 What's the word, y'all? A couple of days ago, Bleach Report put together their annual top 100 players in the NBA list. Anytime Bleach Report, ESPN, The Athletic, any of these big publications put together a ranking list, I'll always tackle it the exact same way. I read through it, skip through it, and then I leave it at that. There was a period of time in my life where I would get really offended or really upset about a specific player being too high or a specific player being too low. That don't really matter to me as much as they used to. But this year, Bleach Report is getting a round of applause for me, not because their list is good, but because they did something differently this year versus last year or the year before that, and it makes for good content. One thing I always wonder is what is the disconnect between the general public versus the experts of the sport? And Bleach Report put that to the test today, and I gotta get round of applause for them. So let me show you how they normally do their top 100 lists. Bleach Report asked the best basketball minds, really? I didn't get an email. And personally, I work with the company and I get an email to answer a series of random player A versus player B debates. The question for each debate, which player will rank higher by the end of the 2023-2024 season? In total, we compiled 8,000 plus votes across nearly 20 participants narrowing our final player pool down to the top 110. From narrow panel of experts, each rate every player from one to 110. They use their own criteria considering everything from individual production, impact on winning, and also health and availability, yada, yada, yada, yada. Then they're compiled and averaged, and boom, this is how we get a list that has Tobias Harris at number 100, when last year he was, he was number 68. They said Tobias Harris fell off, even though he almost shot 40% from three. I think the methodology makes sense to me. Maybe have more than 20 people voting, maybe 21 people voting, but again, the methodology is sound. And then today I woke up with this notification, the community ranks top 100 players. So they have one list that is a so-called experts and then another list from the community, which is just the average NBA fan. So now we get to see how an expert thinks about a certain player and how the average fan thinks. And I think it's brilliant because it's always, in most cases, different. Now, the methodology on this one is going to be a little bit less good because you're asking so many different people, but let's read through it. They basically gave the BR users and readers a similar thing in the sense that they have to pick between two players. Here's two players who's better. For example, a voter might be presented with a hypothetical matchup from Nikola Jokic and Yanis at the Kumpo under the question who will be better in the 2023-2024 season. The more votes they get across the field, the higher they rise, so on and so forth. Because there was so many people, they got nearly half a million votes from the audience. The reason this is, of course, different is because the 20 experts understand that, like, my job is this. Not that my job is on the line if I risk somebody too high or too low, but this is my job versus the average consumer of the Bleach Report app probably don't really care, you know what I'm saying? Going with the gut feeling, which is good at most times, but not all the times. So I'm just saying it's not a perfect method, but it does give you an idea of what the average fan thinks versus the expert. Okay, now that we've got the out of the way, I decide to go through this entire list of the top 100 players and figure out the biggest discrepancy between the average fan and the expert. And I put it into a spreadsheet. I realized when I was on player like 42 that there's probably a better way to do this. Also, number two here is really number 100. I noticed maybe a little bit confusing, but all you really need to know is the highlighted players are the players that either jumped up the most or went down the most. So Keldon Johnson for the experts was 20 players better than the average fan. And I think this makes sense. Not that Keldon Johnson is not good or anything, but because the Spurs were one of those teams that the average fan is not watching a lot of, considering they were on their tank fest stuff, it makes sense that most people don't recognize the talent that is Keldon Johnson. I am guilty of this. I have said across this channel all off season that Keldon Johnson and Devon Macel are two players that I don't really have a frame of mind at how good they are versus what they can be because I haven't really watched a lot of the Spurs. So it makes sense that he would be 20 spots lower. Also, you got players like Shane Sharp who across the Bleacher poor experts did not get voted on at all, but the average fan has said, hey, he's gonna be the 90, 100, 99, 98, 97 best player basketball. Same thing with Jayden Ivy. He did not get ranked, but the NBA fans say, hey, he will be. And one thing I noticed while doing all of this is that the NBA fans skew towards the younger players, right? Everybody wants to see the next big thing. And as we walk through this, you're gonna recognize a lot of super young players ranked higher than their older counterparts, even if we agree that the counterparts will probably be better. Derek White also matches Keldon Johnson by being down 20 players. Now, Derek White is an advanced stats darling. There's a couple of those type of people across the NBA every single season. Derek White is that this year. He was all defensive second team this year, if I'm not mistaken. The Boston Celtics have decided to trade away their former DPOY and Marcus Smart because they believe that the value that they were getting from Derek White was just better at the end of the day. And NBA experts recognized that