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Trae is by far the best on offense (even with his shooting woes this season) but by far the worst on defense. He's bad enough on defense to make the top spot a discussion, because if you're not factoring that in he's running away with things.

I feel like Darius give you the best combination of quality on both sides of the ball - he's the guy who takes nothing off the table. So the question is, how much do you value that vs putting up massive counting stats? I value that a lot, so he grabs the top spot.

Trae comes in second because of his defensive liabilities counterbalance his incredible offense. I maintain a deep skepticism that someone with Trae's playstyle can win a title, as well.

Jalen third. LaMelo last, because, like Trae, what he does well he does fantastically but he also has a lot of holes in his game. However, he's just not in the same class offensively: he's never had a season above league average in efficiency, and, if you want to blame his teammates for that, well, it's not like all these other guys have consistently had great teammates, either.

Worth pointing out that LaMelo is by far the youngest of these guys so you'd pretty much expect him to be last. There's plenty of reason to think he'll rank higher among these four if you re-do this evaluation in three years.