Victor Wembanyama, Luka Dončić and the NBA’s best players in 2025-26

I’ve mentioned this in other places over the last two years, but it’s a transitional time for the NBA’s elite. The LeBron James-Steph Curry-Kevin Durant era had already mostly given way to the Nikola Jokić-Giannis Antetokounmpo era, but the former trio hung onto their prime years for so long that we’re already most of the way onto what’s next after Jokić and Giannis. That latter duo hoovered up five out of six MVP awards from 2019-24, but now both are in their 30s.

You can see the shift just by looking at the All-NBA teams from 2022, which is only four years ago but already feels like a different era. Only four of the players on the first two All-NBA teams also made the top 10 in 2025; two are Jokić and Antetokounmpo, of course, but the other two are Jayson Tatum, who will miss most if not all of the coming season with a torn Achilles, and Curry, who is 37 years old. Similarly, only two of the names from the 2022 third team made any of the All-NBA squads in 2025, and one of them is 40-year-old LeBron. (The other? Two-time third-team selection Karl-Anthony Towns.)

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP last year, in particular, seemed to mark a turning point. He’s 27, compared to 30 for Jokić and Antetokounmpo, and has a younger cohort of players coming up behind him that (the NBA hopes) will be its faces when the clock inevitably runs out on James, Curry and Durant.

With that in mind, I wanted to examine a question that now has some very different answers than it did a few years ago: Who will be the league’s best players this coming season?

This question seemed fairly stable for a long time — to wit, at least five of the six-man combo of James, Curry, Durant, Antetokounmpo, Jokić and Tatum made one of the All-NBA teams in six of the seven seasons from 2018-19 to 2024-25, and the only exception was because Curry and Durant were both injured in 2019-20. In 2021-22 and 2023-24, all six made it, with four earning first-team honors in 2023-24.

That isn’t going to be the case this season, not with Tatum out and Curry, Durant and James likely to be third-team picks if they crack the top 15 at all. With Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard joining Tatum on the shelf, and injury questions surrounding Joel Embiid, too, we have a bit of a void in the league’s upper tier.

Because I’m focusing on just the coming season, I’ll frame my process here in a very specific way: If you’re drafting 10 guys for a randomly selected team to be on your roster for the 2025-26 season — and just the 2025-26 season — who are you riding with? Let’s explore.

10. Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers

A first-team All-NBA selection a year ago, Mitchell’s presence on that team owed more to Cleveland’s 64-win campaign than a particularly brilliant individual season. That said, his individual credentials are pretty outstanding, especially when it matters most.

While his teams have repeatedly fallen short in the postseason, Mitchell himself has shown he can go on crazy scoring jabs even against locked-in elite defenses. He has a career average of 28.8 points per game in the playoffs and has posted five straight postseasons with a PER over 20.

Mitchell’s playmaking and defense aren’t quite on the level of his scoring and keep him out of the highest levels of the league’s upper crust. He also can’t rank higher because of durability; however, last season’s 71 games were the most he’d played since his second season, and he missed the last two games of the Cavs-Celtics series in 2024 and the second half of Game 4 in Indiana this past season.

9. Jalen Brunson, Knicks

The Knicks’ answer to Mitchell, Brunson is less athletic and more vulnerable defensively, but his pick-and-roll game is more devastating and — as with Mitchell — he has shown it can scale up in postseason environments, even with the Knicks offering no pretense whatsoever that anyone other than Brunson would have the rock.

Brunson has historically been more durable than Mitchell but did miss 17 games last season and wasn’t at his best in the latter part of a series against Indiana for the second consecutive spring. But the fact that he could be the engineer of a series win over the mighty Celtics, and that he also succeeded as a conference finalist next to Luka Dončić in Dallas, gives him a slight nod. Maybe Brunson and Mitchell can settle this once and for all in the Eastern Conference finals?