defensive value of Derek White, even if he is only averaging 12 points per game and the average fan is like, that defense stuff don't matter. And you're gonna see that again a couple more times. They didn't value defense as much as the expert. I'm gonna stop doing this. I'm gonna stop doing this. All right, I'm gonna stop doing this. Josh Hart was up 13 spots. And you know what this is? New York bias. And you gonna see it. Because every single player across the New York Knicks ranked so much higher amongst the fans versus the experts. Like 13 spots for Josh Hart is a lot of spots. Let's be real. Another guy, Keegan Murray, a younger dude that ranked significantly higher. A guy like Rudy Gobert, who objectively we could say that Rudy Gobert was not as good this season as some of the previous ones. Most people are out on Rudy Gobert as a player which makes sense. He just got traded for a lot of stuff and didn't live up to that value. But he is also down 17 players. Again, showcasing that defense just didn't matter as much to the average fan. They'd rather go get the bucket getters and we go see some of that. Oh, oh, I forgot to highlight this one. I'm glad I'm looking at it. New York bias. RJ jumps up 16 spots. RJ? I love RJ. Shout out to Rowan. But it's no surprise that Josh Hart and RJ both jump up a lot. We also see Jeremy Grant dropping down 17. And one thing I'm thinking is that when the contract doesn't match the production, the average NBA fan is out, regardless of if the player is good. Like Jeremy Grant is still a really good NBA player, but when you look at the value he got signed at this office, he's like, man, is that worth? And the NBA fans probably took that consideration that he's probably not worth the, whatever the dollar amount was. So because of that, he ranked 17 players worse than what the experts did. Right beneath him is Draymond Green having the biggest drop off in the entire thing, dropping 23 players. Showcase and again, that defense is one of those things that you have to watch to under, not to understand, but to value, because I was looking at some of the people that are above Draymond Green, they just, most of them was just not, like, do you think Jordan Poole is one player better than Draymond Green? I'm sorry, that's just, I just don't see that as the case. And most people that voted saw Draymond Green as super inferior to his counterparts, which again is surprising to me because he just made it all defensive team again and the Warriors are really good again with him on the court. Like he's another one of those advanced stats darling, but the ITES also shows it as him being a four-time NBA champion and stuff, but not Draymond does not get the love. Jaylen Green gets the love jumping up 10. School Henderson jumps up 15 compared to the experts one. And you don't see a lot of the rookies go higher because everybody's super excited about the rookies. What can we say? Myles Turner, another defensive-oriented player down 10, even though Myles Turner's also a crazy, great three-point shooter coming off a career year, he also drops down 10. Franz Wagner was surprising when it dropped down 13 because I thought that most people understood how good Franz Wagner is, maybe not. Talk about some ups though because C.J. McCullum jumps up 13. I think that the NBA fans really saw that like if you could get a bucket, I value that which I think is important in the game of basketball, but they think it's more important than me personally. Chet Holmgren, another rookie, jumps up 13 because people believe in Chet. Echo Porter Jr. coming off a championship run and then Austin Reeves is 15 spots better amongst the fans versus the experts. And I would say, I think part of this is Laker bias, but he is the only Laker that had a significant jump. While if you compare it to like the Knicks, everybody had a significant jump, where the Lakers only had one person with a big jump. So of course Lakers bias plays a part. Would it be in a big market? But not as much as the Knicks thing, which is surprising to me. I really went into this thinking that the Lakers and the Knicks would be able to be like, oh man, I think BR had Anthony Davis at 10, right? We think Anthony Davis is number seven. We think Rui Hachimora should be in the top 100, but they didn't do that. So I don't know what to think about that. Played Thompson's notoriety and great three point shoot and puts him up 10 spots. Julius Randu, another New York Knick, jumped up 10. But again, he's coming off an all NBA season. So that's understandable, I guess. Wimby jumps up 20. Everybody's excited to see Wimby. Lamello Ball up 10. Terry's Halliburton up 12. And then the thing that bothered me the most about all of this though, again as a guy that doesn't get up in arms about rankings anymore, they had Yolkens as a fourth best player in basketball. And that's just extremely low. One or two in my personal opinion. That's the Nicole Yolkens range at this moment. He's the best player basketball. He's the second best player basketball. Fourth is just crazy. Anthony Edwards also jumped up a bunch from being ranked 15 amongst the staff to top 10. So I just thought this was really, really interesting to see NBA fans opinion on the top 100 players in ball. And I think this should be a normal occurrence from Bleach Report. This is fun. And next year, I want to be notified. I would like to participate. Get my little Voltean, you know what I'm saying? Even though I don't like ranking players when there's no pressure, I don't mind picking between Jay Dubb and Nikola Vusevich. I wouldn't mind making my selection to this guy. You know what I'm saying? If you want to see the full thing, I'll put the link in the description to the article so you can dive through it and kind of figure out what your favorite players are versus the experts in the average fan. But this was really, really fun to kind of go through it.