NBA Player Tiers 2023: Why Kevin Durant dropped to 1B; and who are the three in 1A?

This is the fourth annual NBA Player Tiers project, in which Seth Partnow names the top 125 players in the league after each season and then separates them into five distinct categories of value, each with their own sub-categories to further delineate them. These are not meant to be read as firm 1-125 player rankings. Rather, they’re meant to separate solid starters from the very best superstars, and every level in between. This is how NBA front offices assess player value across the league when building their teams.

NBA Player Tiers: ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ‘23: Tier 5| Tier 4| Tier 3 | Tier 2

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This is the end, my friends. Having worked our way through 119 of the 125 who make up this year’s edition of the NBA Player Tiers, we have arrived at Tier 1. As I’ve noted several times earlier in the week, the value players bring toward winning a title increases more quickly the higher up the pyramid we move. In those terms, history suggests a Top 5-ish player — Tier 1 — brings as much, or slightly more even than does a Top 20-ish Tier 2 player and a Top 40-ish Tier 3 played combined:

The differentiation between regular-season and playoff value can be explained many different ways, but to me, the easiest way to conceptualize the dichotomy is this: The difference between going 4-3 and 3-4 over a seven-game stretch is generally immaterial in the regular season. In the playoffs, it’s the difference between going fishing or not.

The outsized impacts of these small differences necessitate obsessing over the details. Some of the critiques of the players left in Tier 2 might seem like nitpicks, as well the rationale for keeping the Tier 1B players our of Tier 1A. But when it’s best-on-best in May and June, those margins matter tons.

It’s no accident — though, perhaps, historically unusual as a matter of timing — that the past three NBA Finals MVPs make up Tier 1A. I don’t think “having been the best player on a title team” is a requisite, but it sure is a useful demonstration. Meanwhile, Tier 1B has one player who is just starting his decline from the top and two players who could easily get there but might not have the opportunities to prove they belong higher in the next few seasons for reasons outside of their control.

Tier 1B: 4-6

Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, Luka Dončić

I wavered on whether the string of recent injuries and playoff disappointments should push Kevin Durant down into Tier 2. And then I reminded myself he shot nearly 62 percent on 2-pointers last year, over 40 percent from 3 and nearly 92 percent from the line, leading to efficiency 16 percent above league average despite carrying a usage rate north of 30 percent. While time comes at your fast, Durant is just about two years removed from being — for my money at least — the best player in the world, so it’s possible I’m just being stubborn by keeping him this high.

One thing I would like to see from him this season, though I’m not sure if the Suns’ overall roster will allow it, is a little more focus on managing the regular season so we get a better chance to see the best version of Durant come playoff time. If nothing else, getting through the season healthy and relatively rested will give him the best shot at regaining his stature as one of the better playoff defensive players. A 6-foot-9-to-13-inch player with pterodactyl arms, good feet and a great nose for the ball can do some things on that end.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible Devin Booker stamps his claim as the Suns’ best player. Whether that means Booker gets this spot or Durant ends up tumbling down a sub-tier or three (or both!) would depend on exactly how that came to pass. But much like LeBron James this year, the end of his time at the top will come. We’ll see if Durant can push that reckoning off by another year.

Joel Embiid has been the second-best player over the last three regular seasons — I have argued the second-best player in each of the seasons as well, but I don’t vote for MVP — which would put him up in Tier 1A if postseason results were roughly commensurate with that performance. It’s not that he’s been bad in the playoffs, more that there’s always something that gets in the way. Other than the Sixers’ first-round sweep at the hands of the Celtics in 2020, Embiid has missed at least one game every postseason. One could make the case that Philly should have won each of the series in which it was eliminated over the past three years, with the 2021 loss to Atlanta particularly glaring, though losing to the Celtics after taking Game 1 — and home-court advantage — with Embiid not playing wasn’t great either. Plenty of top players have had their teams bounced from the playoffs after leading a series 3-2, but again, with Embiid, it’s always something.

Some of this is circumstantial, but some has to be laid at Embiid’s feet as well. After being one of the biggest value-add offensive players in the league across the last two regular seasons with 63.5 percent true shooting on 37.1 percent usage — roughly 8.9 points/100 above league average efficiency over that span — this has declined to 57.5 percent true shooting on 29.1 percent usage in the playoffs.

