Thinking Basketball podcast. My name is Ben.

Welcome back to episode eight of our 21st century peaks.

Today we have to just get right into it.

We are going to talk about some of the best mid-range players of the century and what that means.

And they're both two-way players.

And there's a lot of stuff to get to.

But our segue into today's conversation is actually picking up where we last left off.

And Cody, you might not remember. But at the end of the last episode, I tried to avoid ranking Dirk Davitsky and Steve Nash. Does that sound familiar? Yeah. That was the whole thing. I think I asked you like three or four times to be like, come on. Let's see what's going to happen. And I don't remember exactly how it turned out, Ben. Yes, yes.

Well, we can get to that in a little bit and maybe even at the end of today's show because

the reason, the reason that I did not want to go there really is because the first

player I want to discuss today bleeds into this sort of trying to sort out where to put these players.

And that is one CP3, Christopher Paul, this, yes, the state farm salesman himself.

And what's interesting about Chris Paul is he's one of these players where you look at him and you go,

okay, well, what year is his peak? Does he have two separate peaks? He almost won MVP in 2008.

Then he has this injury that kind of moves him briefly to the backburner of the basketball consciousness

for like a year or two in 2010 and 2011. You could argue it started in 2009 when they were

just destroyed. They were banished to the phantom zone in the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets. I think they lost one game by like 54 points or something.

That was the end of that.

And all of a sudden in 2011 in the playoffs, Chris Paul is playing the Lakers and he starts

doing Chris Paul things again.

And people are like, oh my God, Chris Paul's really good.

And then he's back. And then he is traded to the Lakers. And then, my God, Chris Paul's really good, and then he's back.

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