Whose stock is up? Whose stock is down? And what trends do four-plus seasons worth of data reveal?

The Ringer’s NBA Top 100 debuted in December 2022. Since then, it has provided 34 distinct snapshots of the top talent in the basketball world. Each individual update is interesting on its own—including the most recent one from last week, featuring a revamped design and a new voting feature—but taken as a series, these rankings become a great trendspotting tool, a lens that captures the rises and falls of the most important characters in the NBA. So, at the dawn of the 2026-27 season, let’s use the entire history of the Top 100 to flag some of the most interesting player-related trends in the league from the past few seasons, starting at the very top. 

The Top 100 NBA Players of 2026-27

The Top 100 NBA Players of 2026-27

The Grand Prix

The NBA Top 100 has a new no. 1, and he’s also the youngest player to take the top spot—by far—in this project’s history. San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama may have lost the NBA Finals in June, but four months later the 22-year-old Frenchman has evicted Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at the top of our rankings. 

Wemby becomes the fourth unique no. 1 in the history of our list, joining Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, and SGA. 

How did he do it? By dominating the playoffs—that’s how. When Wembanyama was on the floor during the postseason, San Antonio had an astounding net rating of plus-12.9. When he came out, that number dropped to minus-2.0. That’s MVP stuff, reflecting Wemby’s totalizing impact whenever he’s on the floor. 

The absurd part is that the new king of our rankings is still a work in progress. Sure, Wembanyama’s defense is already fully formed—he just became the NBA’s first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, and he did it in his third season—but his offensive game remains unpolished. Heading into year four, that’s the thing to watch. Will Wembanyama develop a signature move inside the arc that helps him leverage his ridiculous blend of size and skill to create reliable, efficient looks near the rim?

It seems like only a matter of time. It’s taken Wemby just three years to go from his NBA debut to our top-ranked player, a stunning fact when you consider that NBA players don’t typically reach their primes until age 28 or 29. Wemby turns 28 on January 4, 2032! This might be the scariest graph I’ve made in a while. 

Depth Charts

Roster depth has never been more important to winning in the NBA. The last few champions have featured rotations deep with Top 100 talent—with guys like Josh Hart, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Derrick White thriving in complementary roles. But the distribution of top talent is very uneven around the NBA. 

Five different rosters include exactly one Top 100 player. All are in rebuilding phases except for one, Golden State, where Stephen Curry enters year 18 in a lonely predicament. 

On the other end of the spectrum, OKC leads the way with seven players who cracked the Top 100—and it also has Aday Mara, the gigantic rookie center who has looked positively awesome in the preseason. The Thunder are followed closely by San Antonio and a surprising Portland team, which boast six players apiece, but that’s a bit deceptive. The Trail Blazers’ top-ranked player is Deni Avdija at no. 27, and four of the six Blazers on the list rank in the 76-100 range. 

Only two teams feature three top-25 players. You may have heard of them: the defending champs in NYC and their new-look rivals in Philadelphia. The Knicks have Jalen Brunson (6), Karl-Anthony Towns (13), and an ascendant OG Anunoby (20), while the NBA’s newest superteam in Philly has Tyrese Maxey (14), Jaylen Brown (16), and LeBron James (21). Speaking of LeBron …

The Old Guard

The preseason top 10 does not include Curry, James, or Kevin Durant. These three megastars have redefined pro basketball greatness in the 21st century, but their collective grasp on the top of the league is gone. This chart proves it. Curry is 11th. Durant is 15th. James is now 21st. And the pattern isn’t limited to these three icons; the top 10 of our list includes only one player over 31: Kawhi Leonard, who’s 35 years old and clocks in at no. 8. Make no mistake: Nobody is shoveling dirt on Curry, Durant, or James, who each deserve credit for playing incredible basketball at these advanced stages of their careers. But Father Time remains undefeated, and while all three of these icons are still must-watch television, the days of them fighting over MVPs and Larry O’Briens are gone. 

The Jalen Duren Roller Coaster

Six months ago, the 22-year-old center had turned himself into one of the best bigs in the NBA, and we have his 2026 third-team All-NBA nod to prove it. Through the lens of our rankings, he peaked at no. 24 in March.

Then, the wheels came off in Motor City. Duren pulled the biggest disappearing act of the postseason, and his lackluster play was the biggest reason why this 60-win 1-seed looked suddenly mediocre against both Orlando and Cleveland. 

If there’s one stat that captures the Great Duren Falloff of 2026, it might be this: In the regular season, Duren averaged 14.6 points per game in the paint; that ranked third in the NBA. In the postseason, that figure fell to 7.7, which ranked third on his own team. 

It was particularly poor timing for Duren, who entered the summer as a restricted free agent and faced a protracted—and often acrimonious—contract negotiation with the Pistons. He and the team ultimately agreed to a five-year, $200 million deal, but questions about his future in Detroit and his ultimate ceiling remain. After rising to 24 last season, he’s dropped all the way down to 46 in our most recent rankings. 

Still, call me an optimist here. As disappointing as the past six months have been for Duren, he is still the single biggest riser in our rankings since the beginning of last year—jumping 37 spots since last October. 

The glass-half-full case is pretty strong. Duren is still just 22. He’s the perfect counterpart to Cade Cunningham, and throughout the regular season he showcased a level of creativity and finesse that Detroit may still be able to tap into. As the Pistons get back to playing regular-season basketball, it’s pretty easy to see a scenario where this dude reasserts himself as arguably the best roll man in the whole league. I expect him to be back in the top 30 on this list soon.

The Demise of Small Guards

Since the beginning of last season, no player has fallen further than Ja Morant, who enters 2026-27 looking for a fresh start in Portland. Morant’s tumble didn’t start last October—his ranking peaked at no. 9 in January 2023, but, thanks to a variety of factors, it’s been downhill ever since. 

On the one hand, the stage might be set for a redemption arc. Morant is still only 27. He remains one of the league’s most electrifying athletes, and a change of scenery may be just what the doctor ordered. 

On the other hand, there’s a chance that Morant’s fall is part of a larger, more troubling trend for undersized lead guards. The list of the six biggest fallers since last opening night also includes Darius Garland, De’Aaron Fox, and Trae Young. 

All four of these star point guards used to rank in the top 30. All of them are still 28 or younger, but they are all careening down this list. It’s telling that all four have been traded since the beginning of 2025, often for underwhelming returns. Is the league turning its back on small, high-usage guards that don’t exactly thrive on defense? 

The evidence is compelling, but there is an inconvenient counterpoint here, and he’s the king of New York City. Jalen Brunson is relatively undersized. He has poor defensive metrics. But guess what—he’s doing just fine, folks. His ascent from 51st in our rankings in 2022 to sixth today—with a Finals MVP to boot—is one of the most improbable superstar stories in modern NBA history. 

Still, in a league where it seems every player can now dribble, pass, shoot, and defend, undersized talent has to be truly elite to pierce the upper crust of our rankings. Brunson is exceptional.

Kirk Goldsberry

Kirk Goldsberry is the New York Times–bestselling author of ‘Sprawlball.’ He previously served as the vice president of strategic research for the San Antonio Spurs and as the lead analyst of Team USA Basketball. He’s also the executive director of the Business of Sports Institute at the University of Texas. He lives in Austin.