The 2026 NBA Draft class is special. There’s a chance historians bookmark this precise chapter several decades from now, pointing to June 23 as an critical inflection point for some of the most tortured fanbases in basketball. Washington, Utah and Memphis in particular are about to receive a massive shot in the arm.
There is always uncertainty with the draft, of course, but this is a uniquely talent-rich class. It stretches beyond the ballyhooed top three of AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer, too. For this exercise, rather than outlining the best overall prospects, let’s focus on the top scorers in the 2026 class, with special credit given to those who can score efficiently from multiple areas on the floor and create advantages on their own, while also (hopefully) fitting well in a team context.
Honorable mentions: Caleb Wilson, Dailyn Swain, Keaton Wagler, Bennett Stirtz
7. Darius Acuff Jr.
Darius Acuff Jr. put together the most complete and productive offensive campaign for a freshman point guard since Trae Young. His NBA appeal resides primarily in his outlier poise and feel as a ball-handler. Acuff probes the lane and handles pressure with an effortless grace. He never gets sped up and he knows how to manipulate a defense to create open looks for teammates.
That said, Acuff was also Arkansas’ primary scorer, averaging 23.5 points on healthy .484/.440/.809 splits. Many have questioned Acuff’s sudden shooting leap, but the touch is evident on floaters and at the free throw line. The reason Acuff was so efficient this season, compared to past years in high school, was an improvement in shot selection and a better understanding of how to navigate pressure. He’s so calm, cool and collected.
Acuff puts the ball on a string and has no trouble creating advantages with low, jittery handles and a winning first step. He has the strength to bump defenders off their spot and hold his line on drives. Arkansas put the ball in Acuff’s hands a lot, but he’s a proficient spot-up shooter who should be able to scale down in the NBA, assuming he buys into such a role (or is ever asked to operate in such a role).
There are valid concerns about Acuff’s rim scoring (56.6 percent), where he has a tendency to fade away from contact and becomes over-reliant on tough, finesse finishes. Given his frame and overall decisiveness, however, there’s reason to believe Acuff can improve in that department. He should draw more fouls and find avenues among the trees as he refines his footwork even further and learns to properly weaponize his running-back strength.
6. Mikel Brown Jr.
Mikel Brown Jr.‘s freshman season was a roller coaster. There were stretches, like a 45-point performance against NC State, where he looked like the best guard in this class. There were others, like his 1-for-13 outing against Duke, where Brown looked completely out of sync with the Louisville offense. He shot sub-30 percent from the field on seven different occasions.
Brown’s projection here is, well, a projection. He was the most tumultuous performer in a lottery full of premium guard prosepcts. Some of that was a back injury, over which he had no control. Some of it is endemic to his play style. Brown was a high-variance scorer for the Cardinals; he relied heavily on his 3-point shot and settled too often for contested, high-difficultly jumpers.
So how is Brown a top-six scorer in the 2026 draft? The vision is clear. He will need to clean up his approach and add some muscle. But Brown is already a dizzying ball-handler with the speed and stretchiness to create and extend advantages on command. He is also the most dynamic shooter in the class. Yes, he only shot 34.4 percent from deep as a freshman, but that was on extraordinarily high volume.
Brown will attempt 3s from several steps behind the NBA line without blinking. He puts instant, crushing pressure on the opposing defense. His gravity is unmatched among lottery guards. Brown has a quick pull-up trigger, but he’s also highly adept working off-ball, flying around screens and exhibiting impressive instincts for when to relocate into open space. Close out too hard on the catch, and Brown will skate his way inside and put the defense on its heels.
Brown converted 65.3 percent of his rim attempts this past season, but he only 47-of-72 in 21 games. The volume was low. He has a tendency to settle. His shooting threat is a massive boon to any offense, and Brown has all the skill and tools necessary to become a monster slasher, but he will need to improve his core strength and attack the lane more frequently, hopefully drawing more fouls in the process.
5. Labaron Philon Jr.
Labaron Philon is poetry in motion, and he made huge strides in his sophomore campaign at Alabama. After thriving as an off-guard and connector next to Mark Sears in year one, Philon took over the controls in year two and flourished. He made critical strength gains (particularly in his lower body) and answered questions about his shot-making in emphatic fashion.
There are still some aesthetic quirks that will prevent certain front offices from buying all the way in. Philon has a bit of extra load time on his pull-up jumper and he’s a string bean on the court, weighing in at 176 pounds at the Combine.
