NBA's Third Best Player?

Recently, ESPN released an article on the subject of the third best player in the NBA.  The article stated that LeBron James is the best, Kevin Durant is the second, and Chris Paul is third.  To come to this conclusion, 30 NBA executives were polled.  The players that were voted for were Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose, Tony Parker, Anthony Davis, Blake Griffin, Joakim Noah, Kevin Love and Paul George.  After George was removed because of an injury, there were nine players left.  To eliminate certain players, a few different stats were used.  One was Real Plus-Minus, or RPM.  RPM measures a player's impact on team performance, with other things taken into account. Some say that this stat is a bit unreliable, as certain player's numbers do not show their real value to a team.  Anyway, two other stats that were used were Win Shares per 48 Minutes, or WS/48, and Player Efficiency Rating, or PER.  Using PER and WS/48, Tony Parker, Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook were eliminated from the guard bracket, and Griffin and Noah from the big man bracket. This left Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, Anthony Davis and Kevin Love. They then turned to RPM to eliminate Curry and Davis.  Then, Love met Paul in the finals.  In the finals, Paul topped Love in Career Net Rating.  So Paul is obviously the winner, right?  Not so fast.  The executives completely omitted Dirk Nowitzki from the poll.  If you compare Dirk's RPM to Love's, the answer is surprising: Dirk tops Love's 5.06 with a 6.35 of his own.  Also Dirk's .199 WS/48 is in the top 10, and beats two vote-getting "bigs".  Plus, if you factor in True Shooting Percentage, which gives an increased value to three pointers and incorporates free throws, Dirk makes an even stronger case.  Last season, CP3 ranked #65 in the league in True Shooting, and so far this year he is #126.  Dirk, however, ranked number #26 last year and #6 this year.  Dirk's career regular season Points Per Game, Rebounds Per Game and Blocks Per Game all beat Paul's numbers.  Paul leads in Steals Per Game and Assists Per Game.  Field Goal, Free Throw and 3 Point Percentages in the regular season all go to Dirk. Huh?  This is starting to look like a close race for the #3 spot.  Chris Paul is a great player, as is Kevin Love.  In fact, all of the players who received votes are worthy of being called great.  But, that doesn't mean that others can't also be contenders.  So who is the third best player in the NBA?  You tell me.