Predicting the NBA's Top 10 Scorers In 2025-26
While today's NBA analysis often emphasizes advanced stats, we shouldn't overlook the game's ultimate goal: scoring points.
There's a balance here, though. We also need to avoid the trap of thinking "buckets equal impact."
For example, in 2024-25, Brooklyn Nets gunner Cam Thomas averaged the same number of points (24.0) as Donovan Mitchell. And nobody would ever trade Mitchell for Thomas straight up.
Here, we'll predict the top 10 scorers in the league for the upcoming campaign. We'll exclude players unlikely to meet the 58 games required to qualify for a scoring title (so long, Joel Embiid and Zion Williamson), and we'll also consider aging curves (farewell, LeBron James and Kevin Durant).
The result is a list made up of rising superstars and established bucket-getters, most of whom will probably generate some MVP buzz.
Maybe buckets equal impact after all.
10. Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs
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If you really want to get out there in the hot-take game, you could draw some major attention by arguing Victor Wembanyama is done improving after what amounts to a year-and-a-half of NBA experience.
Or, if you'd rather end up on the right side of history, you do things like putting him here among the projected top-10 scorers for 2025-26. Just seems safer, doesn't it?
Wemby's game will never be defined by offense, but that's only because he's already an all-time defender. We should still view his 24.3 points per game last year as a mere scratching of the surface. There's so much room for him to juice that total—to the point that it almost feels like an undersell to "only" rank him 10th.
Consider: Wemby managed that figure while logging just 33.2 minutes per game and playing without anyone else who made defenses panic. Whatever he might miss with Chris Paul gone (a team-high 121 assists to Wemby) should be offset by the defensive attention De'Aaron Fox's driving and scoring will command.
Wembanyama could easily add another couple of three-point attempts to the 8.8 he averaged per game last year. He could finish more efficiently at the basket and hone his foul-drawing. Put it all together, and you can see a fairly clean path to a high-20s scoring average.
That'll look good next to an imminent Defensive Player of the Year award.
9. Jalen Brunson, New York Knicks
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New head coach Mike Brown presided over a Sacramento Kings offense that set records in 2022-23, and we should assume he'll bring some of that ball-moving, pace-pushing magic to this year's New York Knicks.
Just don't expect him to do anything that marginalizes Jalen Brunson, who's averaged 26.4 points on 19.3 field-goal attempts per game across three years with the team.
Brown should find a balance between the ball-dominant offense favored by Tom Thibodeau and the more team-oriented style of the Indiana Pacers. The ideal approach keeps Brunson as a focal point, but allows for greater ball movement.
Brunson is among the best isolation weapons in the game, but he doesn't need to lead the league in time of possession for what would be the third straight year.
The theory here is that Brunson, who finished 10th in scoring last season, can improve on his average by being less fatigued and more frequently set up by teammates in a more diverse attack.
8. Devin Booker, Phoenix Suns
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Somebody's got to get the Phoenix Suns a few buckets, right?
New import Jalen Green is probably in line for a productive season, but Devin Booker is the Phoenix guard most likely to explode from a scoring perspective.
Maybe that will be a bit tougher if Booker is also tasked with running the Suns' currently point guard-less offense, but the absences of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal leave a major void.
Booker averaged 26.6 points for two straight years before Chris Paul showed up in 2020-21, and he set a career high with 27.8 points per game in 2022-23. Durant played just eight games for the Suns that year after coming over from the Brooklyn Nets.
It stands to reason that Booker, coming off a down year, will have plenty to prove and enjoy all he can eat from a usage standpoint. He'll have the ball a ton and, in his age-29 season, might be in line for a natural peak of sorts.
If those two factors align, Booker should have what it takes to top Brunson and Wemby.
7. Cade Cunningham, Detroit Pistons
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More threes and free throws will be the key to Cade Cunningham bettering last year's ninth-place finish in scoring. Well, those two things plus the fact he made a leap to All-NBA status last year doesn't look much like a peak from here.
Cunningham will turn 24 just prior to the start of the 2025-26 season, and he'll effectively be entering his fifth campaign as the Pistons' offensive alpha. All the reps, mistakes and triumphs he's amassed over the past few years give him a level of experience and self-knowledge few players in his position can match.
Framed another way, he has a great idea of what works for him and, more importantly, what he needs to work on.
There's a ton of room to add to his 6.0 three-point tries and 5.3 free-throw attempts from last year. Juice those numbers a bit, and Cunningham could easily bump last year's 26.6 points up closer to 30.0.
6. Paolo Banchero, Orlando Magic
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Desmond Bane adds some desperately needed high-volume sniping to the Orlando Magic offense, and we should expect (or at least hope?) Franz Wagner figures out how to hit more than 30.0 percent of his threes at some point.
