NBA player tiers: Kevin Durant and Steph Curry remain in Tier 1, but for how long?

This is the fifth annual NBA Player Tiers project, in which Seth Partnow names the top 125 players in the league after each season and then divides them into five different value categories, each with their subcategories to further delineate them. These are not intended to be read as fixed player rankings from 1-125. Rather, they are intended to separate solid starters from the very best superstars, and every level in between. Here's how NBA front offices assess player value across the league when building their teams.

NBA Player Levels: '20 | '21 | '22 | '23 | '24 pre-playoffs | '24: T5 | T4| T3 | T2

The NBA is undergoing a changing of the guard. While Tier 1 has been relatively stable over the five seasons I've done this exercise—only nine players have been in Tier 1 at least once, with the six below plus LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and James Harden—many of the stalwarts are becoming facing the ticking of the clock as the next wave, like Jayson Tatum, Anthony Edwards and of course Victor Wembanyama, are knocking on the door.

I could have gone in a number of directions with this group, from just having a super-select top three or four covering the entire level to rewarding some of those newcomers at the expense of the old warhorses, and I wouldn't do that. much arguing with those who saw it that way.

But for now, here's the cream of the crop.

Level 1B (4-6)

Remarkably, a true shooting percentage of 62.6 with a usage rate of 29.0 represents a bad year Kevin Durant, even compared to just the post-Achilles tear portion of his career. The poorly constructed and extremely top-heavy roster of the Phoenix Suns did him little favor, which raises a question that has only been included indirectly in the levels over the years: to what extent should the influence of players on selection decisions and coaching hires be taken into account? ?

It is a challenge to do this systematically. From the outside, it is difficult to determine who advocated which step or how much weight an organization is giving to a star's wishes. But the balance of coverage indicates that Brooklyn/Phoenix-era Durant demanded a lot of things and received most of them, including hiring and firing coaches.

It is often said that coaches should not be general managers because there is not enough time in the day to properly perform both duties. This applies even more to players. But how much will it cost the players if it happens? It's hard to judge, but it's something that should probably be included in the analysis when considering later career superstars like Durant, LeBron James or one or two others.

All of this suggests that Durant has barely held onto his spot in Tier 1 this year and will need a strong performance – including the playoffs – in 2024-2025 to be worth staying here.

Another former MVP somewhere in the back nine of his career is Stephen Curry. Has Curry's ability to drag indifferent teammates to success diminished now that the Golden State Warriors have missed the playoffs, or has Golden State found the bottom of the overall roster that allows him to do that? Or was it perhaps a combination of both?

Make no mistake: Curry is still a great, great player. But there are subtle signs of decline. His number of rim attempts was the lowest of his career by quite a margin. His ability to influence the game as a team defender has diminished significantly: over the past two seasons he has averaged 1.2 steals per 100 possessions, exactly half of the 2.4/100 he averaged in his first thirteen years. kept his career.

For the first time outside of 2019-20, when he played in just five games, 2023-24 marked the first time the Warriors were superior in terms of net rating with Curry off the floor than on, with Golden State scoring 0.6 points per 100 possessions. better when Curry was on the bench, compared to 14.5 per 100 better with Curry on the floor from his first MVP season in 2014-2015 through 2022-2023. At 35, there's no shame in recognizing that Curry isn't quite the automatic driver for the elite offense he's been for most of his career, but that dip does drop him from 1A to 1B.

For Joel Embid, it's seemingly always something: poor health, whether it's his health or that of his teammates; a ball that bounces off the rim four times and then falls to eliminate the Sixers from the playoffs; star players who fall out with the organization, requiring trades or other lineup reshuffles. All of this and more has prevented Embiid from ever reaching the conference finals, which is a shame because, according to several impact metrics, Embiid has been the second-most effective regular-season player over the past four seasons, behind only Nikola Jokić's all-time great series.

