Colin Cowherd's Latest Top 5 NBA Players Age 25 Or Under List Is Great Minus The Fact That Over Half Of Them Are Not 25 Years Old Or Younger
Now this is incredibly hard-hitting journalism that you can't find anywhere else. We see these types of lists all the time throughout the year, it's mostly subjective and is a great way for these talking heads/NBA Twitter accounts to get some engagement. Normally when discussing a Top 5 list under a certain age, the big thing is that you are using players that actually fit those parameters. That's sort of the whole point, or at least I thought. Maybe I'm the dumb one here (entirely possible) to think that when you're talking about players who are 25 and under that the list would actually include players who are 25 years old or younger. Maybe that's why I'm sitting here blogging and Colin Cowherd is making millions of dollars. Maybe the joke is on me?
Because I'll tell you, 3 of the players listed here are very much not 25 years old or younger. It's not even a situation where they just had a birthday like last week so they would be disqualified but maybe Colin didn't realize it. A quick Google search will inform you that
Giannis - 27 years old
Joel Embiid - 28 years old
Nikola Jokic - 27 years old
I'll concede that he nailed the Tatum/Luka selections even if I happen to disagree with how they are ordered, at least he chose two people who were actually 25 or younger. I mean Giannis/Jokic/Embiid aren't even close! They haven't been 25 or younger for at least 2 seasons. At first, I thought maybe he misspoke and just meant the top 5 players in the entire NBA or something. But the more I re-listened it was very clear that he was talking about guys being 25 or under since he then said "Embiid had 7 more years of his prime". While that may be true, I don't think Colin was suggesting Embiid would be this current level of dominant until his age 35 season. He clearly thought he would be 31-32.
I'm also not ruling out that we are all being trolled on purpose. Colin is no dummy. He knows a clip like this will go viral. It's not like he gives a shit if he's wrong or says outrageous things so what's it to him? At least I hope that's the plan here but maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
Now, if he wanted to give an actual list of top 5 guys 25 or younger, he could have gone
1. Jayson Tatum
2. Luka Doncic
3. Devin Booker
4. Ja Morant
5. Trae Young
You may not agree, but at least we're working with some guys that are actually 25 or under. If you want to find a way to work in SGA or LaMelo or Bam or Ayton or Zion fine, make your case. At least we can be open to that dialog. Where you lose me is trying to convince me that a player who is 28 years old should be included in a list that is talking about players who are 25 and younger. I'm willing to bend the rules however you want, but I have to be firm on that. If age isn't going to matter for this list about age, where's Steph?
Listen, we all make mistakes. But if you can't sit back and get a nice little chuckle over an entire segment being useless because half of the list of 5 players aren't even close to being 25 or younger, I dunno what to tell ya.