Every player in the 2018 NBA Finals, ranked

At the end of a truly wild NBA season, we find ourselves with a truly anti-wild NBA Finals pairing. For the fourth straight year, the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers will face off with the championship on the line.

Both teams needed seven games to escape their conferences. After an erratic season that included multiple blockbuster trades, a player throwing soup at the coach, and a number of “Sheeshes” from the greatest player in the world, the Cavaliers survived what appears to have been a shallow, weakened East. The Warriors, meanwhile, cruised all season long until digging deep to watch the Rockets miss 27 straight threes, many of them open, in a Game 7 beat the excellent Rockets to win the West in seven.

On occasion of Warriors-Cavaliers IV, we’re ranking all 30 players eligible to play in the 2018 NBA Finals. Spoiler alert: most of the best players are Warriors. The series tips off on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

30. Kendrick Perkins

The Cavaliers signed Perk on April 12 for some reason. He played in one regular season game and hasn’t seen the court for a single second (not even garbage time) in the playoffs. Why why why is he on the roster?

29. Okaro White

Did LeBron have to buy Okaro White suits, too? Did LeBron ask Ty Lue if maybe Okaro could just hold down the fort back at home to save some suit money?

28. Zaza Pachulia

Zaza is a seemingly good dude who causes nothing but misery on the court. Blessed be the young Warriors big boys Kevon Looney and Jordan Bell for making Pachulia a memory and not a mainstay. If anyone could injure the indestructible LeBron it’d be this dude.

27. Damian Jones

Fun fact: Jones is the only Warrior with a negative playoffs plus-minus (-20).

26. Ante Zizic

Of the two major blockbuster trades from last summer — Chris Paul to Houston and Kyrie Irving to Boston — there is just one player still alive heading into the Finals, and his name is Ante Zizic.

25. Patrick McCaw

And now for a brief moment of sincerity: it’s really nice to see McCaw get back out there very briefly in garbage time in the Western Conference Finals after that scary, scary injury late in the regular season.

24. JaVale McGee

The Warriors, who supposedly made the center position irrelevant, have two centers they never need to play on their roster, along with the two that play sometimes. Golden State’s front office is generally unimpeachable, but having all these bench-riding big dudes is awful weird.

23. Quinn Cook

Cook must be especially relieved that the Warriors pulled out the series win against the Rockets, or his name would be eternally cursed in the Bay Area after that one memorable Game 5 miss.

22. Jose Calderon

In retrospect, it’s a little surprising Calderon didn’t get the nod at times over Jordan Clarkson in the Celtics series. The Spaniard is a huge defensive liability, but Boston had few dangerous one-on-one players. The Warriors, uh, have several.

21. Nick Young

Young is the other questionable Golden State front office move: you’d hope to get someone a little more dependable with the midlevel salary cap exception, especially considering how many veterans would love to hunt rings with the Warriors. Fun fact: Young has the same number of assists this postseason (four) as McGee in 64 more minutes. A swingman getting just four assists in 167 minutes is actually pretty impressive for the wrong reasons.

20. Cedi Osman

Free Cedi!

19. David West

Can we all acknowledge that West was essentially unplayable against the Rockets? The Warriors’ frontcourt depth would be a problem if they haven’t the best top-4 in NBA history.

18. Rodney Hood

Hood remains in the doghouse, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and when those desperate measures don’t work, then I suppose it’s time for Rodney Hood. Hood is a team-worst minus-79 in the playoffs, by the way.

17. Jordan Clarkson

Clarkson honestly hasn’t been much better than Hood, but since he can nominally play point guard (and really only when LeBron is also on the court) and since he didn’t refuse to enter a game in garbage time, he’s in the rotation. Clarkson is shooting 31 percent in the playoffs, and only about a third of his shots have been threes, so that’s not a ready excuse. The good news is that Clarkson is only due $26 million over the next two years.

16. Shaun Livingston

Livingston is one of just two totally trustworthy reserves for Steve Kerr, and with Andre Iguodala still out of action, that’s a big burden, especially considering he’d rather play one-handed than take an open three.

15. Jordan Bell

Bell would make Warriors fans feel a whole lot better if he could be a little more sure-handed around the rim. Can’t wait to see the rebound battles between Bell and Larry Nance Jr., two brand new entrants to a familiar war.

14. Kevon Looney

It seems like just last year that Looney was a wide-eyed irrelevant youth in a Cavaliers-Warriors series. Oh wait, it was last year. Now there’s a good chance he’ll start every game. Part of that speaks to Looney’s talent, which was always lurking and ready to strike. Part of it speaks to poor roster decisions on centers from the Warriors.

