HoopsHabit has listed their rankings of all 30 NBA starters for every position. How did the Toronto Raptors fare, and did the rankings get it right?
We, as a sports community, are obsessed with rankings. We have weekly power rankings, we rank the top-100 NBA players, we even rank the starters at every position.
For the most part, this is a very flawed process. The game just doesn’t work that way. A player’s environment and situation impacts so much of their game, it is impossible for us to truly rank players.
Furthermore, a player’s ranking is highly dependent on what you require from them. Julius Randle has far less value in Utah alongside Rudy Gobert than he does in New Orleans paired with Anthony Davis.
So if rankings are inherently flawed, why do we love them so much? Because they are fun.
Pizza is nutritionally flawed, but yet every Sunday you can see me hammering home a slice as I disappointingly watch my under-performing Fantasy Football team.
Not every post we read needs to be breaking down Serge’s inability to pass after beating a close-out or the effectiveness of a particular lineup. Sometimes we can enjoy a cheat-day and bask in the controversy known as power rankings.
HoopsHabit has released rankings for the upcoming 2018-2019 season, so we are projecting a bit. Older players will be discounted some from their previous seasons, as we fruitlessly attempt to project the development of players still early in their career.
Heading into the rankings, I expected most of my disagreements would be on the Raptors behalf. However, my assessment actually has two Raptors slightly overvalued, two Raptors with the correct ranking, and one player underrated by the HoopsHabit staff.
It’s easy to argue for your team’s “lack of respect”, but we try to remain as objective as possible at our site.
So let’s take a look, starting with Kyle Lowry, at each starting Toronto Raptor and were they rank compared to the rest of the league.