SI TOP 100 ACTIVE NBA Players Today by Zach Lowe

[StartOrien]

David west at 31 seemed almost absurdly high to me. He was the one I really disagreed with, and I think Lowe is bending to popular opinion a bit with where Tyson Chandler is ranked.

I just don't see it in him. Even before the injury I don't have him anywhere near 30.

I'd take I-blocks-ya over him 10 times out of 10.

Can't really get behind Bargs at 65 either.

[wdleehi]

Granger at 51 is way to high. 

[nickagneta]

Problems I have with the list so far:

Louis Williams being anywhere near the top 100.

DeAndre Jordan (see Louis Williams).

Nicolas Batum at 81 is based on the recurring thought that he is going to have a breakout year. Yet we keep waiting and waiting.

Andrea Bargnani at 65. Offense must count for a lot, huh?

[action781]

Problems I have with the list so far:

Louis Williams being anywhere near the top 100.

DeAndre Jordan (see Louis Williams).

Nicolas Batum at 81 is based on the recurring thought that he is going to have a breakout year. Yet we keep waiting and waiting.

Andrea Bargnani at 65. Offense must count for a lot, huh?

I think you have to consider them as "players" not simply how they fill their roles on their current teams.  For instance, while Shane Battier would be a better 6th/7th man on a contending team than Lou Williams.... Lou Williams would be a far better player to have as a starter on a team deprived of players who can create offense.  I'd still agree with Battier being a better overall player, but

Regarding Bargnani, well, offense is half the game and the part that players have more control over normally.  And he showed to be a fairly efficient scorer at a decently high volume as a #2 option in 2009-10 (TS% .552)

[nickagneta]

Problems I have with the list so far:

Louis Williams being anywhere near the top 100.

DeAndre Jordan (see Louis Williams).

Nicolas Batum at 81 is based on the recurring thought that he is going to have a breakout year. Yet we keep waiting and waiting.

Andrea Bargnani at 65. Offense must count for a lot, huh?

I think you have to consider them as "players" not simply how they fill their roles on their current teams.  For instance, while Shane Battier would be a better 6th/7th man on a contending team than Lou Williams.... Lou Williams would be a far better player to have as a starter on a team deprived of players who can create offense.  I'd still agree with Battier being a better overall player, but

Regarding Bargnani, well, offense is half the game and the part that players have more control over normally.  And he showed to be a fairly efficient scorer at a decently high volume as a #2 option in 2009-10 (TS% .552)

Regarding Bargnani, if he was a guard...fine. But he isn't. He's huge and doesn't rebound, play defense very well, pass very well, or have any post game.

He's a center with the skills of an okay SG and without the skills of being a center, who gets his shot off because teams are reluctant to send their big men that far out of the paint to cover him. If he was 5 inches shorter he would be playing his career in Europe as a mediocre SG/SF.
65 is way way too high.

[StartOrien]

100% agree, Nick.

[jdz101]

Yeah I vomit whenever I see deandre Jordan on any list.

[Roy H.]

Yeah I vomit whenever I see deandre Jordan on any list.

Because you don't like him, or because Danny should have taken him (or a half-dozen other players) over J.R. Giddens?

[StartOrien]

I'm always surprised to see the overtly negative outlook on DeAndre Jordan, particularly with the strides he took this season

[KCattheStripe]

I'm always surprised to see the overtly negative outlook on DeAndre Jordan, particularly with the strides he took this season

[nickagneta]

I'm always surprised to see the overtly negative outlook on DeAndre Jordan, particularly with the strides he took this season

Well, to be fair, I think a great many rosy outlooks of DeAndre Jordan on this blog are there because he was drafted after JR Giddens, is still in the league and because he had one monster of a game against the Celtics last year.

What I have seen of Jordan in the 15-20 times I have seen him as a pro on League Pass is that of a player with a great instinct to block shots on help defense, a player that gets utterly lost in system defense and on man defense is just not good. He can rebound and dunk but has little offensive game other than put back dunks, alley oop dunks or dunks after getting his position far underneath the basket because his man is much smaller or just got beat to the spot. He might be the worse free throw shooter in the league with no chance of ever developing a shot outside of 5 feet.

I find him to be an extremely limited player. He shouldn't be anywhere near the top 100 players in this league.

[soap07]

FWIW Nick, he also improved every year in the league. Guy like him that is that young with a work ethic, he can certainly develop more of an offensive game.

[nickagneta]

FWIW Nick, he also improved every year in the league. Guy like him that is that young with a work ethic, he can certainly develop more of an offensive game.

