NBA Player Tiers: Wembanyama joins LeBron, Jalen Brunson and other All-NBA contenders

This is the fifth annual NBA Player Tiers project, in which Seth Partnow names the top 125 players in the league after each season and then separates them into five distinct categories of value, each with their sub-categories to further delineate them. These are not meant to be read as firm 1-125 player rankings. Rather, they’re meant to separate solid starters from the very best superstars, and every level in between. This is how NBA front offices assess player value across the league when building their teams.

Tier 2 is where the players who are All-Star shoo-ins and All-NBA contenders start to dominate the ranks. This is the level where everyone listed could be the best player on a title team next year, just needing increasing perfection in the rest of their team’s roster construction as we move through the subtiers.

At this level, I’m starting to nitpick to draw distinctions between players who are all excellent and often dominant. But as we see every postseason, those small distinctions tend to have an outsized impact on which team ultimately prevails in playoff series. This year, 17 individuals reside in Tier 2, spread across three subtiers.

Tier 2C (16-23)

The Clippers (for now at least!) duo of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, like many in Tier 2, are still world-class on their day. Leonard’s injury and availability issues are well-documented, and as dominant as he can still be when healthy, the 68 games he played in 2023-24 was the third-most of his career and the highest total since 2016-17. He has also missed 15 of L.A.’s last 19 playoff games, which is a problem considering when championships are won. Meanwhile, George has had some of his own health issues while the natural effects of age have reduced his defensive ability somewhat, especially in terms of the versatility to contain quicker guards.

At this point it’s clear that Anthony Davis might be the “best second-best” player in the league while not being as good a first option as others in this and perhaps one tier lower. Such is life for a player who, while an absolutely elite finisher of chances created by others, has struggled to either get his own or make plays for others for most of his career. Add in one of the most versatile and playoff-valuable defensive skillsets in the league, and here is where he ends up.

Bam Adebayo is much like Davis, though he substitutes much improved playmaking for some of the finishing and scoring variety Davis can provide. Similarly, his greater versatility as a switch defender is offset by Davis’ superiority as a rim defender. But on aggregate it ends up in a similar overall package.

Ja Morant experienced a completely lost season, partially by his own doing, partially via bad injury luck. But I tend to give players especially those on the younger side a one-year grace period, and Morant just took that mulligan.

I’ll be frank and state that Donovan Mitchell is not my cup of tea as a player, but he has a strong record as a playoff performer even if one gets the sense that his own output sometimes comes at the expense of his teams’ established identities.

This was the best and most reliable season from Kyrie Irving since he engineered his way out of Cleveland in the 2017 offseason. It says something that this occurred in a year when he only appeared in 58 games, but the distractions which have so often marked his career were largely absent, and he was excellent across the first three rounds of the playoffs before he (along with the rest of the Mavericks) ran into the far more talented — and extremely well-equipped to guard him with Jrue Holiday or Derrick White — Celtics in the Finals. There was even evidence that his presence allowed for some growth in Luka Dončić’s off-ball game.

As recently as the 2022 offseason, De’Aaron Fox’s career appeared to be slightly drifting. But during the last two years he has regained the top end of the electric quickness that made him so dynamic in the first place. He has married that with much improved jump-shooting. His partnership with Domantas Sabonis produces one of the harder to defend two-man games in the entire league. In his one postseason series against the Warriors in the 2023 first round, Fox showed he can pick up much of the slack left by Sabonis’ playoffs struggles. The biggest question remains whether Sacramento can provide a sufficient platform for us to see how well Fox might perform deeper into the postseason.

After his double MVP run in the playoffs, Jaylen Brown could easily be a slot higher. In some ways, he’s a victim of having great teammates, as sorting out the order of importance of Boston’s starters or which of them had the most impactful season is enormously tricky. However, and not for the first time, the relative straightforwardness of Brown’s style of offensive attack served the Celtics in great stead during the difficult moments they faced during their championship run. He should also be lauded for the subtle improvements he made in his game, from the higher level of defensive impact — showcased in the Finals by him drawing the primary assignment of guarding Dončić and doing the job better than anyone else this postseason — to subtle increases in his skill level especially from a ballhandling perspective. The only reason Brown isn’t higher is that analytic impact models haven’t always loved him in a similar way that Klay Thompson’s metrics tended to be lower on him than his reputation would suggest.