13. Larry Nance Jr.

Nance avoids shots he can’t make, rebounds the holy hell out of the ball, and plays super hard 100 percent of the time. That automatically makes him one of the seven best Cavaliers. Given P.J. Tucker’s success on the offensive boards in the West finals, Nance could get his name shouted by Mike Breen quite a lot in this series.

12. J.R. Smith

Smith was atrocious on the road against the Celtics. Given that his counterpart is Klay freaking Thompson, Cleveland can’t afford for Smitty to be cold as a rule. Whatever Smith needs to do to hit those open shots, the Cavaliers desperately need it.

11. George Hill

Hill has been wildly inconsistent since coming over from the Kings at the deadline, and is due $20 million in 2018-19, so it’d be really, really nice for everyone involved if he had a strong Finals debut. His defense on Stephen Curry is obviously critical, but so is his ability to hit open shots consistently.

10. Andre Iguodala

There’s no word on whether Iguodala will play — at last check he’s seeking a second opinion on his knee. That becomes the biggest question going into the Finals: if Iguodala can’t play, will that hurt the Warriors just a little, or a lot? If Iguodala isn’t there to guard LeBron, that responsibility will fall to Kevin Durant. Will guarding LeBron wear Durant down to the point that he’s less effective on offense? Will that cascade into making this series more competitive? Will Golden State’s addiction to middling centers finally cost them when they don’t have the wings to fill the Iguodala-sized gap in the rotation?

9. Jeff Green

Green was one of the heroes of Game 7 for the Cavaliers (along with — who else? — LeBron). With Kevin Love’s status for at least Game 1 and possibly Sunday’s Game 2 in question, Green’s mix of open court speed and idiosyncratic offensive style could help Cleveland overcome huge odds. Or he could regress to the Jeff Green that has mostly confused onlookers for much of his career.

8. Tristan Thompson

What a journey this postseason has been for Thompson. He began the playoffs basically out of the rotation as gossip vultures swirled around him. By the end of the East finals, he was as integral to the Cavaliers’ survival as anyone but LeBron. It was noticeable and a little scary when Thompson was on the bench! His ability to step out on defense and take advantage of the Warriors’ rebounding toughness could have a huge role in whatever success Cleveland musters.

7. Kyle Korver

As one of the greatest shooters of all-time, it goes without saying, Korver needs to hit his open shots. Boston did a great job tracking him down and challenging everything, and Golden State likely will do the same. We know the Warriors are going to score. Cleveland needs to keep up. Getting some points from Korver is a big factor in that, and can open the lanes for James and, to a lesser extent, Green.

6. Draymond Green

Draymond Green’s impulse control still gets blamed for the Warriors’ 2016 Finals loss, though Green’s Game 7 near-heroics seem to be forgotten. (He was the best player in that game in the first half.) Vengeance came a year ago, and while Dray has been especially quiet this campaign, one expects that the brightest lights while bring out the fire within once again.

5. Kevin Love

Cleveland has a really, really tough course ahead. And that’s assuming Kevin Love can play after suffering a concussion against the Celtics. Without Love, the Cavaliers are toast. No pressure.

4. Klay Thompson

Had the Warriors been constructed on a different timeline, and Durant had always been around and grew up with the team, Thompson would feel like the unfair, superfluous star here. You have the best shooter ever in Curry, a top-10 all-time scorer in Durant ... and the second best shooter ever, who can also defend? That’s totally unfair! Thompson, when paired with Curry and/or Durant, is just totally unfair.

3. Kevin Durant

Durant is the reigning Finals MVP and just broke the Western Conference Finals scoring record and ... no one cares. I’m as guilty as anyone in talking about Durant only to talk about the continued ramifications of his decision to join the Warriors instead of talking about his play. This is what happens when you sign with a 73-win team, I suppose. You get the trophies and like nothing else.

2. Stephen Curry

Let’s go ahead and put away all suggestions that Curry isn’t healthy right now. If you watched him in the closing games of the Rockets series, you’ll see that he’s just as fine as anyone can be this deep into the season. No excuses if he has a rough night or two. And he has had some rough nights against the Cavaliers over the first three Finals series. Last year, the Warriors were too overwhelming for Curry to come under any scrutiny or on-court pressure. Golden State is hoping for a repeat this time. But if Cleveland can stretch the series out, the ghosts of 2016 just might return.

1. LeBron James

There’s little more that can or that needs to be said about LeBron. He’s played every game this year, because that’s what the Cavaliers needed, and he played every minute of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, because that’s what the Cavaliers needed. In 2015 and 2017, the Cavaliers needed more than what LeBron could provide, a rare phenomenon. Everyone is assuming that will be the case again this year. But will it?

That’s the reason to get deeply invested in these Finals. We have a pretty strong sense of how this is going to play out, with the Warriors dismantling the Cavaliers like they did a year ago. But what if they don’t? You don’t want to miss that ... just in case.