Thinking Basketball’s Top 10 Players of 2026
The podcast is for YouTube members only as of now, but these were Ben Taylor’s rankings.
The numbers in parentheses represent ranges -- how high or low he could reasonably see a player ranking. He emphasizes these more than a strict ranking – for example, the 5th-ranked player is not necessarily clearly better than the 6th-ranked player. Some players are very close, and difficult to separate in data and/or film. In these cases especially, ranges are useful.
Candidates are players who, taking an optimistic view and holding the players above them constant, could each reasonably enter the top 10. (In other words, the players whose ranges extend up at least to the 10th position on the high end.)
Specifically, the question he’s attempting to answer is:
What players, when healthy, give the highest probability of a championship on a typical good team?
Top 10 Players of 2026:
Candidates: