NBA: Ranking all 30 starting small forwards for 2018-19

With the 2018-19 NBA season still a ways off, it’s time to rank all 30 projected starting small forwards in the league for the upcoming campaign.

The 2018-19 NBA season still feels so far away. With free agency all but over and training camp still weeks away, August is usually when the dog days of the NBA summer are out in full force.

In order to pass the time, why not rank every projected starter by position for all 30 teams?

Earlier this week, we ranked all 30 projected starters for both the point guard and shooting guard positions, which means today we’ll be covering the small forwards. As the league continues to dive deeper into small-ball lineups, there will be quite a few players making the list who traditionally would’ve been 2-guards, as well as a few notable names that are missing after being moved to the power forward rankings as small-ball 4s.

The question is, what goes into these rankings? While there’s no set algorithm or advanced statistic determining these evaluations for the upcoming season, there are a number of factors being taken into account.

These include a player’s stats from last year, team impact, defense, fit with his current team, propensity for injury, opportunity, projected team success and a myriad of other factors. These aren’t based on fantasy projections or contract value; they’re just simply good, old-fashioned rankings determined solely by a player’s expected on-court value for the upcoming campaign.

While official depth charts haven’t been laid out just yet, these are the 30 players we’re expecting to spend the majority of the upcoming season at the starting small forward position for their respective teams. Without further ado, let’s rank all 30 projected starting small forwards for the 2018-19 NBA season.