The methodology behind Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 list has remained much the same since its inception in 2014: evaluate every player for the coming season, assess their quality independent of their role and usage within their team, and then rank them. The concept is simple, but the science is inexact. And no matter how much time, effort and thought goes into it, the task remains somewhat flawed. How do we eliminate the role of context when drawing distinctions about athletes in such a heavily contextual team game?
Well, unfortunately, it’s the only way to execute a task like this with any sense of fairness.