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In the summer of 2019 — when we weren’t heading to the theaters to watch “Avengers: Endgame” or staying home to watch the final season of “The Good Place” — the crew at NBC Sports basketball decided to answer a simple question:
Who would be the best players in the summer of 2024?
It may be a simple question, but there were no easy answers. In hindsight, we had plenty of hits but also had a trio of huge misses. The group of us at the time — myself, Dan Feldman, Tom Haberstroh and Rob Dauster — agreed on some, disagreed on others and ultimately settled on this list.
Projected top 10 players of 2024:
1. Giannis Antetokounmpo
2. Anthony Davis
3. Luka Doncic
4 Nikola Jokic
5. Zion Williamson
6. Kawhi Leonard
7. Karl-Anthony Towns
8. Donovan Mitchell
9. Ben Simmons
10. Trae Young
Let’s start with the mistakes, the three big misses from this list, and all mainly for the same reason — we thought age would hit them harder.
• LeBron James. We thought his skills and physical condition would erode far more than they did, so he was ranked 40th (just before the season when he turned 40). We thought he might be retired by now, we did not predict another ring, another Finals MVP and five more All-NBA seasons that were still ahead of him back in 2019. LeBron proved us very wrong, and that longevity of high-level play is a big part of his GOAT case.
• Kevin Durant. He was down at No. 29 because “Durant is on the wrong side of 30 and has a torn Achilles.” We underestimated his recovery. Durant bounced back better than we might have envisioned at the time, but in hindsight ranking him one spot back of D’Angelo Russell (28) seems foolish. (Also, ranking Russell 28th was one of our uglier mistakes.)
• Stephen Curry. He was ranked 31st, although writing on him for this project Tom Haberstroh said, “I feel like the best shooter ever deserves a higher spot on this list.” He’d argued for that, and ultimately Tom was right. The majority of us thought his skills would fade more quickly with time, we didn’t see a 2022 championship where he was named Finals MVP.
• The ugliest pick in the top 10? Ben Simmons…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/2019-predicted-top-players-2024-121500565.html
Author : NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-09-09 12:15:00
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