This will be the final installment of a 10-part series ranking the top 100 players in the NBA for the 2024-25 season.
A few things to note before I start:
- This is a projective list of what I think will happen this upcoming NBA season.
- Does track record matter? Absolutely. Does last year matter? It matters the most. This list is based on what the players have shown they can do during the previous two or three years and how much it will carry over to this upcoming year.
- My criteria are simple: if I am building my team to win a championship, who do I want on my team? This is factoring in talent, availability, and how much I can trust you in the playoffs. It is a projective list in a vacuum, but I also tend to give a little bit of a boost to guys who have proven they can come up big in the playoffs.
- This is a ceiling-raising, not a floor-raising list. In other words, I am prioritizing players who can make a good team great, rather than a bad team good.
Click here for the rest of Driscoll’s Top 100.
Without further ado, here are the Top 10 players for the 2024-25 season.
10. Joel Embiid
2023-24 Stats: 34.7 PPG, 11 RPG, 5.6 APG, 1.7 BPG, 1.2 SPG, 38.8 3P%, 64.4 TS%
Embiid was phenomenal last year. By blindly looking at the numbers, you would think this is one of the best regular seasons ever. So why don’t I have him higher? Just remember the criteria. My goal is to build a team to win a championship. Is Embiid talented enough to be a No. 1 on a championship team? Absolutely. However, Embiid’s two biggest weaknesses are his availability and playoff dropping. As great as it would be to have Embiid at his best on my team in the playoffs, we have yet to see him play like his regular-season self in the playoffs. Maybe this is the year things start to turn around.
“We’re not steel workers, we’re not nurses… we’re playing basketball, at the most, four days a week.”
Embiid’s load management isn’t flying with Chuck 👀 pic.twitter.com/PC2HZd9HwK
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) October 24, 2024
9. Anthony Davis
2023-24 Stats: 24.7 PPG, 12.6 RPG, 2.3 BPG, 1.2 SPG, 62.1 TS%
The best No. 2 in the league comes in at No. 9. People will scoff at the idea of Davis being over Embiid. However, think about it: even though they both have availability issues, Davis’s aren’t nearly as bad as Embiid’s. Also, Davis is far more reliable in the playoffs. I know the pushback is that Davis is not the offensive engine on the team. While this is a good argument, I think that Davis’s game is more portable to the playoffs. So while I completely understand why people want to take Embiid based on talent, I think Davis is the significantly better ceiling raiser.
8. Steph Curry
2023-24 Stats: 26.4 PPG, 5.1 APG, 40.8 3P%, 61.6 TS%
This ranking feels very weird. Curry has been a top-five player for close to a decade now. However, pretty much all of his stats went down last year. As much as you would like to say he will bounce back this year (I think he will), when you get to the top of the list, the margin for error is small. Not that it matters a ton in individual rankings, but I also think the Warriors are going to be just as bad this year. Curry has the potential to make an All-NBA Team this year, but he is probably going to need to be better to maintain his spot.
7. LeBron James
2023-24 Stats: 25.7 PPG, 8.3 APG, 7.3 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 41 3P%, 63 TS%
This is another one that feels weird. James had been on the decline for a couple of years but was better last year than in 2023. With this being said, it will be tough for him to maintain the same production he had last year. If we are talking on a per-game basis, I think there is an argument that you can say you would rather have James on your team than anyone else. However, that’s not what this list is about. I need guys who will play a ton in the regular season and come up big in the playoffs. James has the production on offense, but he takes too many plays off on defense for me to give him a spot in the top five. Of course, the fact we are even entertaining the possibility of James being a top-five player at age 40 is insane.
6. Kevin Durant
2023-24 Stats: 27.1 PPG, 6.6 RPG, 5 APG, 0.9 SPG, 1.2 BPG, 41.3 3P%, 62.6 TS%
Curry, James, and Durant have been constantly put in the same sentence for about a decade now. To be honest, Durant is usually the one most forgotten about since he has accomplished the least, both from winning and award standpoints. With this being said, I think Durant is the best out of the three of them today. He is the most consistent defender out of all of them and is easily the most versatile scorer. The main concern with Durant is his availability, but he played 75 games last season. I am not expecting him to play that much again, but hopefully, it is a trend in the right direction for what is probably the last few seasons of his career.
