"Jimmy Butler better than Jayson Tatum and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander" | Players Choice Reaction

It's FYF Sports, man, it's Lamont. And we are back. Another great video here for you guys today, man. You guys see the topic, man. We got to talk about some things because we got a lot of things coming up with FYF Sports and some other platforms. And I think this topic right here is kind of a gateway into what you can expect moving forward with FYF Sports and some of the, just the big events that we got planned. Before we get started with today's show, man, y'all, I don't know why you haven't done so. If you haven't done so already, you need to check out this app right here, Clash TV, man. Clash TV, man. We're going to be moving some of our most exclusive content over to Clash TV, man. And I'll need you guys to go immediately download this app. Link is in the description, not because we're going to be over there, because this app right here can address all of your basketball needs throughout the summer. They're covering all of the 15 top leagues here in the United States. You're talking Drew League, Summer Leagues, Pro-Am Leagues, the Jamal Crawfords, all these leagues that we was really enamored with last year. They're going to be covering it all, all in one app. It's a free app. It's free to download so you don't have to worry about paying a ton of subscription fees. And you can come over there and watch some of our most exclusive content, content that you will not find on YouTube. You can only find on Clash TV. Make sure you go download it. Link is in the description of the video. Today, we're doing a little bit of a mini reaction video. I thought this video was kind of intriguing because it was a YouTube short from Player's Choice. Salute to those guys over there. I'm sure many of you guys are familiar with that platform. And I'm sure many of you guys are familiar with the people and the host over there that host a multitude of shows and various talking points on basketball. I thought this was interesting because a guy that's a frequent over here on FYF Sports, man, he's been over here since day one, SB Talk Sports. He was on the show and they were asking him a series of questions that I feel like were trap questions to try to lock him into a certain narrative or at least lock him in into their narrative when I think they were completely missing the point that he was trying to get across. And it was a topic on Jason Tatum. And I think they tried to use another player, which was also a bad example as a trap question, trying to back him into a corner. When I watched the full episode, I think he did a good job of not allowing them to apply bad basketball logic to sensible basketball logic and sensible takes. And it just kind of baffles me because coming up pretty soon here, we'll be announcing dates and times. We're gonna be having a debate, FYF Sports versus player's choice. And just watching some of these shorts and watching some of the angles and avenues that they like to go down and the tricks they try to use to dispel or demote your logic to uplift their own is just kind of funny. But let me watch, I'm gonna play this clip for you guys. I'm gonna let you guys watch it first and then I'm gonna give you my thoughts on it. And then what do we always do after we react to a video? We address the video with the facts, the real facts. We like to go do our research and we like to apply that logic to what was said to determine who was right or wrong. But you guys go ahead and check this video out. It's a short from player's choice podcast. You have to nitpick on winning and losing and they flaws in their game. You don't have to nitpick on winning and losing. Yes, that does matter. Who's better, Jimmy Butler or Jason Tatum to you? Jason Tatum. Okay, you see how contradicting that is. No, I think he's just all around better. I agree, Jimmy Butler is just all around better. Jason Tatum has been in a top five player conversation this whole season. He's the first team all NBA player. Is Shane top five? He was in a conversation, yes. No, he wasn't. No, he wasn't, I was in a conversation. I was talking to you. So y'all see how tricky and convoluted the discussion can get when you, one, are dealing with debating multiple people that all hold the same flaw logic versus you. And when that happens, what you generally tend to see, whether it's on PC, whether it's on Ticket TV, any platform where people hold a consensus opinion about a certain player or players, and you come on there with dissenting opinions, what you will find is they will throw so much at you, whether it's examples of other players, X, Y, and Z, to try to promote and push a narrative, but they shy away from real facts and logic that actually support the claim. So SB Talk Sports, what did he say about Jason Tatum? He said, Jason Tatum was regarded for the most part this year as a top five player. They refuted that. I think we all can safely say, with the Celtics coming off of finals appearance, with that team looking as great as they did defensively, it did not surprise me to see Jason Tatum in almost everybody's top 10 list going into the 2022-23 season. This is not to say that for his