The Top 50

A couple summers ago, Slamonline ran a daily feature over the summer that counted down the L’s 50 best players and was a nice touch over a particularly bland offseason.
This summer’s gonna be pretty interesting with several franchises at serious crossroads, and several personnel moves already made, but all the same I’m biting the idea and doing my own Top 50.

When I threw this together, the focus was mostly on talent, ignoring what a players’ team has accomplished and putting the spotlight on them. Intangibles like past accomplishments, future potential, the clutch factor and general ability to win both hurt and helped a few of these guys and decided some close calls.

So here it goes, the NBA’s Top 50. Hard to perfectly nail something like this, I’m sure even I’ll disagree with some of my picks but hopefully it’s on point. I’ll be trying to get a new player up every day, so stay tuned and enjoy.

Up front though, apologies to: Scot Pollard, Darius Miles, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, DJ Mbenga, Brian Cardinal, Ira Newble and the Collins twins; you guys just missed the cut.

#50 - Andre Miller
The list begins with a dude you might not’ve expected to see. Maybe one of the league’s most slept-on talents, Miller’s made a career of solidly running the point on low-profile, mediocre teams. But with the leaps and bounds made by his young and promising Sixers squad last year, Dre soon might finally get the shine he deserves.

A former league leader in assists, Miller narrowly dodged sharing a backcourt with tweener extraordinaire Allen Iverson when the two were swapped almost 2 seasons ago. Miller’s beginnings in Philly were shaky, as the team struggled to find a rhythm after their immortal superstar’s departure, Miller’s name spent more time in trade rumours than Scot Pollard did on the bench last year. He was destined to be a casualty in the Sixers’ rebuilding process; one of the few players without the youth and flexible contract to be of value to the team.

Instead, Miller proved his value by becoming an indispensable floor general; a leading veteran among a bunch of kids who led a consensus lottery team to the playoffs and (kinda) almost a first-round upset of the mighty Pistons. 17 (on a 50% clip), 7 and 4 weren’t good enough for the All-Star team, but if Philly can build upon last season’s success and make strides in the East, Andre might have a brighter spotlight on him in the not-so-distant future.