The NBA Draft often teaches us that skill, craft and production matters more than ingrained perceptions of how a star player should look, however. And Philon checks damn near every box. He improved his rim finishing this season, able to carve out layups with a slippery finesse. The added muscle in his legs allowed Philon to better handle contact and hold his line on drives.
Philon might possess the best floater in the class. His touch on runners and in-between shots is a thing of beauty. With his shifty handles and wide array of dribble moves, Philon has a counter from practically anything the defense throws at him.
He more than doubled his mid-range shot attempts as a sophomore while maintaining solid efficiency (44.5 percent). He made similar gains as a 3-point shooter, hitting 39.9 percent of his 6.2 attempts per game.
While Philon’s limited burst and strength does raise questions as he levels up, he has one of the best handles in the draft, with effortless touch and bountiful creativity. He’s an easy bet to figure it out.
4. Ebuka Okorie
Another uber-talented guard prospect for the road. Ebuka Okorie blew past expectations this season. Okorie was lightly recruited, initially committing to Harvard before flipping to Stanford, where he blossomed into the most dominant scoring guard in the ACC. Okorie put up 23.2 points on .465/.354/.832 splits, with some of the most impressive individual performances in all of college basketball last season. He dropped 30-plus points on seven different occasions, including a 40-point deluge (on just 21 shots) against Georgia Tech.
Okorie will need to answer questions about his size and his middling assist numbers, but the man can put the basketball through the net. That much is guaranteed. Built like a mini-tank and blessed with an unstoppable first step, Okorie is one of this draft’s preeminent advantage creators. He gets to his spots at will, able to hit the turbo button or mix speed and direction to keep his defender on his back foot.
A fearless shot-maker, Okorie attacks with confidence at all three levels. He only hit 35.4 percent of his 3s as a freshman — around the league average by NBA standards — but the volume and difficulty of those shots bode well for Okorie’s gravity moving forward. He will launch deeeeeeeeep pull-ups, keeping defenders in an impossible limbo when they also need to contend with his downhill speed.
Okorie kept a tight lid on turnovers; he was in the 91st percentile for pick-and-roll efficiency and the 88th percentile for isolation scoring, per the No Ceilings Draft Guide. He’s a bullet in transition. He was effective in (very limited) catch-and-shoot opportunities. Okorie was fairly efficient and mistake-free despite playing on a lopsided roster with extremely poor spacing. There are valid concerns about his tendency to shy away from contact at the rim, where he wasn’t the best finisher. But he got in the lane so often and he’s super strong. Put better spacing around him and give Okorie time to mature, and there’s reason to believe those concerns will dissipate.
It’s fair to wonder if Okorie is enough of a point guard at his size, but the ability to stir the drink — always compromising the defense in one way or another — is extremely special, made even more so by Okorie’s ability to punish defensive lapses with incredibly displays of shot-making.
3. Cameron Boozer
Cameron Boozer is not often lauded for his scoring ability, but the Duke freshman ho-hummed his way to 22.5 points per game on sparkling efficiency. He was the most comprehensive and dominant player in college basketball as an 18-year-old. Now, as the youngest player in the draft, Boozer is a bonafide top-3 picks (and the No. 1 prospect on the FanSided Big Board).
While Boozer is decidedly less flashy than other names on this list, that does not make him any less competent when it comes to scoring the rock. He is so versatile, basically a model of excellence across every play type. He scores out of pick-and-rolls, whether he’s attacking slow-footed bigs as the ball-handler or rumbling toward the rim with brute strength as a roll man. He puts on a fundamentals workshop in the post. He’s a putback artist on the offensive glass. He shot 39.1 percent from deep on healthy volume at Duke. Boozer knows instinctually when and where to move off-ball to better position both himself and teammates.
The top line of Boozer’s scouting report will center on his unmatched feel and vision as a passer, or his prodigous rebounding and physicality. But he is a genuinely phenomenal scorer, too. A bucket in the least sexy of ways. It took Boozer a few games to adjust to the speed and athleticism of college basketball, but once he did, it was curtains for his opponents. While doesn’t get much vertical lift, but Boozer is a straight-line bulldozer, able to plow through the chest of his defender before uncorking delicate, dance-like footwork to carve out a two-foot finisher under the rim.
He wasn’t much of a mid-range or pull-up threat at Duke, which is a fair knock against Boozer when projecting his offensive ceiling, but given his overall touch (and the fact that he’s broadly good at almost everything else), it’s fair to proceed with confidence in Boozer’s ability to keep stacking new skills. He has the sharpest mental game in the draft. That applies to his scoring as much as it does his playmaking or his defense. Boozer knows instinctually how to dismantle the defense in front of him. Anyone questioning his ceiling because of “poor athleticism” is in danger of looking very, very silly a few years down the road.
