Today, the final player came out on the website, as the best player in the world. And from the word go, there was no doubt, that this guy would be LeBron James.

But the predictability of the top player choice, doesn’t necessarily mean the rankings were boring. They had their surprises, for better and for worse creating a lot of controversy, especially around Kobe Bryant who (quite fairly in my opinion) was ranked as the 7th best player in the league.

These last few days, I’ve been inserting all the grades and ranks into a spreadsheet, creating average team grades(which I can give you access to if you hit me up on twitter or via e-mail) to find some things about the implications of the project for the teams.

I ended up with a bunch of data that I really enjoyed analyzing. Mind you, this ranking doesn’t rank team quality, but overall depth. That said, some of the top (and bottom) teams might be surprising, but, if you’ll read my analysis, you will see how within the world created by NBA Rank, it all makes sense.

See you after the jump!

(more…)

Nash was rated 14th over players like Manu Ginobili, Rajon Rondo and Russell Westbrook in the rankings, making him the 4th point guard in the rankings behind Chris Paul, Derrick Rose and Deron Williams, a rating that I’ve predicted in the previous Rogue DDL.

This completes the Suns team in the NBA Rankings, with two more players from the Valley in the Top 100 (Grant Hill was rated 67th while Marcin Gortat was 84th).

The master list for the entire team can be found on ESPN’s website via this link.

The average grade for the Suns was 4.45/10 while the average position for the Suns players was 212, with the average being lowered by the Bottom 3 players in the Suns rankings: Gani Lawal, Garret Siler and Zabian Dowdell. More analysis on this will be provided once all the rankings are complete and teams can be compared in full.

In the coming days, Sun-n-Gun will provide you a large debate article analyzing the results, featuring your favourite former editor, Andrew Lynch. Also, I will be tackling the question of tanking vs fighting in my next solo blog post, so make sure you stay tuned and follow @snghoops on twitter.