Tier 2B (10-15)

Jimmy Butler — and the Miami Heat overall — suffered through a somewhat lost season, and like a few others discussed in earlier tiers — such as his not-quite teammate Damian Lillard — Butler needs a return-to-form season or else he will begin the inevitable tumble down the tiers as he ages out of star status. But I’m not willing to declare now the time for that for one of this era’s great gamers.

The dynamic and competition between Devin Booker and Anthony Edwards was fascinating during the brief Wolves-Suns series and will be equally intriguing going forward. Booker continues to improve every season adding to his already versatile offensive game and continuing to progress as a defender. Meanwhile, Edwards made a leap, if not quite “The Leap,” into the game’s elite this season, driving the Timberwolves to a top-four record and their second-ever conference finals. All while being recognized as the best player across the first two playoff rounds by general acclaim. Like so many in their first deep postseason run, Edwards discovered some of his current limits in the Western Conference finals against Dallas with the Mavericks interior defense in particular bamboozling the young Minnesota star. If his career follows the pattern of others, he will learn from that experience and continue to rise up the league’s pyramid.

Every so often, there is a player who is just unexplainably good. Jalen Brunson isn’t big, though he is strong. He isn’t fast, but he’s quicker than he’s given credit for. Despite possessing one of the most difficult shot diets in the league, Brunson is hugely efficient even in a year where his midrange accuracy took a slight dip. The total package has turned a player who seemed a slight overpay when New York signed him to among the better values in the league, especially for players no longer on their rookie contracts. The Knicks were one of the best and most fun stories of the entire season, and Brunson is the single biggest reason.

I was worried that I got a little loose by having Victor Wembanyama in Tier 4 before he played his first NBA game, but that worry was clearly an overdeveloped sense of caution. The most hyped prospect since LeBron James met and exceeded every expectation to a greater degree than any prospect since, well, LeBron. Wembanyama might push for Defensive Player of the Year as early as his second season, while I wouldn’t bet against him becoming not just the best defensive player, but recognized as the best player overall before he finishes his rookie contract. I’m not sure it’s possible to get too carried away about his potential achievements in the league as the last rookie to have his level of impact was likely Tim Duncan, and he turned out pretty well, we can all agree.

Tier 2A (7-9)

Whether LeBron James, Jayson Tatum and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander should make up Tier 1C or sit here in Tier 2 is a perfectly fair question, and I wouldn’t argue either way, other than noting that, historically speaking, nine players would be an unprecedented number sitting at that level. Certainly all three could be the best player on title teams — obviously so in the case of Tatum! But this group provides slightly less margin for error in terms of team construction than do the six who make up the very top group.

For Gilgeous-Alexander, his first playoff run as a first option was always likely to be a bit of a learning experience. And so it was, with the Mavericks defense illustrating some of the areas where both SGA individually and the Thunder in general could diversify their offensive approach in the future. Still, another season like the past one could see Gilgeous-Alexander both pick up his first MVP trophy and also vault him into the top five or six players in the game.

This late in James’ career, dominance is no longer an every game thing despite the more than occasional throwback and/or vintage performance. One of the areas age has shown up most is on the defensive end where the every possession intensity has … lessened as compared to his heyday. That said, much of the onus remains on the Lakers to build a roster that doesn’t ask as much of James on a nightly basis.

On the flip side, the talent around Tatum perhaps made it more difficult for him to show off while at the same time allowed for his team to win the title quite comfortably without Tatum being quite at his best. This isn’t to say he played poorly by any stretch, but his playoff scoring efficiency (54.9 percent True Shooting) well down from his excellent regular season mark (64.9 percent TS%). This has not been a pattern across his career as prior to this year the gap has been far smaller (56.9 percent to 57.9).

At this level, those small margins matter a great deal which is why he misses the cut, just, of making Tier 1.

NBA Player Tiers: ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ‘23 | ’24 pre-playoffs | ’24: T5 | T4| T3