2. AJ Dybantsa
AJ Dybantsa put himself in rarefied air this past season. He led college basketball in scoring (25.5 PPG) as a freshman, converting 72.3 percent of his rim attempts and 46.4 percent from the mid-range. He melds unbelievable size and athleticism on the wing, with the twitch, craft and explosiveness you’d more commonly in a dynamo guard.
Dybantsa puts two feet in the lane without issue. He can draw fouls with head fakes and slick footwork, able to mix speeds and contort his frame at odd angles. The way Dybantsa can get low and squeeze through tight spaces, at 6-foot-9, defies comprehension. He takes on the qualities of a snake charmer, able to lull defenders to sleep with hesitation dribbles before pouncing toward the rim with near-unstoppable force.
The ability to self-create looks at the rim means Dybantsa can operate as a team’s primary engine. He puts the defense in rotation and exerts significant gravity in the middle of the floor, which opens up shooters on the perimeter or cutters sneaking backdoor.
In addition to his unmatched polish as a slasher, Dybantsa is a proficient weapon in the mid-range. He has the step-back on lock, with picturesque footwork in the post. He’s not super strong, but he plays very physically on offense. Dybantsa puts mismatches in the thunder dome and earns frequent trips to the charity stripe. That he can operate as forcefully as he does while maintaining so many finesse avenues is why college defenses found very few ways to keep Dybantsa in check.
He will need to refine his shot selection and prove himself from 3-point range. Dybantsa can get a little too reliant on tough fallaways, especially since he does not really need to settle in most situations. He made 33.1 percent of his 3s on healthy volume at BYU, which is important growth compared to his more troubling high school numbers, and his 77.4 percent free throw clip is evidence of workable touch. That said, Dybantsa has unconventional mechanics with a low release point, which will need to be ironed out to ensure consistency at the next level.
The man is a bucket, plain and simple. He’s an imperfect prospect, but with certain outlier traits that put him on a superstar path all the same.
1. Darryn Peterson
There is a strong case based on last season’s evidence to put AJ Dybantsa at No. 1 with a bullet on this particular list. Perhaps in a few years, when we all look back at the complex, layered discourse around this very talented class, the Dybantsa “skeptics” — and I am not really a skeptic, more so a believer in Darryn Peterson — look very silly.
But Peterson is the most complete guard prospect in a decade and it starts with his effortless, flow-state scoring. Even operating at half-speed amid soft tissue injuries and chronic cramping, Peterson was basically automatic from the perimeter and mid-range. He’s a dangerous movement shooter, coming off of screens and pindowns, with a high release point and pristine, repeatable mechanics on his jumper.
Kansas primarily used Peterson off-ball, despite him being the only reliable creator on the floor in most situations. That was mostly a product of his unique injury situation, as Peterson simply could not pressure the rim and generate his own offense as easily as expected.
The thing about the NBA Draft, however, is that teams aren’t just looking at college tape. Especially when it comes to highly-touted, five-star freshmen. Peterson was the consensus No. 1 prospect in high school because he was applying pressure on the rim. He was shaking-and-baking his way to pull-ups at the elbow. Peterson’s burst and creativity was once his biggest selling point. Now that he’s finally healthy — and teams aren’t worried about his medicals, per ESPN’s Jeremy Woo — there’s reason to believe Peterson can rediscover some of that old magic.
So here’s the deal: Peterson is an automatic shooter on the perimeter, comfortable scoring off of motion and scalable to whatever role the offense requires of him. He is a far more polished and dependable shot-maker than Dybantsa at this stage, even if he was less able to create space with his step-backs or gain the upper hand on drives to the rim.
If Peterson can return to pre-Kansas form athletically — and that’s not necessarily a guarantee, just for the record — he’s going to create a lot more easy separation getting into those shots. He’s going to draw more fouls and finish with more intention at the rim, instead of finding himself stonewalled on every drive. There is a real sleeping giant quality to Peterson as a prospect. We know he’s capable of so much more than he showed in his one year of college. And folks, he was still damn good at ~70 percent capacity.
Unlike Dybantsa, Peterson can work with or without the rock. He can flow effortlessly into DHOs and various screen actions. He doesn’t need quite so many dribbles to find his spot and get to a high-quality, efficient look. We are splitting hairs, and Dybantsa’s blend of size, athleticism and dexterity is hard to overlook. For the purposes of this article, however, let’s all take a leap of faith and crown Peterson as the 2026 draft’s top scorer.
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