Was surprised to see Robin go up 10 spots. Did he really improve over his previous season? I thought he was exposed in the playoffs. He certainly has value. But maybe now people are just aware of who he is after signing in NY. It'll be interesting if Wes is also higher than last year. He tore a freaking achillies.
Wes is ranked 108, down 25 spots from his ranking of 83 last year, 108. Wesley Matthews Dallas Mavericks | SG @WessyWes23 Score: 40.4 Last year's rank: 83 2015-16 projected RPM: 0.43 Insider's scouting report BNM
Behind the scenes footage of ESPN coming up with their player rankings. At 3 seconds in you can see they have to think really hard to remember who plays center for the Blazers.
Link to team-by-team rankings. They have ranked the top 80 so far and Lillard is the only Blazer that hasn't been ranked. PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS X. Damian Lillard 128. Mason Plumlee 140. Ed Davis 144. C.J. McCollum 153. Al-Farouq Aminu 159. Meyers Leonard 176. Gerald Henderson 194. Noah Vonleh 269. Maurice Harkless 280. Chris Kaman 326. Allen Crabbe 365. Phil Pressey 393. Pat Connaughton BNM
I am confused by this. SO all the Blazers are ranked except Dame. They have only ranked the top 80, so they are saying that all of our players are in the top 80 EXCEPT Dame? After opening the link I am just further confused. If they only ranked the top 80, then how come so many have numbers higher than that? Also, it seems that it is the stars on ever team that are not being ranked, like LBJ, Rose, Dame, ETC. Why is this? Doesn't matter anyhow because we have the top 12 on our roster right now... right?
The opposite. #1 is the best, #450 or whatever is the worst. So all of our players EXCEPT Dame are worse than Top 80. They haven't ranked Dame yet because they're still counting down to #1. We don't know where he's ranked yet.
Sorry, poor wording on my part. That should have read: they have only ranked the players from 80-400. They start disclosing the rankings at the 400th best player in the league and work their way up to #1 - kind of like the Miss America Pageant, but without the bikinis (I know, I know, it's a "scholarship" competition). Lillard is obviously in the top 80, as he is yet to be ranked, and all the other players on our roster are 128 or below. BNM
FiveThirtyEight uses their "Carmelo" system to rate players... I guess we have a bunch of "Rotational Players", "Defensive specialists", an "All-Star" in Dame....And then there are Frazier and Henderson......... http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/
It's interesting that they rank Noah Vonleh as a defensive specialist, but then list two of his top 4 most comparable players as Spencer Hawes and Enes Kanter - two guys that are definitely not known for their defensive prowess. BNM
I think we found our second all star!!! Under the most comparable players section for Mason Plumlee: 10 Jamaal Magloire Year: 2004 Similarity: 42 BNM
I would say that reputation around the league wise - Plumlee is probably the second closest all-star player we have.
#150 would be starting quality. Aminu and Leonard are close to that. I'm pretty sure the players wouldn't be ranked like this after the season.
Seems in line with fivethirtyeight's CARMELO rankings that list Aminu as a key role player and Meyers Leonard as a rotation player. BNM
Yes, since 120 / 30 teams = 4, the average team has 4 players in the top 120. Since I think we'll be average in 2016-17, I expect us to increase from just Lillard to 4 players in the top 120.