career, he's better than a lot of the guys that he might be above. Going into the 2022-23 NBA season, it is a fact. If you look through most of the way too early rankings or the early preseason power rankings for individual players, Raptor rankings, all of those rankings, whether it's based on eye tests, whether it's based on analytics, you will be hard-pressed to find a list going into the season that didn't have Jason Tatum top 10 close to the top five. Then SB made another good point. He said, Jason Tatum was a first-team All-NBA player. I think that holds a lot of weight, especially now that the NBA has kind of changed up the way that the first teams and positionings is. It's not all segmented. You have to be a point guard to get the point guard spot or a shooting guard to get the shooting guard spot. They've changed it to guards and forwards, and it kind of opens the door for them to have a more complete or accurate first team that represents the best players in each conference. And you can then argue amongst the first team, maybe even the second team, because you'll have about 10 guys there that throughout the year, leading up to that point where they did the voting, you're probably generally looking at the 10 best players that year. If you want to try to incorporate team success, playoff success, and those things, that, again, convolutes the argument because we're talking about individual players, not what you did as a team. And it sounds to me like the people and the guys like Mars and Dub and Low, they rank players based on success, wins, and losses. The team attribute we just saw Low get into trouble pushing that particular narrative in addressing Kevin Durant, and then Kevin Durant pulled up and said, "'Why don't you just judge the player as an individual? "'Why are you incorporating team "'and all these other things, winning and losing? "'What does that have to do with the individual?' And when we look at a player, for example, that they brought up, this is a player that they used. Mars specifically said, "'Do you think Shy Gilchrist Alexander "'is a top five player just because "'he was first team all NBA?' And so now you have to think, did you, one, watch enough OKC basketball to judge him fairly? If we're being honest, most people didn't see enough OKC games to even judge him fairly. That's one. He barely played on national TV games. But in the games that you did see, like when they played the Lakers, he played absolutely great. So what else can we look to when we're trying to decipher? Because the one thing that we know that's irrefutable, the one thing that we know is irrefutable is what he accomplished this season. Let me go ahead and put it up on the screen here. Okay, so when we talking about Shy Gilchrist Alexander and what he actually accomplished this year, I think we can look to none other than a guy by the name of Michael Jordan in this particular example to kind of help. So again, what Shy Gilchrist Alexander was able to do this year? To average over 30 points per game, four rebounds, over four assists, at least one steal and at least one block, shooting above 50% from the field in one season. The only other player in NBA history that was able to accomplish this particular feat was Michael Jordan. And the crazy thing is, is that in both of the seasons that he did this, he was the league's MVP. So what Shy Gilchrist Alexander was able to do this past season is only comparable to most people's goal. And in both of those season, Jordan was looked at as the league's best player, an MVP, as an individual. Mind you, we're not talking about it. MVPs aren't necessarily decided on how good your team is, your record, X, Y, and Z. We have to look to this feat. So when he's accomplished something that only Michael Jordan's accomplished, and in both of those seasons, Jordan won MVP. I could safely assume and deduce that it's arguable whether you want to put them in the top five or not. Just like SB Talk Sports said, there is a conversation that needs to be had or should be had. And actually, in real life, this conversation was being had that Shy Gilchrist Alexander was a top five player in the league. There's absolutely no doubt about that. So when we look to the fact that Shy Gilchrist Alexander was a first team All-NBA player, right, we can just simply look at how the votes were doled out. Right, Shy Gilchrist Alexander had more first team votes than players like, I mean, I can give you an example here. He had more first team votes than players like De'Aaron Fox, Damian Lillard, LeBron James, Jalen Brown, Jimmy Butler, Steph Curry, Donovan Mitchell. Now, we're talking about this year, him being a top five player this year. The majority of people, whatever you wanna weigh, that we know that a lot of you guys are gonna say that the media votes and these former athletes and media members, their votes aren't extremely credible. But what this goes to show is it's a consensus of what people are actually thinking about who these players are in the moment right now, this year, without the biases of winning, losing, what happened the year before, what happened the year before that. All this stuff that convolutes these arguments, they're just considering what happened