OKC Thunder Superstar Snubbed From Top 100 Player List

The NBA Summer League is winding down and soon we will be left in the dark ages of the NBA offseason. The warm summer months giving us no hoops to discuss, leading to outlets creating their own fodder.

A tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme, is player rankings. Typically, a listing of the top 100 article players in the NBA, with a few head-scratchers thrown in to drive attention. On Monday, Bleacher Report blew their load a bit early, digging deep into the offseason bag to put out a top 100 NBA players of all time list.

Typically reserved for August, Bleacher Report got a jump start on the idea with plenty of laughable decisions littering the list. Of course, the article can only be attributed to Bleacher Report's staff because who on earth would want to put their name on these rankings?

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just had one of the greatest seasons in the history of the league, only rivaled by Bleacher Report's No. 1 overall pick, Michael Jordan.

Gilgeous-Alexander led the league in scoring, won the NBA MVP award, grabbed the Western Conference Finals MVP honor and capped it off with his first championship and a Finals MVP trophy. He made his third All-Star team, third All-NBA squad and third straight season finishing inside the top-five of MVP voting.

The Thunder superstar led Oklahoma City to 68 wins in the regular season and the franchise's first NBA championship while averaging 32.7 points, 5.0 rebounds, 6.4 assists, 1.7 steals and a block per game on 52/37/89 shooting splits.

Yet, all those accolades weren't enough for Gilgeous-Alexander to crack the top 100 players in the NBA, according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Butler finds himself at No. 83. Butler, who made two shocking runs to the NBA Finals in 14 seasons with just three more All-Star appearances than Gilgeous-Alexander, who has played half as many years. That gap shrinks to just two if you only look at All-NBA nods.

Butler is a hall of very good players and by NBA standards a Hall of Famer. However, we have already seen the peak of the 35-year-old and it was nowhere near the season Gilgeous-Alexander put up.

While Butler isn't the only head-scratching name above the Thunder superstar, it does prove the point that Bleacher Report is putting together a half-baked list for the attention they are getting online right now. There is no uniformity as to what gets a player ranked where.

Butler, a remarkably good but not great player, ranks ahead of Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Bernard King, Jayson Tatum, Chauncey Billups, Tony Parker and Sam Jones.

Perhaps Bleacher Report values big face coffee as a lasting legacy for Butler because his basketball reputation will not outlive the names below him.

Along with Butler comes Paul George, Damian Lillard and Joel Embiid as active players to bump Gilgeous-Alexander off the list.

So perhaps it is due to the Thunder's stars age until you spot Luka Doncic all the way up at No. 57. Doncic, a deserving member of the top 100 and based on just skillset alone should be higher, but faces the same sample size concers as Gilgeous-Alexander –– the only knock you could possibly give to OKC's MVP.

At the end of the day this list doesn't truly mean anything and it accomplished the goal of bleacher report to gain attention. So it is a win-win.