Elite Depth?

Are the Knicks the deepest team in the league? A new Hoops Hype ranking gives us a clue about the answer. Plus, 5 Questions with my mom.

Good morning! A reminder that next week we’re kicking it up to four newsletters, followed by a return to our regularly scheduled five per week. In the meantime, we end this week with a very special interview (to me, at least).

News & Notes

🏀 Earlier this week, HoopsHype released its list of the top 100 NBA players.

Most major platforms release lists like this around this time, and while I’m sure a great deal of work went into this one, none of them interest me all that much in a vacuum. I did perk up though after seeing the following tweet from Steve Popper:

Depth is an NBA topic that fascinates me, simply because there are so many questions it raises. What is its value in relation to other potential determining factors of a championship? How should we go about determining elite depth from mediocre or average depth? And most prominently, what is the proper measuring stick for elite depth on an NBA roster? The best top four? Top six? An entire rotation? Or does it change depending on the complexion of the team?

With these questions in mind, I went through Hoops Hype’s list and looked at the top NBA teams by their depth for a particular number of players. In other words, who had the highest ranked second best player? The highest ranked third best player? And all the way down until the list ended.

Interestingly enough, there was one team that had a better “Top 6” than the Knicks. Can you guess who it is? While you’re pondering that, here were the results: