Lessons from the 2026 NBA Draft Cycle

Ships in the Night

Player evaluation is tough. An analogy that comes to mind is trying to locate a ship in the distance when you’re in the middle of a monsoon. The ship is moving — players change, sometimes drastically, season to season — and you only get glimpses of what it really looks like when things steady and you get a moment of insight.

The waves are our foundation for analysis, the greater context in which we evaluate what “good” even means. A quick visit to nbarapm.com shows that even players with over a decade of experience have vastly different valuations based on what metric you choose. Anthony Davis, for example, grades out as the #8 player since 1997 by peak LEBRON; peak DARKO has him #54; peak RAPM? Outside the top 100. Now, a closer inspection would help untangle these differences, but the point stands: this ranking stuff isn’t easy.

A System of Systems

As a non-professional in the space, taking this seriously since 2021, I have tried to focus on one major aspect of player evaluation per year.

Year 1, writing with The Stepien, I tackled archetypes. The benefits involved understanding nexuses of impact. I came up with monikers for every type of connector based on identifiable player groupings; I better understood rim protection by separating those who stay near the basket from those who defend different distances from the hoop; I came up with a custom metric for tough shotmaking; and assessed potential primary advantage creators through film-based analysis. While this system helped identify some diamonds in the rough (i.e., Julian Champagnie, Orlando Robinson, Jabari Walker), it missed the forest for the trees, as I devalued those who didn’t fit into these distinct buckets.

Year 2, writing for Swish Theory as co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, I again mixed stats and film, separating players by their draft-year resume. I started with “whiteboard” prospects, players whose production declined as competition increased, trying to suss out whether that trend would hold at the NBA level, too. Then I tackled “everything everywhere” prospects, who met an array of statistical thresholds with play not falling off against the top NCAA teams. I finished with “flawed freshmen” prospects, who had glaring holes in their games, where I offered prescriptions to better translate to the NBA. I used this accumulation of analysis to forecast where each player would rank on a good team in their prime. This led to much better results: my 2023 top 30 currently ranks #1 of 75 public boards despite having one of the lowest correlations to actual draft results (evaluation per Tawny Park Metrics). In particular, my process made me appreciate Ausar Thompson (my #4) and Dereck Lively (my #8).

Year 3, I took a drastically different approach. I evaluated players on three axes: production, feel, and athleticism. My production analysis led Zach Edey to becoming my easy #1 prospect. Analyzing feel led me to make an outlier call on Oso Ighodaro (and yes, I’m still very high on Nikola Topic). Athleticism I actually found the toughest, but it’s why I remain very high on Jonathan Mogbo, potentially getting a shot on the defense-needy Sacramento Kings. Again, I found some success: my top 30 currently ranks #32 of 113 boards. This is largely thanks to placing Oso in my lottery, while also fading Zaccharie Risacher and Dalton Knecht (and I still believe in Reed Sheppard and Ron Holland).

Year 4, I tried all kinds of things. First, I graded every player across ten categories, representing different avenues of contribution on the court (three-point talent, midrange talent, rim finishing talent, passing talent, etc.) and attempted to put appropriate weights for each one. This method fell prey to rose-colored glasses: if my instincts were to be high on a player, this led to unreasonably high grades in not just one but multiple areas of impact. Noting this limitation mid-cycle, I then switched to forecasting Offensive Estimated Plus-Minus (O-EPM) and Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus (D-EPM) for every player. But the weakness there is assigning values to players with similar profiles, when the interaction of skills is more complex than that. The results? Not great so far — for example, my struggle to find a comparable high-EPM player to Kon Knueppel led me to rank him in the second half of the lottery, a clear mistake already.

