Top 100 NBA Players — Nos. 11-20

The Point Forward’s top 100 list is designed to spotlight the best NBA players on both ends of the floor, regardless of salary or current team context. The rankings are based on where players stand at this very moment, with the (still theoretical) 2011-12 season approaching.

No set formula was used for this list; it represents my opinion after watching an abnormal number of games, scouring every statistic out there, recalling conversations I’ve had while reporting on the league and poring over hours and hours of clips on Synergy Sports. And even with all that information, separating some of these players amounts to making an impossible subjective call.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve taken you through the bottom 80 of the list, but now comes the hard part: ranking the NBA’s 20 finest players. Here are Nos. 11-20, with the top 10 to follow on Tuesday.

Carmelo Anthony is a lazy defender, but he can score at will and create space for teammates. (AP)

20. CARMELO ANTHONY
SF, New York Knicks
Age: 27
2010-11 Stats: 25.6 PPG, 45.5 FG%, 37.8 3PT%, 7.3 RPG, 2.9 APG

Anthony is a subpar defender, a master of lazy switches and emphatic pointing, through which he indicates that one of his teammates should very kindly guard the guy Carmelo was just guarding. It’s fine if you want to ignore this, delete the latest Knicks defensive atrocity from your memory and revel in the 25 points Anthony scored that night. There are reasons the Knicks played better defense without him, and the Nuggets’ defense improved when he left. Anthony is talented enough to be better than this, and perhaps the Knicks’ move to hire a “defensive coordinator” for coach Mike D’Antoni will create the kind of systematic accountability that is needed for Carmelo to play up to his full potential.

Many fans reflexively list Anthony among the league’s top 10 players, but given the names we’re about to look at it, it’s difficult to actually make that case. Defense is half the game, and he rarely shows much interest in it.

So why is he as high as No. 20 here? First, he is one of the league’s best rebounding small forwards, and he steps up that part of his game when the stakes are high. The guy can grab some monster boards.

Second, and most important, Anthony scores a ton of points. He takes a lot of shots to get those points, and some of those shots are bad ones that make you wonder how much better his team could have done had he opted against flinging up his fourth contested 20-footer of the game (all after a jab step or two, of course), but he does score a ton of points. And for all the bad shots he forces, he also earns a lot of free throws (7.9 attempts per game last season), the best shots in the game.

You need scorers, even if those scorers are capable of being more efficient and, thereby, make their team more efficient by choosing a pass or a dribble-drive over a long jumper three or four times per game. You need scorers when the shot clock is winding down and everything is on the line. You need them when your other top players are hurt and someone needs to get a bucket. And you need them to draw a defense’s attention, to make it tilt those extra few feet away from the other guys on your team.

Scorers grease the wheels, even when they are hogging the ball. For all of Anthony’s faults, his teams have never struggled to score. It’s just that Anthony isn’t the best kind of high-volume scorer. He stops the ball instead of swinging it, allowing the defense to stand still and gather itself. He’s a perimeter player without a reliable three-point range, unless the accuracy he showed in 27 games as a Knick (42.4 percent, well above his career average of 32 percent) proves lasting. (If it does, watch out.) He has never quite developed into a knockout pick-and-roll creator — though that, too, could change alongside Amar’e Stoudemire — and he’s not a power forward who can drag a big man defender away from the rim with his range.

Carmelo is a fine player, one of the best in the league. But he doesn’t belong in the same class as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki.

19. AMAR’E STOUDEMIRE
PF, New York Knicks
Age: 28
2010-11 Stats: 25.3 PPG, 50.2 FG%, 79.2 FT%, 8.2 RPG, 2.6 APG, 1.9 BLK

The next six spots, Nos. 19-14, represent the toughest stretch of the entire top 100 for me. You could order them in any way, and I wouldn’t have much of an issue. These guys are that close, and they all come with caveats — age, problems on one side of the ball, etc. I’m starting with Stoudemire, a top-10 offensive player who slips down here because of issues on the other side of the ball.

