None of the top 5 NBA players are American!

Larry Bird does, that's who.

That was certainly true in Russell's time before small ball and the 3-pt shot. Not as much in today's game. And I'm not sure how Jokic could become the 6th best center of all time but not even be a top 5 player this year.

The game has changed. Jokic's passing and floor spacing threat makes him more effective in today's game than a center that can only protect the rim. Plus he is a great rebounder - 2 more per game than Embiid.

It's because Giannis will be among the greatest power forwards ever, Durant a top 5 ever small forward, Lebron among the GOAT conversation, Curry a top 3 point guard of all time, and Embiid might surpass Jokic because of his skill set.

Arguably Jokic is top 5.

I thought the discussion was about the players currently top five in the league, and not the five players who were / would be the best at their peak.

You are right. And anyone who doesn't include Doncic in the current top 5 can't be watching the same game I'm watching. So many "punditS" were predicting a sweep" then they predicted The Suns would win in 5, then they predicted the Suns would win in 6, and now they predict the Suns will win in 7.

Doncic has outplayed Booker and easily Paul. Give the boy his due.

You're right if were talking about this year but I'm not excluding Kawhi or Durant just yet and Lebron is still a force.

Tie score, 20 seconds left in a game 7 who do you want? Also who will get you to that game 7?

People either love Doncic or seem to hate him and not want to give him credit for his accomplishments. Playoffs 2nd highest scorer one of the highest in assists, regular season 5th in assists and scoring and PER and 24th in rebounds. Also I think 2nd in triple doubles.

And with no other allstar on the team he is double teamed more than most others.

No one works harder than this kid. Give the kid his due.

Bogdonavic? He‘s not even close to the best on his team. Vuc and Sabonis are also not close.

KD, Tatum, Butler, Booker, Curry are all pretty clearly several orders of magnitude better. Gobert is not on their level.

I wouldn‘t throw a fit about your top 4, but it also wouldn‘t be crazy to exchange anyone on that list besides Giannis with KD or Curry, and possibly Butler. Booker and Tatum are knocking on that door. Doncic is clearly on his way to the top 5, but homeboy‘s gotta learn to play some D.

He gets his due. If you ask most people which under 25 player they'd build a team around they'd probably choose Doncic.

Cause the writers get enamored stats. Westbrook wasn‘t top 5 when he won either.

I believe one is - Durant.

The best five players in the NBA based off this current season are Jokic, Embiid, Giannis, Luca and KD (in no order)

The next tier are basically all American - Curry, Tatum, Booker, Lebron, Morant (also in no order).

Regarding that top 5 the only question for me is around either Curry or Lebron displacing Luca. But this year I don't think so. Curry shot 4% below his career averages from the field and from 3, and honestly the fact Lebron put that team together single handedly (which we all know he did), baited people on social media about how good it supposedly was and then he "leads" them to only 6 games better than the Blazers who gave up after 20 games, kind of extinguishes that narrative for this year at least.

I did forget Kobe, but Larry Bird...nay!!!

Yeah I think we can put the "Luca doesn't belong" narrative to bed. Along with the Booker conversation.

Man these much touted game 7's quite frankly sucked. The Bucks went 3/7 from 3 in the first quarter then 1/26 to close out the game. Phoenix just had probably the biggest game 7 meltdown in NBA history. Wow.

Luka was brilliant on offense and aggressive on defense and Booker was horrible. Tatum has also been great, should he move up?

This year:

Jokic, Giannis, Embiid, LeBron, Doncic (in this order//Doncic showed up out of shape but the thing about this kid is that he listens and takes responsibility for his actions--he got in shape and carried the team, and then when his defense was exposed by Phoenix early on in the series, he took responsibility and actually played real defense and if the best young player in the league plays defense, everyone on the team is going to do it).

The narrative for years now has been that the three ball and outside players are king, and it's true that the three was long under-exploited, because you can pretty much match a top shooting team (usually a bit under 50% overall) merely by shooting 35-6% on threes. And you can't have a big man who can't guard on the perimeter to face opposing big shooters. However, this whole narrative goes way too far. When you look at the leading NBA players by PER, they are almost all centers and power forwards. Those two positions dominate the rebounding and shot blocking and fg percentage numbers. So, they are offensively very important, and we know their defense is extremely important. Having Giannis, Embiid, and Jokic (all three of whom are, however, out of the playoffs already) the three MVP leaders was appropriate this year. The league still runs on centers and power forwards, but you're done if you don't have good perimeter defenders and shooters or great midrange shooters and drivers, and good perimeter defense. It will be fun to see what Memphis can do if the team stays together and Ja can be healthy while playing that kind of skywalking game.

All-time:

Magic, Jordan, LeBron, Russell, Wilt. There you have three unselfish guys who will play without the basketball, plus Jordan and Wilt. Wilt to carry the load, then Jordan to shoot clutch shots when you need someone who can hit free throws. Four out of the five play great defense.

Second: Stockton, West, Bird, Duncan, Kareem. Tim Duncan is more of a winner than the Mailman and I'm ignoring the scoring numbers here. Kareem was an absolute monster in the post in the 1970s and into the 1980s, which we forget because we remember him when he was in his late 30s.

Yeah it's a good point - Tatum is so good right now and just led his team to the conference finals, it's hard to not have him in that top 5. But can you really put him ahead of Durant? I'm not sure I could but also wouldn't argue with anyone that did.

Maybe I am overrating Booker here - he was really nothing without CP3 and you see that his success really is linked directly to the play of Paul. The one guy I always find myself sleeping on is Jimmy Butler who is the best player on a 1 seed, in the conference finals - there is a great case to be made that Butler is better than Booker.

Kobe? Curry? The big O if not Curry

Where's some respect for Gary Payton in the past years players. I hated how good he was.

Butler is the ultimate alpha. It's hard to include him is because he misses too many games. He missed over 20 and Miami still had the best record (kind of like Ja at Memphis). Theres a lot of great players which is why thinking theres a definitive 5 is silly. At the same time theres a lot of inflated scoring in this era- role players can get 40.