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ESPN is out with the first part of their annual ranking of 400 NBA players, starting with the bottom 100. Three Nets made their list, Sergey Karasev at No. 344, Andrea Bargnani, at 361 and Shane Larkin, all the way down at 388 ... or 12th worst. (Lucas Nogueira of Toronto is No. 400.)
There was no response from Karasev or Bargnani, but Larkin didn't allow it to pass unnoticed.
Devin Karpertian of The Brooklyn Game tweeted out his own surprise ... and the 22-year-old Larkin responded.
@uuords they'll see lol.
— Shane Larkin (@ShaneLarkin_3) September 23, 2015
Billy King said he told Larkin, who was a square peg in a round hole in Phil Jackson's triangle, "I said to Shane, just be who you were coming out of Miami and you’ll be fine." Of he and Bargnani, King added, "We have a lot of guys that have so-called been knocked around by local management in other organizations but they don’t have to prove it to them."
Later, ESPN added its next hundred players which included No. 271, Thomas Robinson; No. 273, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson; and No. 295, Wayne Ellington.
How were they ranked? Here's ESPN explanation, "We asked, 'Which player will be better in 2015-16?' To decide, voters had to consider both the QUALITY and the QUANTITY of each player's contributions to his team's ability to win games. Over 100 voters weighed in on nearly 30,000 pairs of players.'
It will go on for another five weeks. Oh joy.