The 2026-27 NBA All-Pendulum Draft! (Patreon Preview)

So this is one of those things that has come up a lot.

And I don't know if we necessarily originated the term, but it kept when we just discuss a player, it was just kind of this idea that like public sentiment has gone a little too a little too far one way or the other on player X.

And they would come up periodically.

I was about to name a name, but I'm sure as we get into this, that name will come up as an example of it.

more i thought about the concept of the pendulum is it's really trickier than it sounds like because to say the pendulum has swung too far one direction or the other on a player is to first establish some something approaching well here's the consensus opinion on this guy here's what it used to be here's what it is now and that's such a moving target right because it doesn't always reflect what you think about the player except to say we're gonna weigh in on what basically how what we think about the player differs from where public sentiment has landed.

So there is like an objective, subjective kind of clash going on here.

I don't feel like the concept is as difficult to understand as I'm explaining it.

It's not that different from like an overrated versus underrated conversation, except that the idea being it's weird that this player has as I'm going to make the pendulum motion has swung like, you know, one direction or the other.

And in a lot of cases, I don't know what your list is going to look like.

In a lot of cases, we'll have examples of players for whom like it really has gone way positive.

And then now we're way negative on it or vice versa.

And it's just an unusual class of player that I'll just say sometimes contract has a lot to do with it.

And that's fair.

But that was a through line.

I noticed as I was kind of putting a list together.

So that's the idea.

We're going to just talk about draft players that we think the pendulum is has swung too far in one direction on and is and public's opinion on that player is kind of no longer fair or representative of the player's actual like where the player's perception should actually be is that is that is

that

a

decent summary of what the the job is here I think that was excellent.

Absolutely excellent.

And I would say I gravitated towards, on my list of players that I have, I gravitated towards, I guess it's I want to come to their defense almost, where it's, as you mentioned, it could be a player where perception just feels way more positive than it should be relative to what they're doing or where we think they're headed.

But for some reason, my list is overwhelmingly populated by guys who I just feel as if we're just way too low on them.

I don't know what that says.

Does that make me a softie? Does that mean I'm too stubborn to adjust to my priors to where I had these opinions about these guys a few years ago and I refuse to relinquish them? I don't know.