It’s that time of year again when my fellow NBA writers all revel in the opportunity to draw up their rankings, lists, and tier charts of the league’s best basketball players. Unfortunately, not all rankings, lists, and tier charts are created equally, as I felt the Chicago Bulls were particularly disrespected in Bleacher Report’s latest edition of their NBA Top 100.
I found B/R’s method particularly interesting this year, as they did not just create an arbitrary list out of thin air to spark debate. To rank each player in their list, they conducted a series of Player A vs. Player B polls. They claim to have collected a ridiculous 8,632 votes from a panel of nearly 20 people to decide this placement.
This piqued my interest. I couldn’t say for sure whether or not this was the fairest way to do things, but it was certainly an interesting way to go about it. That all came crashing down when I saw how my Bulls were ranked in their NBA Top 100, however, as I would have personally made some biggest changes. Let’s look over a few of the biggest ones.
These four Bulls players were all ranked too low in Bleacher Report’s NBA Top 100.
4. Nikola Vucevic (No. 81)
If the 2023 FIBA World Cup has shown us anything, it’s that Nikola Vucevic still has plenty of juice left in the tank. He’s been absolutely dominant against the world’s top talent while carrying a significantly undermanned Montenegrin team to the best run in their nation’s history.
I understand if Vucevic fell off of people’s radars after a disappointing 2020-21 season, but I believe he did a great deal to restore our faith in him last season. Although somehow managing to average the exact same stat line of 17.6 points, 11 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game in each of the last two seasons, Vooch’s efficiency shot through the roof as he started to win back even some of his biggest critics.
Vucevic rated out as a positive on both ends of the court last year, with an offensive BPM of 1.9 and a defensive BPM of 0.7. Believe it or not, his combined BPM of 2.7 was good enough to rank him 36th among all NBA players last year, even ahead of stars like De’Aaron Fox, Jaylen Brown, and Bam Adebayo. He may not be the most flashy player, but Vooch is still clearly a top-10 center in the league today and deserves to be ranked much higher than 81st here.