 What's the word, y'all? It's time. ESPN has dropped their annual top 100 players in the NBA season list. And I've mentioned this plenty of times before. I don't personally enjoy ranking players, but I understand the reason why every publication does it every year. I do find it interesting. It's just not something that I enjoy doing myself. And I've talked about this extensively on the seventh most popular basketball podcast in America, the Kenny Beach and podcast link in the description. I typically don't tackle ranking players like this players number one, two, three, four, so on and so forth. I like to do it in two different ways. The first one would be like a tier ranking. So these players are the same tier of player. One might be slightly over the other one, but it's arguable. And the second one is by ranges. Example, Giannis is one of the two best players in basketball to a lot of people. He might be number one, or he might be number two behind Nicola Okic. His range would be one to two. While a player like Steph Curry's range is gonna be bigger depending on who you ask. Some people believe that Steph Curry is the third best player in the league. Some people might have him all the way down to seventh. I don't know where I would personally put him, but that range feels about right. And then we have players like Trey Young, whose range is gonna be huge because a lot of people really dislike what Trey Young could do on the field. On the field, she's on the court. And some people really value what Trey Young is. So his range might be, I don't know, I don't wanna make up some fictional numbers, but hopefully you understand the process that I usually do it. But ESPN is very cut and drive. This guy's number one, this guy's number two all the way down to 100. Now I've seen some screenshots of this. I haven't dived into the entire 100 list, so a lot of this will be new to me. This guy right here, bro, oh man. But through the tweets and the discourse I've seen on Twitter, a lot of people don't really understand what ESPN and Bleach Report do with their lists. And I'm assuming that I am going to disagree with a lot of the stuff here, but that's okay, it all subjective at the end of the day. The one thing that ESPN and Bleach Report do that is different is they are trying to predict where we believe the players will fall at the end of this season. And the reason I bring that up is because there's been a lot of discourse about number 13 on the list, Anthony Edwards. People saying, oh my God, what has Anthony Edwards done to have him be the 13th best player on the list? But they don't recognize ESPN is not saying he's the 13th best now. They're believing that he's going to hit superstardom. So by the end of the season, they are predicting that he will be widely known as the 13th best player in basketball. That is the bet that they are making. And again, I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but that is their mindset when they create these lists. All right, let's get to the nitty gritty. Number 10 is Anthony Davis. Okay, sure, I can believe that Anthony Davis had the stellar season, the defense was like that. And if he could just stay healthy long-term, he's going to be that type of dude. Number nine, LeBron James. All right, so the Lakers get two of the top 10 players in ball. It is also insane that this is the oldest player in the entire association and he is still widely considered a top 10 player in ball. For the majority of my adult life, he's been number one, number two, or number three, mostly number one. And now he's number nine, and I can't complain because that's still crazy for a dude that's closer to 40 than he is to 35. Is that math, math? Oh no. This is another guy who's like, what has Shay done to be over LeBron or Anthony Davis? And that's not what they're thinking. They're thinking that at the end of the season, maybe it's okay, see taking a huge jump or him being better than he was last season, which is crazy, because he averaged 31 points per game last season. They're expecting him to end up number eight. And that is a 40 spot difference. Shout out to Shay. Do want to get myself one of these because I've been on the Shay train since his very first pre-season game, in our pre-season summer league game. That was me. And I know some of y'all been there since college. I don't watch college. I didn't think he was going to be this good though. I'll be candid in that. I was like, that's a guy that I think is going to help some team win a bunch of basketball games one day. I never thought in a million years that he would be a top 10 player in basketball. So maybe pat me on the back a little bit. For the people that saw the vision early on, you get more praise, I guess. Kevin Arent, seven, Jason Tatum, six. Steph Curry, five. Wow, okay. I did not expect Steph Curry to be, I expected him to be a little bit higher. But again, we're talking ranges. Like I mentioned, Steph Curry being five makes sense, but I personally believe that they were going to put him a little bit higher. So that leaves what? Luca Embiid, Luca Embiid, Yanis, and Yolkitz. Let's see. We have Luca at four. Joel Embiid at three. Okay. This is going to be my first real disagreement, I guess. Again, I was objective. Joel Embiid has not been a better player than Curry. Full stop. He's won the MVP last season, and I respect that. But they're saying that maybe this is the year where he elevates Steph Curry. But it still, not elevate Steph Curry, but elevates past Steph Curry. But it is weird. I mean, we've been asking Joel Embiid to not just do it, the 82 games, but