Finally, we arrive at 2026. This cycle, I really went through it, trying out about 10 different ways to value prospects. My favorite one was realizing there are, essentially, three different ways to stop a player: send help, trade for help, or pray. While I believe this is the optimal way to think about player impact, it is also extremely hard to put values on those factors. And we have examples like Kevin Durant, where he is somewhat weak at handling pressure, doesn’t necessarily require a trade for specific personnel to stop him…but boy, you better call upon whatever religion you can to PRAY he misses. I utilized more statistical data than ever before, marking down unique metrics for every player on a weekly basis. This led to discoveries, like the value of averaging FT% and 2P%, where 60% appears to be a key threshold. However, I settled on a system that blended my ranking process for my two most successful boards, with some key edits. Rather than production, feel, and athleticism, I gave everyone a rank for athleticism, non-shooting skill, and finishing touch. I switched out production and feel for their redundancies, difficult to disentangle and prone to that same rose-tinted analysis. Similar to 2023, I graded these factors by where a player would rank on a good team in their prime. We’ll see how it works out.

RAPM Supremacy

But the more I think about it, long-term RAPM is king. Most importantly, the distinct factors give a guideline for how basketball works in the most tangible way. Dissecting what made Rajon Rondo peak at only +0.8 offensive True Shooting impact compared to Ricky Rubio at +2.3 makes one much better at understanding hoops in general. I started the offseason by putting the names of 122 players with 10+ NBA seasons under their belts in a spreadsheet. I then put my best estimate for each of the six factors for all players at their 5-year peak, learning about each factor as I went along. By the end of the exercise, I consistently got within 1 point of each player’s peak RAPM.

The difficulty here is that a player’s RAPM factor composition may change drastically over the course of their career with role changes. Consider Jrue Holiday going from elite in defensive True Shooting impact in 2018-2021 to then switching to an elite offensive True Shooting booster with the Celtics. Once again, we are aiming at a constantly moving target.

Kingston Flemings: My #2 Prospect

Given these difficulties grading the RAPM factors against one another — again, it’s easy to be rosy on every factor for a favorite prospect, when it’s unrealistic that that player contributes to contradictory factors at once — I created what would be my final 2026 system: grading where the key underlying elements which make players valuable would rank within the league at that player’s peak. Athleticism, non-shooting skill, and finishing touch.

Let’s talk Kingston Flemings. Mid-cycle, I had a moment of panic over Flemings’ profile: he didn’t take many threes for a guard and rarely got to the free-throw line. That combination is a death knell for many guard prospects. And especially for ones who, like Flemings, do not have a reliable floater.

But let’s look at Kingston’s tools, which are the true ingredients for a player becoming great. He is clearly very athletic, getting the best Combine Score of any first-round guard in the 2026 draft. His 40.5-inch max vertical means he can challenge rim protectors at the NBA level, with 12% of his rim makes being dunks (compare that to Ebuka Okorie at 6%, Darius Acuff at 5%, or Keaton Wagler at 0%). He also graded in the 87th percentile or better compared to all Combine guards for each of the lane agility, sprint, and shuttle run tests. This athleticism is functional, too: his 3% steal rate and 1.3% block rate are both great for a high major freshman point guard. His short wingspan (only one inch above his height) has clearly not limited this defensive production or ability to dunk with a crease.

For non-shooting skill, we see Kingston as one of the best passers in all of college basketball as a freshman. And consider his predecessor at Houston, Jamal Shead. Shead’s sophomore NCAA season passing stats were very similar to Flemings’ as a freshman. Fast forward to the NBA, and Shead is putting up a 31% assist rate with a 4.0 assist-to-turnover ratio, one of the most effective passers in the league. The skill is evident in Flemings’ process, probing into the paint with his elite quickness and consistently making quick reads with accurate delivery. In spite of his low rim rate, with more midrange than rim attempts, Houston’s rim rate and rim finishing rose by seven and six points, respectively, when Kingston was on the court.

As far as shooting touch goes, Flemings put up 85% shooting from the line, 39% from three (40% self-created), 44% in the midrange (82% self-created), and 57% at the rim (77% self-created). The shot profile is the problem, but Houston’s system is one of extreme midrange reliance, 9th in the country in midrange frequency and nearly last in the NCAA in rim frequency and free throw rate. Flemings’ reluctance to shoot threes and occasional struggles to find optimal finishing angles are two problems he needs to figure out. But I will always bet on a basketball genius of his level of acumen to figure it out over those who didn’t sport Kingston’s gaudy feel indicators, which show up as quickly on tape as one would expect given the numbers.

