Battle of the Classes: Ranking the best high school basketball classes since 2000

Video: MaxPreps Minute - Battle of the Classes
Figuring out which high school basketball class is the best since 2000.

With the 2015 NBA Draft a thing of the past, there will be a lot of talk about the best draft classes of all time. But since players enter the draft at all different ages — straight out of high school, after one year of college, maybe even after four years — those draft classes don't tell us how good high school basketball was in any given year.

That's our job.

MaxPreps went back and looked at every high school class since 2000 and put together the best team possible. Now, we're not talking about just throwing together the nine best players in a class. We made REAL teams.

We tried our best to keep players at their natural positions (no putting Steph Curry at the power forward), but we were a bit lenient in certain cases. Look, the Warriors just won playing three small forwards and two guards so exceptions can be made when the talent is right. The bottom line is, the team has to be able to play together.

We've ranked them in order from 16-1 based on how we think each team would fare. There are some great ones and some, well, not so great ones.

Let the debate begin.


*For classes before 2012 RSCI player rankings were used. For 2012-15 247Sports Composite rankings were used.

16. Class of 2005
Superstars: None.

Snubs: C.J. Miles just missed the cut, but let's be honest — it wouldn't have made a difference.

Recruiting notes: Josh McRoberts was the No. 1 player in this class, which says something. Wesley Matthews, arguably the best player on the list, was ranked No. 61. A superstar athlete was also ranked No. 101: New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham.

Why they're ranked here: As we go on you'll see that there's pretty much no argument here. This is the one class devoid of any superstars (or stars of any kind). Had Andrew Bynum's career not been derailed by injuries and general insanity, he could have been the lone bright spot. As it is, this goes down as the worst high school class since 2000.