NBA Rank 2026 audit: What we got right -- and wrong -- in our top 100 - ESPN

When combing through ESPN's latest countdown of the top 100 NBA players, try to remember one phrase, which is just as applicable to ranking players as it is to building a winning roster.

People see the game better than numbers, but numbers see all the games.

As it relates to NBA Rank 2026, those numbers are a collective of advanced player ratings commonly in use, from ESPN's Net Points to DARKO, LEBRON, EPM and RAPM. Those systems can provide a useful counter perspective to the humans, with their good eyes but occasional biases.

With the full top 100 unveiled for the 2026-27 season, let's examine what the metrics revealed about which player rankings our panelists got right — and which they got wrong.

1. Jalen Brunson (No. 6)

Our last view of Brunson is him carrying the Knicks to a fourth-quarter comeback in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. He was tremendous in New York's run to the championship — but that leads to the bias that he will maintain it.

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He was Finals MVP, but will he really finish the season as the league's sixth-best player? Brunson has always been limited a bit by his size (6-foot-2, 190 pounds) and his defense, something the metrics perhaps see and remember more than the seven panelists remember the late buckets he poured in to win the Finals. Those problems are likely to persist.

I love Brunson's game, but his lofty ranking benefitted not only from recent bias but also from the New York media bias. (That bias might also help you forget