This #2 ranking also reveals my skepticism around AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Caleb Wilson, but I view all four as very close to each other as prospects. If Dybantsa’s three ball comes around and defensive effort sharpens, I will have made a mistake. If Darryn can showcase another gear as a passer, he likely surpasses Kingston as well. I am most concerned with ranking Caleb Wilson low, as my offseason dedication to reviewing Hall of Fame player profiles reveals he shares many common characteristics with top 50 players of all time.

But, returning to RAPM, it is easy to see Flemings providing a major boost to his team’s offensive True Shooting while suppressing turnovers, and creating turnovers on the defensive end while still hanging in as a physical defender who will prevent his man from getting easy looks. He’s also a solid rebounder for a point guard. In particular, offensive engines can have huge impacts on team offensive efficiency, as the ceiling is higher for that factor than any other. If he can transition to Morey-ball, moving on from Houston’s tendencies, that true shooting boost might be among league leaders. He isn’t quite the level of passer as Ricky Rubio, but he has a major advantage in finishing touch.

Looking Ahead

Having tried the numerous grading systems outlined above, I am settling into this three-factor (athleticism, non-shooting skill, finishing touch) estimate, as each represents a different, distinct way to win on the court. While not completely fungible, and with some difficulty discerning what separates one from another in the fine details (film remains important), each provides a discrete way for a prospect to succeed at the highest level. You can succeed with poor athleticism if you have elite skill and shooting; you can succeed as a poor ballhandler if you’re athletic and can shoot; you can succeed as a poor shooter if you can dribble and are athletic. And so forth.

As far as 2027 prospects go, Tyler Tanner has been a favorite of mine since early in his freshman season, when he remarkably started his college career with 33 assists before recording a single turnover. He remains criminally underrated by mainstream mocks, with his draft range appearing to be 15-30 currently. Listen, I get the concerns: 5’10.75” and 169 pounds would rule out 99.9999% of the population from being an NBA player. But boy, is there plenty of evidence that he’s in that 0.0001%.

How often do players of his build get 17 dunks while playing in the toughest conference? Or post a 50.5 free-throw rate against top-50 teams? While maintaining a 1.1% block rate? Add, on top of that, he shot 85% from the free-throw line with a 2.7 assist-to-turnover ratio. His weakness is three-point volume and midrange efficiency, but both improved over the season as his on-ball responsibility increased. He was the best player on a team where five senior teammates are receiving genuine NBA looks (Nickel, Miles, Washington, Okereke, McGlockton). He is likely to boost his team’s offensive efficiency, reduce its turnover rate, and increase its turnovers forced. The big question mark is defensive True Shooting impact: his ability to always cause havoc might muck up opposing offenses, but without significant strength gain he will concede good looks.

Simply put, Tanner is a functional feel outlier. Check out Lukas Spinnler’s deep dive into how this might play out at the NBA level (as well as for Chance Mallory, by Elias).

My other outlier call is that Pat Ngongba has genuine All-Star upside. With his strength, mobility, length, and hand-eye coordination, Ngongba will be one of the best defensive True Shooting suppressors in the league. On top of that, his strong touch, Morey-ball-ness, and great passing for a center mean a likely very positive offensive True Shooting impact too. The concern is defensive rebounding, as he will allow more second-chance points than your average center, but the two-way efficiency impact will make that tolerable — and he’s a good rebounder on the offensive end.

Wrapping Up

Beyond anything, my biggest lesson is that draft analysis should be….fun. Validating numbers with tape watch means you can make your eyes reconcile with the ledger in all kinds of ways. Figuring out your own system, utilizing all tools available, will certainly give you a unique edge, as ultimately we are all at different points on the tidal wave, always attempting to reduce the error caused by limitations of perception and bias. Stay true to your process, and good outcomes will follow.