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 at No. 9. It speaks to how highly he was projected to go just five years ago — when we made this list he was coming off his first All-Star season and having won Rookie of the Year the season before. The 2019-20 season after this list came out was Simmons’ best one, making an All-NBA team, First Team All-Defense and he was an All-Star. When things fell apart for Simmons, they fell fast, by June of 2021 he was passing up a dunk in the playoffs and we all know what followed. We did not see that coming.
• The top four are pretty good, and while second is a little high for Anthony Davis he belongs in the top 10.
• Zion Williamson and Kawhi Leonard at 5/6 might have been spot on if both had stayed — or could stay — healthy. Alas, they did not.
• Towns, Mitchell and Young certainly are not top 10 players but those don’t feel like wild misses.
Projected rest of top 25:
11. Joel Embiid
12. Jayson Tatum
13. Devin Booker
14. De’Aaron Fox
15. Jamal Murray
16. Jaren Jackson Jr.
17. Bradley Beal
18. James Harden
19. Kristaps Porzingis
20. Pascal Siakam
21. Deandre Ayton
22. Ja Morant
23. Kyrie Irving
24. John Collins
25. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
• That Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was 25th shows how much he exceeded expectations — everyone knew he’d be good (Doc Rivers will be happy to tell you about it), but not MVP-level good. Credit to him for the work put in and the growth.
• Also exceeding expectations was Joel Embiid, who would be top five (probably top 3) if we were ranking the best players today — he stayed essentially healthy the past couple of seasons and has been a dominant force.
• Jayson Tatum also exceeded expectations; just don’t tell Steve Kerr that.
• One of the hardest parts of this was trying to project out high school and college players. For example, we didn’t have Anthony Edwards on the list — he was getting ready to start his one season at Georgia and wasn’t on our radar, at least not to become the player he has grown into. Victor Wembanyama was more like a whisper, a rumor of a big kid in France with some skills, we didn’t have any idea at the time what he would become.
The only high schooler to make the top 50, the one we expected to break out? Emoni Bates.
• The expectation was that Harden and Beal would fall off some with age, but that decline with Beal may be steeper than we expected. It’s going to be interesting to see how he bounces back and fits in with Durant and Booker this season in Phoenix.
• We were higher on John Collins than we should have been.
• Jaren Jackson Jr. is higher on our list than he would be on a ranking of the best players in the game, but he did win Defensive Player of the Year just a couple of years ago. He’s poised to have a big bounce-back season, along with Ja Morant — who should be higher on this list if healthy.
