The Cavaliers are disrespectfully low in ESPN’s controversial NBA core rankings

The belief in the Cleveland Cavaliers has not yet reached reality.

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, a dedicated and astute NBA reporter, recently conducted a project that ranked each team by the “Top 3 Stars” on their roster. Instead of simply selecting the top three players from each team, which was a monumental task to begin with, Bontemps identified players who will form the “core” of a team both now and in the future.

For example, the Indiana Pacers’ top three players might include Myles Turner, but Bontemps also included Bennedict Mathurin. For the Golden State Warriors, Brandin Podziemski joined senior Andrew Wiggins on the list. The Houston Rockets were ranked based on their young rising stars and not Fred VanVleet or Dillon Brooks. Right or wrong, that was his rubric for making the list.

Unsurprisingly, the list starts with the Boston Celtics and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Each of them has a core of stars that are already in or about to reach their prime, and all are locked for several years. The Celtics won the title and the Thunder are the favorites to win the West.

From there, however, you have to move further down to find the Cleveland Cavaliers – all the way down to No. 8. That’s a ranking that shows Bontemps and the rest of the league trailing behind a Cavaliers team that was 16-1, when this article was published.

Bontemps chose Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley for his three-star core in Cleveland, although he acknowledged they could easily include Jarrett Allen as well. He highlights the impact that new head coach Kenny Atkinson is having in Cleveland and how both Garland and Mobley are off to the best starts of their careers.

The fact that they are ranked so high shows how well the Cavs have started, as Garland and Mobley both had disappointing seasons a year ago and the fit of these four stars was maligned by many. At the same time, they should almost certainly be rated higher – and there is an argument for a much higher rating.

Part of what holds the Cavaliers back on this list compared to their overall performance as a team is that it’s about the top three of a team – and the Cavaliers have the best fourth-best player in the league in Boston. Jarrett Allen is a top-10 center in the NBA and a top-50 player overall and is not being considered for this exercise. So that needs to be taken into account.

At the same time, the Cavaliers have proven that they are better than the eighth-best core in the league. Their stars are crushing the competition – and what’s more, they’re all young and have good health records. However, this does not apply to some of the teams above.

The fact that the Milwaukee Bucks were ranked above the Cleveland Cavaliers is probably wrong, but defensible. Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to play at a top-five level – seriously, his numbers this year are insane – but Damian Lillard has clearly declined and Brook Lopez is aging from being an elite defender. The Bucks played a simple game plan and are only 8-9.

Bontemps’ inexplicable decision was to place the Philadelphia 76ers ahead of the Cavaliers and move the trio of Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey to sixth.

Embiid has barely played this season and is suffering from a degenerative knee disease that may prevent him from ever playing at an All-NBA level again, let alone as an MVP. Paul George continues to get injured and didn’t play well when he was healthy; he is also 34 years old. Tyrese Maxey is an up-and-coming player, but he was terribly ineffective when trying to play without his co-stars. He can’t lead a team offensively like Mitchell or even Garland.

When you add it all up – injuries, age, ineffectiveness – and sprinkle in a little reality, they’re 3-13 this season and there’s no case in current reality that ranks them above the Cavaliers would. Looking back at Embiid’s MVP past? Perhaps. Do you wish for a future that will never come? Possibly.

However, in the present and the future, the Cleveland Cavaliers have proven to be an elite team with an elite core of players. They already deserve to be a few places higher up the list, and it’s very likely that they will be even higher at the end of the season.