Next year’s top 100 NBA players: Who can make the list for the 2026-27 season?

Each year, CBS Sports ranks the the 100 best players in the NBAand every year, we inevitably miss out on some of the most important players of the following season. Take last year’s list for the 2024-25 season. Dyson Daniels, most improved player? Unclassified. Breakout Rockets star Amen Thompson? Unclassified. Ivica Zubac made a late run at an All-NBA selection. However, he is not part of our list of the 100 best players in this sport.

Inevitably, we end up with a little egg on our face. We fix this a year later, of course, but the nature of the exercise practically requires mistakes. We can’t see the future even though the list is supposed to look at it. Players are often made on the roster based on their expected future performance, but if we knew for sure which players were poised to improve, well, teams would probably try to hire us because they’re not sure about that either. Much of the fun of the start of the season is seeing which players stand out in unexpected ways.

So today we will try to understand this. The following 10 players aren’t in our top 100. But for whatever reason, these are players who might make us look like idiots by excluding them, and ultimately make next year’s list as an apology. Of course, there are some pretty obvious candidates for a list like this, so to make it more interesting, we’re going to exclude a few people. For starters, no 2025 rookies are eligible here. We didn’t even see them play. We’re also banning No. 1 picks in the first five years of their career (sorry Zaccharie Risacher) and Rookie of the Year winners (goodbye Stephon Castle). It’s no fun predicting when players like this will make a big jump.

No, we’re looking for slightly deeper cuts here. This list includes only one of the top five picks on a rookie contract, and he has played fewer than 1,000 NBA minutes. Meanwhile, we have two undrafted free agents, two veterans on their fourth NBA team and another on his third, and a late first-round pick with less than 400 minutes under his belt. Here are 10 players, some of whom have an obvious path, others who come out of nowhere, who could appear in next year’s top 100.

Grimes could have very easily made this year’s list. He averaged nearly 22 points per game as a 76er… but he did it as a 76er, which means he did it for last season’s most aggressive tankers. Were they empty calories? Or signs of real growth? We’ll find out this season as Grimes attempts to fit into a healthier and hopefully more competitive Philadelphia team than the one he played for last season. Given his experience as a 3-and-D wing in New York, he should be perfectly capable of sliding into the backcourt for the Sixers. Combine the role player skills from his years with the Knicks and the high-level scoring from March and April, and you have a hands-down top-100 pick.

Are we cheating a little by excluding pick No. 1 in 2024 but accepting pick No. 3? Maybe, but Zaccharie Risacher played real minutes last season. Sheppard didn’t. Now, with Fred VanVleet out, he’ll have to do it. Fortunately, he is in an ideal situation for his skills. The Rockets can cover for his size issue on defense and probably won’t ask him to handle the ball too much. But they need his shooting badly, and he should be able to look good in an offense led by Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun. Elite shooting can put a player in the top 100. Payton Pritchard is the obvious analog. We don’t know yet if Sheppard is ready for this, but the Rockets wouldn’t have picked him No. 3 if they didn’t think he could make it happen.

Everything is aligning for Sharpe this season. It has been a remarkable training camp in every way. He has Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard in the building as mentors. Portland has seemingly resolved its defense. What he needs is a primary scorer on offense, and with Scoot Henderson out at the start of the season, Sharpe won’t even have competition with another high lottery pick. This is his time to prove he can be a key player. He has athletic gifts. If he can make 3s consistently and improve his decision-making, he’s an obvious top-100 candidate for next season and a possible Most Improved Player this year.

At his peak in 2021, Deandre Ayton ranked 51st on our Top 100 list. We weren’t unusually high either. The Pacers gave him a max offer, then the Suns matched it. He has the tools to be a top-level starting center. Lately he hasn’t had the motivation. But how many times have we seen a down-on-his-luck veteran join a LeBron James team and suddenly rediscover his old magic? Is Ayton really that different from 2020 Dwight Howard? He is now in an ideal position. Between James, Austin Reaves and Luka Dončić, he has never had so much play around him. If that doesn’t motivate him to play harder and do the dirty work, nothing will. But what if we got his 2021 version during a contract year? It’s not hard to imagine him returning to the list next year.