You couldn't have asked for more from Embiid himself last season, either in the regular season or during the Sixers' short playoff run. But he still hasn't really proven his authority in a postseason and has never consistently achieved the same level of dominance. His shortcomings in the playoffs are likely exaggerated, with a career 58.0 percent shooting on 31.6 percent usage. But excluding his shortened rookie year, he has 61.6 percent true shooting on 35.5 percent usage. The latter is otherworldly, while the former is just damn good.

There have been numerous reasons for the lack of sustained playoff success, many of which were completely beyond Embiid's control. But it's always been something, and that's enough to keep him in Tier 1B for now.

Level 1A (1-3)

For all the complexity that the NBA game offers, basketball can be quite simple. Combine an offensive force with the size, vision and ability to attract extra defenders with a dynamic edge threat (or two!) and surround them with shooters, and that's a tough formula to stop. While Luka Doncic was good all year, the midseason trades that brought in Daniel Gafford and PJ Washington helped both Dončić and the Mavericks hit exit velocity and get into orbit.

It wasn't just a more favorable context. Dončić made some subtle but telling improvements, becoming a more active player off the ball – a higher percentage of his made 3s were assisted than any season since his rookie year – while also increasing his defensive contributions.

The defense was an unsung part of the Mavs' run to the NBA Finals. Although Dončić was rarely, if ever, tasked with playing the first game against the opposition's best weapons, he made more effective use of his size and game-reading ability, especially against the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves.

While our lasting memory may be the disappointment of Dallas losing the finals, it is equally an illustration of how even top stars need a bit of luck to reach the top. Not only did the Celtics significantly surpass Dallas' top-to-bottom talent, but Boston was just as well equipped to handle Dončić in its own defensive style while having the range and amount of on-ball creators to match him to fall in ways that other teams could. t on defense.

There's still room for improvement, as Dončić's conditioning could probably use an upgrade, while his penchant for interacting with officials – occasionally picking up a few silly fouls, as in Game 3 of the finals series – could be scaled back significantly. But using this quibble to keep him out of Tier 1A would set a near-impossible standard that few players in NBA history, let alone current times, could match.

Giannis Antetokounmpo is the only player to have been in every year-end edition of the tiers in Tier 1A. For the first time, I had some doubts about posting it here. He has missed time in four of the last five postseasons, including the Bucks' entire stay this year. During that stretch, Milwaukee has lost its first-round series twice as a higher seed, something that's certainly true for other players, though his dominance during the 2021 playoffs has earned Antetokounmpo good will on that front and will continue to do so.

There are also concerns about how robust his impact will be as he approaches his 30s, which he will reach in early December. Some of it was certainly due to Milwaukee's rather sloppy start to the season from a schematic and coaching standpoint, but Antetokounmpo's struggle to find synergy with Damian Lillard could reflect a level of inflexibility or stubbornness that could prove challenging as he gets older and what loses. of his athletic ability.

There have been suggestions that the Bucks were somewhat limited in their ability to be tactically versatile; given how important adapting and iterating has become in the postseason, limiting those options is a disadvantage. Antetokounmpo will be in the bubble next season as he moves out of Tier 1A for the first time.

After going through 124 players, we're left with the reigning (and should be four in a row, but why provoke that particularly damaging debate again?) Nikola Jokic at the top of the heap. Although the Nuggets ultimately fell to Minnesota in seven games in what was their best run of the past postseason, Jokić left behind some indelible memories. For example, his third quarter in Game 5 against the Wolves defies description.

During his three-in-four MVP run, Jokić has averaged 26.1 points, 12.2 rebounds, 8.7 assists, 1.4 steals and 0.8 blocks per game. Even if we lower these thresholds to 25/10/7.5/1/0.5, no other player has reached these heights even once.

And he's done it while scoring efficiently enough to lead the league twice and finish second twice in “TS Add” – a Basketball-Reference-created metric that indicates how many points above (or below) a player scores. he would have done if he scored at league average on the same number of tries.

To reiterate one last time, these levels are not rankings.

But if it were, the Joker would be #1.

NBA Player Levels: '20 | '21 | '22 | '23 | '24 pre-playoffs | '24: T5 | T4| T3 | T2