Stoudemire works on defense (mostly), but he has well-known positioning issues and is too often caught flat-footed in the wrong place, as some opposing player is scoring. We’ve seen this for years. Phoenix was generally worse defensively with Stoudemire on the floor, with the exception of his abbreviated 2008-09 campaign, and the Knicks were much worse defensively with Stoudemire on the court, according to Basketball Value. Opposing big men put up All-Star-level Player Efficiency Ratings against the Knicks when Stoudemire played, and his rebounding reached career-low territory on a team that ranked 26th in defensive rebounding rate — a team in desperate need of boards.

Stoudemire has rarely been surrounded by top-shelf defensive talent or a defense-first head coach (at least not for a prolonged stretch), and he’d benefit from exposure to either one. But all the evidence we have suggests that he’s a liability on defense, and you can see as much any time he’s on the floor.

But Stoudemire is an amazing offensive talent. He gets a lot of points in the pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop game, meaning things come in rhythm without his stopping the ball. Even his isolation attacks and post-up moves, among the most efficient in the league, come in a flash and often start in the middle of the floor, forcing the defense to collapse. And Stoudemire is an underrated passer who can find the right guy when that collapse happens.

He has become a very good mid-range jump-shooter. When your power forward (or center, as was often the case last season in New York) can shoot from 20 feet out, all sorts of things open up.

Stoudemire turned a so-so Knicks roster into a 28-26 team before Anthony arrived via trade. You can build an elite offense around Stoudemire, and an elite offense can gun its way to a decent win total in the regular season.

I’m not sure the power forward ranked two spots ahead of Stoudemire could have managed what Amar’e did in New York before he was joined by Carmelo last season. But I’m not convinced Stoudemire, with his issues on defense, could take a 50-win club and bring it over the hump in the playoffs, when you’re not facing a gassed team on the second end of a back-to-back.

You need to score and defend to win an NBA title, but the best evidence we have suggests that having an elite defense is slightly more important in building a champion. Building that kind of defense around an often out-of-position (if well-intentioned) big man is very, very hard.

18. STEVE NASH
PG, Phoenix Suns
Age: 37
2010-11 Stats: 14.7 PPG, 49.2 FG%, 39.5 3PT%, 11.4 APG, 3.5 RPG

Somewhere along the way, Nash became underrated. It was probably a combination of backlash over two MVP awards many people thought he didn’t deserve; the perception, mostly unfair, that Phoenix wasn’t “tough” enough to succeed in the postseason; and the rise of a dynamic group of young point guards who were more athletic than the aging Nash.

There’s also the fact that Nash has never been much of a defender, even though he’s smart, communicates well and always knows where to be. He’s little and doesn’t have much leaping ability, and the Suns work hard to hide him when they can. But under the current rules, it’s almost impossible to defend point guards on the perimeter, and I’d rather have my defensive liability out there than on my front line. It’s not ideal, but it won’t kill you in the same way as having two big men who can’t figure out a pick-and-roll. And for what it’s worth, Nash’s defensive numbers on Synergy are pretty good, which suggests that a) not many guards are really effective post-up threats, and b) there is value in being in the right place at the right time.

But I’m afraid we haven’t appreciated what Nash is on offense. I wonder, when it’s time to put Nash’s career in perspective, where he will rank among the league’s all-time great offensive players. Last season marked the end of a stretch, starting in 2001-02, in which Nash’s team ranked either first or second in points scored for possession, according to Basketball-Reference. Some of those clubs, from Phoenix and Dallas, are among the greatest scoring teams ever, and a few of them led the league in scoring efficiency by ridiculous margins.

You can’t credit Nash for all that, because Nowitzki, Don Nelson, D’Antoni, Stoudemire and many, many others helped. But Nash was the common denominator. And while it’s fashionable to talk tough about how “defense wins championships,” NBA history, including the Mavericks’ recent run, suggests what really “wins championships” are teams that do lots of things very well.

If you put Nash on your team, even now, you’re going to be good offensively. Check out Phoenix’s roster from last season and ask yourself whether that team should have finished ninth in points per possession — just a smidgen behind the eventual champion Mavs.

It’s not hard to see why Nash has this effect. ESPN.com’s John Hollinger has argued that Nash is the greatest shooter of all time, and he may be right. You can just rename the 50-40-90 shooting club (50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three-point range and 90 percent from the free-throw line) the Steve Nash Shooting Stars, because Nash either pulls it off every season or misses by hundredths of a point in one category. This is something only seven players have accomplished in 11 seasons between them, with Nash and Larry Bird the only two players to do it twice. Nash is doing this almost every single season.

