SI has Durant at #2, Curry at #3, Green at #10 in the league, overall. Definitely alpha's.
Klay Thompson is ranked #20 in the league, overall. I'd say he's an alpha because of his defense and his ability to take a game over with his shooting.
" Should the Warriors need him to shoot, Thompson (22.3 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 2.1 APG) is ever willing to let loose. If the offense is finding fertile ground elsewhere (or even if his own shot has deserted him), Thompson will defend and curl just as hard, content to have indirectly done his part. Thompson’s game scales up and down effortlessly—from minute to minute and from game to game—so that his team can always draw exactly what it needs from him.
The rarity of that separates Thompson from most every other player in his class. No team should make Thompson its primary scoring option because he doesn’t have the ball skills to support that responsibility. Virtually any other role is fair game. Golden State won the title with Thompson as its second-leading scorer in 2015 and as a hot-and-cold streak shooter in 2017. He makes himself instrumental, regardless, because Thompson demands to be guarded even while at a standstill. His shooting can blow a game open without the slightest warning.
Those incendiary highs are a remarkable thing. It is not a stretch to say that Thompson’s hot hand laid out a return path to the 2016 Finals through scorched earth. It’s also not wrong to credit him, in some way, for Stephen Curry finding the perfect role. It’s because of Thompson’s ability to guard across three positions that Curry never really had to sweat his matchup. The toughest defensive assignments would always be accounted for. It’s also in part because of Thompson’s gravity that opposing defenses faced an impossible dilemma. Curry would have found his own way, but—as with the Warriors as a whole—it was Thompson who exaggerated his best attributes and mitigated his worst."
Klay Thompson is ranked #20 in the league, overall. I'd say he's an alpha because of his defense and his ability to take a game over with his shooting.
" Should the Warriors need him to shoot, Thompson (22.3 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 2.1 APG) is ever willing to let loose. If the offense is finding fertile ground elsewhere (or even if his own shot has deserted him), Thompson will defend and curl just as hard, content to have indirectly done his part. Thompson’s game scales up and down effortlessly—from minute to minute and from game to game—so that his team can always draw exactly what it needs from him.
The rarity of that separates Thompson from most every other player in his class. No team should make Thompson its primary scoring option because he doesn’t have the ball skills to support that responsibility. Virtually any other role is fair game. Golden State won the title with Thompson as its second-leading scorer in 2015 and as a hot-and-cold streak shooter in 2017. He makes himself instrumental, regardless, because Thompson demands to be guarded even while at a standstill. His shooting can blow a game open without the slightest warning.
Those incendiary highs are a remarkable thing. It is not a stretch to say that Thompson’s hot hand laid out a return path to the 2016 Finals through scorched earth. It’s also not wrong to credit him, in some way, for Stephen Curry finding the perfect role. It’s because of Thompson’s ability to guard across three positions that Curry never really had to sweat his matchup. The toughest defensive assignments would always be accounted for. It’s also in part because of Thompson’s gravity that opposing defenses faced an impossible dilemma. Curry would have found his own way, but—as with the Warriors as a whole—it was Thompson who exaggerated his best attributes and mitigated his worst."
