J.R. Smith will best be known as an eccentric individual whose penchant for bad on-court decision-making cost his team a Finals Game, but he was still a coveted role player for years who won two NBA Championships; Cleveland in 2016 and Los Angeles in 2020.

Smith’s individual highlights include finishing in the top ten four times in 3-Point Field Goals, winning the 2013 Sixth Man of the Year, and earning three consecutive Rookie of the Month Awards in 2005.  He won’t make the Hall, but he is more famous than many who did.

A late First Round Pick from Missouri (27^th in 2010), DeMarre Carroll was a journeyman player who had stints for Memphis, Houston, Denver, Utah, Atlanta, Toronto, Brooklyn, and San Antonio, but for a hot second, while he was with the Hawks, it looked like Carroll was about to break out.

Named the Co-Player of the Month in January of 2005, Carroll finished the year fourth in Effective Field Goal Percentage.  Carroll never broke that threshold, but he had five 10-plus Points per Game years, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Professionally, Corey Brewer was a journeyman player who served 13 seasons in the NBA, highlighted by winning an NBA Championship with Dallas in 2011.  He was never close to being an All-Star, but the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame cares about collegiate accomplishments, and Brewer helped lead Florida to win two NCAA Titles while winning a Final Four MVP.

Many Hall of Fame players has three fewer Championships than Brewer. 

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists out and we always consistently look to update them when we can and based on necessity.  As such, we are very happy to present our post-2021 revision of our top 50 Carolina Panthers.

As for all of our top 50 players in football we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the National Football League. 

3.  Playoff accomplishments.

4.  Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Last year, the Panthers again failed to make the playoffs, but there were changes in the top 50, including one new entry and two elevations.

As always, we present our top five:

1. Steve Smith

2. Cam Newton

3. Luke Kuechly

4. Julius Peppers

5. Ryan Kalil

You can find the entire list here.

It is worth noting that Newton, who returned midway through last season to Carolina, did not surpass Smith and remains at #2.

Wide Receiver, D.J. Moore, climbed to #37 from #48.

Linebacker, Shaq Thompson went from #46 to #40.

The lone debut is Offensive Lineman, Taylor Moton comes in at #50.

We welcome your input and comments and as always, we thank you for your support.