The Players Who Didn't Deliver

NBA 2025-26: Top 10 Biggest Disappointments — Players

Every season produces its heroes. It also produces its cautionary tales — players who arrived with expectations, contracts, reputations and promise, and delivered something considerably less. Some of these stories are about talent failing to translate. Some are about character failing to emerge. Some are simply about the NBA's oldest truth: the gap between what a player could be and what they choose to become.

This is that list.

#1 — GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO, MILWAUKEE BUCKS
32-50. Lottery. Trade rumors. No resolution.

The most uncomfortable story in the NBA this season isn't what happened on the court. It's what nobody will say out loud.

Everyone in Milwaukee knows the marriage is over. The front office knows it. Giannis knows it. The league knows it. And yet, through an entire season of mediocrity — a 32-50 record, a roster built around a nine-figure investment in a player who can't quite carry a flawed team to relevance — nobody pulled the trigger, nobody made the call, nobody was willing to be the one who ended it.

This is the NBA's most sophisticated game of hot potato. The Bucks don't want to be the team that traded Giannis and look foolish if he wins a title elsewhere. Giannis doesn't want to be the player who demanded out and confirmed every narrative about his playoff failures. And so the season drifted — neither competitive nor deliberately rebuilding, just existing in the space between ambition and honesty.

Giannis individually remains an elite player. His numbers were fine. But "fine" from a two-time MVP on a max-max-max roster is the definition of disappointment. Milwaukee committed enormous financial capital to build around him. What they got was a lottery team and a situation everyone wants resolved and nobody wants to resolve.

The offseason will force the conversation nobody wanted to have. It's overdue.

#2 — JA MORANT, MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES
20 games. Suspended. 17.9 points. Memphis 25-57. JJJ traded.

Ja Morant is one of the most gifted basketball players on the planet. His athleticism, his burst, his ability to make plays that no other guard in the league can make — all of it is real, all of it is undeniable, and all of it has been almost entirely irrelevant to the 2025-26 season.

The recurring question with Morant is no longer about talent. It is about whether he wants to be an NBA superstar or something else entirely. The suspension this season — another post-game incident, another conflict that had nothing to do with basketball — was not a surprise to anyone paying attention. It was the latest chapter in a story that has been telling itself the same way for three years: elite player, elite moments, then something that reminds you the basketball brilliance coexists with a version of himself that seems to actively resist what the NBA needs him to be.

Memphis traded Jaren Jackson Jr. and fell to 25-57. The franchise that looked like a Western Conference force two years ago is now a lottery team gutted of its supporting cast, built around a star who played 20 games. Morant is 26 years old. The talent is not in question. The priorities are.

#3 — PAOLO BANCHERO, ORLANDO MAGIC
Max contract. Zero All-Star appearances. Zero All-NBA. Orlando Play-In.

Paolo Banchero has every physical tool a franchise cornerstone needs. The size, the touch, the IQ — it is all there in theory, all visible in stretches, all convincing enough that Orlando committed to a max contract. The problem is that theory and stretches do not win basketball games, and Banchero has not consistently bridged the gap.

This is the uncomfortable reality of Banchero's career so far: he is not a max player. Not yet, and perhaps not ever in the current version of himself. In an era where the second apron has fundamentally changed how franchises think about every dollar, signing a player to a max deal requires near-certainty that he will be worth it. Banchero is not a winning player. He is not a leader. He does not consistently make his team better. His advanced metrics are unbecoming of a player collecting $35 million per year.

Kendrick Perkins called him the biggest individual disappointment of the season. That verdict is harsh. It is also defensible.

#6 — MYLES TURNER, MILWAUKEE BUCKS
4 years, $109 million. Career lows across the board. Lottery team.

This was the worst free agent signing of the entire 2025 offseason — full stop.

Turner was supposed to replace Brook Lopez and give Milwaukee a rim-protector who could operate in modern spacing schemes. What he delivered was 11.9 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game — career lows in all three categories — on a Bucks team that collapsed to 32-50. His true shooting percentage was among the worst of his career. His rebounding, always a weak point, deteriorated further.

The context matters: Turner has never been the elite sidekick his reputation suggests. Indiana's run to the Finals two years ago was a collective achievement, not a Turner showcase. But $109 million buys a team the right to expect more than the third-worst scoring season of a player's career. Milwaukee is now carrying that contract into an offseason where they have almost no draft capital and a franchise player who wants out. Turner is not the reason the Bucks failed this season. He is a symptom of an organization that spent its way into a corner and has no obvious exit.

#9 — ZION WILLIAMSON, NEW ORLEANS PELICANS
Half a season. Again. New Orleans 18-64. Laughing stock of the league.