the games after those, and we haven't seen that. Wow. I know Luca didn't make it last season, but a guy like Luca, and of course Steph Curry doing what he does post-season. To see a guy with little to no post-season success when that's what matters at the end of the day, be higher than them, is just surprising, to say the least. Have Yokich two in Yanis one? I can't be mad at it personally. I think that Yokich has taken the crown as best in the league, but Yanis is still that guy, and I can't, again, I can't disagree. Then we get to book at 11, Jimmy at 12. Jumped up a couple different spots. James Stase put at 14, Donovan Mitchell climbs. I was curious to see what Donovan Mitchell would land on his list because he was, I got it that most of us knew was basically the second to third best shooter guard in ball over the last couple of seasons before he got to Cleveland, and Devin Booker was, of course, amazing again. So I think Donovan Mitchell kind of slides into that two full stop, and that's pretty cool. He's number 15. Bam. Yeah, okay. ESPN has given the love to Bam. We talked about a couple days ago how the GMs did not do that, the GMs did not get Bam out of bio love, and here he is at number 16. Don't wanna go through all 100, of course, but I'm gonna just kind of stroll through and talk about the things that I see that's interesting. Jamal Murray being 17th. This 100% is true. Bubble Murray was no fluke. This guy is a bona fide playoff performer, and I will not be surprised if he makes an All-Star appearance strictly based on his postseason success this year. He averaged 20 points per game even in a regular season that's coming off the big injury. I'm assuming that that points per game might hit 23, 24, and if the Denver Nuggets are as good as we know they can become regular season, they could have two All-Stars and Jamal Murray might get that first official spot. He is a guy that has elevated himself in the playoffs. Every single performance is better than the last, it feels like so. I can't be mad at him jumping up this many spots because again the postseason and what is what mattered the most, the championships and the rings are the things that at the end of the day is what we put on this pedestal, and Jamal Murray performing amazingly for four playoff series in a row and him being the second best player on a dominant, dominant playoff run. He deserves this kind of respect for sure. He's right above Paul George, right above Jaylen Brown. Of course, if you had the arguments, these guys are better. I'm not disagreeing, but to see Jamal Murray get the respect is cool. Damata Sabonis and D'Arf Fox are back-to-back at 22 and 23, both of them having huge jumps. D'Arf Fox of course had his first All-Star appearance and Damata Sabonis got back to All-Star appearance so that's great, all-NBA appearance for him. Kawhia 24, I'm assuming they're just talking about the lack of help because not help, health, because when he has suited up, after his little slowest start coming off the injury, he's been phenomenal. It's just like, can we get him to, this is the Kawhi questions, you know. There's Troy Young, he went from 16 to 19, right above Larry Market and Brandon Ingram in Drew Holiday, or right below those dudes and right above Palo Bencaro. Shout out to Palo. He looks in one pre-season game. He looked really, really nice. Of course, the FIBA experience is probably gonna help him grow as a player as well, and it's a year number two, former first overall pick. There's Jaren, our DPOY of the season. I was waiting for him, 34, Kawhi Irvin. Now, Kawhi has been expressive as anybody in the NBA history when it comes to ranking players, even when this dropped, he verbally or went on to social media to say like, nobody cares about this, it's across the association. And I like that mindset. I'm hoping that the actual players are not diving into ESPN Top 100 like, they got me a 62 when I believe I'm top 30. Like, nobody should care other than us fans who don't play the sport. But Kawhi Irvin has been one of those zoos like, man, we don't get no care about me being number 34, but it is low. He's been efficient everywhere he's gone, and he's gonna play an integral part in whatever Dallas ends up doing, obviously. And there's pressure, there's pressure. He's just got his money, Dallas is invested in him and Luca, there's pressure for Kawhi to not just play what Kawhi's game is, but play an elevated version of that because the team fits, but the talent level is a huge discrepancy between Kawhi, who's the second best player on the team, and maybe Grant Williams, who's the third best player on the team, John Moran. And I also saw some discourse about that. He fell from nine to 35. Again, they're talking about this upcoming season where he will be missing 25 games. I don't think it has anything to do with the all four stuff, it's really just about the fact that he's gonna miss 25 games. Because if that stuff didn't happen and he was just playing ball, he undoubtedly is gonna be towards the top of this list. But you miss over a quarter of the season for whatever reason, you just aren't gonna be as valuable as if you played more than that. This just keeps happening. Every year, Zach Levine and Demarda Rosen, at least as they've been together as teammates, have been right in front of or behind each other. 