Rank these players all-time from 1 to 4

[kobeunderbite]

[ElJorge]

Wade first… you can move Harden and Westbrook back and forth between 2-3 and I wouldn’t care who ends up where. CP3 is 4th.

[PhutureDynasty]

Wade

Paul

Harden
Westbrook

Spaces are tiers. You could switch Harden and Westbrook and I'd be fine with that. I feel like they're similar; MVP players who did not really play playoff-winning basketball.

[thedangerouskitchen]

Wade is obviously #1... CP3 is my #2 because he played/s elite-level Defense, unlike Westbrook and Harden, who don't even play that end of the court (let alone on an elite level).

#3 and #4 you can flip a coin between Westbrook and Harden.

[ElJorge]

I don’t understand the CP3 love. Zero Finals appearances, no MVPs… over two guys with an MVP each and a Finals appearance.

[Titan18]

I don’t understand the CP3 love. Zero Finals appearances, no MVPs… over two guys with an MVP each and a Finals appearance.

Technically he did make the finals finally after like 17 years but I agree

Personally id say Wade, Harden, Westbrick, CPbitch

[ElJorge]

I don’t understand the CP3 love. Zero Finals appearances, no MVPs… over two guys with an MVP each and a Finals appearance.

Technically he did make the finals finally after like 17 years but I agree

Personally id say Wade, Harden, Westbrick, CPbitch

Ohhh I forgot about that lol… but yea I still have him 4th

[elmerjfudd]

Wade
Paul
Harden



Westbrook

[Bush4Ever.]

Wade and Paul clustered fairly close together (Wade first)

moderate gap

Harden

meaningful gap

Westbrook

Edit: In the new updated backpick rankings, Wade is 25, Paul is 17, Harden is 30, and Westbrook is outside the top 40. I think Chris Paul is one of the few players where I have a meaningful ranking disagreement with backpicks, and one of the few players that I think gets an unnatural bump as a function of longevity. Unlike Ben Taylor, I think there is something meaningful carried in being *the* guy in the league (or otherwise hitting that status for a short period of time leading to a ring like a Wade or Kawhi, etc...), and Paul was never really that. Wade wasn't the best player in the league at any point, but in this case I think playoff success should carry the day.

Or put another way, Wade was on the happy side of squeezing career value out of longevity/volume, whereas Paul was solidly on the unhappy side. Put it this way, Wade hit .300 in his career, but squeezed out 110 RBIs a season from those hits. Paul hit .310 in his career, but only pulled 95 RBIs a season out of those hits.

Harden seems a little too close to Wade too. Harden is an absolute statistical monster, but he is definitely in the "didn't turn over into greatness in the playoffs" camp.

Without looking at the nuts-and-bolts, in my head before looking I was thinking Wade 25ish, Paul 28-30ish, Harden at the very back end of the top 40, and Westbrook entirely off the board, maybe towards the back end of a top 50 list (although I would never want him on most teams if I was a GM).

Edit: RealGM has Paul 20, Wade 27, Harden 30, and Westbrook 46. Most standing members on RealGM are of a mindset similar to Ben Taylor, so it isn't that surprising.

[Shill Jackson]

I’ll never understand the CP3 fangirling.
Is he very good? Yes……..but……
He’s 4th for me. Wade is first. I guess Westbrick over Harden because he puts forth more effort.

[ElJorge]

I’ll never understand the CP3 fangirling.
Is he very good? Yes……..but……
He’s 4th for me. Wade is first. I guess Westbrick over Harden because he puts forth more effort.

He’s definitely better than Harden and Westbrook in the sense of “makes his teammates better”, and I’m sure the geeky stats favor him. But there really is something to be said for plain old bad luck. And CP3 seems to have it in spades.

[Bush4Ever.]

Historically, I've always viewed Paul as basically Stockton+

Very good longevity
Tons of assists per-game and career
Comparatively few turnovers, partly as a function of overtly conservative playmaking.
Efficient shooting
Very good defense, led by steals, but sometimes vulnerable to quicker PGs
Relative drop/failure in playoffs

The biggest differences are related to scoring pop/peak value (Paul wins), and healthy/dependability (Stockton wins).

Paul nearly averaged 20/10 for a 15 (!) year period from 2008 through 2022 (18.3/9.7, with two steals a game, efficient shooting, and minimal turnovers). That's absolutely amazing. A 13 year gap between his first top 5 MVP vote season and his last (by comparison, Westbrook's gap was four years).

Was he a regular season hero? Yeah, to a fair extent. That dings him against guys who were great in the regular season and playoffs, but not against guys who had basically no playoff success themselves in a leading or main sidekick role (like Harden, Stockton, Westbrook, etc...).

[Alex_Murphy]

Wade lol


Cp3
Westbrick
Wade
Hardone

[wailuaFC]

Cp3
Wade

Harden


Westbrook

[Robceltsfan]

Cp3
Wade

Harden


Westbrook

I tend to agree with this.

Give CP3 an almost prime Shaq, or prime Lebron, and he's going to have hardware in his trophy case. I might not lower Westbrook so much, though. At least he played defense, too.

[PhutureDynasty]

In terms of skill you could argue CP3 is better than Wade. That's totally reasonable to me. He also played with worse teammates than Wade, but it's not like Paul played on bad teams in his post-Hornets days. Those Clippers teams were good. The Rockets team was good and was within a few misses of beating the 2018 Warriors and maybe beating Cleveland in the Finals. The Phoenix team was good and was in a close Finals series with the Bucks.

Ultimately, he didn't get the job done. That has to count for something.

His skill is why I have him ahead of other ringless stars like Harden and Westbrook but the playoff success is why I have him behind Wade by a hair.

Rings don't mean everything but I think CP3 has had enough talented teams and talented teammates to have at least one ring. He has none.

For that reason, I have Wade as a greater player.

[_Vcsgrizzfan_]

I am also in the camp that CP3 probably deserves to be ahead of Wade, or at least on par. Yes, he's had some terrible choke moments, but he's also carried a lot of teams very meaningfully.

If Wade doesn't win that ring in 2006, he's seen completely differently, despite the rings with LeBron. And to me, if there is ever an "asterisk" year since I've been watching the NBA, that is it. It was the year the league went crazy with the enforcement of handcheck rules. You could barely breathe on a perimeter player, and fouls were called. Some idiots still think that is the way the game is called today, but that is nonsense. 2006 was the height of that and the finals had some of the worst officiating I've ever witnessed on a relative basis. The parade to the line Wade received in some of the wins was just ridiculous. It is not his fault, but it does taint my view of him somewhat on a historical basis.