I mean Ringer is owned by Bill “Harden’s passing isn’t as pure as Luka’s” Simmons afterall

His playstyle is the same as Harden, but he’s not foul baiting like Harden was. And no I’m not saying he’s not foul baiting. But harden was jumping backwards into dudes, kicking his legs out on 3s, whipping his head back on drives, and every possible thing to get foul calls. Literally none of the guys getting foul merchant labels are even comparable to what prime Harden was doing. There’s a reason they changed a bunch of the rules.

Luka is absolutely not a media darling though, he gets flak all the time for his playstyle. The narrative surrounding him and his playstyle literally got him traded. Compared to Shai getting teased for ft attempts while he’ll easily win his second MVP, he absolutely gets criticized.

Hardon was on the cutting edge of a lot of this foul baiting stuff. He wasnt being surrounded by guys doing the same thing like Luka is. The hate is split right now. Harden was shouldering so much of that.

Bro the media consistently compared him to inferior players like Ja, Trae, Jaylen Brown. This is a joke of a take.

Jokic is a clear media darling in all ways. We acting like he doesn’t literally jump on defenders all the time. And his defense doesn’t get half the criticism Luka’s does.

The most telling thing is how Windhorst eviscerated him for losing in the finals while nobody gave a fuck that Jokic choked a 20 point lead in game 7 of the second round.

How is the Luka case the “actual best case” when we had a whole racist campaign from the media against Jokic?

Shai was getting way more free throws on less FGA than Luka.

THEN LUKA WENT TO THE LAKERS. And it changed. Now Luka has joined Shai and Pre-Injury Embiid in their free throw merchant ways.

And guess what? Luka has never gotten as much hate..

He just gets shit on and dismissed in different ways, whats your point? You’re acting like the media is in love with him but they are absolutely not, up until a couple weeks ago it looked like he’s gonna be All-NBA 2nd team.

Yea I’m sure you are done once Luka starts getting accused lmao

You absolutely can?

Just because it’s apart of the rules doesn’t make it any less of a corny play style.

You can wrestle fuck someone and not throw a single strike and win a fight in the UFC. That doesn’t make it any less boring to watch nor does it show you’re technically better regardless of if it’s the rules.

We are not

I understand the Spurs fans still hating Kawhi but people from Toronto hating him never really made sense to me.

He specifically told the Spurs he wanted to go to one of the LA teams but they shipped him out of the country instead. Then, even though he could’ve just taken the year off, he balled out and provided the team with their best year in franchise history. Then he became a free agent and went to where he actually wanted to go.

He’s a hater but he does like he’s rooting against a sports movie villain. I think he enjoys the storyline of it more than anything malicious.

mainstream media haven’t caught up to lamelo’s impact yet because they don’t watch the games. it’s that simple

they see highlights of him bombing 1 leg 30 footers and assume he’s an inefficient chucker

At least they’ve stopped pretending Tyler Herro is up there

Progress?

I don’t know how you even rank a guy who hasn’t played 40 games in a season since 2022 in the top 100.

He’s played 39, 19, and 33 games in the last 3 regular seasons. How good of a player can you be if you can’t play? Them having him at 50 despite his health seems like it’s already pretty generous.

Steph hasn’t done much this season I don’t see how this is crazy

Ayo is the perfect glue guy - someone who could play 25 minutes on pretty much any team. He also seems to scale well with a bigger role (like now with Ant out), similar to McDaniels and NAW did in the past. That’s an underrated skill.

If I had to describe him like a 2K player, he probably doesn’t have any A or A- level skills (outside of speed), but he also doesn’t really have any weaknesses below a B- (maybe shot blocking). He’s a solid 1-on-1 defender, a good team defender, an excellent rebounder for his position, and very active in passing lanes. Offensively, he’s a solid passer, a good ball handler (probably second or third best on the team after Ant and Bones), a great catch-and-shoot 3pt shooter, a solid pull-up shooter, and a very good finisher.

Even if he never takes another leap, I could easily see him getting $20M+ this summer and having a Derrick White-type career as a high-level contributor on contenders. That said, I do think there’s still room for growth - and it’s easier to unlock that on a good team with clear structure and roles, like the Wolves.

