It’s that time of year where the annual rankings from every publication start hitting the internet, and Sports Illustrated is first to the plate with its Top 100 players for the 2016-17 season. The top two spots didn’t change from last season. According to SI’s Rob Mahoney and Ben Golliver, LeBron James is the league’s best player and Kevin Durant sits in the No. 2 spot again despite consecutive MVPs collected by his new Golden State Warriors teammate, third-ranked Stephen Curry.
While there is nothing surprising about the league’s top-three players, Draymond Green and Kyrie Irving, numbers 13 and 25, respectively, both stand out because of where they’re ranked versus fan perspective. Both Green and Irving are incredible players who are doing fantastic things on the floor for their respective teams, and their presence is the reason we’ve had a repeat NBA Finals over the last two seasons.
Green, despite being the driving force behind the Warriors’ two-way versatility over the last two seasons, is still criminally underrated by the basketball watching world. Green is a unique big who can defend five positions while creating scoring opportunities for himself and his other four teammates on the floor. Last year, Green led all front court players in assists (598) and passes per game, a byproduct of only six guards moving the ball more frequently than Golden State’s loudmouth star.
What really makes Green so important for the Warriors is that he can create space in multiple ways. Green improved his three-point shooting from 33.7 percent to 38.8 percent last season, forcing defenders to stay within close-out distance when he’s spotted up for catch-and-shoot opportunities. When he’s not the one getting looks, he’s been great at setting screens on and off the ball for both Curry and Klay Thompson to give them the space they need — and it’s never much — to splash from deep or get shots off from behind the arc.
Green’s value to the Warriors can be found with deep dives into the analytics, but everything he does for Golden State can be analyzed with a squinting eye test, too, and the fact he has two teammates listed above him on SI’s player ranking is only going to make him more of a threat on both sides of the ball for this upcoming season.
On the flip side, Irving was thrown around in conversations with the NBA’s best point guards the moment he traded in his Duke uniform for the Cavaliers. Irving has always been one of the most fun players to watch; he has an incredibly smooth crossover and can be as spectacular as any guard in the league when his jumper is falling.
For the most part, Irving has lived up to the hype. Through his first five seasons, his numbers are either in line or slightly below some of the game’s other elite point guards. Chris Paul, Curry, Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard (through four seasons) produced better per/36 and per/100 numbers than Irving did during his first five years in the league. Irving recorded better per/36 scoring numbers than his peers, but no one would argue that he’s a better scorer than either Curry or Westbrook right now, and it’s a tossup with Irving and Lillard.
However, Irving stepped up on the game’s biggest stage and was instrumental in two of the Cavaliers’ biggest wins in the NBA Finals. Irving’s 30 points and eight assists in Game 3 helped keep the Cavaliers from going down 3-0 in the series; he was downright dominant in Game 5; and his huge shot over Curry in Game 7 iced the series in Golden State. Irving has played incredibly well in big moments, and he had more big games in this year’s Finals than Curry did in the last two seasons combined.
Irving has sneaky efficiency, but his three-point shooting dropped tremendously in 2015-16, something to look out for as the Cavaliers attempt to defend their title. Shooting from deep is a huge part of today’s NBA, and if Irving continues to slide in that department, it could cause problems for a Cavs offense that relies so much on spacing around LeBron James.
Though both players are obviously among the league’s elite, it’s hard to argue against where Sports Illustrated ranked both Green and Irving. While the Cavaliers young point guard is slowly morphing into one of the NBA’s best big-game players, Green is consistently giving the Warriors more across the board than arguably every player in the league but LeBron. He’s truly peerless in terms of defensive versatility and has an offensive skill set that’s similarly rare for a player his size. While it certainly helps to have all-world talent surrounding Green, he still goes out and does the job he’s asked to do — something that Irving is approaching, but still working toward at this point in his career.
