When combing through ESPN’s latest countdown of the top 100 NBA players, try to remember one phrase, which is just as applicable to ranking players as it is to building a winning roster.
People see the game better than numbers, but numbers see all the games.
As it relates to NBA Rank 2026, those numbers are a collective of advanced player ratings commonly in use, from ESPN’s Net Points to DARKO, LEBRON, EPM and RAPM. Those systems can provide a useful counter perspective to the humans, with their good eyes but occasional biases.
With the full top 100 unveiled for the 2026-27 season, let’s examine what the metrics revealed about which player rankings our panelists got right -- and which they got wrong.
Four things NBA Rank got wrong
1. Jalen Brunson (No. 6)
Our last view of Brunson is him carrying the Knicks to a fourth-quarter comeback in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. He was tremendous in New York’s run to the championship -- but that leads to the bias that he will maintain it.
He was Finals MVP, but will he really finish the season as the league’s sixth-best player? Brunson has always been limited a bit by his size (6-foot-2, 190 pounds) and his defense, something the metrics perhaps see and remember more than the seven panelists remember the late buckets he poured in to win the Finals. Those problems are likely to persist.
I love Brunson’s game, but his lofty ranking benefitted not only from recent bias but also from the New York media bias. (That bias might also help you forget that Brunson missed the shot in the most iconic image from the Finals, when OG Anunoby swooped in for the putback game-winner to clinch Game 4.)
The metrics place Brunson around the No. 25 range heading into the season. That’s not a huge gap. He’s elite, just not No. 6 -- at least not during the regular season.
2. Rookies
Another bias comes from wanting to believe the hype. AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson all make the top 100, but rookies are generally bad NBA players -- predraft highlights don’t show the turnovers, or the missed boxouts, or the poor defense.
Is it possible one or two rookies end the year in the top 100 of Net Points per game, per 100 possessions, or another metric? Of course. It’s a strong draft, but history suggests these rankings could be a year too early.
3. Jaylen Brown (No. 14)
Without the rehabbing Jayson Tatum, the Celtics were picked to win about 40 games last year, so their overperformance led to a Coach of the Year award for Joe Mazzulla and to a shower of praise for Brown.
The claims of Brown being the league’s “best two-way player” came mostly after he had his best game of the year against the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, but few noticed Brown’s next game, where he scored 14 points on 24 field goal attempts. Maybe we term this a “highlight bias” because our voters perhaps saw those highlights and loved him, ranking Brown between No. 9 and No. 23. The metrics’ average, meanwhile, was around No. 60.
The quick reasons the metrics don’t rate Brown as highly are that the Celtics played better without him, he turns the ball over a lot and he doesn’t have great vision. The not-so-quick reasons filled plenty of podcast space over the summer.
4. Collin Murray-Boyles is outside the top 100 and the computers don’t like it.
The metrics see the Toronto Raptors second-year forward as comparable to Atlanta Hawks All-Star Jalen Johnson (No. 22 in NBA Rank) in his production this coming year. Murray-Boyles isn’t the passer that Johnson has become, but he is a good defender who just doesn’t yet shoot a lot from the perimeter. He’s on the glass and he actually averaged more assists per 48 minutes as a rookie than Johnson did in either of his first two years.
With the 2025 rookies he entered the league with -- such as Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper and Kon Knueppel -- Murray-Boyles didn’t get the same publicity and didn’t get enough ranking votes. But the computers saw him.
Four things NBA Rank got right
1. The top
As the analytics revolution has played out, the general perception of good players has become more consistent with metrics. Coaches know better and don’t just let bad shooters toss up shots to get inefficient points. Fans know better, too.
This year, the aforementioned Brown has a gap between metrics and the general perception, but much of the NBA Rank top 20 is spot on.
2. Paolo Banchero (No. 36)
For those who don’t follow the NBA subtext on Banchero, you have missed frequent whispers about how much better Orlando is with him off the floor. But last year, those whispers might have become louder because the panel moved him down from No. 17 in 2025 to No. 36 this season.
Banchero had benefitted from the hype around top draft picks while he was still trying to build a jump shot and make his teammates better, but the gap between Banchero’s perceived value and his on-court production is shrinking.
3. Ajay Mitchell (No. 79)
Mitchell was not a regular starter last year but was quite good on both sides of the floor. According to Genius IQ tracking, Mitchell was in the top 20 in points allowed per 100 matchups and shot quality allowed.
Across the spectrum of various metrics, he ranked in the top 30 leaguewide. That’s far better than the No. 79 ranking our panelists gave, but that’s the kind of variability that should get narrowed as Mitchell’s responsibilities and exposure grow in Oklahoma City.
4. The impact of injuries
We aren’t displaying the underlying variability in the voting on players, but players who were injured last season (such as Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton, Damian Lillard), who are still recovering (such as Jimmy Butler III), or who are chronically injured (such as Joel Embiid) have much more variability in how much they will contribute this year.
From an analytical perspective, one of the best predictors of future injury is past injury, and that leads to greater uncertainty about the quantity of playing time. Our voters captured that.