Heading into the 2025/26 season, Zach Harper of The Athletic has taken stock of both the NBA’s top 40 big men and the league’s 40 best lead guards.
Harper divided the players into seven tiers for each list. While three All-NBA superstar guards – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, and Stephen Curry – qualified for his top tier among lead guards, only one player is in the top tier for big men — three-time MVP Nuggets center Nikola Jokic. For what it’s worth, two-time MVP Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo was not listed as a big for this exercise.
Here’s more news and notes from around the NBA:
- Zach Kram of ESPN runs through one statistic that could make or break this season’s goals for all 30 NBA squads. Among some of the interesting numbers of note: the Kings were outscored by 120.9 points per 100 possessions during the 1,000-plus possessions that stars Domantas Sabonis, DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine shared the floor; and the reigning champion Thunder are bringing back the players who logged 99.2% of all their playoff minutes from last season.
- The new CBA’s brutal second tax apron has come under renewed scrutiny this summer, after effectively compelling the breakup of the Celtics’ 2024 championship roster. Steve Bulpett of Heavy.com spoke to several league executives about the mechanism’s impact on team-building. “Before, they just kept hiking the price of being over the tax limit,” one executive said. “But now you have things like limitations on trades and loss of draft position [teams in the second apron for three years in a five-year span have a first round pick moved to the end of the round]. These are all new in the apron system. Now the cost gets too expensive. It’s not just money; it’s limiting to your operations.”
- Seven of the 10 teams listed among David Aldridge of The Athletic‘s most improved rosters this offseason are in the Western Conference. The No. 1 club on Aldridge’s list, the revamped Rockets, may not be much of a surprise, but the No. 6 Hornets certainly are.