ESPN recently came out with a list of the top-50 players heading into the Disney bubble, and the Boston Celtics find themselves as the only team rostering five ranked players.
All season long, we’ve preached about just how good the Boston Celtics’ core-five have been. Rostering the likes of All-Stars Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum, arguable All-Star snub Jaylen Brown, former All-Star Gordon Hayward, and SwissArmy man Marcus Smart, we’ve gone as far as deeming them the best core in the Eastern Conference.
Generally speaking, lists of player rankings are predominantly arbitrary and, in the grand scheme of things, mean nothing aside from notoriety. That said, it doesn’t mean that when one reads such publications this logic comes to the forefront of the brain.
Often times, when these lists are published, it spurs an unbelievable amount of emotion — both good and bad — that clouds one’s judgment and, in turn, sends them into a frenzy. Personally, just last week we here at the Houdini were so enraged over Bleacher Report’s NBA top-100 rankings that we had to go and re-rank some of them ourselves and gave our own justifications as to why.
Recently, ESPN dipped their toes into the water and went more in the direction we did, ranking the top-50 players heading into the Disney bubble and, though there are a few disagreements here and there, for the most part, we approve!
In this piece, we see all five of the C’s core listed. The list goes as follows:
- 38) Marcus Smart
- 36) Gordon Hayward
- 25) Jaylen Brown
- 20) Kemba Walker
- 13) Jayson Tatum
Now, granted, while it is fun to see where your team’s players rank amongst the rest of their peers in the league, a ranking scale that shows where they rank in their respective conference is much more impactful; After all, it is the players within one’s conference that a team will have to get past to make it to the NBA Finals in the first place.
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In our rankings, we deemed that both Walker was easily a top-10 player in the east and Tatum would be ranked in the top-5. It would appear ESPN is under this impression as well.
Their ranking reads as follows:
- Giannis Antetokounmpo
- Joel Embiid
- Jimmy Butler
- Jayson Tatum
- Pascal Siakam
- Ben Simmons
- Khris Middleton
- Kyle Lowry
- Kemba Walker
- Bam Adebayo
The rest of Brown, Hayward, and Smart find themselves ranked 11th, 14th, and 16th, respectively.
All in all, however, the Boston Celtics find themselves as the only team heading into the Disney bubble rostering five players on this list. Sure, some come close — Milwaukee, OKC, Toronto, Philadelphia, and the Clippers have four — but the shamrocks sit soundly at the top of this illustrious mountain.
To bring things full circle: All season long, we’ve preached about just how good the Boston Celtics’ core-five have been… we’ve gone as far as deeming them the best core in the Eastern Conference.
At this point, not only does it appear ESPN agrees with our stance but, frankly has brought it a step further and strengthened the C’s case of being the best core in the entire association.
But, hey, that’s just our interpretation…