[The Ringer.com] Ranking the Most Important “Third Guys” for NBA Contenders

Last year, our "Third Guy" was Chris Paul. It's nice to see Eric as our 3rd option instead of our 2nd.

 

Lol! Nice

 

Capela is important to us for reasons outside of shot creation. That said, if WB and Ego can start harnessing the power of Capela's vertical game, we would really be impossible to beat. CP3, for whatever reason, never quite clicked with Capela.

 

kuzma ahead of gordon is a fuking joke. kuzma is trash, the 2nd coming of chandler portions

and donovan is probably the #1 on the j*zz, though conley/gobert should rate ahead of ego anyways

 

They're ranked in terms of importance, not in order of how good they are as players. You could even argue Kuzma should be higher with how little depth the lakers have. They really need him to be good.

 

The way they framed it as "most important" rather than "best" makes it pretty arbitrary how they rate these things. It doesn't really seem to have any sort of reasoning to it. If I were to be asked who's the 3rd most important player on the Rockets I'd pick Capela. If he can play in the playoffs now with the Warriors gone then he can change the series a lot more than Gordon who is what he is and his role is quite set. Capela is more akin to Kuzma as the "guy with potential for breakout" than Gordon who's more like Danny Green on the Lakers.

But then Ringer articles have always been kinda whack unless Kevin O'Conner is writing it or Bill Simmons goes on one of his fun essays.

 

if that's the criteria then tuck should probably be our #3

 

Yeah with Conley and Gobert in the 20-30 range of rankings for players in the NBA, if Donovan is not able to surpass them then Utah has no shot.

In Houston you're talking about a team with two top 12 players, two guys in the 30's-40's in Gordon and Capela, and a guy in the 70's in Tucker. It's absurd to think a team like this isn't a frontrunner for the title, yet here we are.

I did like the recent podcast from KOC and the Memphis dude where KOC talked about his interview with d'Antoni about how he plans to incorporate Westbrook into our otherwise well-oiled machine. Basically, MDA told him that he's gotta put Westbrook in as many positions as possible to be aggressive towards the basket, to open up those runways so that he doesn't feel the need to settle for the outside jumper. If Westbrook can cut out that part of his game, the off the dribble pull-ups early in the shot clock, then maybe he can finally transform into the efficiency butterfly everyone's been hoping he'd become once they saw him run past fools and dunk all over them in the transition. It's like the first 8 minutes of the podcast, so give it a listen.

 

If the Jazz want to contend, they'd better hope Gobert's defensive prowess extends all the way to the arc, because their 6'1" PG and 6'3" SG aren't going to be stopping many people.

 

Long live the hobbit!

 

Same here. I'm just frustrated since back in the Grantland days their NBA coverage was much better than now. But then that's probably just Zach Lowe propping everyone up.

 

So many wrongs with this article. Waste of time to read it.

 

this is so true. if you ever feel bad about the Cp3 trade just remember this.

 

It’s unbelievable how little acknowledgement Eric Gordon gets. He can shoot/drive+slash/and serve as ball handler as well as defend. He’s so incredibly critical to our team

 

That's the problem.
They think they can just throw some often misinformative stuff out there, and non LA- GSW- NY team fans should be happy to even get a mention.

 

I think he is more important to the lakers than gordon is to the rockets. If he has a bad year the lakers will have a bad year