Ranking the NBA’s 40 best big men, plus schedule highlights

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Today is the five-year anniversary of the first Play-In Game/Tournament result. The Blazers beat the Grizzlies to secure the final playoff spot in the Western Conference during the bubble. Soon the Play-In Tournament would morph into four teams playing for the last two playoff positions in each conference.

While it can provide some exciting basketball, let’s celebrate its main outcome, which has been limiting outright tanking down the stretch of each season. To the Play-In! 🥂

Bounce Rankings

Who are the best big men in basketball?

Oh, you know you love it! You know I love it. You know the internet is waiting for it? Everybody loves arbitrary rankings! I compile a list with super computers and random guessing, before resigning to “this is good enough” as the criteria and mode of production. I throw together a couple of graphics via Canva. And the next thing you know, we’ve got some prime content before the season starts.

We’re going to start ranking some positions! We’ll eventually get to lead guards, shooting guards, wings and forwards. But today, we’re harkening back to a time when big men ruled the NBA earth! We’ve taken all of the big men in the NBA and churned out a top-40 list. Some big men were left off this list, but we feel pretty confident you won’t entirely hate this.

There are seven tiers of big man for the 40 who made the cut. Let’s dive in and see just how perfect this carefully curated list is!

No offense to any other great big men in this league, but we should all be able to agree that Jokic is in his own tier. Sorry, Sixers fans, but Big Honey is by himself here. After that, I feel very confident putting all my chips in with Wemby as the second best big man in the league. Mostly, it’s because I don’t believe Embiid can sustain health enough to be the clear-cut number two, and Wembanyama is going to get even better. Davis might have a chance of being higher if he’d stop fussing about playing center.

Next part of the list might be controversial. Mostly, there are plenty of Sabonis people who will think he should be higher. I don’t think he’s bad by any means, but I do believe his lack of defense and inability to play with other big men lowers his ceiling. Also, it wouldn’t shock me if Şengün ends up climbing this list quickly.

Keeping Mobley out of the top 10 was legitimately tough, but he got the squeeze. I’m hoping he makes this look so stupid in the upcoming season. Zubac still feels super underrated to me, and some may quibble with how high Hartenstein is on this list, but he’s phenomenal. Holmgren could also end up making his placement look stupid, but he has to remain healthy.

Maybe Turner should be higher than Allen? Gafford could easily be higher than both of them. I’ve never been a big Vucevic guy, but his offense is still a tough matchup. And while some don’t like the Raptors’ payroll, I do not think Poeltl is a problem contributing to it. He’s super underrated.

Yes, I’m already buying the Hansen hype. No, I don’t care if it takes a little bit for him to realize it. I’m going all in, and I believe he’s a top-25 big man right away with his skill and size. I’m interested to see what Lively and Ware do this season, because they could easily vault themselves into the top-20.

Last note for now: I’m still not certain Ayton will be someone JJ Redick likes coaching.

The Last 24

Another franchise sold for over $4 billion

🏀 Cane you believe it? The Carolina Hurricanes’ owner is purchasing the Blazers. $4.2 billion for the franchise. 

🏀 Re-draft 2024! Sam Vecenie decided to re-draft last year’s NBA Draft class. Zaccharie Risacher is not number one.

🎧 Top 100! “The Basketball 100″ book is now also a podcast series, and it’s asking the tough questions. Is Kyrie Irving the best number two ever? 

🏀 Prodigal son? Kent Lacob is leaving his great job with the Warriors. Why is he leaving his dad’s business?

📈 Rise to EuroLeague. Dubai basketball is having a moment. “This is a story from a movie.”

Curious Mike

Porter is saying the quiet part out loud 

Did you know former Denver Nugget and current Brooklyn Net Michael Porter Jr. has a podcast? At this point, is there any player you’d be shocked to learn is also a podcaster? Almost everybody has a podcast these days, so a lot of the things said by current athletes can get lost in the noise.

One interview that didn’t get lost in the noise this week was MPJ jumping onto someone else’s podcast and saying something alarming. This is what he said about potential gambling scandals:

“Think about it. If you can get all your homies rich by telling them, ‘Yo, bet $10,000 on my under. This one game I’m gonna act like I got an injury and I’m gonna sit out. I’m gonna come out [of the game] after three minutes.’ And they all get a little bag because you did it one game.

