’s sad how cp3’s early career is forgotten these days. personal stuff aside kyrie is an incredible player, has the rare ability to make people look silly with his handle quickness and footwork on a regular basis…pre-knee injury, paul did alla that AND led the league in assists and steals

not to mention one of them was one of the best defenders and the other one of the worst

i think chris paul is better than both isiah thomas and kyrie. him & isiah are pretty similar, i think cp3 is just more talented overall, better shooter w/o a doubt, pretty similar in terms of passing, rebounding, defending etc.

he's just a better overall basketball player than kyrie. kyrie got lucky to play w/ lebron in his prime -- he put up insane games when they won the title so it's no shade at him but i don't think it's controversial at all to say that we're looking at kyrie's career completely differently if lebron never returns to cleveland. prob not a guy who has ever played in the NBA finals or come close to it. dude is insane ballhandler, offensive player and scorer, but he's not on chris paul's level as a player.

when you start putting paul up against guys like kobe, wade, dirk, garnett... it's much more eye of the beholder. if you put chris paul over those guys it's more of a longevity and holistic basketball argument. in terms of peak greatness, the ability to score the ball at will, really push a team to the top of the mountain in the playoffs via sheer ability to get the ball into the basket (excluding KG here), those guys are better than chris paul. i can see it either way. i think he prob belongs in the same tier as those guys more or less. i would prob take the peak versions of all those guys over the peak versions of cp3... give me the guys who are putting up 30/6/5 (wade and kobe) over the over the 22/5/11 of chris paul. but that's just personal preference. obv the advanced stats & things like that value efficiency and across the board contributions more than what i'm talking about.

i'll cop to some recency bias and to paul's glory years coming a time when i was paying less attention to the game

lol

you have to give it to cp3 over isiah just for the longevity, theyre pretty similar players but paul did it for twice as long

I agree on CP3 > Kobe but the phrase ">" does a lot in these discussions. like Kobe is maybe a better player in a pure basketball sense but I think if you were building a team from scratch you'd probably want CP3. alas it's hard to compare them since Kobe has been on great Lakers teams nearly his entire career while most of CP3s teams either don't make sense or suffer lots of injuries down the stretch

i think we can all agree that chris paul is no lauryn hill

Back in the 80s, Kool Moe Dee did a report card with grades for rappers on the inner sleeve of the ‘How You Like Me Now’ LP. Ego Trip got him to do another one at the end of the 90s. Fun reading. pic.twitter.com/CQL2zyv4h0

— aka Jimbo Jones (@jimbojonestown) January 8, 2022

kobe will always be overrated because of titles but his early to late 20s he was insanely athletic, great scorer, just an amazing basketball player, and be even better playing in a more spaced out era. like if harden and brad beal can average 30+ ppg nowadays i have no doubt peak kobe could have had several seasons north of 35 ppg. i mean harden did and he’s a better long range shooter than kobe was (tho again tailored to his era) but kobe is still a better player, to me. i don’t begrudge anyone who would take the amazing PG over that but i don’t think it’s cut and dried that you would “rather have” that over the crazy athletic and good pure scorer if you were starting a team.

there were extenuating circumstances be it going thru post-lebron expansion in cleveland or injuries to himself or others in boston, but the historical accounting of kyrie’s career outside of playing with lebron james is not going to look very hot. i guess we’ll see what happens this year

i need to see the alternate timeline kobe where he played his whole career in charlotte before i decide

or for the nets!

he prob still ends up in LA with shaq

its true you cant keep kobe from the lakers its like one of those scifi movies where two people still fall in love despite being put in different dimensions or whatever

i think shaq could go anywhere tho shaq is not bound to a place

man idk about cp3 over kobe that seems pretty wild to me. kobes overrated n all but...

just at the most basic level
https://i.imgur.com/aLrIton.png
vs
https://i.imgur.com/yltcoFR.png

i mean almost all of those are voted upon awards and kobe is the most overrated player ever

do we really think kobe played 15 seasons of all league defense

12, rather

cp3 vs wade is an interesting one to me, feel like I would take Paul but not sure I have an at all accurate memory of wade

cp vs wade is much closer i agree.

wade and kobe are interesting re the contemporary game cause wade didnt shoot 3s and kobe shot tons of them, very poorly

i mean almost all of those are voted upon awards and kobe is the most overrated player ever

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 11, 2022 2:10 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think close to his death he was becoming properly rated and the pendulum was swinging towards underrated a bit. twitter was very anti kobe for a time.

has any player in nba history gotten a bigger rep bump than kyrie for a 2-3 game stretch of insane play?

twitter is full of lunatics tho, amongst casuals hes top 5 xp

kyrie is a legitimately great scorer he can go out and get you a shot, and hit it too, its just the everything else thats not really at alltime levels

I watched a lot of CP and Kobe at their peaks but one thing with Kobe in those years is that when Kobe was on the floor you were never out of a game. The dude would just have these moments where he could dominate a game like no others.

i mean kobe was obviously a legit great player, but also he was a chucker