It’s that time of year. One of the most recurring topics in basketball discourse is debating who the best player in the NBA is. With the NBA season around the corner, it was time to bring back our yearly preseason rankings of the best players in the association.
From the start of the 2022 playoffs with Anthony Edwards’ near 40-piece in Memphis, the common theme last postseason was the revolution of the youth in the NBA. With the rise of young stars like Ja Morant, Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum, the next generation is starting to dethrone some of the stars that have been dominating the league for an extended period of time. We saw Tatum send home Kevin Durant first and then followed that by sending home the defending Finals MVP in Giannis Antetokounmpo. On the other side of the bracket we saw Luka send home the reigning Western Conference champions in the Phoenix Suns.
With the rise of the youth and the amount of talent increasing in the association, some popular names dropped in our ranks. We’ve seen the decline of longtime superstars like James Harden, who we ranked No. 5 going into last season, and Chris Paul who we tabbed at No. 20. last October. Harden, Kyrie Irving Anthony Davis, and Damian Lillard were four notable players who dropped a few spots from our last preseason list. Jayson Tatum, Ja Morant and Brandon Ingram were notable names that made significant leaps from the previous rankings.
Some notable omissions from our list that were on the edge of cracking the top 30 were Bam Adebayo, Rudy Gobert, LaMelo Ball, Darius Garland, and Jrue Holiday. With all that being said here are our top 30 best players in the league as of right now.