Cavaliers are disrespectfully low in ESPN's controversial rankings of NBA cores

Belief in the Cleveland Cavaliers hasn't caught up to reality yet.

ESPN's Tim Bontemps, a plugged-in and sharp NBA reporter, recently underwent a project of ranking every team by the "Top 3 stars" on their roster. Rather than merely picking the three best players on each team, a monumental task to begin with, Bontemps identified players who make up the "core" of a team both now and moving forward.

For example, the Indiana Pacers' best three players might include Myles Turner, but Bontemps included Bennedict Mathurin. For the Golden State Warriors, Brandin Podziemski joined the list over the older Andrew Wiggins. The Houston Rockets were ranked by their young rising stars instead of Fred VanVleet or Dillon Brooks. Right or wrong, that was his rubric for building the list out.

The list begins, unsurprisingly, with the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder. Each have a core of stars firmly in or just entering their primes, and all of them are locked up for multiple years. The Celtics won the title, and the Thunder are the favorites to win the West.

From there, however, you have to keep moving down the list to find the Cleveland Cavaliers -- all the way to No. 8. That's a ranking that shows Bontemps, and the rest of the league, is lagging behind on a Cavaliers team that was 16-1 when this piece was published.

Cavaliers' core is ranked No. 8

Bontemps chose Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley for his core of three stars in Cleveland, although he acknowledges you 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.

It speaks to how well the Cavs have started that they are ranked this highly, because Garland and Mobley both had disappointing campaigns a year ago and the fit of these four stars was maligned by many. At the same time, they should almost certainly be ranked higher - and a case can be made for much higher.

Part of what is holding back the Cavaliers on this list vs their overall performance as a team is that the exercise is looking at a team's Top 3 -- and the Cavs have the best fourth-best player in the league, right there with Boston. Jarrett Allen is a Top-10 center in the NBA and a Top-50 player overall, and he isn't counted for this exercise. So that has to be factored in.

At the same time, the Cavaliers have proven that they are better than the 8th-best core in the league. Their stars are crushing the competition -- and what's more, are all young and have good track records of health. That can't be said for some of the teams ranked above them.

Bucks and 76ers ranked on reputation

The fact that the Milwaukee Bucks were ranked above the Cleveland Cavaliers is probably wrong, but it's defensible. Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to play at a Top-5 level -- seriously, his numbers this year are insane -- but Damian Lillard has clearly slipped, and Brook Lopez is aging out of being an elite defender. The Bucks have played an easy schedule and are just 8-9.

The inexplicable decision made by Bontemps was to rank the Philadelphia 76ers ahead of the Cavaliers, placing the trio of Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey at sixth.

Embiid has barely played this season and has a degenerative knee condition 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 was not playing well when he was healthy; he's also 34 years old. Tyrese Maxey is an ascending player, but he was terribly inefficient when trying to play without his co-stars. He can't carry a team offensively like Mitchell or even Garland can.

Add it all up - injuries, age, ineffectiveness - and sprinkle on top a bit of reality that they are 3-13 on the season, and there is no case based in present reality that would rank them above the Cavaliers. Looking back at Embiid's MVP past? Maybe. Wishing for a future that will never come? Possibly.

In the present and moving forward, however, the Cleveland Cavaliers have proven themselves an elite team with an elite core of players. They deserve already to be a few spots higher on the list, and it's very likely that they find themselves even higher by the end of the season.