NBA Rank 2026, players Nos. 100-51: Four rookies make their debuts - ESPN

NBA Rank is back! With less than one month until opening night, let's start counting down the league's best players for 2026-27.

How many rookies landed in our top 100? Which stars who changed teams this summer are climbing our rankings? Where will the defending champion New York Knicks check in?

Our countdown begins with players Nos. 100-51 and continues Wednesday with Nos. 50-11 and Thursday with our expert panel's predictions for this season's top 10.

• The countdown begins: Nos. 100-51 revealed
• Wednesday: Nos. 50-11 | Thursday: Nos. 10-1
• 10 players to watch in NBA Rank… 2027
• NBA team rankings: Three-year outlooks for all 30

And that expert panel has been overhauled for the 2026 edition.

In previous seasons, more than 100 ESPN NBA insiders, reporters, editors and producers voted on thousands of possible player vs. player matchups to arrive at the final top-100 list.

That «wisdom of the crowd» approach has given way to the wisdom of seven: ESPN's Ben Golliver, Vincent Goodwill, Zach Kram, Bobby Marks, Dave McMenamin, André Snellings and Matt «Stats» Williams. (The panelists' individual top-100 lists were combined to create our final rankings.)

Voting guidelines, however, remained unchanged. The panel was asked to rank players based on predicted contributions — quality and quantity — for the 2026-27 regular season only.

Let's get to the list.

Note: Signature stats provided by ESPN Research.

G | Atlanta Hawks
Age: 27
2025 NBA Rank: 64

The Dorture Chamber heads southeast, where the Hawks will be downright scary on the wings with Dort, Jalen Johnson and Dyson Daniels. Dort is still one of the league's most physical defenders and is entering the final year of his contract (at $18.2 million), so he'll be motivated in