Who Core Score Says Can Win the NBA Finals

Two years ago, we tried breaking each NBA roster up into the value of its “Core” and the value of “Everything Else.” The Core? Anyone on The Ringer’s list of what was then the top 125 and is now the top 100 NBA players. The idea was that while Everything Else can get a team through the regular season, there’s a necessary level of Core strength necessary to win an NBA title. Stars play more minutes in the playoffs. Veterans no longer pace themselves. The basketball becomes more Core vs. Core.

To measure this, we fit The Ringer’s rankings onto a curve built off of FiveThirtyEight’s WAR values. FiveThirtyEight’s gone now and this exercise is imprecise enough that I’m not sure it would be worth updating that curve anyway. But that’s how this works. Other things to know:

• Core Score is measured in wins.
• Everything Else is almost exclusively just a gap between a team’s Core Score-implied wins and how many games it actually won. As its name implies, a lot of things contribute to Everything Else. Coaching. Role players. Health. Who got traded and when.
• Nikola Jokić is hard to evaluate. Our curve goes off FiveThirtyEight’s best bet at the end of the 2022–23 season, so he’s worth 18 wins in Core Score all by himself. (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is worth 11.44.)

Nothing else about this should be too controversial, but we’ll address the Jokić piece more below.

In this year’s playoffs, Core Score and Everything Else break down like this:

Back in 2023, we theorized that the cutoff for a team who could believably win the NBA Finals was somewhere around a 21-win Core Score. Back then, we had another 13.9 wins spread across the 30 cores (because The Ringer was ranking 125 players instead of 100), but that shouldn’t be too impactful. What I really don’t know is whether there’s a black-and-white title-capable threshold or a collection of tiers.

The Mavericks entered last season with a Core Score of only 17.2. They didn’t win the title, but they did win the Western Conference ahead of the Nuggets (31.7), Timberwolves (23.8), and Clippers (22.5). They also won it ahead of the Thunder (19.6), Suns (18.9), Pelicans (18.9), and Lakers (18.6). The Mavericks had the eighth-best Core Score in the West, and they won the Western Conference. On one side, you could say this makes Core Score meaningless. On the other, you could say the title-capable threshold stands. Maybe the Nuggets or Timberwolves or Clippers could have beaten the Celtics if they’d gotten there. We’ve never claimed that Core Score should predict single series. We’ve said it might be able to identify title-capable teams.

What do we have this year, then? In tiers, with two above the threshold and three below it:

Tier I: They Can Definitely Win

Four teams (the Nuggets, Thunder, Celtics, and Cavaliers) are, per Core Score, definitely title-capable. The Thunder and Celtics aren’t a surprise. The Nuggets and Cavs are interesting.

Across three years of measuring this, we’ve never seen the Nuggets with a positive Everything Else score. Maybe this means Jokić isn’t that much better than the rest of the league. Maybe it means their bench has always stunk. Maybe it means Michael Malone wasn’t a very good coach. I’m biased towards this haphazard metric I’ve cobbled together, but I’m curious. Even if you drop Jokić to equal with SGA, the Nuggets have a top-four Core and are one of just two playoff teams with a negative score in Everything Else. (Only eleven NBA teams are negative in Everything Else in total. This is mostly a reflection of tanking and the Phoenix Suns.) Basically: The Nuggets are bad at Everything Else. They’re good at having Nikola Jokić. Maybe that’s Calvin Booth. Maybe it was Malone. We’re not going to get a perfect test this postseason, but we’ll get something resembling one.

The Cavs aren’t as controversial. They’re just a little eye-popping in how well-rounded their roster might be. Per The Ringer, only the Lakers have a second-best player as good as Evan Mobley. Nobody has a third-best player as good as Darius Garland. Nobody has a fourth-best player as good as Jarrett Allen. They’re a better, top-heavier version of what the Timberwolves brought to last year’s postseason.

Tier II: Maybe They Can Win

Two more teams (the Knicks and Lakers) are above 21.0 in Core Score. We could include the Clippers here at 20.8, assuming they have someone between 101 and 125 if the list expanded that far, but we’re somewhat arbitrarily holding them out.

The Lakers aren’t controversial. This is a weird roster, because all LeBron James teams have weird rosters these days. It features an awesome one-two punch, but that one-two punch is polar, off the charts in some areas (mostly offensive) and vulnerable in others. They’re better described as “potent” than “great.” For a few weeks, though, potent can be all you need.

The Knicks aren’t expected to contend. If Jalen Brunson is fully healthy, though, could they? This would imply yes. There were points this season when the answer would have been yes. I think the answer is yes, but Brunson’s health is a question and they need to click. It’s noteworthy that both these teams did relatively badly in Everything Else compared to their playoff peers.

Tier III: It’d Be a Stretch

The Clippers, Warriors, Timberwolves, and Bucks are all above 17.0, within at least a Scottie Barnes of championship contention. Three of the four are top-heavy: The Clippers have four top-55 players. The Warriors have two in the top 20. The Bucks have Giannis Antetokounmpo. For the Timberwolves, it’s more about breadth, as one of seven teams in the NBA with at least five top-100 players. (Tiers I and II contribute five. The Rockets are the seventh. The Lakers only have three top-100 guys.)

In the preseason, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to hear that a roster like one of these four won it all. They’re close enough that at full strength, it’s believable. Core Score doesn’t think it’s happening, though, and there are other reasons to doubt at least three of the four. (The Warriors are the one that’s most curious, having so dramatically transformed through the Jimmy Butler trade.)

Tier IV: They’re a Piece Away, But a Big Piece

A player like Scottie Barnes might be enough to get the Bucks’ Core there, but it’d take Donovan Mitchell to push the Pacers across the line. Still, it’s at least conceivable that the Grizzlies, Rockets, Magic, or Pacers could turn their current Core into a championship Core.

The Rockets are the most interesting team here, having trailed only the Cavs and the Thunder this year in Everything Else. Along with the Thunder and Celtics, they’re one of three teams with six players in The Ringer’s top 100. Their four top-100 players 23 and younger are the only such collection in the league. I’d guess the conventional line will be that they’re “a year away” or “on the rise,” but it’s very possible The Ringer is underestimating just how good these guys are, especially under Ime Udoka’s coaching. Rockets vs. Warriors could be an all-timer, at least in the context of being a first round series.

Tier V: Congratulations on Being Here

God bless Heat Culture, and good for the Pistons, who finished fifth in the NBA in Everything Else.

Want to see the Cores that didn’t make the playoffs?

Victor Wembanyama’s blood clots impact this, as does the Suns’ general dysfunction, Joel Embiid’s knee, and the Pelicans playing what’s felt like all of 2025 without any of their Core. The Everything Else scores are interesting, especially as it pertains to tanking. More importantly, though, even SGA wouldn’t be enough to get eight of these teams up to that championship threshold. There are some really bad rosters in the NBA. It might be worth it to keep tabs on those franchises over the next few years. Presumably, at least one will be a contender in the medium-term future. How will they do it? How do you go from a 4-win Core to a 21-win Core in just a few years? Is it the Process? Development? Free agency? Trades? Do you need all-stars or a group of guys like Naz Reid?

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