Oh, and he also handles the ball all the time. Imagine if Derrick Rose could shoot like Ray Allen, only even better, and you start to understand how much pressure Nash puts on defenses. You can never go under a screen on a pick-and-roll because Nash will just stop his dribble and pop a three in your face. He shot 40.7 percent on three-pointers off pick-and-rolls last season, which means he shoots threes off the dribble better than most three-point specialists shoot them in spot-up situations. That is nuts.

If you can’t go under the screen, you’re yielding Nash the lane, and from there, you’re dead. Sometimes basketball is a simple game. Given his age and minutes limitations, which are bound to get a bit stricter, putting Nash much higher than this is a bit of a stretch. But I wonder where he’d have ranked here, say, five or six years ago.

17. KEVIN GARNETT
PF, Boston Celtics
Age: 35
2010-11 Stats: 14.9 PPG, 52.8 FG%, 86.2 FT%, 8.9 RPG, 2.4 APG

Garnett, for all his greatness, is quite clearly not the offensive threat he was in his prime. It’s easy to brush that off, because he doesn’t have to be the focal point now that he’s surrounded by three other guys who finished in the top 50 in these rankings. But two of those guys struggle to create (Allen) or finish (Rajon Rondo) their own shots, and there are times against good defenses when the Celtics do need Garnett to at least resemble his old self. And he can’t do it every night anymore — at least, not against the best. That was laid bare in the 2010 Finals against the Lakers and again last season in the conference semifinals against Miami, when KG went 13-of-20 in one game and 1-of-10 in the next. His post game and isolations aren’t there every night, and when they aren’t — when defenses don’t have to fear them as much — Garnett’s impact as a passer is muted a bit.

So why is he here, above two guys in Nash and Stoudemire who can work as offensive centerpieces every night? First, even when those elements of his game are off, Garnett is still one of the best mid-range-shooting big men outside of Dallas. Rondo’s reluctance to shoot isn’t as disastrous as it might be without great shooters around him, and an elite perimeter shooter at power forward is a more unusual — and, thus, more valuable — commodity than a dynamite shooting wing. And Garnett’s passing from the high post and the block creates open shots for others and builds a general culture of unselfishness on his team.

Second, and much more obvious: Garnett brings that loud, nasty defense every night. That defense has fallen from its peak levels; he isn’t as explosive a leaper or shot-blocker as he was even three or four years ago. But he can still defend a pick-and-roll with both subtlety and lunatic effort. He can run at a ball-handler, cut him off on the perimeter and then retreat in that crouch, arms spread wide, still facing the ball-handler and yet somehow cutting off every desired passing lane. Garnett knows all the angles, his feet are still quick, his form is perfect and no one is going to outwork him.

With Garnett on the floor last season, the Celtics were essentially the best defensive team in the league. With Garnett on the bench, they allowed a whopping 6.2 more points per 100 possessions, taking them down to a level not far from the league average.

Only one player in the league (we haven’t gotten to him yet) had a larger positive impact on his team’s scoring margin, and Garnett fared about as well in adjusted plus/minus measures that take teammate and opponent quality into account. (Such systems are designed to identify guys whose good plus/minus numbers are really just the result of playing heavy minutes alongside studs.)

If I’m building a team to win a decent number of regular-season games, give me Stoudemire over Garnett. But if it’s Game 7 of the Finals, I’ll take my chances with KG.

16. MANU GINOBILI
SG, San Antonio Spurs
Age: 34
2010-11 Stats: 17.4 PPG, 43.3 FG%, 34.9 3PT%, 4.9 APG, 3.7 RPG, 1.5 STL

There’s almost nothing not to like about Ginobili, and had he played more minutes, I could easily have flipped him over the next guy — and perhaps even the guy after that. He’s a great all-around player who has been the driving force in San Antonio for a couple of years now. He has long been one of the league’s best big-game and big-moment players, and that “skill,” to the degree that it is a skill at all, seems only to get better as Ginobili ages.