“That is so not okay, but some people probably think like that. They come from nothing and all their homies have nothing. If I come out of the game after three minutes and y’all all hit on my under, we’re all getting a little bag. Obviously my brother (Jontay Porter) went through his situation, Malik Beasley is going through a situation right now. Terry Rozier was in some hot water. But the whole sports gambling entity, bro, it’s bad and it’s only gonna get worse.”

MPJ mentioned players getting death threats, and then said players can’t win anymore because they’re either messing up someone’s under bet or over bet. He’s not necessarily wrong.

Sports gambling being more and more accessible now is going to make it a reality, whether the NBA is getting a cut of the gambling money from sponsors or not. And while some in my industry (myself included) may be uneasy with sports gambling being so embedded, the truth is that it also helps the economics of coverage, helping people make money across whatever the NBA touches. Full disclosure: We have a partnership with BetMGM! This stuff is everywhere.

The NBA can’t be happy about the messaging here, though. It’s what so many people know and fear with the intertwining of gambling and the NBA. But we’re in too deep now and it’s something the league and federal authorities will just have to monitor as much as possible.

Elsewhere, MPJ had this to say on a different platform, discussing vices like gambling for his brother:

“Everybody has different vices. Everybody has different things that they struggle with. That can go with people who struggle from alcohol, people that struggle with drugs. You know, for example, my brother struggled with gambling. My vice has always come in the form of women. And when I’m far from God, and I’m not in my word, l’m not praying, l’m not prioritizing Him, like that seems to be the place that the devil gets me, is in the space of women.”

This is honestly such a funny quote to me. Friends and I have laughed about it for days. We’ll laugh about it for months, if not years. It’s a hilarious pseudo-flex by Porter, just mentioning that he gets a lot of women. And you might be wondering, “Zach, did you just create this section as a Trojan horse just to present this second MPJ quote?” Yes, yes I did.

Mark the Calendar

Keep an eye on these five (40?) games

The NBA released its full schedule yesterday. Something I like to do every year is mark a lot of games down that I’m excited to see. Last year, we had about 35 games in the mix. This year? I had to cut it down to this list of 40, just to not make it an entire book. A sample:

Western Conference finals preview? Nuggets at Thunder, 9:30 p.m. ET, Feb. 27, ESPN

This is the matchup I’m looking forward to the most, and we get it at least four times this season. Denver and OKC have each won a championship in the last three seasons, and we assumed both are running the league for the foreseeable future when they were crowned champs. The Nuggets got cheap and let their depth go, then finally loaded back up with their bench and positions of concern after trading away our guy Michael Porter Jr. this summer. The Thunder had one of the most dominant seasons we’ll ever see, have their entire roster intact and look even scarier. But last time, it took them seven games to take out Nikola Jokić and a weak supporting cast. With Denver reloaded, are the champs going to be able to keep beating them?

KD in the desert: Houston Rockets at Phoenix Suns, 9:30 p.m. Nov. 24, Peacock

This is a bit of a two-fer with Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks facing their old team, but this will primarily be about Kevin Durant coming back to Phoenix to face Devin Booker and his old team. They gave him the exit he wanted, but I’m guessing there won’t be a gift basket of gratitude coming from him. He’ll want to drop 40 and get a W.

Eastern Conference measuring stick 1: Hawks at Magic, 7 p.m., Oct. 24, League Pass

Both Orlando and Atlanta are looking to be the team that takes advantage of the wide-open East. They both have good young talent. They’ve both added key veterans. And both of these teams expect to have massive steps forward this season while jockeying for home-court advantage in the first round.

Şengün versus Wemby: Rockets at Spurs, 7:30 p.m., Nov. 7, Prime Video

Alperen Şengün and Victor Wembanyama have had some interesting battles in their two years. Wemby shut down Şengün a couple of times early last season, which was probably payback from a Wembanyama rookie-year showdown when Şengün had 45 points on the Spurs’ franchise guy. Şengün has been trying to go through Wemby’s chest every time they play, and Wemby is having to learn how to battle against that brawn.

1 versus 2: Spurs at Mavericks, 9:30 p.m. October 22, ESPN

There wasn’t debate about whether Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper should be picked first in this draft. This wasn’t a Greg Oden-Kevin Durant or Derrick Rose-Michael Beasley situation. Still, getting the first and second picks together is often noteworthy, and the Mavs and Spurs is a fun matchup anyway.

One more reminder: Check out all of the games for more of the most interesting matchups. Even Jazz games made the cut!

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