Every year, Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux perform an exercise trying to find the best “young cores” in the league. This is their criteria:
1. The player counts if they are 25 or younger
2. Players without team control are discounted (i.e. GTJ is <= 25, but is an UFA this offseason).
3. They don’t care about draft picks. i.e. the Spurs have a ton of future draft picks, but that doesn’t factor into this ranking — since this ranking is about the players already on the team.
The general idea of the above is to answer the question “given this core of players, how do we think they will grow together over the next 5 years”.
The full list is below:
1. Thunder
2. Grizzlies
3. Magic
4. Spurs
5. Rockets
6. Cavaliers
7. Mavericks
8. Wolves
9. Pacers
10. Pelicans
11. Celtics (only because Tatum is 25)
12. Raptors
13. Hornets
14. Hawks
15. Pistons
16. Trailblazers
17. Jazz
18. 76ers
19. Warriors
20. Heat
21. Kings
22. Nets
23. Bulls
24. Lakers
25. Nuggets
26. Wizards
27. Knicks
28. Bucks
29. Clippers
30. Suns
Not bad for year-1 of a rebuild imo. If they draft and develop well this year, we should hopefully see them climb into the top 8 next year.
If you’re curious to hear them justify their choices, you can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5dfb1JbzfJ4QiHLxUA2zst?si=511a4a57c2934c56 . I don’t agree with everything they say, but it’s interesting to see how folks outside of Raptors’ discourse see the team.
by -vinay
8 Comments
In the middle just like everything else since the chip
Pretty sad for the wizards to be this bad for this long, and still be so far away from having a good core
Knicks fans are (rightfully) over the moon with their team right now but I agree with this assessment. They’re a team built to win now, and so they’re going to top out as far as Randle and Brunson can take them.
I understand why their fans are excited but also that’s a team with a very clear ceiling and that is not a championship result – then they’re trapped there for the next few years. Very curious how the fans feel after another two years of good but not great.
Spurs should be 1!
I’m sorry this whole ranking falls apart for me after the Thunder or Grizz and then becomes a ranking of the best players under 25. The Mavericks and Twolves only have a couple of players that meet requirements.
That said, the Raptors are in the right tier (they’re not in the top tier, maybe the second or third tier down). Had we acquired a player in the Siakam trade (a Bufkin or a Kuminga), they’d be higher.
raps can drastically move up in this ranking if they draft 3 solid players this draft. Any 3 of sheppard, salaun, dunn, clingan, dillingham, castle, and da silva can really help them get better imo. We can put sarr up there too but I doubt raps pick is high enough to draft him.
12th is a little misleading because some of these teams have no interest in a young core. The Nuggets for example have Jokic and Murray, they’re not concerned with this list. So, take out the win-now teams and they’re better than only the Hornets, Hawks, Pistons, Trailblazers, Jazz, Nets, Bulls and Wizards.
Not good when teams making the playoffs have a better young core than you lol