Frequently I am asked the question of who I would begin an NBA franchise with. You know, that debate you have with your friends about if you were an NBA GM and you could pick any star at the beginning of their career who it would be? Majority of people today say LeBron James since he’s arguably the best player in the league today. However, when it’s my turn to answer I consistently pick none other than Kobe Bean Bryant.
ESPN and TrueHoop Network have named Kobe the 4th best player in the league right now in their top 30 NBA Player Rankings. With him being at 34 years of age, that’s not that bad of a pick for 17 years into my dream franchise. The rankings were done by grading players on a scale of 1-10, in which Kobe received a 9.10.
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ESPN and TrueHoop also broke down how and who all voted for the top 30 players this year:
We asked 104 experts to rate each player on a 0-to-10 scale, in terms of “the current quality of each player.”
Here is the full list of voters from ESPN.com, the TrueHoop Network, TrueHoop TV, Daily Dime Live, ESPN TV, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, espnW, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Insider, ESPN Fantasy, ESPN Games, ESPN Dallas, ESPN Los Angeles, ESPN Chicago, ESPN New York, ESPN Stats & Information, ESPN Topics and ESPN Analytics.
Underneath their rankings they have fan tweets which responded to them.
https://twitter.com/THEMisterrEff/statuses/321790584551526400
https://twitter.com/jjosiah97/statuses/321787883298119680
Last year, in their top 500 players poll, Kobe was ranked 6th in the league with Derrick Rose (#5), Chris Paul (#4), Dwight Howard (#3), Kevin Durant (#2), and LeBron James (#1) ahead of him. However, with the injury bug biting both Howard and Rose, alongside Kobe’s stellar play this year, he rose to the number four position in 2013 with only Paul, Durant, and James ahead of him yet again.
Bryant is currently averaging 27.0 points, 6.1 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game on 46.2 percent shooting this season. Do you think Kobe should have been number four or should they have taken his age and play into more consideration to be in the top three? Sound off in the comments below!
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