I think that also Afflalo from Denver and Gordon from New Orleans (if healthy) should be ranked higher than Martin.
Also Frye is not anymore playing for Suns. I think that better of Morris twins will get to start this season but it doesn't change power forward rankings since he is not going to be better than Thad.
My rankings:
Rubio - 8th
Martin - 10th
Wiggins - 9th
Young - 6th
Pekovic - 5th
"Also Frye is not anymore playing for Suns. I think that better of Morris twins will get to start this season but it doesn't change power forward rankings since he is not going to be better than Thad."
Yep. That's my fault. Went off the top of my head and forgot he left. Oops.
Mikkeman wrote:I think that also Afflalo from Denver and Gordon from New Orleans (if healthy) should be ranked higher than Martin.
Also Frye is not anymore playing for Suns. I think that better of Morris twins will get to start this season but it doesn't change power forward rankings since he is not going to be better than Thad.
Morris was better than Young last season. Was it a fluke, or is he on an upward trajectory with more room for growth?
Brandon BassHole wrote:Rather have Kobe than Martin 99 out of 100 times even if he is older
Yea your right. I think Cam has Young way too high too. I'd take Faried and Randolph over him for sure. Also ironic that Pek is ranked the highest, yet everybody always wants to trade him.
I don't get all the love that Faried gets in this board. He is basically same size than Young and the only thing where he is better than Young is rebounding. Young is basically better in everything else.
They are both about same level finishers at rim (number of attempts and FG%) but Faried does not have any range in his shot that would make him terrible fit to play for example next to Pek. Young is not good three point shooter either but at least he has some offense game further than 5 feet from basket. Faried also turns the ball over much more frequently than Young and cannot basically pass the ball at all. Young had twice as many assists last year than Faried.
Young is also much better on defense than Faried. Faried hustles a lot but is often out of position and is much worse guarding jump shots compared to Young. Young really knows how to limit the amount of shots taken inside against him. If you look his positional stats from 82games.com, you see that before last year he had won his match up against opponents power forwards three years in row. On average opponents power forwards have been able to get only about 35% of their shots close to basket. Last year was an exception but since that Philly team was so terrible, I think no one could have been looking good on defense at that team.
Wiggins 114
Martin 115
Dieng 133
Brewer 143
Mo Williams 198
Budinger 199
Bennett 209
Barea 239
Lavine 306
Shabazzz 321
Turiaf 337
Robinson 361
Hummel 432
Rubio, Young and Pekovic have not yet been ranked, so they will be in top 80. Since there is 30 teams in NBA, it means that there is 150 starters and about 100 rotation bench players totally.
I would interpret rankings following way:
1-5 superstar
6-25 all star
26-50 bona fide starter or great sixth man
51-80 above average starter or good sixth man
81-120 mediocre starter or great bench player
121-170 borderline starter or good rotational bench player
171-220 bad starter or average rotational bench player
221-300 borderline rotational bench player
301-400 end of the bench
400-500 should not play in this league
So based on ESPN rankings, Wolves will have three above average starters in Rubio, Young and Pek and two average starters in Wiggins and Martin. Also they would have two good bench players in Brewer and Dieng and couple of average ones in Mo, Bud and Bennett. So based on ESPN rankings Wolves have quite nice depth but not any real stars in their team. (I assume all three Ricky, Thad and Pek will be ranked around 51 to 80.)
Personally I think that Wiggins and Dieng are ranked too low and Martin has to be lowest ranked 19 point scorer from last year. Martin's ranking is still OK for me because he is so one dimensional player. Bud seems to be ranked too high unless he returns totally his pre injury form.
One interesting tidbit is that Robinson was ranked higher than many this and last years first round picks.
Just for fun some more infomation about ESPN rankings.
Rest of the MInnesota starters were also already ranked in ESPN player rankings.
Pek: 66
Rubio: 73
Young: 77
With Wiggins and Martin ranked to 114 and 115 it seems that Wolves projected starting five has quite high ranking for the lowest ranked starter but quite low ranking for highest ranked.
It seems that many quite respectable teams have at least one starter that was ranked clearly lower than any of the Wolves starters:
And only 6 teams have their full starting five ranked higher than Wolves: Golden State (Bogut: 74), Washington (Pierce: 83), Portland (Lopez: 92), San Antonio (Splitter: 96), Cleveland (Waiters 101), New Orleans (Gordon 110).
As a side not it seems that most of the bad teams have at least couple of starters ranked higher than any Wolves starter. Utah (Hayward: 47), Detroit (Monroe: 54 & Drummond top45), Boston (Rondo: top45), Denver (Lawson: top45 & Faried top45), New York (Anthony: top45), Sacramento (Gay: 51 & Cousins top45), Lakers (Bryant: top45), Brooklyn (Lopez: 49 & Willians: 55 & Johnson: 59), New Orleans (Davis: top45), Phoenix (Dragic top45 & Bledsoe top45), Atlanta (Millsap: top45 & Horford: top45 & Teague 64) Charlotte (Jefferson: top45 & Stephenson: 50 & Walker 61
Only three teams have lower rated top player and all those teams play in east: Milwaukee (Antetokounmpo: 88), Orlando (Oladipo: 81), Philly (Carter-Williams: 79).