8. Jalen Williams, Thunder

Big wings who can handle the ball are everything in the NBA, and having Williams as a second option — even with an injured wrist we didn’t learn about until after the NBA Finals — was essentially the difference for the Thunder in winning a title. Williams was able to score 40 points in the crucial Game 5 win, mostly on an array of tough shots, and was a more reliable steward of the offense in the non-Gilgeous-Alexander minutes than he’d been a year earlier against Dallas.

And then there’s the defense. In contrast to most of the perimeter players on this list, Williams is an All-Defense selection with plus size and fast hands. He even played as a small-ball center at 6-foot-6 when the Thunder’s bigs were injured — and did it well!

Finally, let’s bet on what’s around the corner. Williams is still only 24 and, as a result, is far more likely to surprise us on the upside than the downside in the coming campaign. He won’t put up the per-game counting stats that the other guys on this list do unless Gilgeous-Alexander misses considerable time, but in the postseason crucible, his elite two-way ability becomes clear.

7. Evan Mobley, Cavaliers

Mobley still needs to take his offensive game up another level to warrant first-team All-NBA consideration, but as the league’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year, it’s going to be hard to get much better at that end.

Meanwhile, his offensive arsenal continues to expand, and the Cavs leaned into it much more last season. There may still be more meat on the bone, as he developed a reliable 3-point shot last season (37.0 percent on more than three tries per game) and can use the threat of it to cook rival bigs off the dribble. A big reason Cleveland didn’t advance out of the second round last season was his injury against Indiana, with Mobley missing Game 2 and not playing to his usual standard in the final three games.

That might be the biggest knock on him here: He still hasn’t had an emphatic playoff moment, with a 33-point effort in a 2024 elimination game against Boston coming the closest. I’m excited to fast-forward to April and see what he can do in the playoffs at full strength.

6. Anthony Edwards, Timberwolves

Is Edwards the best American player in the NBA? There’s a good case for it, even with Edwards still mastering being a leading man at the offensive end. While the highlights are impressive, the body of work can still improve. Edwards’ 20.1 PER last season doesn’t exactly scream superstar from the hilltops, and it was a career high. While he’s become a deadly long-range shooter (39.5 percent, including a lot of difficult hoists), his 50.1 percent mark on 2s is pretty woeful for a player of this caliber.

He also hasn’t mastered creating shots for others at an elite level, although the Wolves’ spacing options likely afford him fewer assist opportunities. Edwards’ assist and turnover rates are fine but pale next to those of Mitchell, let alone the four players who top this list.

So what gets Edwards up to No. 6? Defense and durability. Edwards is a big, athletic presence on the defensive end who, at 24, has the energy to play a big offensive role without taking plays off on the other end. He offers secondary rim protection, blocking 51 shots last season, and he virtually never fouls. He’s similar to Williams that way, but with even more offensive oomph.

Finally, you know he’ll be in the lineup: Edwards played 79 games each of the last three seasons, an increasingly rare feat among players of this level.

5. Victor Wembanyama, Spurs

This still might be too low. Wembanyama was a shoo-in for Defensive Player of the Year before he was sidelined by a blood clot last season. He finished the season with a league-leading 176 blocks despite only playing 46 games and cleaned nearly 30 percent of defensive rebounds.

Offensively, he’s become a force as well, even as he’s still figuring things out and the Spurs’ system around him doesn’t seem to optimize his skills. He spent last year bombing away 3s (12.8 attempts per 100 possessions), and while those are makeable shots for the 7-5 Wembanyama (35.2 percent), it’s not exactly elite efficiency. Last season, he shot 80.3 percent in the basket area while putting up ordinary numbers everywhere else; the hesitations into stepback 3s from a 7-5 guy are cool when they go in, but the Spurs have to figure out how to get their giant at the rim more.

Even with all that, Wembanyama might have another level in him this season, which is a scary thought for the rest of the league. He’s not on the level of the top four players on this list offensively … yet. But stay tuned.

