ONLINE — A basketball writer’s annual top-10 player ranking expanded to 17 names Wednesday after repeated attempts to remove anyone were deemed too emotionally difficult.
“There are ten spots,” the writer acknowledged. “But there are also at least 17 guys who are obviously top 10.”
The list initially contained 10 players before three were added as honorable top-10 selections and four more were included because excluding them “felt insane.”
Readers immediately objected to the order, arguing that several players ranked outside the top five were clearly top five while two players inside the top five were not even top eight.
The writer attempted to solve the problem with tiers, which created a new dispute over why Tier 2 contained six players and whether the final member of Tier 1 was secretly Tier 1B.
Editors eventually approved the ranking after changing the headline to “Some Extremely Good Players, In An Order.”
Comments remained furious that Player 14 was somehow only the 14th-best player on a top-10 list.
