Who ruled the NBA during the 2013-14 season?
As we've moved through each of the nine positions, both the five traditional spots and the four non-traditional ones, that's the question that's been tossing and turning in the back of our minds. If you missed any of the individual positional rankings, you can find all of them here.
But now it's time for the final order.
No longer are we comparing Chris Paul to Stephen Curry, James Harden to Dwyane Wade, Kevin Love to LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard to Goran Dragic. Everyone is being thrown into the same pot now, whether his name is LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Blake Griffin, Anthony Davis or something else entirely.
It's also worth noting that the playoffs do not factor into these rankings, as the scores were compiled during the regular season.
The NBA 200 metric identifies the players who performed best during the 2013-14 season. Potential doesn't matter, and neither does reputation. It's all about what happened this season, and this season only. All positions are graded using the same criteria (though rim protection was added into the equation for bigger positions), but the categories are weighted differently to reflect changing roles:
- Non-Scoring Offense: Facilitating and Off-Ball Offense
- Defense: On-Ball, Off-Ball and Rim Protection
- Intangibles: Conduct and Durability
For a full explanation of how these scores were determined, go here. And do note these aren't your father's classification schemes for each position. Players' spots were determined not by playing style, but by how much time they spent at each position throughout the season, largely based on data from 82games.com, and we're expanding the traditional five to include four combo positions.
In the case of ties, the order is determined in subjective fashion by ranking the more coveted player in the higher spot. That was done by a voting committee comprised of myself, Associate NBA Editor Joel Cordes, NBA Lead Writer D.J. Foster, National NBA Featured Columnist Grant Hughes, NBA Lead Writer Josh Martin and Associate NBA Editor Ethan Norof.