Being “clutch” probably isn’t a real, permanent skill. But players like Ginobili have an easier time appearing as clutch because they can hurt an opponent in so many ways. He can attack in isolation. He runs the pick-and-roll like an elite point guard, threading gorgeous pocket passes to Tim Duncan or using his weird hesitation dribbles and Euro-step (Manu-step?) techniques to create space. He can finish well at the rim. He hits an above-average mark from the floater range. He can make threes both off the catch and off the dribble, the latter of which is a rare skill. And when a defender overplays his left hand, Ginobili will cross him over to the right, get in the lane, cross back to his left and do something so crazy that you’ll want to re-watch it instantly.

You can quibble with his shot selection now and then, and argue that he shouldn’t be taking more than six threes per game. Those are fair nitpicks, but they’re still nitpicks.

On defense, Ginobili is a rangy, whip-smart 6-foot-6 creator of chaos. He is always near the top of the league in steals, and it’s easy to mistake him for an irresponsible gambler when he suddenly leaves his guy to swipe the ball from an unsuspecting sap 15 feet away. But if you watch carefully (and long enough), you realize that Ginobili’s gambles are based on his knowledge of an opposing playbook and anticipation of what action is about to happen. It’s gambling almost without risk, and Ginobili might be better at it than anyone.

He’s also fundamentally sound, smart and active. You don’t play any other way for the Spurs. San Antonio has been one of the best two-way teams for a decade, and Ginobili has been at the center of that. The concerns about durability and minutes are legitimate, and they keep him here.

Even alongside Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce has consistently been the best two-way player in Boston. (AP)

15. PAUL PIERCE
SF, Boston Celtics
Age: 33
2010-11 Stats: 18.9 PPG, 49.7 FG%, 37.4 3PT%, 86.0 FT%, 5.4 RPG, 3.3 APG

It has been a bizarre half-decade in the relationship between Boston fans and Pierce. Garnett arrived in the summer of 2007 and immediately asserted himself as the team’s best player, even as Pierce won the Finals MVP that June. Then Garnett sustained a mysterious leg injury in Utah in February 2009. While at times he looked like his old self last season, he has yet to return to his 2008 levels and he can’t be counted on to provide major scoring every night.

But then Rondo became an All-Star, a defensive menace dishing a dozen assists on some nights — assists that propped up Boston’s aging star trio. Rondo was the most indispensable Celtic! But his game fell off a bit as last season progressed, and it was clear his lack of a reliable jumper still choked the offense at times against the best defenses. He had trouble finishing in the lane, couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get to the foul line and oversaw an offense that could look astonishingly bad at times.

Through it all, it is Pierce who has sustained as Boston’s best two-way player. He has become an elite three-point shooter, and though Rondo has a lot to do with that, Pierce deserves credit for honing the one aspect of a superstar’s game that can remain somewhat intact with age. He is still Boston’s best option in isolation and in the post — an option this team absolutely must have to avoid total meltdowns on offense — and he can still get to the line in a pinch.

Pierce doesn’t do this one-on-one stuff as much — he’s not young anymore, he has better teammates than he did five or six years ago and he has to conserve his energy for the most important spots — but the inconsistency of Rondo and Garnett as scoring options has made it clear how valuable it is to have someone who can create, draw attention and finish when the shot clock is running down and a team’s options are exhausted. Pierce can do that every night. No other Celtic can.

On the other end, Pierce has turned into such a good defender that he would not look totally out of place on the All-Defensive team. His one-on-one opponents shot below 40 percent against him on every half-court play type that Synergy tracks — isolations, pick-and-rolls, spot-up chances, in the post, etc. It has obviously helped Pierce to play with Garnett and Rondo and under former assistant coaches Tom Thibodeau and Lawrence Frank, but Pierce has been carrying his own weight on defense for at least two or three seasons now. He’s not LeBron or Andre Iguodala, but he’s much closer to them than to his 2004-05 self.

The Celtics were nearly 18 points better, per 100 possessions, with Pierce on the floor last season than with him on the bench, the biggest positive impact of any player, according to Basketball Value. The site’s adjusted plus/minus system, which factors in the quality of an individual player’s teammates and opponents, also painted Pierce as one of the dozen most impactful players in the league last season, at age 33.

14. BLAKE GRIFFIN
PF, Los Angeles Clippers
Age: 22
2010-11 Stats: 22.5 PPG, 50.6 FG%, 64.2 FT%, 12.1 RPG, 3.8 APG

Ranking Griffin above established stars like Garnett and Stoudemire just seems uncouth. But a year from now, ranking him even this low will look silly when he puts up some crazy average line, like 25-14-4, and shows a new gear on defense.

