NBA Players Tiers 2026: Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, injured standouts in Tier 3

2026 NBA Player Tiers: Tier 5 | Tier 4Welcome to Tier 3, quite possibly the most polarizing tier. For some teams, this is as high as it gets, which obviously doesn’t make it easy to be in contender conversations.This year, 22 teams are represented in Tier 3 (21 were represented last year). Only two teams don’t have a player placed in the top three tiers, and no team clinched a top-six playoff seed without having a player higher than Tier 3. In 2025, the Houston Rockets were the only team that clinched a top-six seed without a player placed higher than Tier 3. The good news is that Houston was the second seed in the Western Conference. The bad news is that the Rockets lost Game 7 at home to the No. 7-seeded Golden State Warriors, a team that had two players in the first two tiers. Houston decided to go get Kevin Durant afterward.Advertisement