Do Rankings Matter?

You know, the first one came from Maddox, and he had said. He asked me yesterday, hey, Coach, in your next podcast, can you talk about your opinion on rankings? And this is a good question. I've kind of alluded to this before, and, you know, it's funny because I kind of see it both ways. Look, right? I kind of have different perspectives. Obviously, rankings are important. Like, people respect rankings. I don't think the individual number matters at all. But if you're a top 100 player, like, that's a big deal, because you're just gonna get that there's a status that comes along with that, right? Your ESPN top 100. That's just. That's. That's something. But in terms of players saying, like, oh, you know, I'm. I'm ranked number 50 in my state. Like, you know, that's cool. But at the end of the day, that doesn't really matter. Like, what really matters is, like, okay, are you playing? Are you. Are you getting offers at the college level? Right? Are you. Are you able to go and continue your career? That's what matters. Okay, it doesn't matter again, what. What your number is, because, again, it's just. It's. It's. It's. It's a flawed system because who's picking these rankings, right? It's. It's an. It's a subjective measurement. The way I. The way I might evaluate a player might be different from how somebody else might do that. Okay? So if they evaluate things differently than me, they use different criteria than I do, then. Then they might think that the guy I think is the 50th best player. They might think he's the 21st best player. Right? The guy that he thinks is the seventh best player, I might think is the 27th best player. Okay? So, again, I don't think rankings really matter, which is why you see guys like, they don't matter because you see, at the end of the day, guys who are ranked lower or aren't ranked end up beating these guys who are highly ranked because it's just. There's a lot of things go into it. You know, a while ago, I had. You know, for those of you who don't know, I actually used to run something called NBA Universal, which was a. Essentially, I just talked about the NBA. That was like, how long ago is that? It was, like, over a year ago. Probably about a year and a half ago I was doing that where essentially I would just talk about the NBA. So one of the videos I made, though, and actually, I think you'll probably find it on my channel if you go back. But I don't know if I still have it up or not. Essentially, I went through all of the number one overall ranked high school prospects from like 2000 to 2015 or 16. I think that might be a little bit off, but essentially it was like that, that span of guys. And there were so the number one guy in every high school class based on ESPN. And there was like three guys who are NBA all stars. Out of those 16 or so guys. LeBron was one of them, Dwight Howard was one of them. And then I forget who the third guy was. Maybe there was four, but it was like very, very small percentage of those guys went on to be NBA All Stars. The majority of guys who, you know, if you go through a top 100, a lot of those guys are not in the NBA. A lot of those guys just. I mean, if you go through a top 10, a lot of times, a lot of those guys won't be in the, in the NBA. So who's in the NBA then? If the top 10 guys in high school aren't going to the NBA, who, who is? Well, it's guys who are lower. Because here's the other thing with rankings. A lot of times those rankings get started, here's the issue with them people. And actually, I respect ESPN for not doing this. A lot of, a lot of ranking systems do this stuff where they start ranking guys in seventh or eighth grade when it's like, you don't know, like, if A kid is 611 in sixth grade, yeah, he's going to be really good because he's two feet taller than everybody else he's playing against. Obviously, if a kid can jump 35 inches when he's in seventh grade, okay, yeah, he's gonna be better than everybody else. But what about when all of his classmates catch up to him when they're sophomores in high school? What about in three years when that 611 kid is playing as other 611 kids, okay? And all of a sudden that 6'11 kid never had to really try that hard because he was always bigger than everybody else. But now he's not right? And now that kid, who, you know, was a little undersized when he was in eighth grade, undersized when he was in ninth grade. Then boom, shot up and now he's 6 10. But he had to work. He was always working. He was undersized, like, okay, I gotta, I can't afford to not work at this. Now all of a sudden he's, he's the same height as that guy, but he's been working at it. He's gonna be better than that guy. Right. Even though the rankings might say, oh, this kid's better. Well, no, he's not. Because you can't start ranking kids when they're that young because you don't know what a kid's gonna look like when he's in, you know, 11th grade compared to when he's in seventh, which is, it's so dumb to me that that rankings at that age even exist. I think it's. I think it's literally the dumbest thing ever. I get it. Because people like that stuff. But it's, it's just it, it to me there, it holds no weight. There's no