With training camps still a few weeks away and the FIBA World Cup completed, this is the deadest time of the basketball year. What better time than now to start arguments about who’s better and who’s best by creating some NBA Player Rankings? Rankings in a vacuum are highly problematic simply because so much of a player’s value is tied up in context: how well does he mesh with his teammates? What’s his contract situation? Is he being asked to do too much or held back by others taking too large a role?
Still, tis the season, and creating a rough order of players isn’t the worst way to start to crystallize thoughts about the league in general and how specific teams might perform for the coming season. With that in mind, here’s one man’s opinions about the 25 best players for the coming year. This isn’t intended to be a prediction of All-Star worthiness or MVP voting as those things tend to overrate offense while being more beholden to position requirements than a straight ranking. There are nine point guards in my top 25, with another few just missing the cut.
Speaking of missing the cut, you’ll notice there’s a whole category of players not listed, and that’s guys with serious lingering injury concerns. Paul George will likely miss most of the season, so that’s an easy omission, but guys like Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant, Brook Lopez, Al Horford and Rajon Rondo all working their way back to some degree from devastating injuries aren’t on the list either. At this point, there’s simply no way of knowing how these guys will perform versus NBA competition. Rose’s World Cup was less than stellar, but was that simply two years of rust or an actual loss in a degree of explosive ability?
Also absent for the most part are role players. No matter how deadly a shooter a Kyle Korver or dominant a rim protector a Roy Hibbert can be, those are guys you “finish” a team with. While many a role player can have as much if not a more positive impact than the team’s star, that impact would swiftly become negative if these players were asked to step up to the number 1 or 2 slot for a team. It’s not so much these players don’t make this list, t’s that they belong on a list of their own.
In terms of “healthy scratches” to borrow a March Madness term, the first five out were Kyrie Irving, Paul Millsap, Al Jefferson, Joe Johnson and Kahwi Leonard, which is a pretty darn solid starting 5 in its own right. If someone wanted to argue any of them should make the list anywhere from about 18 on down, that’s valid and aside from some rough tiers many players are close enough, you could rank them any number of ways and be in the ballpark.
So without further ado…