The NBA Top 100 was never designed to be a museum piece. It is supposed to spot the sport’s next great shift before everyone else catches up. On that basis, The Ringer has just made the boldest call in the list’s short history: Victor Wembanyama is now No. 1, and Nikola Jokić has been nudged aside.
That matters because this is not a random reshuffle at the top of a vanity ranking. Since December 2022, the Top 100 has built itself as a trendspotting tool, updating across 34 distinct snapshots and trying to separate the noise from the real movement. Last week’s redesign and new voting feature only sharpened the point: these rankings are meant to say something about where the game is going, not just where it has been.
And where it is going, according to this list, is straight toward Wembanyama.
A 22-year-old at No. 1 is the whole story
This is the part that makes the switch so striking. Wembanyama is 22, and that alone turns the ranking into a statement rather than a forecast. He is the first player of that age to rise to the top of the list, which immediately tells you how unusual this leap is. The short list of players who have held No. 1 has now gained another name, and it is not one anyone can dismiss as a fluke.
The case is not just about potential, either. Wembanyama’s rise has been tracked through the Top 100’s own numbers, and the scale of it is hard to ignore: a plus-12.9 swing against a minus-2.0 marker for the old order is the sort of statistical contrast that makes the change feel less like a debate and more like a verdict. The list is saying that Wembanyama is no longer the future. He is the standard.
That is a brutal outcome for the players who have occupied this space before, but it is also exactly why the ranking matters. Nikola Jokić has been part of the Top 100’s No. 1 history, and so have other giants of the modern game such as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Stephen Curry. This is elite company, not a casual handover. To replace someone from that group is to announce something bigger than a hot streak.
The Top 100 is not pretending this happened in a vacuum
Context matters here, and the list has not tried to hide it. Victor Wembanyama reached this point after a third season that has clearly changed the conversation around him, even if the road included the pain of June 2026, when he lost the NBA Finals. That loss does not erase the rise; if anything, it adds weight to the idea that his presence already bends the rankings around him.
It also makes the timing even more pointed. At the dawn of the 2026-27 season, the No. 1 spot belongs to a player whose reputation is no longer built on promise alone. The league has spent years telling itself to wait for the full version of Wembanyama. The Top 100 has decided that version is already here.
That does not mean the rest of the list has become irrelevant. Far from it. The rankings still reveal a crowded and volatile league, with names ranging from Deni Avdija to Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown all appearing in the conversation around the wider Top 100 picture. But the top spot is the part everyone remembers, and the list has now drawn a line through the old order.
There is a temptation to treat any No. 1 ranking as a temporary flourish. That would be a mistake here. The Top 100 is trying to tell a story about how the league is changing, and this one is impossible to miss: Victor Wembanyama has become the new face at the top, and Nikola Jokić has been pushed into the background of his own era. In a league built on arguments, this is one of the loudest yet.
