How much do non-performance factors matter in rankings?

[ceiling raiser]

Was thinking about this the other day. Not talking about intangibles, training, locker room, playstyle, or even backseat GMing. But about more fuzzy factors:

• Number of national games played
• Endorsements by top companies
• Number of controversies players are involved in
• Presence in top metros (particularly NYC/LA)
• Playing on EST (more of an issue with legacy media)
• Involvement in street all community
• Relationships with celebrities
• Fashion style off the court

There are a few that are somewhat related to performance:

• Awards (particularly MVPs and FMVPs) won
• Draft position
• College played for

What do you guys think? Might be interesting to map the consensus media top 50 and even the RealGM top 50 to these factors.

[SHAQ32]

Wut

[ceiling raiser]

Wut

Everybody has biases. Trying to enumerate them here, to see what priors inform rankings. I’m not suggesting they SHOULD be a part of rankings, to be clear.

[Dutchball97]

Awards are a good starting point to see who the best players were in a given season. Especially looking at MVP rankings and All-NBA teams usually gives you all the main actors. It's then up to the stats to prove or disprove these assesments. Maybe I do use it too much of an anchor as well though as I find it hard to become too bullish on players that were regarded as fringe All-NBA with minimal MVP consideration but statistically look significantly better than that.