More concerning than the drop in efficiency is the decreased volume. One of the worries about relying on bigs as primary offensive engines is the theory that it is easier for a defense to take the ball out of their hands, which has happened to an extent with Embiid. Some of this is likely the degree to which Philly has played more Harden-ball than Embiid-ball, which isn’t wholly Embiid’s doing. But contrast with Nikola Jokić, who has consistently been able to raise his usage four to five points in the playoffs, and we start to see the difference.

Unfortunately for Embiid, it increasingly looks like Philadelphia will struggle to put a championship-level core around him pending the resolution of the James Harden situation. This could rob him of the opportunity to fully reverse some of those narratives and trends. Since the things he has left to prove that would bump him up to the very top of the tiers are largely postseason-based, he’s going to struggle to make that last step.

Speaking of insufficient supporting casts, we present Luka Dončić. I’ve been critical of the Mavericks’ team-building philosophy around Dončić from day one, and I think a look back at the tiers over the years helps illustrate why. The min-maxing approach of relying on Dončić to basically handle the offense and shot-creation duties and fill in more functional players around him can lead to regular-season success. But they have ultimately been out-talented by pretty wide margins against top playoff opposition. The result has been a “Luka do everything” approach that has seen him consistently wear down toward the ends of games and series.

Even adding a second star in Kyrie Irving doesn’t help much, as the near complete duplication of skills coupled with Irving’s unreliability in terms of both availability and other issues make the net impact of the pairing less than the sum of the two talents. After that, the cupboard is pretty bare, with only Grant Williams sneaking into a Tier 5 spot as of right now.

Those team and contextual factors aren’t what is keeping Dončić out of Tier 1A. Rather, concerns about defense, conditioning and ability/willingness to maximize his play with another star through off-ball contributions are what’s holding him back. It is extremely plausible that one or all of these issues could be eliminated or at least alleviated by more talent around him. Less reliance on Dončić means he has more energy for defense, is likely fresher in fourth quarters and perhaps is more willing to operate as a floor spacer or decoy if there are others around capable of shouldering the creation burden.

Unfortunately, much like Embiid, it doesn’t appear he will get a chance to test those hypotheses any time soon.

Tier 1A: 1-3

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokić

I don’t want to give him short shrift, but I’m not sure what there is to say about Nikola Jokić that hasn’t already been said.

I think it’s more interesting to talk a bit about why there had been such skepticism about him prior to the 2023 playoffs. There are a number of reasons for this, but perhaps the most important — and more broadly applicable to a wider range of players — is the degree to which we have been operating off unfair baselines. This has operated at both a team and individual level.

In the team context, more specifically — “How will player X perform against team Y?” — the specter of the Warriors, especially the Durant version, has given us a skewed view as we’re grading on a curve. Jokić has weaknesses, as do most players, though more on that in a second. One of those weaknesses, the challenges he faces against a team that can spread the opposition out as effectively as the Death Machine Warriors, was seen as disqualifying.

“You’ll never beat the Warriors if your center can’t chase Steph or KD out to half court.” Or so the thought went.

But really, everything after the fifth word is superfluous. If a team manages to put together two Tier 1 players (Curry and Durant at the time), a Tier 2 guy (Draymond Green), one from Tier 3 (Klay Thompson) as well as a quality role player like Andre Iguodala or two, that’s a historic collection of talent. For most plausible team constructions, facing that lineup simply means you lose so long as they are healthy. While Jokić’s vulnerability on the perimeter might be the specific mechanism against that onslaught, there’s going to be a crack somewhere.

This brings me to the second part of the unfair baseline, which is LeBron James. While peak LeBron, let’s call it 2011-15, had weaknesses, they were more “weaknesses” in terms of being things where he was relatively less good at doing rather than having actively negative skills or traits. The list of players in recent memory for whom that has been true for any length of time include James, Michael Jordan during the first Bulls three-peat and maybe someone like Hakeem Olajuwon circa 1994. It might be cleaner if we invented a new category, “Tier 0,” to describe those guys. Despite an obvious weakness or two, I might add early aughts Shaquille O’Neal to the “Tier 0” group just based on how impossible he was under the illegal defense rules in place prior to about 2003. Rather than quibble who is or isn’t on that list, I’ll just note it’s very exclusive, and there are more years without a player at that level than with.

