B/R NBA 200: Ranking the Best Overall Players Heading into 2016-17

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Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports Stephen Curry was the unanimous MVP, winning the league's most prestigious individual award in a dominant fashion unlike any in NBA history. But what comes next? Does he enter 2016-17 as the league's top-ranked player, or can another superstar such as Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, LeBron James or Kawhi Leonard knock him from his lofty perch? Where do the premier members of the 2015-16 rookie class—Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Jokic, Devin Booker and Kristaps Porzingis—fit among the more established contributors now that they're entering their sophomore seasons? We've already ranked the league's best guards, wings and bigs within their own positional groupings. Now, put everyone in a definitive order, ranging from the league's impressive backups and low-end starters to the superstars and studs on the rise. We aren't projecting how well everyone will perform during the upcoming season, but where they are as 2016-17 gets underway. Thus, we use the end of last season as our starting point. Not every player starts out on level footing, either; The NBA 200 metric identifies those who performed best during the 2015-16 regular campaign*. Potential doesn't matter, and neither does reputation or playoff performance (too variable)—it's all about what happened this past regular season only. In this edition, we're looking at every single player from every single position, all mixed together. All positions are graded using the same criteria (rim protection was added into the equation for bigger positions), but the categories are weighted differently to reflect changing roles:

Scoring

Non-Scoring Offense: Facilitating and Off-Ball Offense

Defense: On-Ball, Off-Ball and Rim Protection

Rebounding

Durability

For a full explanation of how these scores were determined, go here. And do note these aren't your father's classification schemes for each position. Players' spots were determined by how much time they spent at each position throughout the season, largely based on data from Basketball-Reference.com, and we're expanding the traditional five to include four combo positions.

In the case of ties, the order is determined in subjective fashion by ranking the more coveted player in the higher spot. That was done by a voting committee comprised of myself, three B/R National NBA Featured Columnists (Grant Hughes, Zach Buckley and Dan Favale) and B/R Associate NBA Editor (Joel Cordes).

With 200 bigs considered, you can click "Next" to start the whole list or skip ahead to Players 140-111 if you want.

Note: All statistics come from Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless otherwise indicated. Injury information comes from Pro Sports Transactions. In order to qualify for the rankings, players must have suited up in at least 30 games and logged no fewer than 500 minutes. This intro was adapted from last year's edition.

*Thus, a "retired-in-the-offseason" player like Tim Duncan or Kobe Bryant will still show up here as well. Even though they're (sadly) not playing again, they're a valuable placeholder that helps show where 2016-17's bunch stacks up in comparison at the start of the season.