27, 28 last year, 38, 39 this year. Oh, we fell off, y'all. We fell off, everybody knows, okay. Harden at 43, what a fall. What a fall. Julius Randall got higher on the list, but it's, again, this is a guy that made two all-to-be appearances in the last three years. And he's still just in the 40s range. And I'm not saying it's wrong, because if I look at these players above him, actually, it probably is wrong. Yeah, that's probably too low for Julius Randall. Winby, all right, so there's the first rookie. Winby's at 47. I'm noticing that I'm not seeing one particular guy from New Orleans. I've saw Brandon Ingram. I am not, I have not seen Zion. And aren't they just expecting that he won't have a healthy season, I guess? But sheesh, to have him not in the top 50 is just wrong. You feel me? Yeah, I mean, I know the injury stuff, but boy, I just need, yeah, also, he's the poster boy of this section. I just need one, one healthy Zion season. That's all I'm asking for. Because when he is healthy, this range is like, he's a top tennis player when he's healthy. And yes, smaller sample size would be in 30 games, 30% of his games throughout the tiring of his career. But boy, when he's out there, there's a reason why they were a number one, number two seed when it was healthy. He's that impactful of a player on the offensive side. And if he ever starts to like pick up his feet defensively or show the defensive upside that we saw when he was at Duke, the guy can be top player-ish in the league. He just needs to have approval here. I understand. The people that are turned over by Zion right now, I understand it. He's got all the stuff off the court. He's dealt with the lack of care of his health, whatever you want to call it. But boy, the product is the product. Just needed to, just need more of it, that's all. So where does he end up falling? Oh man, I'm afraid. Hopefully he's high 50s, if anything. Henry Gordon, Franz Wagner, Josh Giddy, Wiggs, Dremont, Freddie, there's man, 57. Even last year, 40 was too low. But again, I guess they were right because he was injured the entire season. But boy. All right. Poor Ziggas being 62 was surprising to me. Coming off his best season since his All-Star year in New York, but I'm guessing you're just assuming that, man, he's at the best, the third most touches on the team. He looks good so far in pre-season and stuff. So 56 feels kind of low. Look, I'm falling for Grace from 18 to 64, Rudy, oh my God. It's hard for me to have a strong reaction to any of this stuff. You know what I mean? Whoa, they got Chek going from 35 to 74. Of course, he didn't play much last season. And in the games he did play, you'd think he's gonna be slightly better than Nikola Busevich. Hey, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that Kay Cunningham is gonna be more than one spot better than Nikola Busevich at the end of the season. That's just my personal bet. Watched a lot of Kade so far in his career. Watched way more of Busevich so far. I feel pretty good about Kade being better than one spot better than Busevich. Maybe that should be how I'm tackling these. What have they done to my boys? Rudy Gobiard dropped so much. Chris Paul dropped so much. Hey, me and the guys been talking. This jersey just does not look good on him. I'm sorry. This is just worse looking jersey on him. And maybe it's because he's old, right? But every single stop he's had in his career, he's looked better in that jersey. This one just feels weird. There's Scoot rookie number two. Surprised to see Tyler Hero so low. I think Tyler Hero's about to prove a lot of people wrong. I don't think he's gonna be a superstar or anything. But I think because of the trade noise, the cloud that was above his name all summer, I think he's gonna have a really, really good season. So I think I would bet that he's better than the 79th best player in the league at the end of the season. I'm curious to see, who's 100? Who's, oh, Kevon Ludi! And the top 100, I love it. Who's gonna sneak in as the 100th player? Man, the Knicks have a lot of guys. The Knicks have a lot of guys on this list. RJ Brunson, Randu Hart, quickly, I think I saw Mitch Robb. But like they have like five or six dudes. So shout out to New York. They got some depth over there. Moment of truth, who's 100? Colin Sexton's 98, Big Val 99, and 100 will be Mitch Robb. Okay, so I knew he was on the list. Mitch Robb. He's got a lot, man. I want somebody to like break it down. This team has this many. This team has this many. Yeah, I would guess that the Knicks are up there with the best of them with total players. The Pelicans also have a bunch. They've had Z, Brandon Ingram, Val, CJ McCullum was on there. So there's a lot of teams. I mean, we talked about a hundred spots for 30 teams. So there's gonna be a lot of teams of multiple people. Again, this is not something I'm super passionate about. So my apologies for not getting hot to like maybe some other creators out here. The one thing that did surprise me the most is to see Jolymeet at number three, opposed to some of the other players across the league or to see Zion at 54, whatever the hell it was. Those were the surprising pieces for me. But for the most part, again, it's all subjective. Part of their job is ESPN, Bleacher Report, Washington Post, all of these people that write articles is to get you to click and to get you to talk about. So if you're at home or really appalled by one thing or another, it's a reason for it. It's their job. If they put together the perfect top 100 list that was no controversy to whatsoever, they failed. And I hate that that's the way it is, but their job is clicks, right? So they've failed their overhead if they don't get people to talk outside of it. So I don't know what the big, aha, thing is that's gonna get people to talk the most, but their job is to get people to talk. Remember that.