4. Luka Dončić, Lakers

Dončić has never won an MVP award, but nobody will be shocked if he claims one eventually … perhaps as soon as this season. The “skinny Luka” stuff from this summer was a nice start, but the biggest issue for Dončić has always been his inexplicable tendency to put on weight in-season despite his massive (and theoretically calorie-burning) role.

I have Dončić this high for a different reason: His second campaign in L.A. is likely to go much better than his first, because the Lakers have had some time to build the system around him rather than air-dropping him into one built around James and Anthony Davis. And, of course, Dončić remains an absolute maestro in the pick-and-roll. My favorite stat: Despite all the downhill drives to the rim, Dončić only committed four offensive fouls last season.

That said, the twin scourges of defense and durability work against him. He’s only averaged 63 games over the last five seasons and has to stay in the lineup more often to challenge the top three players on my list. And when he’s there, he needs to be more impactful on defense — including not pausing in transition to whine at the refs every third play.

3. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks

Antetokounmpo clearly isn’t the defensive player he was five years ago, but offensively, he might be better than ever. He’s mostly ditched the bricked pull-up 3s that defenses used to reliably bait him into and instead has focused on being a battering ram in the paint. Antetokounmpo averaged more than 30 points a game for a third straight season in 2024-25, while also cutting his turnover rate sharply over the past two campaigns.

Milwaukee leaning into “point Giannis” lineups could also push his game forward again, even in his age-31 season. Antetokounmpo averaged a triple-double during his final eight games of 2024-25, although he couldn’t quite match that in a first-round playoff loss to Indiana.

Like a lot of players on this list, you’d like to see him in the lineup slightly more often, with 58 missed games over the last four seasons, but that’s probably the biggest quibble. Overall, Dončić and Wemby have a lot of work to do to catch Giannis.

2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder

Gilgeous-Alexander took his game into new territory last season, joining the exalted 30-PER club for the first time while winning the scoring title, MVP, Finals MVP and a championship.

He has a great shot to collect more accolades on a loaded Thunder team that is built around his rare scoring skills. Gilgeous-Alexander is neither a high-wire athlete nor a fearsome long-range marksman; he only had 46 dunks last year and shoots a meh 35.5 percent from 3 for his career on relatively low volume. Instead, his gift is starts and stops, the ability to seemingly move two ways at once and leave defenders grasping at air while he glides to the rim or pulls up from the midrange.

Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t have a huge frame but has also mastered all the little nudges and forearms that are needed to free himself for shots, particularly from his office on the left block. The “free-throw merchant” stuff is ridiculous, but he knows how to use angles to get to the line (8.8 freebies per game). The more pertinent part is that he’s become money when there, making 89.8 percent last season on his frequent forays to the stripe.

Throw in that he’s been durable (151 games the last two seasons), that he defends (with tremendously fast hands, although he could foul less) and that he sets the tone for the Thunder locker room, and he has a great case as the best player in the league for this season. There’s just one thing in his way…

1. Nikola Jokić, Nuggets

If you were drafting from scratch to have one player for this season, you would likely hem and haw for hours between Jokić and Gilgeous-Alexander. But ultimately, you’d start with Jokić. The skill set for his position is too amazing, the possibilities with other players too fantastic, for the choice to be anyone else.

It’s an odd mental juxtaposition: Gilgeous-Alexander is the reigning MVP, three years younger, just won the title and might very well repeat as MVP again. Yet I’ve found most league insiders still anoint Jokić as the best player in the league, and I agree.

Advanced stats also give Joker the edge: He has led the league in both PER and BPM for five straight seasons, with some of the highest marks of all time in each of those five. (Even last season, his PER was the third-highest of all time.)

There’s an argument these metrics overvalue Jokić because of his defensive limitations — the Nuggets have only squeezed into the top 10 in defense twice in his time there and were 22nd last season — but his lack of rim protection is offset by good hands and elite IQ reading opposing plays. Even against the mighty Thunder, Jokić was enough to drag the series to seven games last spring with nary an All-Star teammate. (He’s still never had one!)

