Behind The Scenes

ESPN.com’s NBA Player Rankings

If there was a list of every player in the NBA, where would your favorite athlete rank?

Here’s a better question, perhaps: Would you agree with the player’s placement?

Good news. ESPN.com has done the research and they want to hear your feedback.

Royce Webb, ESPN.com’s NBA deputy editor, came up with the idea.

“With the lockout, we wanted to give NBA fans a chance to talk about what they care about the most — the game, the players,” said Webb.

“We reached out to 91 NBA experts from all corners of ESPN and asked them to rank every NBA player. Voters rated each player on a 0-to-10 scale, in terms of the ‘current quality of each player.’ We then aggregated their input to improve accuracy.”

ESPN.com’s NBA section began disclosing the rankings in late September, gradually counting down the list of 500 players.

Fan response was encouraged. The site used a #NBArank hashtag to help spark the dialogue and the feedback from fans has been included on the site.

Several ESPN NBA reporters have weighed in regularly, too, often examining some of the most under/overrated players.

“We’ve seen tens of thousands of tweets, retweets, comments and replies on Twitter,” said Webb. “The response has been incredible.

“More and more, every day, we are reaching out to fans through social media to improve our NBA content. Twitter, Facebook and ESPN.com’s Daily Dime Live all offer ways to communicate with fans in real time. The interaction keeps us sharper, improves our relationship with fans and enhances many aspects of our content.”

Onto the rankings: Here’s the top 10:

1.) LeBron James
2.) Dwight Howard
3.) Dwyane Wade
4.) Chris Paul
5.) Dirk Nowitzki
6.) Kevin Durant
7.) Kobe Bryant
8.) Derrick Rose
9.) Deron Williams
10.) Blake Griffin

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