It’s the potential for immediate improvement that puts him ahead of KG and Stoudemire, by the slightest of margins. Griffin is never going to be a roving pick-and-roll destroyer on Garnett’s level — has anyone ever been? — but he’s already a top-eight defensive rebounder who held opponents to 30.8 percent shooting in isolation. He didn’t fare nearly as well in the post or in the kind of positioning defense Garnett mastered more than a decade ago, but Griffin’s combination of athleticism and smarts suggests that he’ll make quick progress. And on offense, Griffin is the kind of every-night force Garnett was in his prime Minnesota years.

As for Stoudemire, Griffin is a better overall defender already, and he should close the gap in terms of scoring efficiency very soon. He’s already one of the most efficient post-up and pick-and-roll players in the league, and you can expect him to improve both his mid-range shot and his outside-in off-the-dribble game next season.

To put things in perspective, though, we’re talking about all of these improvements when, after just one year as a pro, Griffin ranked 15th in PER; averaged nearly four assists; recorded a higher assist rate than any player bigger than 6-10 (aside from Hedo Turkoglu); drew an automatic double team in the post; discovered a great pick-and-roll chemistry with Eric Gordon before Gordon’s injury; and emerged as one of the 10 best rebounders in the league on both ends of the floor.

This ranking feels better now.

13. ZACH RANDOLPH
PF, Memphis Grizzlies
Age: 30
2010-11 Stats: 20.1 PPG, 50.3 FG%, 75.8 FT%, 12.2 RPG, 2.2 APG

Randolph represents the cut-off point at which the uncertainty of the last six spots ends and the rest of the list takes form without as much hand-wringing. Randolph has always been a 20-and-10 interior machine who gets to the line at a decent rate, throws a couple of assists and avoids turnovers. A few things have happened in Memphis that have combined to elevate Randolph into the NBA’s elite.

He has, perhaps simply by trying harder, become a better all-around defender. He still looks like the same doughy, ground-bound guy, but as ESPN.com’s Tom Haberstroh recently pointed out, every metric we have now indicates that Randolph is a neutral defender — at the very worst. The Grizzlies allowed almost the same number of points per possession regardless of whether Randolph was on the floor or on the bench, and considering this was a top-10 overall defense playing in the superior conference, that’s a win for Randolph. Opposing power forwards and centers played to a PER that was a tick below the league’s average against the Grizzlies with Randolph on the floor.

Randolph is so strong that even the best post scorers have a tough time moving him around. The clever footwork that fuels his post game also allows him to shift around the court in subtle ways on defense. He’s not a great defender, but he’s smart, he’s usually in the right place and few are better at cleaning the defensive glass.

He has also shot a higher percentage in Memphis than he typically did in previous stops, perhaps the result of shooting one or two fewer long jumpers per game and replacing them with closer shots. No one can guard him one-on-one, meaning an entry pass to Randolph is going to result in either a decent shot for him or a double team. Players like that are handy to have, and Randolph gets extra points for learning to work so well in tandem with Marc Gasol.

12. RUSSELL WESTBROOK
PG, Oklahoma City Thunder
Age: 22
2010-11 Stats: 21.9 PPG, 44.2 FG%, 33.0 3PT%, 8.2 APG, 4.6 RPG, 1.9 STL

The issues everyone ranted about in the playoffs are real, even if the volume was turned up a little high. Westbrook shoots too much, especially from the perimeter. As good as he is, he’s not an elite jump shooter, and he shouldn’t have a higher usage rate than Kevin Durant and all but four players in the league (Kobe Bryant, Rose, Carmelo and Dwyane Wade). As everyone saw in the playoffs, the Thunder suffered through too many possessions in which Westbrook threw zero passes before chucking an 18-footer — the kind of shot he made just 36 percent of the time last season.

Pinning that all on Westbrook was too much and missed all the peculiar issues going on in Oklahoma City. But there are other possessions where Westbrook gets further into the lane, forces the defense to collapse and, for whatever reason, overlooks a passing lane that is right there for him.

