Written by Adam Fromel at BleacherReport.com
It’s time for some fresh blood in the latest NBA positional hierarchies.
Four of the five lineup spots now feature at least one new player since the last edition was published Jan. 11 (positions, in this article, are determined by Basketball-Reference.com’s designations). At center, we even have a rookie making his debut as a top-five stud.
You can probably guess who it is.
As always, we’re looking at the players who have made the biggest on-court impacts while establishing themselves as household names—or at least getting on track to do so in the near future.
How that impact is achieved is ultimately irrelevant. An offensive stud can be just as valuable as a defensive anchor, and some mixture of the two diametric opposites is viable as well.
Basically, be the best at basketball, and you’ll be rewarded here.
Injured Players
Before we dive into the rankings, it’s worth noting that we will not consider injured players for any of the featured spots or list them as honorable mentions.
If a player is expected to be out of action for a prolonged period or has missed too much time in the last few weeks, he’s automatically ineligible for the remainder of this slideshow.
As a result, Nicolas Batum, Eric Bledsoe, Tim Duncan, Blake Griffin, Ian Mahinmi and Hassan Whiteside will not appear, although they would make the cut—or at least be considered—if the injury imp didn’t dictate otherwise.
Point Guard No. 5: Rajon Rondo
Team: Sacramento Kings
Age: 29
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 12.0 points, 6.4 rebounds, 11.7 assists, 1.7 steals, 0.2 blocks, 17.2 PER
We’ll kick things off with the man who’s still leading the NBA in assists per game. In fact, Rajon Rondo has been even more impressive during recent outings; though he’s averaging 11.7 dimes on the season, that number is actually up to 12.7 since the beginning of 2016.
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