Which Cavs are too low, too high on ESPN’s Top 100?

Which Cavs are too high on ESPN’s Top 100?

Caris LeVert at 80

Caris LeVert seems like a really solid guy and a great teammate, and he seems to genuinely want to be in Cleveland. That’s great. He is also incredibly talented as a basketball player. The tricky thing for LeVert is that his greatest strengths are on-ball, star-player traits: ball-handling, shot creation and passing.

If you do those competently, you raise the floor of the team you are playing for. If you do them excellently, you raise the ceiling. LeVert falls somewhere in the middle, and because he is weak on defense, off-ball movement and shooting, his ability to scale into a different role alongside players like Garland and Mitchell, who are both better than LeVert at nearly everything he does, is limited. LeVert belongs outside the Top 100, the only Cavs player on the list to not quite deserve it. He should be an honorable mention.

Evan Mobley at 36

Evan Mobley is a supremely talented young player, the kind of future star that you don’t listen to trade offers for because his future is so bright. His defensive versatility, his instincts, his diverse skillset all leap off the page even as he just turned 21 years old. In a few years it’s not crazy to think Mobley will be one of the final players revealed as part of the Top 10 on this list.

For now, though, Mobley isn’t quite here. A rosy projection for him could see him land at 36 by the end of next season, but he has to prove it first. The offense is still raw enough, the shooting isn’t there, the strength to bang inside a work-in-progress. Garland, Zion Williamson and Draymond Green all belong above him, at the very least, from players who checked in below him on the list. He’ll get there, and probably soon, but like many young players on this list the potential got converted into present play a little too fast with these rankings.