And offensively … goodness gracious. Jokić is a 6-11 point guard but big and strong enough to bully any non-center, has enough touch to shoot willowy 12-foot floaters on the move as if they’re layups and is also an elite screener who magnifies his guards in the two-man game. Last season was the first one where he took the 3-pointer seriously, and he made 41.7 percent of them … while also averaging a triple-double.

On top of it all, the Joker has been durable, averaging 73 games a season over the last five years and answering the call for every playoff game. The biggest question, as he gets into his 30s, is just how long he can keep this going.

Five who are hanging on

Steph Curry, Warriors

Mitchell (my No. 10 player) over Curry was a non-starter as an argument as recently as two years ago. Entering his age-37 season, however, it’s not so easy to project Curry outperforming Mitchell this year.

Curry presents some of the same health questions that Mitchell does but perhaps more strongly. Curry has cleared 65 games in only two of the last six seasons and missed the last four games of the Minnesota playoff series with a hamstring injury. The Warriors are also careful with his minutes within games.

Curry also doesn’t offer the snap-of-a-finger shot-creation ability you see from other guards on this list. What he offsets that with, of course, is that he’s the greatest shooter ever by orders of magnitude, and his mere presence coming off a screen sends defenses scrambling into silliness. That skill shouldn’t be heavily impacted by age, either, and remains his best argument for cracking the 10 names above even if he won’t match them on raw output. Even at 37, he was the hardest omission.

LeBron James, Lakers

James making second-team All-NBA at the age of 40 was an insane accomplishment. Can he do it again next spring, when he’ll be 41? It seems unlikely at the moment.

Doubting him at any point in the past 22 years has been a great way to look foolish, but James is already set to miss at least the start of the season with sciatica. He suffered an MCL sprain in last spring’s playoffs, and the team was already exercising caution with his preseason reps before announcing the sciatica issue.

Can he even get to 65 games to be All-NBA-eligible? As indestructible as James may seem, he’s only done it twice in the last five seasons.

Anthony Davis, Mavericks

Of those not in my top 10, Davis has the best case for making first-team or second-team All-NBA this season. He was having an awesome season in L.A. before injuries and a trade to Dallas took some steam out of it down the stretch. Davis finished the season fourth in PER and ninth in BPM but only played 51 games as a result of the absences; he missed the playoffs when the Kyrie Irving-less Mavs fell to Memphis in the Play-In.

The issue for Davis is the 51 games part. I’d take him over Mitchell or Brunson for one game if healthy, but for a season? Cross your fingers. He’s only managed to play three-quarters of the schedule in two of the last seven seasons, and at 32, you wouldn’t bet on that trend suddenly reversing in his favor. Davis, however, is still unequivocally a top-10 talent when available.

Kevin Durant, Rockets

Durant is still one of the most feared scorers in the game but has only made one All-NBA team in the last half-decade and has played more than 62 games once in the last six years. He’s still an elite scorer in a playoff series but hasn’t had an exclamation-point impact on a postseason since he was a Brooklyn Net playing Milwaukee in 2021.

At 37, Durant also doesn’t make the impact on defense or as an off-dribble creator as he once did; it’s particularly notable in transition, where the younger Durant was basically an automatic basket.

That said, he’s still good enough to be the clear go-to guy for one of the Western Conference’s best teams in Houston, and if he can stay on the floor for 70 games, he has a chance to put up a top-10 season.

Kawhi Leonard, Clippers

Setting aside questions about his sponsorship agreements, Leonard’s biggest issue has been availability. He’s played more than 60 games in just one of the past eight seasons and tapped out in the playoffs three times in five postseasons.

Leonard still raises the Clippers’ level every time he takes the court and, even at 34, is one of the best two-way players in the league on a per-minute basis. But that impact isn’t quite at the exalted level of his 2018-19 season in Toronto, as we saw in last season’s first round when he had a fairly unremarkable series against Denver (Game 2 aside) and took home a shocking minus-33 plus/minus in the crucial Game 7.

