Welcome on to our first overall view of the landscape here of this 2019-20 NBA season.

We're going to do our awards a little bit early for you, but we thought we'd give you a big episode

leading into the Thanksgiving holiday. So the way we do this basically is we take a fake award

ballot because neither Danny or I actually have real NBA award ballots and we also have a few

categories that we invented as well that we do by the end. So we start with the granddaddy of

them all. The MVP five people on the ballot please Mr. Leroux. Which way do you want to do this?

Do you want to go five to one or one to five? Let's start with one. I think that's where the most

intrigue lies right now. I agree with you and for me the conversation really at the top was

focused around four people and then drawing lines of separation became a little bit hard and

I ended up surprising myself and using something that I've harped on before and I'm going to put my

money where my mouth is temporarily and that is how much you play really does matter here. And so for

me those four people are Yannis who I think has been the best on a permanent basis. Harden, Luca

Donchich and Lebron. And what and so I would say Yannis has been the best on a permanent basis

largely because even though he's a step down from those guys offensively he's by far the best of

those guys defensively even though Lebron has been better this year. What's the basis for saying he's

been the best on a permanent basis? So he's been the most important offensive player on the team.

They've been he's been an effective scorer but also I mean he's in the he's to me he's not my

defense player of the year but he's in that conversation. So if you are going to say his offensive

impact is a little bit behind those guys there are all centerpieces of successful offenses and more

dominant on that end than Yannis's other than maybe as an individual score but then when you factor

in that margin to me is smaller even if offense is more important than defense then the

golf that still exists between him and those guys offensively where with Luca and Harden we're

...