The nine-cat top 50: Giannis finished 53rd

Giannis Antetokounmpo finished 53rd in nine-cat value last season.

Not 53rd among centres. 53rd overall, behind Kel'el Ware and Jalen Suggs, in a pool of 150 players. He had the largest field goal percentage impact of anyone in that pool, and it did not matter.

That number is not a provocation. It is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is the reason this desk exists. If you want the method before the list, it is set out in a ranking is a z-score in disguise.

How this list was built

Every rank below comes from 2025-26 per-game averages for all 30 rosters, with a player traded during the season counted across both of his teams, run through the standard nine-cat method rather than through anyone's recollection of who is good.

The details, because a ranking without them is not checkable:

The pool is 150 players. A z-score measures distance from an average, and the average depends entirely on who is in the pool. Everyone with at least 30 games and 20 minutes a night was scored first, which gave 247 players. The top 150 of those were then rescored against each other, because 150 is roughly what a 12-team league actually rosters. Ranking against all 467 players with a season line would flatter every rotation regular and compress the top.

Percentages are volume weighted. A player's field goal contribution is his attempts multiplied by the gap between his percentage and the pool's aggregate percentage. That measures how far he moves a team number, which is the thing your league actually scores. It is the single most common error in a published list, and it is what puts Giannis where he is.

Turnovers are inverted, so a positive score means fewer of them.

The sample floor is 30 games. Several players in the top 50 cleared it barely, and their games played is in the table so you can discount them yourself. Nothing here is adjusted for injury, and nothing here knows anything about 2026-27.

The top 50

Nine-cat and eight-cat totals are both shown, because they disagree more than people expect. Eight-cat simply removes turnovers.

#	Player	Team	GP	MPG	9-cat	8-cat
1	Nikola Jokic	Denver Nuggets	65	34.8	+10.51	+12.85
2	Victor Wembanyama	San Antonio Spurs	64	29.2	+9.65	+10.31
3	Shai Gilgeous-Alexander	Oklahoma City Thunder	68	33.2	+8.57	+8.97
4	Kawhi Leonard	Toronto Raptors	65	32.1	+7.26	+7.40
5	Tyrese Maxey	Philadelphia 76ers	70	38.0	+7.00	+7.66
6	Luka Doncic	Los Angeles Lakers	64	35.8	+6.01	+8.74
7	Donovan Mitchell	Cleveland Cavaliers	70	33.5	+4.54	+5.71
8	Jamal Murray	Denver Nuggets	75	35.4	+4.08	+4.61
9	Trey Murphy III	New Orleans Pelicans	66	35.5	+3.93	+3.81
10	Lauri Markkanen	Utah Jazz	42	34.4	+3.92	+3.41
11	Stephen Curry	Golden State Warriors	43	30.9	+3.79	+4.97
12	Scottie Barnes	Toronto Raptors	80	33.5	+3.79	+4.70
13	Anthony Edwards	Minnesota Timberwolves	61	35.0	+3.47	+4.77
14	Kevin Porter Jr.	Milwaukee Bucks	38	33.2	+3.42	+4.72
15	Chet Holmgren	Oklahoma City Thunder	69	28.9	+3.15	+2.78
16	Kevin Durant	Houston Rockets	78	36.4	+3.13	+4.83
17	Jalen Johnson	Atlanta Hawks	72	35.2	+2.94	+4.89
18	Cade Cunningham	Detroit Pistons	64	33.9	+2.81	+5.15
19	Karl-Anthony Towns	New York Knicks	75	31.0	+2.78	+3.57
20	Joel Embiid	Philadelphia 76ers	38	31.6	+2.59	+3.89
21	James Harden	Cleveland Cavaliers	70	34.8	+2.45	+4.53
22	Jimmy Butler III	Golden State Warriors	38	31.1	+2.43	+2.05
23	Michael Porter Jr.	Brooklyn Nets	52	32.5	+2.30	+2.83
24	Nickeil Alexander-Walker	Atlanta Hawks	78	33.4	+2.05	+2.32
25	Derrick White	Boston Celtics	77	34.1	+1.87	+1.62
26	Austin Reaves	Los Angeles Lakers	51	34.5	+1.83	+3.26
27	Donovan Clingan	Portland Trail Blazers	77	27.2	+1.80	+0.90
28	Jalen Duren	Detroit Pistons	70	28.2	+1.77	+1.79
29	Amen Thompson	Houston Rockets	79	37.4	+1.77	+2.43
30	Paul George	Boston Celtics	37	30.7	+1.67	+1.42
31	Bam Adebayo	Miami Heat	73	32.4	+1.54	+1.16
32	Onyeka Okongwu	Atlanta Hawks	74	31.0	+1.54	+1.29
33	OG Anunoby	New York Knicks	67	33.2	+1.50	+1.39
34	Mikal Bridges	New York Knicks	82	32.8	+1.36	+0.20
35	Dyson Daniels	Atlanta Hawks	76	33.2	+1.24	+1.12
36	Keyonte George	Utah Jazz	54	33.1	+1.09	+2.66
37	Cooper Flagg	Dallas Mavericks	70	33.5	+1.01	+1.54
38	Desmond Bane	Orlando Magic	82	33.6	+0.98	+1.12
39	Alperen Sengun	Houston Rockets	72	33.3	+0.96	+2.65
40	LaMelo Ball	Minnesota Timberwolves	72	28.0	+0.84	+2.02
41	Jaren Jackson Jr.	Utah Jazz	48	30.3	+0.83	+1.23
42	Ryan Rollins	Milwaukee Bucks	74	32.1	+0.83	+1.87
43	Alex Sarr	Washington Wizards	48	27.2	+0.81	+0.57
44	LeBron James	Philadelphia 76ers	60	33.2	+0.77	+2.20
45	Evan Mobley	Cleveland Cavaliers	65	31.9	+0.69	+0.70
46	Tyler Herro	Milwaukee Bucks	33	31.3	+0.62	+0.63
47	Kel'el Ware	Milwaukee Bucks	77	22.1	+0.55	-0.86
48	Jalen Brunson	New York Knicks	74	35.0	+0.53	+1.19
49	Jalen Suggs	Orlando Magic	57	27.6	+0.47	+1.52
50	Jaylen Brown	Philadelphia 76ers	71	34.4	+0.47	+2.68

The Giannis line, category by category

This is what produced 53rd place. Raw averages on the left, the z-score each one earned on the right.

