We describe wings as players who did not play the majority of their minutes at point guard or center, as listed by Basketball Reference. For example, you might be wondering about LeBron James, who has spent most of his career as a point guard or primary ball handler at small forward. However, over the last three seasons, he played 6% or less of his estimated minutes not at power forward or center, as calculated by Basketball Reference. He’s now primarily a “post” player as he transitions into this new phase of his career.
In the modern NBA, many teams play more wing players at power forward. Players like Jayson Tatum, Jimmy Butler, and Kevin Durant also play the majority of their minutes, upwards of 75%, at power forward. We’ll include this hybrid position and those players in these rankings as well, as it’s not entirely obvious they are traditional power forwards given the evolving nature of positions.
Statistical Analysis
These rankings are heavily influenced by our NBA ADJeff stat, which serves as a primary guidepost. If you want the statistical rank alone for last season, you can find it at that link. However, these rankings should be more nuanced, considering factors beyond just the statistics with some history for players that are of certain prime or younger ages. For example, Ja Morant only played 9 games last year and was much worse than his previous two seasons. Trae Young, who has performed much better in the past than last year and, at his age, shouldn’t be declining. Young’s performance seems to have been affected by pairing with Dejounte Murray, which is no more. Both players should theoretically see a bump back to their previous baseline independent of each other. We factored in such situations for various players that have been better like Jaren Jackson, Jr. etc in the recent past and weren’t old enough to blame decline on age, or that overall have proven they can play better in high usage roles. These rankings will factor in those sorts of examples than just strictly one year although it is the important marker.
