The Ringer published an updated top 25 player rankings.

Article: https://www.theringer.com/nba/2022/3/9/22967447/nba-top-25-players-2021-22-season

Rankings:

1. Jaylen Brown

2. Fred VanVleet

3. Anthony Davis

4. Zach LaVine

5. Jarrett Allen

6. Jrue Holiday

7. Draymond Green

8. James Harden

9. Rudy Gobert

10. Karl Anthony-Towns

11. Trae Young

12. Donovan Mitchell

13. Devin Booker

14. Jayson Tatum

15. Jimmy Butler

16. Chris Paul

17. DeMar DeRozan

18. Ja Morant

19. Luka Doncic

20. LeBron James

21. Steph Curry

22. Kevin Durant

23. Joel Embiid

24. Giannis Antetokounmpo

25. Nikola Jokic

What are your thoughts on the list? It’s a pretty good list, as we would expect from the ringer. That being said, I think DeMar, Ja, Jimmy Butler, and Tatum are ranked wrong.

DeMar should be 12. He has been having an offensive masterpiece of a year. That being said he has dramatic variance month to month. He shot 40% from three on about 2 attempts a game in February, that is not sustainable for him, nor were the 34.2 points he averaged. At least in my opinion, anyways. Obviously this ranking is for his league standing, not regular season awards. For those, he should be ranked much higher.

If you asked me after the first 20 games where I ranked Jimmy, probably around 7. He was really good to start the year. Not to say he as been bad lately, but his scoring has not been there as much. He is a great playmaker, great driving the ball, and we know he can carry a team. I put him at 11 for now. His complete lack of a deep ball is worrying, and Spo needs to figure out how to counteract that issue in his playoff game plans. Luckily for the Heat, Spo would be just the guy to figure that out.

Ja has become a fan favorite. Rightfully so, too. The dude is straight box office. Defense matters, and while he has been surprisingly decent on defense this year, I don’t think his playmaking and slightly more scoring is enough to put him over Tatum. It is close, and I’m a Celtics fan, so it’s not like it’s unreasonable to flip him. So for that, I have him at 9.

Tatum is my 8. I only feel comfortable ranking him this high because he stopped looking like a ghost of Carmelo Anthony. His last 40: 27.7 points, 7.9 rebounds, 4.5 assists on a TS of 59.1%. I did a deep dive on his turnaround and will have it linked below.*

You could probably scramble the top 6 in pretty much any order and no one would call you crazy. I would probably put Bron over Steph and Giannis 1st. But it’s a solid list, and I love seeing big men in that top 3 like Joker and Embiid.

*Jayson Tatum improvement and last 40

Edits: Formatting