Between that and the constant availability questions, he seems unlikely to crack any top 10 lists going forward.

Five for the future

Cade Cunningham, Pistons

Could Cunningham make another leap and break into my top 10? It’s not a wild scenario after the giant step forward he took in 2024-25 — aided by a much better supporting cast that included real, actual shooters — and the fact he’s still 24.

One thing that would help is shooting at a more elite level. Cunningham has a sweet stroke and is a money foul shooter (85.3 percent career), but his pedestrian 35.6 percent mark from 3 last season was somehow a career best, raising his career mark to just 33.3 percent. Yes, he takes a ton of them off the dribble and some under duress, but every perimeter player on this list can say the same thing. It’s shocking to compare the eye test on his shot with the percentages.

A similar issue applies to his efficiency inside the arc — right now, he profiles more as a high-volume floor-raiser than a ceiling-raiser on the offensive end. That was still good enough to get him third-team All-NBA last season, and he’s not too far from cracking this list next year.

Cooper Flagg, Mavericks

Flagg is probably a couple of years away from making this list, but he has a chance to be an inner core member of the top 10 once he hits his prime. The top overall pick from Duke has elite size for a wing, can handle the ball and make decisions on the move and pops off the floor for rebounds, dunks and blocks.

He’s also likely to get a lot of on-ball reps right away — even though he’s just 18 — on a Dallas team that is missing Kyrie Irving this season (Flagg started at point guard in the Mavs’ preseason game Monday). That could accelerate his development into a go-to guy for Dallas down the road.

Paolo Banchero, Magic

Rival front offices in the East should start an underground All-NBA campaign for Banchero, one that would add $6 million to his salary next season and push the Magic into an even more restrictive payroll scenario.

All joking aside, Banchero has a chance to join this list because of his rare skill set: He’s an absolutely huge on-ball creator who is a good passer and creates heaps of free throws with his power. The key step now is refining his efficiency and shot selection, especially inside the arc. Much like Edwards above, Banchero is too dependent on tough shot making, shooting 50.9 percent on 2s and taking only 21 percent of his shots at the rim last season.

Perhaps the Magic’s efforts to put more shooting around him — most notably by adding Desmond Bane — can translate into more space for Banchero to overpower defenders in the paint.

Amen Thompson, Rockets

Thompson is an electrifying athlete and already one of the best defenders in the game after just his second season at age 22. (He was my Defensive Player of the Year choice last season.)

Alas … will he ever shoot? Thompson only made 27.5 percent from 3 and 68.4 percent from the line in 2024-25, and as a result, defenders ignored him on the perimeter and went miles under screens against him. That issue could become more prominent this season, when the Rockets will likely put the ball in his hands to run the offense now that Fred VanVleet is out with a torn ACL.

He may not ever get there offensively because of the shooting issues, but Thompson checks the other boxes with his size, athleticism and ball skills. He’ll have plentiful chances to show what the high-usage, on-ball version of his game looks like this season, for better or for worse.

Darryn Peterson, Kansas Jayhawks

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. But while Duke big man Cameron Boozer and BYU forward A.J. Dybantsa are getting a lot of attention (deservedly) ahead of a stacked 2026 draft, Peterson is the guy scouts who’ve seen them all insist is the best.

The 6-6 Kansas guard has shown he can handle, shoot and blast off to the rim in the showcase games he’s played — a bigger version of guys like Mitchell and Lillard. Also, perhaps it’s destiny. In an amazing run for this section of the country, Peterson was born in Canton, Ohio — mere miles from the birthplaces of James and Curry.

---

Sign up to get The Bounce, the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox.

How optimistic are you about your favorite NBA team? Click here to quickly help us put together our 2025-26 Hope-o-Meter. Results will be published during the opening week of the regular season.