roundtable article<\/a> in which analysts confirmed they would have comfortably voted a healthy Tatum inside the top 10.<\/p>\n\u201cTatum is easily top 10 if healthy,\u201d Bobby Marks said. \u201cIt is hard not to recognize a player who consistently averages at least 25 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cTatum without question would retain his spot in the back half of the top five because of his consistent excellence,\u201d Jamal Collier declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cTatum is top 10, easily, and near top five,\u201d Anthony Slater said. \u201cIt feels like he has lived in that fifth slot on MVP ballots for half a decade, and he\u2019s just 27. He had never been better than last season before his injury.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tatum\u2019s absence allowed a rival to sneak into the top 10. Brunson moved up two spots from last year\u2019s rankings after leading the New York Knicks to a second-round playoff win over Boston.<\/p>\n
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Victor Wembanyama is the only other new name in this year\u2019s top 10 after a dominant season second, but Anthony Edwards climbed from No. 10 to 6. ESPN isn\u2019t ready to boot Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant from the top 10 near the end of their Hall of Fame careers.<\/p>\n
Jokic maintained his No. 1 ranking for the second straight year after averaging 29.6 points, 12.7 and 10.2 assists per game last season. Although he didn\u2019t surpass the star center, Gilgeous-Alexander leapfrogged Doncic and Antetokounmpo for the No. 2 spot after leading the Oklahoma City Thunder to a championship after an MVP season.<\/p>\n
Five of these players will kick off the regular season on Tuesday, Oct. 21, when the Thunder host the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers face the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN concluded its NBA player rankings for the 2025-26 season by unveiling the top 10 on Thursday. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":92014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[37970,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-254195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-jayson-tatum","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115266312097139060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}