NBA Rank 2025-26 - Which 10 players can crack next year's list? - ESPN

This year's NBA Rank features massive turnover from 12 months ago. A full 25 of our top 100 players weren't ranked a year ago, the biggest turnover from one list to the next since 2019. Although one of those players (No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg) wasn't eligible entering his lone season at Duke, the rest elevated their standing in the league with strong performances.

With that in mind, let's take a look at which players could join the NBA Rank top 100 next season after falling short this year.

Notably, we're excluding players who fell off the list solely because of injury. Tyrese Haliburton, Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum, expected to sit out all of 2025-26 because of their Achilles ruptures suffered in the playoffs, plus Kyrie Irving (who could return from an earlier ACL tear) are all obvious picks once back healthy.

Instead, we're going to look at 2025 draft picks, young players who could make the leap and players who fell out of the top 100. From last year's list, we correctly predicted six out of 10, including Flagg. We'll aim to beat that this time.

Dylan Harper, San Antonio Spurs

Naturally, second-year players are the most common newcomers to NBA Rank, with an average of about three per year over the past decade. With only one rookie on this year's list, the rest of the draft is available to join that group.

Of the 11 players drafted No. 2 since 2014, eight of them have made the NBA Rank top 100 by Year 2. The exceptions? Brandon Ingram (who made it for the first time in his third season), James Wiseman and last year's No. 2 pick Alex Sarr. Harper might not have a large role as a rookie behind veteran starter De'Aaron Fox, which explains why he wasn't in the top 100, but expect him to show enough promise to crack the