Dr Positivity wrote:eminence wrote:Modernish guys I'd like to see still make the ballot at some point, have any been discussed at length yet?
Paul George
Rudy Gobert
Jrue Holiday
Damian Lillard
Kyle Lowry
Shawn Marion
Rasheed Wallace
I’d rather vote for Tatum and Doncic than some of these guys
I definitely think it makes sense to look at Tatum & Doncic in with these other guys.
Tatum in particular is a guy I think we need to not overlook. He's generally less respected than the top players of his generation, but his impact indicators are quite consistent, he isn't injury prone, and he's had a ton of playoff success.
Doncic I'm expecting will get a serious push from others at some point soon. Obviously I'm more of a skeptic there, and I think pretty much all of these guys have a better track record for impact - along with better longevity - than Luka does.
George makes total sense as a candidate. I tend to hold it against him that he seemed to blame the Pacers for not doing anything really wrong other than succeed beyond expectations when George was young, along with the fact that the team really didn't miss him afterward. I don't trust him as a franchise player.
Gobert I've been expecting people to start championing, and I'll also say that it's a damn shame that they gave KAT the all-star nod over him. I still have skepticism of him in the playoffs though.
Jrue is a guy I thought I might champion if the Bucks had a great playoff run last year but felt like a non-starter as a candidate after horrific upset loss - granted only the first with Holiday. And yeah he's only a two-time all-star, but that's because the voters are wrong. If you trusted them you'd think draftmate DeRozan had the better career, but I think the answer is Jrue by a wide margin.
While it's wrong to say that Dame has slipped relative to last time at this point, I'm not surprised that support for him has been soft given the soft start to his time in Milwaukee. Going to a win-or-bust team and seeming to make them more likely to bust really doesn't help. Still seems like a guy we need to be discussing in the near future.
Lowry is a guy I've thought championing last project and so I certainly see the case for him, but the foundation of that candidacy was the time in Toronto with his pre-Raptor career basically being without much to speak of, and now that he's ending his career once again irrelevant on his non-Raptor teams, it's hard to get behind him that much.
I'm low on Marion compared to most. I think he absolutely had the chance to have a clear cut Top 100 career. Unfortunately, he developed a horrendous attitude and pushed his way out of the only place he ever looked like a star. Clearly the fact that he eventually landed in Dallas and played as a role player on a champion really washed away the bitter taste for many, but I think folks should never forget that this was a man who thought he was capable of going from a 20 PPG guy in Phoenix to a 30 PPG on another team, and instead his scoring went down and the first two post-Phoenix teams pretty quickly realized he really wasn't that useful to them.
And then there's Sheed was had an attitude worse than Marion's in many ways, but always stayed impactful, and actually seemed to prefer being a supporting player on a contender to having to do heavy lifting as opposed not liking the former and being utterly incapable of the latter like Marion was.
In terms of who I'd be siding with next, I honestly think it might be Tatum. If not him, probably Sheed.