How do NBA players feel about which of their peers is most underrated and most overrated?

And what do they think when it comes to the league’s head coaches?

We asked them those questions, and more, for The Athletic’s 2026 Anonymous NBA Player Poll.

From late February to early April, our writers fanned out across North America, asking players a wide array of questions, ranging from individual awards to player movement to league issues. Our writers surveyed 161 players, a record high for this project, which is approximately one-third of the league’s workforce.

As always, we granted the players anonymity to give them the freedom to answer honestly, without fear of reprisals from opponents, teammates or fans. For transparency and context, we’ll tell you how many people responded to each topic.

The Athletic has already released some of its results: players’ opinions on the MVP debate, the eventual title winner and whether players would visit the White House if their team won the championship. We’ll continue to roll out the results in increments, giving each topic the full attention it deserves.

(Editor’s note: In some cases, combined percentages of all answers to a question will not add up to 100 percent, because individual percentages have been rounded up or down to the nearest tenth of a percentage point.)

Most underrated player

This question yielded a wide variety of answers, with 89 players receiving at least one vote. That is not unusual. In our poll last season, 75 players received at least one vote. The breadth of answers can be explained by the league’s depth of talent, but it can also, perhaps, be explained by some respondents voting for their teammates.

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to focus on the top six vote-getters (3.3 percent and up).

Something that is crystal clear: Players believe the Boston Celtics’ Derrick White still has not received his due respect. He is among the leaders here year in and year out. In 2024, he tied for the win with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Jalen Williams. Last year, he finished second, trailing only the Detroit Pistons’ Cade Cunningham. And now, he’s won again, tying with the Atlanta Hawks’ Jalen Johnson.

White is a winning player, earning an NBA title as a key contributor to the 2023-24 Celtics and a gold medal with the 2024 U.S. men’s Olympic team. He has twice been named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team, but he has never been named an All-Star or been named to an All-NBA team, though it’s possible he could earn an All-NBA nod for his work this season.

“To me, he’s one of the most important players in the league,” one player who voted for White said. “Just doing it on both ends. I didn’t know how much he had offensively.”

White is one of three Celtics to finish in the top six this year, joining Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard. Their upper-tier finishes have something to do with the Celtics overcoming Jayson Tatum’s absence for most of the season to defy expectations and finish with a 56-26 regular-season record.

One of the players who voted for White said: “Everyone is trying to say Jaylen Brown is an MVP candidate. They’re wrong. White has actually been the biggest reason they’re so good this season. He does everything — offense, defense, leadership — for them.”

Johnson was one of the league’s breakout players this season, leading the Atlanta Hawks to a No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference. He avoided major injuries to play in 72 games, and his production improved, averaging career bests of 22.5 points, 10.3 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game, with a career-high 13 triple-doubles. Notably, he did not receive a single “Underrated” vote last season, which may be explained by playing in only 36 games that year due to injuries.

It will be interesting to see if his career arc can approximate the trajectory of Cunningham’s, who was the top “Underrated” vote-getter last season before leading the Pistons to the best record in the East and potentially in the top five for MVP voting. We’re not saying that the Hawks will be the East’s best team next season, but it’s possible that Johnson could take a similar jump.

Jrue Holliday of the Portland Trail Blazers is a staple of our most underrated lists, having finished as the top vote-getter in 2023, the runner-up in 2024 and fifth last season. Austin Reaves of the Los Angeles Lakers has made another repeat appearance after he placed fourth last season.

Most overrated player

Alperen Şengün earned his second All-Star nod this season and helped lead the Houston Rockets to the fifth seed in the ultra-competitive Western Conference. His stats of 20.4 points, 8.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game and four triple-doubles are impressive.

Why all the skepticism from his peers?

That’s a question that we cannot fully answer, but perhaps this comment from one of the players who voted for him sheds some light on things: “He’s crying every play. He’s talented, but, dude, just play hard.”

While it is true that Şengün does not have a reputation as a particularly strong defender, with Amen Thompson and Tari Eason strongly defending on the perimeter, the Rockets finished the season sixth in defensive rating.

The most overrated section of our annual player poll has emerged as the most controversial section. You may remember that point guard Tyrese Haliburton “won” — or is it “lost”? — this category last season, finishing with 14.4 percent of the vote, and then led the Indiana Pacers to the NBA Finals, where they took the Thunder to a Game 7. Haliburton’s “most overrated” votes seemed ridiculous after his postseason heroics.

Şengün’s Rockets were eliminated by the Lakers in their first-round series, meaning there will be no repeat revenge run in the playoffs like the one Haliburton had. Still, he’s only 23 years old, with a developmental arc that bodes very well for the years to come.

The second-place finishers this year, Rudy Gobert of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Trae Young of the Washington Wizards, are regulars in this category. Young finished first in 2023, and Gobert finished first in 2024. While Young is coming off an injury-riddled season (he played in just 15 games), Gobert was the anchor of a Timberwolves defense that finished the regular season eighth in defensive rating. Gobert averaged 10.9 points, 11.5 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game, and he placed fourth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, which is done by a panel of 100 writers and broadcasters.

