Quick note before we begin. This is all meant in good fun and saying one player is better is not a diss to the other. Both of these men are world class basketball players and were integral pieces to an NBA Championship. If you would like to make your opinion known please vote in this poll and I will write another article when those results are in.
Within the last couple weeks both ESPN and CBS Sports have released their NBA player rankings. From100-1 both sites agreed that Giannis Antetokounmpo was the best player in the league. What they did not agree on however, was on who is the better player between Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday. ESPN ranked Khris Middleton number 31 and Jrue Holiday number 26. CBS sports had both players higher than ESPN and flipped with Holiday at 25 and Middleton at 23. This lead to me thinking (very dangerous) “I wonder what the Wisconsin Sports Heroics slack members feel about this.” So I asked them a very simple question:
So simple I didn’t even bother with punctuation. I didn’t want to complicate the process so I didn’t add any caveats. Both ESPN and CBS Sports clarified that it asked their voters specifically about the 2022-2023 season. I didn’t because Jrue and Khris are close in age and both make a bunch of money so I didn’t feel like anyone would use that as a deciding factor. Before we reveal our results lets take a look at why the ESPN and CBS Sports polls might disagree with each other.
Methodology:
“Each of our NBA writers came up with their own list of the top 100 NBA players for the 2022-23 season, taking into account potential improvement and decline.” is what CBS Sports states. That is the question they asked their 8 NBA writers. ESPN had a much different strategy. They asked, “Which player will be better in 2022-23?” Voters had to predict what they expected from each player during the season. That question was posed to over 200 reporters, editors, producers and analysts. Their you can already see a problem. I have no doubt that all those ESPN employees are knowledgeable NBA people. But a lot of those jobs don’t really require you to analyze basketball players in the way necessary to rank every single NBA player. Unlike CBS Sports and their 8 writers who’s full time jobs are watching basketball and writing about it.
Our Results
The Wisconsin Sports Heroics slack overwhelmingly chose Khris Middleton (80%) over Jrue Holiday (20%). Our slack seems to have prioritized the shot making of Middleton over the infamous pressure defense of Holiday. I tend to agree with those priorities. As did the CBS Sports writers. So why did ESPN chose Holiday? I imagine that when so many people are involved in the vote as they claimed, a lot of them tend to favor the bigger name. I wouldn’t say the difference is huge but Jrue is probably the more famous player. Having played with Anthony Davis in New Orleans and being the big name in a trade that made many headlines aids his popularity. Middleton coming to Milwaukee in a trade where at the time he was probably the 3rd most recognizable name does not. Regardless our slack was not very divided.
If you would like to vote you can click the link in the first paragraph.
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