this past year. And so when you look at the NBA first team this year, you're looking at Luka, Shy Gilchrist Alexander, you're looking at Joel Embiid, Jason Tatum, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. If somebody came to me and said, that's my top five from last year, I'm not necessarily gonna argue that. I mean, one could argue after seeing how Jokic performed in the playoffs, that means you're convoluting your argument with winning and losing and you can throw Jokic in there, right? One could argue because of Jimmy Butler taking an eight-seeded Miami Heat team to the playoffs and now you add in winning and losing, playoff success, and you add that in, you might wanna put Jimmy Butler in your top five because of that, because you convolute your own argument with team success. And then you may want to drop guys down, like Jason Tatum, who, because you picked them to beat certain teams and then they let you down and your picks are wrong or you might've lost money on sportsbooks betting or whatnot, now you wanna drop those guys down lower because you are in your emotions because that team, not necessarily the player, the team didn't live up to your expectations. And so when I listened to that short and you hear all of these guys trying to use certain players to slander SB Talk Sports takes, the only thing that I can think is, I'm dealing with a lot of guys that base recency bias, winning and losing on how they judge players. And I think that is the absolute least accurate way to judge who a player actually is. That what it takes to win in the NBA takes more than just having a good individual player. The craziest thing about it is that Michael Jordan proved that. Michael Jordan is the best player in the league without the groundwork of a good team, solidly built around him with great coaching and a great front office. He was not going to win anything in this league. We saw the similar on the flip side with Dominique Wilkins, who was a great player in a bad situation. And we can look throughout NBA history and we look at Kevin Garnett on the Minnesota Timberwolves, great player, just in a bad situation, bad teammates. But what we find ourselves doing, and I think this is why players like Kevin Garnett might mildly get underrated, is because we expect these players, we expect these players to be so good that they live up to every expectation or standard that we set in our head, irregardless of the context and the situation that surrounds them on their own individual team. So if you remove the fact that Shai Gilson Alexander was on a bad Oklahoma City Thunder team, and you look at him as an individual player, individually, he had a season comparable to that of Michael Jordan in which he won MVP Bowl for those years, similar with Jason Tatum, who also led and took the lion's share of first team All-NBA votes, right? Great regular season, but on the flip side, he was on a good team and that good team let people like Mars, Dub, and Low down because they didn't live up to the expectation as a team, they then want to penalize Jason Tatum. Oh, he's no longer top five. Oh, he's no longer this because his team lost. And this is the grave that they like to dig for themselves. And I think even when you're talking about Shai Gilson Alexander, he has the statistical accomplishments comparable to the best player in the league, Michael Jordan, which can be used to make his case as top five in the league. His first team All-NBA voted on by a multitude of voters from former NBA players to media members who actually watched the majority of these games and they don't fake or pretend to do so, like the Dubs, the Mars, and the Lows. And then you can just simply look to the MVP voting, right? At least in this particular year, how did these guys fare? MVP voting will tell you a lot, right? This is what SB said. He said he's in the conversation. SB didn't even say he was top five. He said he should be in the conversation. And so when you have a guy that's first team All-NBA, he's had a statistical year only comparable to that of Michael Jordan. And lastly, the man is top five in MVP voting, top five in MVP voting, only behind MB, Jokic, Giannis, and Jason Tatum. He came fifth in the league in MVP voting. So that also gives you more credibility when you, if you want to make the argument that Shy Gilchrist Alexander is a top five player, at least in the 22, 23 NBA season, he has a strong argument to even be in the conversation. Mars tried to make the point that he didn't even belong in the conversation. Why and how? The only way you would exclude him from the conversation is if you look at team success. If you look at the fact that they weren't a very good team. Removing the winning and losing as an individual player is not even necessarily comparable. The man had more MVP votes than Ja Morant, Jalen Brunson, who had a great year, De'Aaron Fox, who had a great year, Jimmy Butler, he had more votes than Steph Curry and Luka Doncic. Also Sabonis and Donovan Mitchell, all of these guys had great years, right? Am I saying that all of these guys are top 10 or top five? No, but what I'm saying is when you fall in multiple categories, first team, all NBA, top five in MVP vote, statistical accomplishments, only comparable to that of Michael Jordan in a single season, then I believe, yes, there is a conversation to be had that you are a top five player, at least in the moment. And at least going into next year, we should give Shai Gilchrist Alexander top 10 consideration because he's earned it. He's earned it. He's outplayed a lot of our favorite players. He's earned his spot amongst the best of the best in the league today, man. But look guys, there you have it right there, man. Look, salute to SB Talk Sports for pulling up over there, man. Holding his own, you know, in the lion's den. You know, when you're dealing with people who have talking points that are generally stemmed and based out of analytical data, but it's not really based out of, you know, not just analytical data, but it's also based off winning and losing and what your personal expectations of a player are with no respect to context for team, situation, you know, opponents and things of that nature. When you start to dumb your basketball takedown to that level, I think you start to have some very weak basketball talking points. And I think that's the hole they fell into. And once again, it always falls back and goes in to tying into that conversation that Lowe had with Kevin Durant. And Kevin Durant had to call them out about it. Your standards on these players are based on your own made up biases that really don't have any structure or criteria to it, right? And a lot of people's hate for Kevin Durant, that hate for Kevin Durant, that hate for certain players, it stems from decisions that they make that aren't even things that unfold on the court. People hate Kevin Durant and judge him in a different light because he went to Golden State. In those years where maybe their favorite team could have won a championship, Golden State just happened to be a juggernaut and didn't give their team an opportunity. And so people hold grudges for that. People talk unfairly of our stars for that. They look at winning and losing as a fan and then try to apply that to real basketball conversations as if it ultimately will make sense and it never will. You gotta start judging these players fairly. We have to start judging them fairly if we want to have a more balanced perspective on the game of basketball. I try my best not to go into these conversations with hate for any particular player. I'm a human being and sometimes I see things in a player that I just naturally don't like, but I try to give every single player that I talk about a fair chance and they're just due with regards to whatever we're talking about. Whether it's Michael Jordan, people say, I don't like Jordan, I still have him as the GOAT. People say, I don't like Akeem Olajuwon, I still say he's arguably one of the best defensive players of all time and he belongs in everybody's top 15 all time. I can still say that even though I have a certain disdain for some of the things that these players did individually or what they did within the ranks of a team. So again, you guys, let me know your thoughts on that conversation, man. I mean, not January, but July the 8th is the date. We've set a date for the FYF Sports Players' Choice Debate. It's gonna be happening. Again, I don't wanna necessarily call it a debate because it's not gonna be set up in a debate style or platform or in a manner. It's more so just gonna be like a question, answer, trivia type of thing and whoever gives the best answer moves on to the next round, however you wanna say it. But I have confidence that the cast of debaters that I've assembled from FYF Sports, irregardless of the format, the platform, I think these guys can go out. I think they can go be non-biased. I believe they can answer questions on the fly, whether the questions stem from players' choice past conversations or organically from the chat. I don't know how they're gonna be derived, but I believe our guys have been well-tested, man. They actually go out and debate. I've seen our guys, a lot of our guys, when you tell them about True to King or even Sturdy, I've seen them take losses in particular debates and still bounce back, hold their head high. And sometimes they have to revamp and change up their talking points to just get better. I've done it, they've done it. And I think us being more seasoned in these debates, real debates, not just trivia-style questions, I think that's what's gonna ultimately give us the victory. But you know what? You guys are gonna have to be the judge of that. So again, the specific time hasn't been set. As time progresses, as we get closer to that particular date, I'm gonna be dropping more information on when that's gonna happen at specific times. But the one thing I know for certain is it will be on January 8th. We do have a cast of debaters from FYF Sports that I feel will get the job done. But you guys, let me know your thoughts on this video. Let me know your thoughts on SB's comments over on Player's Choice. Let me know all of that in the comments of this video. But you guys, it's FYF Sports, man. It's been another great podcast episode. We will be back with more sports and news. Until then, man, it's FYF Sports. 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