Matas Buzelis showed off just about every important skill at some point last season. His handle needs work, but it was impressive for a rookie his size. He was a league-average shooter last year with reasonable volume, which few people saw coming, and he was already a surprisingly competent defensive playmaker. But that’s not what you’re here for. You’re here for 6-10 year old dudes with crazy jumps who throw down monster jams. The other piece is what he needs to be a complete NBA player. The hope is that he continues to grow as a ball handler, that his shooting growth continues. If that happens, he has star potential. But this kind of thing takes time. What we will absolutely see this season is this athletic giant running down the field and owning the highlights from one of the fastest teams in the league. It’s already a nerd favorite. He will also be a social media darling before long.

Our top 100, especially the bottom half, is full of 3-D actors. Nickeil Alexander-Walker has never been a full-time starter and has slipped into the last spot. Ellis hasn’t had the same exposure as Alexander-Walker on a rival Timberwolves team because he’s stuck with the Kings, but he’s an absolutely ferocious point-of-attack defender who has made just under 43 percent of his 3s in his three NBA seasons. If he played for a normal team, he would have already made the roster. If he continues like this, even the Kings will not be able to prevent him from participating in future editions.

Last year, fans got to enjoy a new appreciation for a very specific type of role player: those who can’t play meaningful minutes for reasons of style and durability, but who absolutely own the minutes they do play. Think Steven Adams in Houston last year or Ty Jerome in Cleveland. TJ McConnell almost won a championship at Indiana in 18-minute increments. You could make a credible case for each of them on the list based on the premise that they are absolutely among the top 100 players in the NBA per minute. The one I will draw attention to this season is Lonzo Ball, who is a match made in heaven for a Cleveland team that sorely needed more transition creativity and on-ball defense. If Ball can give the Cavaliers a solid 20 minutes a night, the specific things he will bring to the table are so valuable that there will be a strong case for bringing him back into the top 100.

Many of the ingredients we’ve discussed for other players apply here. A new opportunity? Check. Without Tyrese Haliburton, someone needs to handle the ball more in Indiana. Year of contract? Check. A good year could bring Mathurin a lot of money. Pedigree project? Check. Mathurin was a No. 6 pick, and while he’s hot and cold, the playoffs demonstrated how valuable he can be when hot. If you can score in the mid-20s against Oklahoma City’s historic defense multiple times in the Finals, there’s a very valuable player hidden somewhere. Now that the Pacers are going through a gap year, we’ll see if Mathurin can discover this form on a more permanent basis.

I promised you deep cuts, didn’t I? Shannon barely played last year…but Minnesota trusted him enough to give him real minutes in the Western Conference Finals. Alexander-Walker is gone and someone needs to take over his bench role, but with Mike Conley aging quickly, there will also be a juicy playing opportunity for Minnesota’s younger players if they can seize it. Rob Dillingham, as the top draft pick, would be the obvious suspect. He is younger and has more theoretical advantages. But Shannon is immediately playable on offense and has been surprisingly solid defensively for a rookie with few minutes. If you can score consistently without taking away other important skills, you can become a very valuable player pretty quickly. That’s the argument here. Shannon will have a bigger role this season to showcase the rest of his game, and last year there were some pretty promising signs.

Longest of our long shots, and I mean that literally, because Huff has a 7-5 wingspan. There’s a gaping hole at Central Indiana, and their system relies on having a big man who can shoot. Huff was over 40% last season with 12.4 attempts per 100 possessions. He is also an excellent shot blocker and is quite a showman as a dunker. Is he likely a top 100 player? Absolutely not. Come on, he’s barely been a rotation player. But you just know someone appears out of nowhere in Indiana this season. Rick Carlisle has a blank slate of 82 plays to work with, and Huff offers the cheapest possible replication of Myles Turner’s skill set. The Pacers will give him every chance to succeed. He’s under contract for essentially a minimum term through 2028, so if he’s a diamond in the rough, the Pacers will have him for the price of a ring for the foreseeable future.