You have made it to the All-Star stratum of our 2026 Player Tiers. A few All-Stars appeared in Tier 3, but none who have been All-Star selections in the last three seasons. Tier 2 is larger this year, but it still rounds out the top 30 players in the NBA.As much as the best players dictate championships, it’s a team game. It’s hard to have one star carry a team of role players to a title, even very good ones. Talent needs to be stacked. It’s not practical, though not impossible, to get multiple Tier 1 players together, and it is hard to be a contender without at least one Tier 2 player.This is where that stacking becomes possible. You can see it in teams at work deep in the playoffs, with the Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks and Oklahoma City Thunder each having multiple players in Tier 2.Tier 2AMany would argue that these players belong in the highest tier. But I had a good reason for keeping them at the top sub-tier here. We might have to call this the Becky Hammon appreciation sub-tier, after she stated her view that, “If your best player is the smallest player on the court, you (probably) won’t win a championship.”There’s no more appropriate place to start than with point guards Jalen Brunson and Stephen Curry, the latter of whom has been a mainstay in Tier 1 — until now.Curry posted one of the worst assist-to-turnover ratios among starting point guards (1.68), his team has missed the playoffs two of the last three seasons and Golden State has been a top-five seed in the Western Conference only once since Kevin Durant left in 2019. Much of that has to do with the quality of Curry’s teammates. He is still a top-tier scorer, bending defenses with his movement and shooting threat. He still gets to the free-throw line like a star, averaging 5.1 attempts per game, and he continues to hold up defensively, averaging 1.1 steals per game. But his 3.6 rebounds per game were a 14-year low. If Curry played enough games to qualify, he would have led the NBA in made 3s at 4.4 per game. But he is 38 years old and missed nearly half of this season with a knee issue after suffering a hamstring strain in the 2025 playoffs.Brunson is an on-ball offense unto himself, spamming pick-and-rolls and isolations to perfection while averaging 5.7 free-throw attempts per game. He’s a relatively low-turnover playmaker, a solid 3-point shooter and very good in the rare times he can spot up. Because he is only 6 foot 2 and has rarely had active hands, he needs to be protected defensively. But Brunson competes on that end of the floor and is the NBA’s leading threat to draw charges.Donovan Mitchell is Cleveland’s starting shooting guard, but at 6 foot 2, he also fits the Hammon paradox. He’s a powerful scorer who averages 6.1 free-throw attempts per game, has a better than 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio and shoots a ton of 3s. Mitchell is better at the point of attack than on an island, but he still has a great nose for the ball.The small forwards here are two NBA Finals MVPs in Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard. Durant still does everything a scorer has to do, on and off the ball, and has scored at least 25 points per game in every season he’s played since the Supersonics left Seattle. He’s made at least 50 percent of his field goals every season he’s played since 2012 and has made at least 40 percent of his 3s in five of the last six seasons. He’s not a big playmaker defensively, but he remains assignment-sound at 6-11. Durant played 78 games this season, his most since missing the 2019-20 season with a torn Achilles tendon. But the spring returns on Durant-led teams have been diminishing. His Houston Rockets were an eyesore in clutch situations because, like many Durant teams lately, they were chronically bad at executing in fourth quarters and overtime. Durant is best suited to have a powerful lead guard next to him to keep him out of a primary playmaker role, and Fred VanVleet’s ACL injury lowered Houston’s ceiling even before Durant suffered two injuries after the regular season ended. Durant’s teams have won only two playoff series since he left Golden State. He has also lost his last seven playoff games, and he’ll be 38 when next season begins.Leonard will turn 35 this summer, and he hasn’t been a part of a playoff series win since undergoing ACL surgery in 2021. Foot and ankle sprains contributed to him missing 10 games in November, a stretch during which the LA Clippers lost 13 of 15 games. Then Draymond Green locked up Leonard while the Clippers blew a 13-point fourth-quarter lead at home in a Play-In Tournament elimination game. Still, from December and March, Leonard was one of the best players in the NBA, playing enough games to qualify for end-of-season awards while largely putting his knee issues behind him. He had an eight-year high in steals and a three-year high in rebounds while recording more steals than fouls for a third straight season. Players rarely test his one-on-one defense. Offensively, Leonard averaged 6.4 free-throw attempts, his most in six years, and shot better than 50 percent for the fourth time in six seasons. He has one of the lowest turnover rates by a star and launched more 3s than ever while still maintaining a 38.7 percent clip. This season was the first time since 2020 that Leonard began and ended a season healthy, which makes it all the more wasteful that he couldn’t win a playoff series and puts more pressure on a team that intends to contend and have another top player beside Leonard due to his bouts of missed time.Tier 2BThis sub-tier has seven All-Stars who were all on playoff teams, and they have all had to share the spotlight in one way or another in the last year or so.Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick referred to Marcus Smart as the team’s power forward, though LeBron James more frequently defended power forwards during his unprecedented 23rd NBA season. James took an understandable back seat to Luka Dončić and a sacrificial back seat to Austin Reaves as the season went on and those three actually played together. James didn’t begin the season healthy for the first time because of sciatica, and Reaves missed the beginning of winter due to injury. Dončić got hurt shortly before the All-Star break just as Reaves returned, and then both Dončić and Reaves were sidelined again before the playoffs. It was an uneven season for James offensively. He took the fewest shots of his career, played the fewest minutes of his career and had his lowest scoring average since his rookie season. He also shot just 31.7 percent from 3, his worst mark in a decade. But James was still dynamic. No player scored more fast breaks per game, and he had his most dunks (97) since leaving Cleveland. Defensively, few players were better in isolation. For a supposed third option, James is elite. But he is no longer a Tier 1 presence.The lone point guard is Tyrese Maxey, who is just a step below the Becky Hammon appreciation sub-tier of guards. He has increased his scoring and steals every year, finishing with 28.3 points and 1.9 steals to go with career highs of 4.1 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 6.0 free-throw attempts per game and 220 3s this season. He’s a low-turnover star, and he had more dunks this year (29) than the previous two years combined (21). No guard scored more fast-break points per game. Maxey plays with a former MVP in Joel Embiid, but the Philadelphia 76ers are basically his team now.