NBA Player Tiers 2026: Tier 5 features Draymond Green, Lu Dort and the best of the rest

With the 2025-26 NBA regular season complete, The Athletic presents its end-of-season NBA Player Tiers, a look at determining and slotting the top 125 players in the league.These are not rankings but more so a hard look at the value of the league’s best players, and the project is a subjective exercise. My evaluation process differs from that of my former colleague Seth Partnow, though this version is inspired by the foundation he built. Because of that subjectivity, I intended to resist creating an echo chamber. There were players I liked that my selected network wasn’t nearly as high on, while there were others I was encouraged to reconsider for inclusion or placement.Advertisement