Yesterday, I largely focused on setting the table for the updated NBA Pre-Postseason Players Tiers before revealing Tier 3 (players between the 24th and 42nd spot) and Tier 4 (Nos. 43-80).
Today, I’m going to get a little more into some of the more interesting and/or challenging placements, as well as note a few overall trends.
For starters, a consistent bit of feedback — and one I’ve gotten from multiple sources since the release of Tiers 3 and 4 — is the always difficult evaluation of which player is more valuable between an elite role player and a good-but-not-great primary or secondary creator. A senior analytics staffer within the league went so far as to argue they would prefer essentially the entirety of Tier 4A, largely made up of elite role players or connectors, over Tier 3B, which is made up of borderline All-Star primaries.
I don’t think there is a reliable way to solve this debate and on some level, deciding between, say, Mikal Bridges on one hand and Jaylen Brown on the other is more a function of the rest of the respective rosters than the individual players. In that particular comparison, I think it’s entirely possible, if not likely, that both the Celtics and Nets would be better if the two were exchanged!
NBA Player Tiers: ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ‘23: T5| T4| T3 | T2 | T1 | ’24: T3&4
In some ways, this is really an extension of the long-simmering question of how to rate the sub-elite, yet still very good, level of on-ball players. At least to my way of thinking, there is nothing more valuable in the league than elite shot creation and nothing more overrated than mediocre shot creation, but finding the importance and desirability of players in between is just hard.
It’s also, in some form, the reason to do this exercise in the first place, as identifying that there is a fairly wide gap between Brown and Jayson Tatum and that the difference between Luka Dončić and Donovan Mitchell is substantial is a vital part of roster evaluation. Avoiding the cheapening of the term “franchise player,” in other words.
Another set of teammates who illustrate this dichotomy is Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. I didn’t think Banchero was an especially worthy All-Star this year. Through games of April 10, there are only eight players who have scored at least 100 fewer points than they would have a similar number of scoring attempts at league average efficiency according to Basketball Reference, with Banchero being seventh on that list. However, on some level, this is a result of Orlando’s lack of other creators. On my Simple Shot Quality model, his 50.2 percent expected eFG% is 24th lowest among the 162 players with at least 500 tracked shots attempted this season.
But to swing back around, the players with the 21st, 22nd and 23rd hardest shot diets are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards and Tatum, all of whom have significantly outperformed their shot expectancies by 209 (SGA, third of 162), 73 (Edwards, 45th) and 151 (Tatum, 13th) points scored, while Banchero has shot essentially at the level of his shot quality (-3 points, 124th of 162). Should he get credit for helping keep Orlando’s offense afloat at all by at least being able to soak up possessions? How would he perform with more creative guard play around him? I’m not entirely sure, which is why Banchero is a hard player to rate.
Meanwhile, Wagner does not have the same self-creation ability as Banchero, but he is superior in most other areas — more efficient scoring, better and more versatile defense, off ball play — in a way which would make him a very plug-and-play addition to any team that already had their primary creative roles filled.
Moving on, there are a few notable players who might have been much higher had I done a tiers update around midseason. Tyrese Haliburton is one. He’s been great this year, a worthy All-Star and the driving force behind Indiana’s powerful offense. But the second half of the…
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