This plus Lowe's work today and recently (100% putting Embiid over Tatum), it's 100% clear that one of Tatum's best attributes (reliability) just isn't valued, at all. This is baffling to me as the most important ability without a doubt is availability. If a guy can't be relied on to even show up close to 100%, then WTF are we doing here? This isn't a video game, asking who the best player is "when everyone is healthy" is a useless exercise. And nothing beats the Ringers final NBA player rankings of the year, which had Kawhi Leonard as the 6th best player in the league (ahead of Tatum in 7th). That aged exactly as well as you'd expect it to.
When I heard a clip of Zach Lowe on Windhorst's podcast recently saying that Tatum is the "7th, 8th, 9th, 10th" best player in the NBA, I kept thinking about the availability point you raise and also the issue of playoff success. Lowe has repeated some variation of this claim multiple times on TV and on podcasts recently. Podcasters should go to podcast jail if they make a statement like that without naming the 9 guys who are definitely or possibly better, but that's an aside.
When certain guys are getting MVP, DPOY or All-NBA awards, the justification for lavishing these accolades on players like Embiid or Gobert is that "It's a regular season award" and so we have to discount their playoff failings. There's definitely a logic undergirding that and I can sort of agree with it in some instances. But when we're doing dumb guy Bill Simmons stuff where you're on a podcast or writing an article for a blog ranking the 10 best players in the NBA, why does availability and playoff success not matter at all? It feels like Zach Lowe is dying to say that Jalen Brunson or Anthony Edwards are better than Tatum, but he doesn't want to actually say it out loud because he doesn't want that to be thrown back in his face if they or their teams end up stagnating or regressing next year. He just wants to vaguely insinuate it and be kind of smarmy and dismissive toward Tatum, which is weird. Kawhi is an interesting example, though, because I feel like he is often lower down on these rankings lists recently because of his issues with availability (I think ESPN had him in the 20s going into this season), but Embiid isn't discounted in the same way, though it seems like he should be at this point.
I am surprised at this turn toward negativity for Zach Lowe, though. Maybe Zach had more access to the Celtics front office under the Ainge regime or something, the dude seems ultra dismissive during any Celtics talk when I've checked in recently. Part of me wants to attribute it to Celtics fatigue, but it's also feels like the media has been hyping Luka up for his entire NBA career. He made first team All-NBA in 19-20 over a clearly better Kawhi when he shot .316% from three. I get shitting your pants about Luka this season when he's shooting significantly better from three but these guys were crowning him when he was a .338%/extremely below average 3PT shooter for his career going into this season. And his teams have never won anything. It feels like he was kind of an inefficient stat compiler for most of his early career who is a mediocre to bad defender and I thought we had learned our lesson about giving accolades to compilers after the Russ MVP, but I guess not.
If you want to argue Luka and Embiid are clearly in this indisputable tier above Tatum, why are their track records so much worse? I understand putting Jokic and Giannis above Tatum, they have won, they are both to me indisputably better than Tatum because of their individual and team successes. If you're arguing that guys like Luka and Embiid are more valuable than Tatum and impact winning more, why haven't they done that? I don't think Tatum should have won MVP this year and I'm not even arguing that he is better than Luka. Ranking stuff in that way is dumb horseshit, but I don't see that it's obvious that there's some huge unbridgeable divide between him and the guys who could conceivably be ranked above him. I don't have a ton of specific ire for Doncic as a player or a dude, I have no issue with him being an MVP candidate or even an argument that he's such an offensive weapon that it offsets his defensive shortcomings, but he is covered in a kind of tedious way. If the Mavericks lose and Luka plays poorly during the Finals, he'll go into the press conference and get asked about his knee. If Tatum has a bad game, he'll go into his press conference (despite not being a top two player in this series, or whatever) and have some dipshit like Gary Washburn basically ask him "Isn't this proof that you're a weak willed choking coward? How are you going to live with yourself after this gutless display?" It does get tiring that any attempt to contextualize some of the Celtics failures is an "excuse", but no one will be saying that about Luka when the Mavericks lose. He'll be a warrior who gutted it out and dragged his team to the Finals.
This is why I don't really engage with NBA media at all, but I get how it's frustrating for folks who do, especially when you're trying to enjoy a fun team that has had a great season.
