NBA Reliability Tiers: Tyrese Maxey, Lauri Markkanen and the Kawhi Leonard irony.
All of the players outside of the top 30 have only been an All-Star once in the last three seasons. But the intersection of value and availability gets interesting here in Tier 4.
This second group of players combines the most available of the stars who are in danger of falling out of the Player Participation Policy criteria for “star players” with the stars who have been more valuable in recent years but not nearly as available. It is doubtful that a player in this group can be counted on to be your best player for a contender in the upcoming season.
As a reminder, the Player Participation Policy was one of the primary inspirations for the Reliability Tiers.
Shortly after the NBA reintroduced its new star-based policy, major social media accounts chose to use LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard as the face of the new policy. We mean, literally the face — he was put on splash graphics for missing games.
Unsurprisingly, Leonard did not appreciate it. He has a reputation for being taciturn, but the reality doesn’t match the narrative. When something is on his mind, Leonard has plenty to say. And before teams left for training camp last year, Leonard pushed back on the idea that the Player Participation Policy was going to make him play more often or, most importantly, keep him healthy.
“I just don’t know the policy — what is the policy?” Leonard said at 2023 media day. “I’m not a guy that’s sitting down because I’m doing a load management… When I was with the Raptors, it was different; I was coming from an injury. You have to know the details of a doctor. If the league is seeing or trying to mock what I did with the Raptors, then they should stop, because I was injured during that whole year.”
Leonard said all of this while in the midst of a stretch where he hadn’t even been an All-Star because an injury took him off the floor. The Player Participation Policy going back to three seasons specifically seemed to target him because if it hadn’t, Leonard would not be considered a star as a result. Leonard was an All-Star and All-NBA selection in 2021 before injuring his knee in the playoffs, and he spent a season recovering from that surgery.