I don't see that. I see an increase in minutes. His per36 stats have not changed a bit.

I will say his defense overall has gone from completely and utterly lost to mediocre at the very best. Don't be fooled by the number of blocks. All he did was play more minutes, not play hugely better defense. His blocks per 36, steals per 36 and his defensive rating have remain mostly unchanged. And for three straight years his team has allowed less points when he is not on the floor as compared to when he is on the floor.

I will admit he has gotten better every year. I will also say its more incremental than leaps and bounds.

[Kane3387]

Overall I think this list is actually pretty sound. No list will be perfect and nit picking will always take place, but there are, what? Less then 400 total players in the league? Probably 240-270 rotational players in the league?  This top 100 is like 40% of the players that see consistent minutes so the guys at 80-100 are very subjective because there are a lot of guys out there who likely produce almost as much and see the same amount of minutes.

I agree with a lot of points here. West is too high in my opinion and Chandler is not the second best defender in the NBA. Hopefully he meant to add Center into that sentence and then I could see an argument for that statement whether it's true or not.

Also very interesting debate on Tony Parker and Rondo below. He makes a solid argument. Clearly you want Rondo for the future but for just next year I could see why he might go with Parker. Personally I still want Rondo  

27. RAJON RONDO
PG, Boston Celtics
Age: 25
2010-11 Stats: 10.6 PPG, 47.5 FG%, 23.3 3PT%, 11.2 APG, 4.4 RPG, 2.3 STL

The Rondo/Tony Parker debate raged in my brain for a long, long time before I finally settled on Parker, by the slimmest of margins. But for the next three years? Rondo, in a walk. To win a title next season? That’s a different conversation, and it’s where Parker’s all-around offensive game lifts him to a point where it’s a coin flip.

Rondo is a better defender, and he has the gaudy assist numbers Parker has never compiled. But Rondo doesn’t have a Manu Ginobili-type to split up his team’s assists, and Parker is a much better finisher on offense. In short, you can’t ignore Parker the way teams ignore Rondo. Parker can’t shoot threes; Rondo can’t shoot outside of 15 feet, and he struggles even from there, having shot a totally unacceptable 57 percent from the line last season. That low percentage was one reason Rondo got to the line just 1.9 times per game last season, a hard thing to manage for an aggressive point guard playing 37 minutes per game.

According to Synergy, Rondo as averaged 0.76 points per possession on plays he finished last season with a shot, drawn foul or turnover. That ranked 421st among all players who saw the floor. You’ll notice “assist” isn’t listed there, and you’d be right to point out that this number badly understates Rondo’s impact on Boston’s offense. He is nearly impossible to keep out of the lane, and he throws passes that make you rewind the DVR to see how he angled the ball back to Ray Allen at the top of the arc while falling out of bounds under the hoop.

Boston’s offense would be dead without Rondo. But it is often comatose with him, because of his lack of range. You can tell me he shot 41 percent on long twos last season, and you’d be right. The league average is around 40 percent, but the league isn’t begging average players to shoot from a distance that could barely be called “the outside.” Spacing is a precious thing, and the Celtics have to work extra hard to get it, in part because of Rondo. The Celtics also continue to turn the ball over too often, both in the half court and (perhaps especially damaging) in transition, and Rondo has to bear some responsibility for that.

The fact that the team scores at an average rate despite all of this is a tribute to Rondo’s creativity and the skill of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. But Rondo still ranks third on that totem pole, even if he has made it close with Pierce and KG.

Parker isn’t exactly Dale Ellis from the perimeter, but you at least have to guard him, and Rondo wasn’t even in Parker’s league in terms of fast-break efficiency; Parker is the best little-guy, one-man fast-break in the league. Rondo wasn’t close to Parker in PER (17.11 compared to Parker’s 20.44), either, but that stat will always underrate Rondo’s defense.

And before you start chirping about rebounding, know that Parker and Rondo averaged the same number of defensive rebounds per game — rebounds Parker was more adept at turning into transition scores.

It’s very, very close, and Rondo’s highs are higher and more exhilarating than Parker’s. Rondo is perhaps the best point guard defender in the league, but point guards can only tilt the game with their defense on the right nights; they cannot have the every-game impact of Dwight Howard or Garnett. Right now, Parker’s stability wins.

http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2011/08/10/top-100-nba-players-nos-21-30/#more-10814

Guess that means the Jazz had two top 20 players though huh?  

[StartOrien]

That's a really good breakdown of Rondo.