In other words: After three NBA seasons, Westbrook has some work to do to reach his potential as a point guard. He’s 22, and he barely played point guard before entering the NBA.

Too much of this criticism missed a very fundamental thing, though: The Thunder had a top-five offense all season with Westbrook leading the way. Scoring was not Oklahoma City’s problem, in the big picture. It ranked so high despite starting Thabo Sefolosha at shooting guard; monkeying around with Jeff Green, who just didn’t fit; trading Green for Kendrick Perkins, a limited offensive player who was limited even more as he recovered from a knee injury; and relying on Serge Ibaka, a raw offensive player, to take Green’s minutes.

James Harden was a huge asset off the bench, but it’s not as if the Thunder were teeming with scorers and long-range bombers. They scored in bunches anyway, fueled by Westbrook’s and Durant’s free-throw-heavy attack. Only six players got to the line more than Westbrook, and all of those free throws reflect the simple reality that he is unguardable. He’s as quick as anyone at his position, except perhaps Rondo and Rose, and I’m not sure either of those guys can get from the three-point arc to the rim as quickly as Westbrook. As Memphis’ Mike Conley could tell you, Westbrook is also getting quite good at bullying and spinning his way into the lane against smaller defenders, stopping and lofting a short jumper over them before help can arrive.

Westbrook has always struck me as just so-so at the nuances of defending his position — attacking the pick-and-roll and mastering the dance of helping down low without losing track of shooters. The numbers bear this out, to a point. The Thunder defended much better with Westbrook on the bench, and Synergy ranks him as strictly average. You can probably toss out the on-court/off-court plus/minus splits, because the Thunder’s starting lineup before the Perkins trade just didn’t work on defense.

Regardless, most young point guards aren’t elite defenders, and Westbrook already has the rebounding part of it down better than anyone. With his size and quickness, he’ll get better right along with his team. And that is scary.

LaMarcus Aldridge put up big numbers last season, when he was asked to take on a heavier offensive burden. (AP)

11. LAMARCUS ALDRIDGE
PF, Portland Trail Blazers
Age: 26
2010-11 Stats: 21.8 PPG, 50.0 FG%, 79.1 FT%, 8.8 RPG, 2.1 APG, 1.2 BLK

This ranking may seem high until you start looking at the big men below him and realize that Aldridge really is the finest two-way player among them — and that he’s bound to get even better given his age.

Last season, Aldridge took on a larger burden on offense and managed to increase his efficiency — a rare double, especially when you consider just how much more efficient he became. He redistributed his shot attempts, averaging 10 shots per game from within 10 feet, up from just 6.5 such shots the previous season, according to Hoopdata. He earned more foul shots and drew more double teams as a result. He morphed from a jump-shooting, outside-in big man into an inside-out post-up force, capable of scoring one-on-one and serving as the kind of player around which a team can build an above-average offense. You can’t say that about Garnett anymore, which is why KG ranks a few spots lower here, despite playing a brand of defense Aldridge can’t yet match.

But Aldridge is getting there defensively. He’s solid in the post and in one-on-one situations, and he has emerged as one of the league’s better big men at tracking guards on pick-and-roll plays. He’s not on the level of Garnett, Tyson Chandler or Andrew Bogut yet — he doesn’t protect the rim or rebound as well as those guys — but he has become a well-rounded defender, on the level of a guy like Al Horford.

It’s the combination of that kind of defense and the scoring game Aldridge showed last season that has him above some bigger names. He’s not as polished offensively as Stoudemire, but he’s in a different league defensively. He can’t match Kevin Love’s shooting and rebounding, but Aldridge’s defense and post game place him above Love — for now. The gap in defense between Aldridge and Griffin is big enough now for Aldridge to hold this spot, though Griffin figures to come charging hard for a place in the top 10 as soon as the NBA resumes.

Randolph was the closest call, because everything we know about defense says the version Z-Bo we’ve seen in Memphis is more of an asset than liability on that end. Aldridge can’t match Randolph yet as a scorer or rebounder, but he’s closing the gap. In a brutal toss-up, I went with Aldridge’s youth and potential as an elite defender.

MORE TOP 100

• Nos. 91-100
• Nos. 81-90
• Nos. 71-80
• Nos. 61-70
• Nos. 51-60
• Nos. 41-50
• Nos. 31-40
• Nos. 21-30