He can improve his shot creation - especially pull-up threes, mid-range looks, and floaters out of pick-and-rolls (he still looks a bit hesitant when he “crabs” his defender). He could also get to the line more given his strength and finishing ability. Defensively, he can take another step by learning to draw offensive fouls (illegal screens, charges), improving his screen navigation, and becoming a better chase-down shot blocker. He’s already strong at the point of attack, but there’s another level he can reach.

If he adds even a couple of these elements, there’s a real path for him to be an All-Star candidate, especially if Wolves move to the East in 2 years.

He’s been great honestly. Had like 2 shaky games when he first came which is to be expected and he’s been fantastic ever since Ant went down as well, just a really solid player with no real weaknesses to his game.

Most Wolves fans think he should be starting.

As advertised, speed demon and good shooting. There less traditional pg play than I was hoping for but he’s a clear upgrade over what the wolves had been working with

Ball in basket

It has Chet as a 1x champion though..

The winning value he brings cannot be understated, but, man, Flagg is insanely gifted.

I just think by this time next year he’ll be a top-10 player again, so the ranking seems low to me.

These lists can be weird, because yes, he’s been out all year, but he’s ranked behind guys like Siakim, Bam, and Paolo, and Tatum would be way ahead of these guys if he wasn’t hurt. So how much do you factor this season vs past performance? I guess I put more value into Tatum’s track record than others do.

Then why is embiid at 50?

“Welcome to The Ringer’s Top 100 Players in the NBA for the 2025-26 season—a year-round, around-the-clock ranking of the players making the biggest impact on the league right now.”

Yeah outside of the main mvp candidates (Sga Jokic Luka Wemby) he’s been the best player, better than Brown and Cade.

I think they will punish them but it won’t be as severe as people hope it will, and they’re likely waiting for the off season

Looks bad if the main headlines leading up to playoffs are about that

Yeah, such as Murray having the better season statistically. That helps too.

Lmao 28/5/6 on 48/37/86 is “far better” than 29/7/5 on 48/34/80? Right, totally

Advanced stats this, advanced stats that

Yet here we are, the Celtics led by brown with a lesser supporting cast on paper are 2nd and the Cavs are floating ⁴⁄₅, and Mitchell historically gets hunted as a defender by the Celtics wings and brown shut down maybe the best offensive player in the nba in the finals- but yeah it’s the guys playing 15 mins a night winning all these games for Boston, not the best player on the team, you’ve outsmarted the system dude

Has literally nothing to do with brown, you definitely don’t watch the games and these conversations are so dumb trying to quantify individual defense using advanced stats

The reason for the on offs is the players that replace brown when he sits are Hugo/baylor/walsh, all great defenders who dominate bench lineups defensively. Has zero to do with brown being a bad defender and he’s obviously a better defender than Mitchell, Mitchell gets hunted in the playoffs, brown hunts star players to guard in the playoffs, what a terrible argument

Lmao you get downvoted but it’s absolutely true, I just had someone try to tell me brown is a defensive liability and that Mitchell is a significantly better defender than him

Funny because in the postseason brown will hunt Mitchell on offense and Mitchell will try to get a switch off of brown on offense, but apparently advanced stats say otherwise

Donovan Mitchell is constantly in top 10 talks but is yet to make it past the 2nd round despite having insanely stacked teams with multiple All NBA, All Star and DPOY team members for his entire career.

I mean yeah he’s more efficient but the pistons have a better offense with Cade on the floor compared to the Timberwolves with Ant on the floor. I get that they don’t really have a point guard but Minnesota is a much more offensively talented team compared to the pistons.

Individual efficiency does matter, and there is an efficiency gap but if you’re driving good offense I don’t really care, and Cade leads detroit to better offense compared to the Ant with the Wolves.

If you’re more focused on playoffs then sure you can make that case but I don’t think the individual scoring efficiency argument really holds

Wolves have 7 players, and the only other team with more than 5 is the Thunder with 8. I thought this was kind of nuts.

From a player standpoint, Ayo Dosunmu had been playing great ball, especially with his role and efficiency. What does the Wolves having 7 players in the ranking have to do with anything I said? You literally disregarded everything I said. Lol

They’ve made it to the WCF two years in a row.