Kevin Durant telling Luka HE TOO SMALL LMFAO THATS MY DEMON MAN! pic.twitter.com/ztPtzFsZ3D
— 𝐇𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 ✰ (@Hatedzs) October 27, 2024
5. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
2023-24 Stats: 30.1 PPG, 6.2 APG, 5.5 RPG, 0.9 BPG, 63.6 TS%
Despite making First Team All-NBA in 2023, Gilgeous-Alexander did not truly get his flowers until this past year by the fans (including myself). Not only did he have his best season, but it was also the season in which he had the most help. Gilgeous-Alexander is easily the best driver in the league, which opens up a pool of opportunities for his team. He could improve on his three-point shot and his passing, but these are by no means weaknesses. Also, the fact that he led the league in steals last year is super impressive given his heavy load on offense. He had a ton of help last year and will have even more this year. This is going to be one of the scariest teams in the league.
4. Jayson Tatum
2023-24 Stats: 26.9 PPG, 8.1 RPG, 1 SPG, 37.6 3P%, 60.4 TS%
The 2024 NBA champion comes in at No. 4. To be honest, I do not think I have seen a player win a ring and somehow get even more disrespected in the process. Call his team stacked all you want, but the only person in the league who scored and rebounded as much as Tatum did while shooting as well from three is Luka Doncic. Speaking of his stacked team, Tatum’s versatility is what makes them able to do what they can do. Tatum can switch onto any player when defending, can have spurts where he is shutting down your best player, and can drop 30 points on any given night. However, if he does not have his best stuff, he is still getting all the double-teams, leaving his teammates wide open. Slander Tatum all you want, but he is an NBA champion for a reason. He is going to be one of the best players in the league for a long time.
3. Luka Doncic
2023-24 Stats: 33.9 PPG (best in NBA), 9.2 RPG, 9.8 APG, 1.4 SPG, 38.2 3P%, 61.7 TS%
After failing to make the playoffs in 2023, Doncic and the Mavericks completely turned themselves around and made the NBA Finals last year. People will tell you it was only the team that improved and not Doncic, but I could not disagree more. He is much stronger and shot far better from three. Despite being a clear negative on defense, his offensive impact is big enough to place him in the top three. I am on record saying that I think the Mavericks will be a significantly worse team this year than last year. That is not how I feel about Doncic, though. He will continue to be an MVP candidate for a very long time.
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo
2023-24 Stats: 30.4 PPG, 11.5 RPG, 6.5 APG, 61.1 FG%, 64.9 TS%
Antetokounmpo is in a weird place with how people view him. On one hand, you never see him outside people’s top four, and rarely outside the top three. However, it still feels like not a lot of people talk about him. This is likely because he has gotten injured either in the first round or before the first round of the playoffs, but he has still been relatively durable. Antetokounmpo played 63 games (rested the last few) in 2023, and he played 73 last year. While I understand the skepticism of his jump shot and availability, I still see him and the guy who I have No. 1 on a different tier from everyone else. Talk about his negatives on offense all you want, but do they matter a ton when he is scoring over 30 points per game on elite efficiency with at worst B-plus playmaking? Meanwhile, he is probably still a top-10 defender in the league. Between his two-way ability and his hunger to prove everyone wrong, I think Antetokounmpo will win MVP this year.
Giannis showing off the long strides 😱
2 steps inside the 3-point line to get all the way to the rim… WOAH! pic.twitter.com/gVDWVTbTp6
— NBA (@NBA) October 27, 2024
1. Nikola Jokic
2023-24 Stats: 26.4 PPG, 12.4 RPG, 9 APG, 1.4 APG, 0.9 BPG, 35.9 3P%, 65 TS%
Is this even a question? I sure don’t think it should be. There is an argument for Jokic to be one of the two or three best offensive players of all time (I currently have him fifth). His offensive game is someone you would build on NBA 2K. He is an all-time great passer, one of the best rebounders in the game, and one of the most efficient scorers. (Jokic led the NBA in True Shooting Percentage in 2023.) The two things that had people question him last year were that his jump shot fell off in the playoffs and his defense was not as great. With this being said, if your “extremely disappointing playoff run” ends with you putting up 28.7 points, 13.4 rebounds, and 8.4 assists per game on 62.5 percent True Shooting, you must be playing all right.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. The list is done. Now, it is on the players to prove me right or wrong based on where I ranked them.
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