Imagine the most physically dominant player in basketball. Imagine a 6'6", 285-pound force of nature who cannot be stopped at the rim, cannot be contained on drives, and represents theoretically the most unstoppable offensive weapon in the sport. Now imagine that player has spent more time on the training table than on the floor for the third consecutive season.

This is Zion Williamson. This is New Orleans.

The frustration is not that Williamson gets hurt. Bodies break. The frustration is everything around the injuries: the conditioning questions that never go away, the sense that the work required to maintain an NBA body at his size and style of play is simply not being done at the level it needs to be. You watch Zion on his good nights and think: this should be a problem nobody can solve. Then the games stop coming and the season disappears.

One wishes he would spend a summer training alongside LeBron James — the man who has turned his body into a professional obligation, who treats conditioning as the non-negotiable foundation of everything else. Or Shannon Sharpe, the Hall of Fame tight end who built his career on discipline as much as talent. Not because those comparisons are fair, but because Williamson has the tools to be the most physically dominant player of his generation and keeps choosing not to do what that requires.

New Orleans is a laughing stock. They gave up their first-round pick to Atlanta. They have no Morant, no Williamson for half the season, no future leverage. The Pelicans are the NBA's most persistent cautionary tale.

#11 — JORDAN POOLE, NEW ORLEANS PELICANS
Benched. Removed from rotation. Probable end of relevance.

Jordan Poole arrived in New Orleans as a primary offensive option and left the rotation before the season ended. His decision-making — always the question mark — devolved into something the coaching staff could no longer justify. With the emergence of Jeremiah Fears, Poole became expendable. At 26 years old, with a max-adjacent contract on the books, that verdict is damning. His time as an NBA rotation player may be over. Teams do not pay for inefficiency at that price.

#12 — KRISTAPS PORZINGIS, ATLANTA HAWKS → GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS Signed by Atlanta. Injured. Traded to Golden State. Injured again.

The Porzingis cycle has become the NBA's most predictable storyline. Sign him, get excited, watch him play well in limited minutes, watch him get hurt, trade him to someone else, repeat. Atlanta went through the entire arc in one season. Golden State got him at the deadline and is now dealing with the same questions that have followed him for a decade.

He is a genuinely talented player. He is also, at this point, a known quantity. Teams keep convincing themselves they will be the ones to keep him healthy. They keep being wrong.

#15 — KLAY THOMPSON, DALLAS MAVERICKS
26-56 Dallas. End of an era. No dignity in the exit.

Klay Thompson had his moment this season — and it had nothing to do with basketball. His post-game comment about Ja Morant — "it's kind of the story of his career, just leaving us wanting more" — was the most honest thing said about Morant all season. It was also, unintentionally, a sentence that applied to Thompson himself.

He is no longer a Contender-level player. His movement without the ball is diminished, his off-ball shooting less reliable, his defensive energy inconsistent. Dallas won 26 games. Thompson's career deserved a better final chapter than a lottery team in a transitional season. He is one of the greatest shooters in NBA history. This is not how anyone imagined it ending.

#17 — SCOOT HENDERSON, PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS
Second season. No identity. Avdija's team now.

When Portland drafted Scoot Henderson second overall in 2023, the expectation was a franchise point guard of the future. Two seasons in, the future remains stubbornly abstract. Henderson is athletic, capable and still developing — but on a Blazers team that made the playoffs on the back of Deni Avdija's 24/7/7 season, Henderson was a secondary story.

The most telling detail: Portland made the playoffs in Henderson's second season and he was not the reason why. At 21, there is still time. But the gap between where he was projected to be and where he actually is grows harder to explain away as development lag.

#10 — TRAE YOUNG, ATLANTA HAWKS → WASHINGTON WIZARDS From franchise star to salary dump in five months.

This is the season's most complete fall from relevance — and it was designed that way.

Atlanta traded Trae Young mid-season as part of their rebuild. Washington acquired him as a signal of intent — a star-level guard to anchor their future alongside Anthony Davis and Alex Sarr. What followed was a masterclass in NBA cynicism: Young sat, game after game, with an injury list that grew increasingly difficult to take seriously. The Wizards were tanking. Young was inconvenient. The solution was to park him on the bench and call it management.

Young's numbers in Atlanta were solid. His numbers in Washington are irrelevant because Washington made sure they would be. He went from the face of a franchise to a cap casualty in the same season, managed out of the rotation by a team that needed losses more than his assists.

At 27 years old, Trae Young is still a legitimate All-Star talent. What this season proved is that talent is not sufficient protection against a franchise that has decided you are no longer part of the plan — and is willing to manufacture medical reasons to make that reality disappear from the stat sheet.