value in it at all. Don't care. Obviously when I was that age that it was always. That was cool. Like when I was in seventh, eighth grade. Oh, who's the best in my class? I'm trying to think. I think the one player in my class. So I was 2018, Marvin Bagley was in my class for a while. Then he reclassed up. So at that point, you know, Marvin Bagley, I guess is one who. Who we'll see. And he was put in pretty good numbers. I think he's put up like 20 and 11 in the NBA or maybe it's like 18, 11 or something like that. 18 and 8, like pretty solid numbers for a second year guy in the NBA for the Kings. So, you know, I think he's going to be a good, a very solid NBA player. So there's one guy who pans out okay, but I believe once he reclassed up to 2017, I forget who the number one guy in my class was. I'm not sure, but I guess probably an RJ Barrett, right? In 2018. Yeah. RJ Barrett Zion. So I had a pretty good class, but there's guys in that top 10 now. And I still remember there are guys who were in that top 10 when I was in middle school that I would look at. I don't know what those guys are now. They're not in the NBA. I'll tell you that. There are guys who were ranked 2, 3, right behind Marvin Bagley. They are not in the NBA right now. Now maybe they will be because a lot of them are still in college now. A lot of them are just, just finished up their sophomore year. But not all of them one and done. So that that should go to tell you all you need to know. And I've broken down before how you have guys take Duncan Robinson from the Heat, right? Dude went from a D3 program, so obviously not ranked to Michigan to not playing in the NBA, breaking records for the Heat, getting a million dollar guaranteed contract. Who cares about the ranking? What does a high school ranking mean? What does a middle school ranking mean to a guy like that? It's just, to me, rankings are incredibly overblown and they're not. It's just not very important at all. And I think, I think I get it, but I think players spend too much. I get it. If you look at it, you're like, oh, that's cool. But if you like legit, get upset about it. Like, I think you're focused in the wrong spot because at the end of the day, if you can play, you can play. It doesn't matter what your rank. If you go out and you beat the guy who's ranked number 42 and you're not ranked, you're better than him. It's what matters. And any coach who goes to see that, who knows anything, basketball will see that and they'll be okay. That kid, who is that? Oh, he's not ranked. Guess I'm not going to recruit him. That's not how it works. Okay, so forget about rankings. Become the best you can actually become. That's, that's what really matters. Forget about other people, forget about what they're doing, forget about who balls, life or overtime is posting about, because again, that legitimately means nothing. I won't even get into that because I've already done that before. But forget about that sort of stuff. It doesn't matter. What matters is your approach to the game, Your approach to getting better. Like we talked about today, you evaluating yourself and giving yourself a roadmap of what you need to improve on to, to get to the level you want to get to. That's what matters. The end of the day, the rankings are what they are. You know, it's entertainment. You know, that's why basketball, basketball's entertainment. So guys are going to find things to talk about. You know, who's the best player in this seventh grade class, who's the best? Like, people want things to talk about when it comes to basketball, so that's how it works. But you as a player, that shouldn't be a big deal to you at all, okay? If the rankings come, they come. If they don't, who cares? Just play. So, but that's a good question, something that I get kind of often. I haven't answered that question in a while or actually I haven't gotten in a while, but it's the first time I've really answered it directly. But you know, just, just understand that it's not like if I can look at the number one recruit out of all of these, you know, out of all these high school classes and three or four of them are end up being all stars in the NBA. The rest of them either. A lot of them didn't even like pan out in the NBA. A lot of them are just like out of the league or didn't even make it to the league. So like, why does that matter a lot of times because that kid was the best player in eighth grade and by the time he was a junior, he wasn't actually the best player, but he was already number one. So like, oh, may as well leave him there, right? Then he gets to college and it's like, why is this kid not panning out? Well, it's probably because he wasn't that good in the first place. There were players who were better than him who ranked lower because they were late bloomers or they weren't 6, 10 in eighth grade. It's kind of how it works. I want you guys right now go to the top link in my description and get my free elite perimeter score workout. We're going to work on a bunch of different skills that you need to have if you want to be an elite player in the perimeter. Make sure you guys check it out completely free. Click the link, I'll send it right to you.