Both the Warriors and Peak Bron are well within living memory, so it’s natural those are the standards against which we have judged Jokić (or Antetokounmpo or Curry). Against the backdrop of all of NBA history, I’m just not sure it’s fair.

Speaking of fair, I’m sure many will read this and question why I didn’t have Jokić in a sub-tier by himself.

To that I’d respond: I thought he was a 1A player when he didn’t have a championship supporting cast around him, and I should extend that same courtesy to Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the last two NBA Finals MVPs prior to this year, neither of whom I am prepared to say have markedly declined. But their team contexts have.

Especially with Khris Middleton ailing the past two postseasons, the Bucks have gotten old, slow and lacking in athleticism relative to their contention competition. Jrue Holiday and Brook Lopez are still excellent players, but without Middleton’s shot creation and shot making, there isn’t much in the cupboard after that. If the formula is to surround a dynamic paint threat like Giannis with shooting, Milwaukee has not been particularly successful, at least not with respect to guys who can reliably stay on the floor in the playoffs. Grayson Allen, for example, has been targeted somewhat mercilessly in certain matchups.

This isn’t to say Antetokounmpo is blameless. While ex-coach Mike Budenholzer has gotten most of the blame for the Bucks’ inflexible offensive approach, much of that can also be laid at Giannis’ feet in terms of his well-known preference to not play the five, as well as the desire to be a play initiator as opposed to a finisher. Top players wanting the ball in their hands isn’t disqualifying, but it becomes a bit problematic when their jumpers go missing. Also concerning is the drop in his free-throw percentage and the accompanying 2.5 percentage drop in true shooting from the previous four seasons to 2022-23. Further concerns include the near 3.8 percentage drop in his accuracy from floater range. Do these sound like nitpicks? They are! At this level, those kinds of differences can easily separate playoffs series wins and losses.

Of further concern for Antetokounmpo and the Bucks is mileage. Giannis has played a lot of basketball over the last half decade and has some chronic knee issues to show for it. A knock-on effect of his jumper deserting him is Antetokounmpo remains extremely reliant on athleticism to get to and finish at the basket. If that starts to go as he enters his late 20s and early 30s, there might not be enough other skills for him to fall back on to stay in this tier.

By comparison, Curry’s shooting figures to age well. But as he enters his age-35 season, the shiftiness that has allowed him to be such a potent rim threat is a concern. The bigger worry is the degree to which Golden State has come to rely on him. With Thompson diminished by his own aging process and injuries, Green suffering frequent bouts of offensive ineffectiveness and the now-departed Jordan Poole not delivering on any of the promise he showed during the 2022 championship run, the Golden State offense devolves into “Steph, do something!?!” a little too often for my taste — and a lot too often for what Curry can manage. In addition to picking up a few more minor injuries here and there, teams have been able to tire him out with physicality in ways that didn’t much work when the Warriors had more and better alternative options. A case in point is the 28.6 percent from 3 Curry managed over the last four games of Golden State’s second-round loss to the Lakers.

To be clear, I think that was as much about the Warriors not being able to present enough threats to keep Anthony Davis out of the paint, nor were other Dubs able to create the sort of defensive breakdowns and rotations upon which Curry can feast with his unmatched ability to move off the ball to find shots. The hope in the Bay is that, with Chris Paul around to shoulder at least some of the offense initiation load, Curry can expend a little less energy in the regular season to have more left in his legs for the postseason. Being able to farm out those minutes across the 82 games is an important part of having a championship-level supporting cast. I’m not going to find fault with Curry for having to lift a team that relied on players on two-way contracts to play key minutes a year ago.

But for Antetokounmpo and Curry, the imaginary clock is ticking on their grace periods, with each needing to show they still belong to remain at the very top of the NBA pyramid for another season.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Tier 5