It should be noted, however, that this question was once again one that players were least willing to answer, with 81 votes cast. To put that into perspective, although Şengün was the top vote-getter, he only received 10 votes.

“I was part of the group that said Tyrese Haliburton for most overrated, and what he did in the playoffs last year was unreal,” one of this poll’s non-voters told us. “So I’m not saying (who I think is overrated). We have a lot of really good players in this league.”

Another player who was asked the question but declined to answer said: “That’s one I would put my name on. I don’t want to crush a guy silently. I ain’t that type of guy.”

Which current coach, aside from your own, do you find the most impressive?

More love here for the Celtics — specifically, Joe Mazzulla, the Celtics’ ultra-competitive, no-nonsense fourth-year head coach.

Because Tatum was expected to miss the entire 2025-26 season as he recovered from the Achilles tendon injury he suffered during the 2025 playoffs, and because the Celtics had traded away floor-spacing big man Kristaps Porziņģis, the Celtics entered October expected to tumble down the standings. NBA.com’s annual GM Survey had league general managers predicting that Boston would finish eighth in the East.

However, Boston defied all of those expectations, finishing second in the East with a 56-26 record. The Celtics also ranked second in offense and fourth in defense.

One respondent said he voted for Mazzulla because of “his tenacity and the way that he fires his group up, the intensity that he coaches with.”

It’s no surprise that Thunder coach Mark Daigneault finished second. His defending-champion Thunder ended the season with the league’s best record, 64-18. Last year, when we asked players to name the league’s best coach, he won with 21.8 percent of the vote.

J.B. Bickerstaff placed third this year in the “most impressive” coach vote, with 11.0 percent. His Pistons ended the regular season with home-court advantage in the East after going 60-22.

Someone who voted for him said: “Just what he’s been able to do with what situations he’s been in. In Cleveland, he shined. He got them to a certain level. For whatever reason, they didn’t want him anymore. He moved over to Detroit, where nobody could figure that spot out, and turned it around to having the best team in the East.

“He has a great rapport with his players, gets on them. They take on his personality, which is tough-nosed. He’s a great coach.”

The Miami Heat’s Erik Spoelstra, who doubles as USA Basketball’s men’s coach, continues to earn the players’ respect. Someone who voted for him lauded “the culture he’s built of winning and playing hard.”

Which current coach, aside from your own, do you find the least impressive?

The biggest takeaway from these results is that tanking can have a negative downstream effect on the reputations of those teams’ coaches. Those coaches get blamed for what, under any typical situation, would be considered baffling substitution patterns or, perhaps, a lack of organization, particularly on the defensive end.

Brian Keefe is the Washington Wizards’ coach, and his team finished the season with the league’s worst record, 17-65, with losses in 26 of their last 27 games.

“I don’t even know who’s coaching the Wizards, but whoever coaches the Wizards,” one respondent said.

The lowlight of the Wizards’ season occurred on March 10, when the Heat’s Bam Adebayo scored 83 points in a 150-129 Heat victory. One of the players who voted for Keefe cited Adebayo’s 83-point performance for his vote, saying, “They should all be out of the league for that.”

It should be noted again that this survey was conducted during the regular season, before the coaching carousel started to turn. Since the end of the season, Doc Rivers was replaced in Milwaukee with Taylor Jenkins, and Billy Donovan stepped down from his job with the Chicago Bulls.

Steve Kerr’s Golden State Warriors future is in doubt. After 12 seasons as the Warriors’ coach — with four NBA championships, a 604-353 regular-season record and 104-48 playoff record — Kerr might decide to exit.

Historically, the former Team USA coach has been one of the most lauded in our player polls. So it was somewhat surprising that 6.0 percent of respondents voted for Kerr as “least impressive” coach.

This season, however, Golden State faced injuries to Jimmy Butler and Stephen Curry and went 37-45. Kerr also faced criticism for Jonathan Kuminga falling out of the Warriors’ rotation and not meeting expectations.

“I think he’s a great coach,” one of the players who voted for Kerr said. “I just thought the way he handled the Kuminga situation wasn’t very smart.”

Who is the league’s best defensive player?

Was there any question that Victor Wembanyama would be players’ top choice for the league’s best defender?

No. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that he only received 41.1 percent of the vote.

Wembanyama led the San Antonio Spurs to the league’s second-best record, 62-20, and he led the league in blocks, with 3.1 per game. Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren finished second among qualifiers in blocks, and Holmgren “only” averaged 1.9 blocks per game.

“He’s 7-6!” said one of the players who voted for Wembanyama, who is officially listed at 7 feet 4. “He just has the ability to cover up so many mistakes, including ones that he’ll make. Just his ability to erase mistakes is extremely impressive where guys drive in the paint and see him and turn around and dribble out. Like, no one does that in the NBA.

“But you’ll drive in, and you’ve kind of got a layup, and you see him, and you turn and go the other way. That’s crazy. … You know what the ending is if you do it. You can’t knock that.”

Scottie Barnes of the Toronto Raptors received some love, too, finishing in a tie for third, with 4.0 percent of the vote.

One voter said of Barnes: “Able to guard one through five, steals, full-court (pressure), protecting the rim. He can pretty much do everything on defense.”