A Fantasy NBA Team - No Superstars

The NBA is a league where the stars drive the money, the market, the hype, and the overall success of the league. It's always fun to create fantasy sports teams and matchups, but could a team without the superstars still find success? Here's my question - could you build an 8-man rotation out of current NBA players that would win it all, but without any player who has ever finished top-5 in MVP voting?

All the current best teams have at least one guy in this top tier of players. The Nuggets have Jokic, the Celtics have Tatum, the Suns have Durant, and so on. Could you win it all without any of these guys?

I went through the MVP lists back to the 2013-2014 season and put together the following list of 19 active players who will be excluded from this fantasy team:

Kevin Durant

LeBron James

Blake Griffin

James Harden

Stephen Curry

Russell Westbrook

Anthony Davis

Kawhi Leonard

Isaiah Thomas

Damian Lillard

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Paul George

Nikola Jokic

Luka Doncic

Joel Embiid

Chris Paul

Devin Booker

Jayson Tatum

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Without the very best players of the last 10 years available, could you still build a winning 8-man rotation? Here's my attempt:

Starting Big: Bam Adebayo

Starting Forwards: Jimmy Butler, Anthony Edwards

Starting Guards: Tyrese Haliburton, Kyrie Irving

Bench Big: Domantas Sabonis

Bench Forward: Mikal Bridges

Bench Guard: Jrue Holiday

On the downside, this roster has no clear superstars (which is the intention), although Jimmy Butler might disagree and rightfully so. And so many of these players are on the cusp - which is the point. Despite lacking a big-time MVP-caliber superstar, every single player on the roster is so solid, and I also think they would compliment each other very well. 

Butler, Edwards, and Irving could all take charge as primary scorers. Adebayo, Butler, Bridges, and Holiday can all play lockdown defense. Haliburton is a genius distributor. Adebayo and Sabonis can grab rebounds all day. And on top of all this, the roster as a whole has a better than average injury history. That is the main reason for the inclusion of Mikal Bridges, who is an excellent player that also has not missed a game since being drafted.

Put these guys up against any of the top teams in the league right now in a 7-game series, and I think they would come up on top. I would expect them to finish in the neighborhood of 60 regular season wins, and then lose in the playoffs 4-7 times on the way to a Finals trophy. Even if you used "cloning" and didn't take them from the teams they actually play on, I think this rotation is good enough to win it all (plug in bottom-of-the-barrel NBA players you want to fill out the roster).