You won’t find the Detroit Pistons on anyone’s lists of best teams in the NBA, nor will you find many of their players in talks of who is best at their position or who will make All-NBA.
That’s what happens when you have a five-year run of futility, when you are coming off a historically bad season that included a record losing streak and only 14 wins.
So, it wasn’t surprising to not see many Pistons represented on ESPN’s recent top-100 rankings of NBA players, but it was surprising to see just how little ESPN thinks of Cade Cunningham, who was ranked just 67th.
Look, these lists are dumb and we all know it. ESPN throws a few clearly fraudulent rankings in the mix to rile up fanbases and increase engagement. It’s content creation 101 and it’s smart, as here I am falling for the trap.
But the rankings do bring up some interesting questions about how you judge a good player who has missed a lot of games and whose teams have always been terrible. I do think team success has to be considered, but some of the players ranked ahead of Cade Cunningham are just ridiculous.
I counted at least nine and that is just in the first half of the list. And Cunningham wasn’t the only one who was slighted, as they had first-team All-Defensive player Herb Jones ranked 97th (more on that as we go), lower than Andrew “freaking” Wiggins (90th), who the Warriors couldn’t give away.
There were many such occurrences, and my guess would be that ESPN researched which fans are angriest and ranked their players lower to get more engagement, but that’s just my conspiracy theory.
You win, ESPN, here are the nine players who have no business being ahead of Cade Cunningham.
#65: Malik Monk
I’m going to say this a lot but I’d love to know what measure ESPN used for these rankings, as there is no quantifiable way to justify Monk over Cunningham.
Monk is a very good bench player, but for his career he has averaged about half as many points as Cade Cunningham, who also averages more assists, rebounds and steals while shooting higher percentages from the floor as well as the 3-point line.
Monk is a “shooter” who shot 44 percent from the floor last year and 35 percent from the 3-point line, both lower than Cunningham, who took six more shots per game.
Please explain this ESPN, as there is not a person on planet Earth who thinks Monk is better than Cunningham (not even Monk) and there is literally no numeric quantification for it.