Category	Giannis, per game	z-score
Points	27.6	+1.91
Rebounds	9.8	+1.82
Assists	5.4	+0.82
Steals	0.9	-0.42
Blocks	0.7	+0.10
Threes made	0.4	-1.34
Field goal impact	16.6 attempts, 62.4%	+3.75
Free throw impact	9.9 attempts, 65.0%	-4.70
Turnovers	3.2	-1.69
Nine-cat total		+0.24

Each z-score is rounded to two places, so the nine add to +0.25 against an unrounded total of +0.24. The field goal impact is the best mark in the entire pool. The free throw impact is the worst in the entire pool, ahead of Rudy Gobert at -3.40, and the two very nearly cancel.

That is the whole story. Shooting 65.0% from the line would be survivable on three attempts a game. On 9.9 attempts it drags a whole category down every week, and a category is a category whether you lose it by a point or by 40.

None of this says Giannis is a bad player, or even a bad fantasy player. It says he is a bad fantasy player in nine-cat, in a lineup that intends to compete for free throw percentage. Remove free throw percentage from the scoring entirely and he ranks 7th of 150, because the -4.70 stops being a cost and the +3.75 stays. This is the clearest case in the league of a rank that is useless without knowing the build it is going into.

In eight-cat, where turnovers come out, he moves to +1.94 and 34th, a gain of 19 places. The player did not change.

Where the scarcity actually is

The reason specialists rank higher than instinct says is that categories have different spreads, and a z-score is measured in spreads.

Category	Pool average	Standard deviation	Spread relative to average
Points	16.83	5.65	0.34
Rebounds	5.80	2.20	0.38
Assists	3.77	2.00	0.53
Steals	1.04	0.35	0.33
Blocks	0.65	0.46	0.71
Threes made	1.70	0.97	0.57
Turnovers	1.89	0.77	0.41

Steals is the tightest category in the pool. Almost everybody is within a third of a steal of everybody else, so a player at two steals a game is a long way out in z-score terms without looking remarkable on a box score. That is why Dyson Daniels at +2.76 in steals is a genuine asset and why nobody believes it until they see the spread.

Blocks runs the other way. It has the widest spread relative to its average, and Victor Wembanyama at 3.1 per game produced a z-score of +5.28, the single largest category figure anywhere in the pool. The next best shot blocker, Alex Sarr, scored +2.91. More than half of Wembanyama's entire nine-cat total comes from that one category.

Eight-cat moves more people than you think

Removing turnovers is not a small edit. These are the largest gainers in the top 120, with a tie for fifth:

Player	Gain in eight-cat
Luka Doncic	+2.73
Deni Avdija	+2.47
Cade Cunningham	+2.34
Nikola Jokic	+2.34
Jaylen Brown	+2.21
Josh Giddey	+2.21

Every one is a high-usage creator, which is the point. Turnovers are a tax on having the ball, and a league that does not collect it hands that money back to exactly the players who were paying most of it. Doncic moving +2.73 is the difference between sixth overall and fourth.

What this list does not know

Four things, and they are the four that matter in September.

It does not know about the offseason. These are 2025-26 numbers, produced in last season's roles. Hoopspire's 2026-27 projection has Giannis in Miami, Jaylen Brown and LeBron James in Philadelphia, LaMelo Ball in Minnesota, Ja Morant in Portland and Kawhi Leonard in Toronto. Every one of those players earned his rank in a different offence. Usage has to come from somewhere, and a ranking computed on history cannot tell you where.

It does not know about minutes. Wembanyama produced second place on 29.2 minutes a night. Chet Holmgren produced 15th on 28.9. Both of those numbers could move by four in either direction this season, and four minutes is worth more than 20 places in the middle of this list. The minutes column is there so you can do that arithmetic yourself, which is the argument the first column on this desk made at length.

It does not know about players who did not play. Tyrese Haliburton has no 2025-26 row in the record at all, so he cannot appear here at any rank. His most recent season is 2024-25, at 73 games and 33.6 minutes. A list built from last season will always show a missing player as absent rather than as cheap, and that gap is the most reliable value in a draft.

It does not know about rookies. No first-year player has a line to rank, which is not a flaw to correct. It is an accurate statement that the rate half of a rookie projection does not exist yet.

Using it on draft day

Read the table in three passes.

First, find the gaps. The drop from +10.51 to +9.65 to +8.57 at the top is real separation. The stretch from 30th to 45th spans 0.98 in total, barely more than the 0.86 between first and second, and treating those 16 players as ordered will cost you more than it gains. Draw tier lines where the numbers actually fall away.

Second, read the categories rather than the totals. Two players at the same total can be opposites, and your roster needs a shape, not a sum.

Third, apply your own minutes number to anyone whose team changed, then move him. That last step is the only one a published list can never do for you, and it is where the draft is won.

Giannis finished 53rd. He is also the 7th most valuable player in the pool for a manager who builds around the number that put him there. Both statements come from the same nine rows of arithmetic, and a ranking that gave you only the first one would have told you almost nothing.