Despite potential contributions from other Magic players, Paolo Banchero's steady improvement suggests he'll surpass last year's 25.9 points per game.
Banchero's scoring has climbed in each year of his career and sits at 22.4 points per game across his first three seasons. When you filter for his youth, it's hard to avoid anticipating further growth.
Among players who logged at least as many games in their age-20 to age-22 seasons as Banchero (198), he ranks 11th in scoring average—one spot behind Tracy McGrady.
T-Mac exploded in his age-23 campaign, leading the NBA at 32.1 points per game and finishing fourth in MVP voting.
That kind of leap may be beyond Banchero, but a smaller one feels likely. If he nudges his average up to 27.0 points or so, it should be good enough to threaten for a top-five spot.
5. Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets
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There are a lot of absurdities in Nikola Jokić’s profile.
Seven-footers aren’t supposed to be able to map the floor and pass like he can. Slow-footed lumberers don’t tend to be among the most dangerous tempo-pushers in the league and, well, there’s also the litany of off-kilter, one-footed heaves he fires up in desperation—most of which go in.
Perhaps the greatest, though: Jokić is capable of threatening for the scoring title despite what seems like a personal preference to shoot as infrequently as possible.
His unselfishness is his defining characteristic. He’s hard-wired to pass the ball, to get it out of his hands, to make sure it stays infused with kinetic energy at all times. His 19.5 shots per game last season were a career high by a mile, but that figure ranked just 10th in the league.
With the Denver Nuggets adding a modicum of scoring depth in the forms of Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown, and with Cam Johnson replacing Michael Porter Jr. (the former narrowly averaged more attempts per 36 minutes than the latter in 2024-25), maybe Jokić will be able to play a little more in line with his preferences. Which is to say he’ll shoot less.
Of course, when he can average 29.6 points per game on a 57.6/41.7/80.0 split while, deep inside, not really wanting to shoot at all, this is as far down the list as it’s possible to put him.
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks
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Giannis Antetokounmpo hasn’t averaged fewer than 27.0 points per game since 2016-17, the breakout year that earned him his first All-Star nod and a significant number of MVP and DPOY votes. He has been above 30.0 points per game in each of the last three seasons.
That consistent scoring punch would have been enough to land him in the top five by itself, but the personnel around him—or lack thereof—makes upside easy to see.
Damian Lillard put up 24.9 points per game last season, and he’s no longer with the team. Even if new starting center Myles Turner is an ideal fit, he and his career-best 18.0 points per game (2022-23) aren’t going to replace Lillard’s numbers in the raw scoring department.
Maybe Antetokounmpo will sop up the rest of those points himself.
There’s an obvious counter here: Giannis, who has led the NBA in two-point makes and free-throw attempts per game in each of the last three years, has significantly less overall talent around him than he’s had across most of the last decade. He’s a lock for at least 25 or 26 points per game, but defenses will have less to fear when they sell out to stop him.
That possibility, combined with the potential for athletic decline as Giannis embarks on his age-31 season, are why we can’t quite get him into the top three.
3. Anthony Edwards, Minnesota Timberwolves
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Unless you’re convinced the trajectory of Anthony Edwards’ career is about to level off in his age-24 season, the Minnesota Timberwolves superstar can’t be ranked any lower than this.
Edwards has improved his scoring average in every season of his career. After putting up 19.3 points per game as a rookie, his year-over-year ascent took him to 21.3, 24.6, 25.9 and 27.6.
Far more impressively, his effective field-goal percentage also improved in each of those seasons, topping out at 54.7 percent last year as he added extremely high-volume three-point shooting to his repertoire. Among players who fired off at least 10.0 triples per game in 2024-25, only Stephen Curry topped his 39.5 percent hit rate—and just barely. Steph was at 39.7 percent.
The bet here is Edwards retains most of those long-range shooting gains while also improving his downhill attacking game. The only knock on his 2024-25 effort was that he got to the line marginally less often than he did the prior season.
With that corrected, his scoring floor next year has to be around 29.0 points per game. Edwards’ ceiling is harder to peg, but all we know he hasn’t hit it yet.
2. Luka Dončić, Los Angeles Lakers
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Luka Dončić has No. 1 scorer upside, a fact we know to be true because he was the NBA's leader at 33.9 points per game in 2023-24 (more than the guy at No. 1's league-leading average last season).
The 26-year-old also has the benefit of "best shape of his life" momentum behind him.
It's typically a mistake to buy into offseason conditioning stories because they're mostly PR ploys, but Dončić's is a bit more convincing because the entire world learned last year that there were real questions about his focus, conditioning and commitment.
It feels logical that his trade from the Dallas Mavericks and relatively substandard performance with the Los Angeles Lakers would motivate him to get after it in the summer. Airbrushing is pretty good these days, but we're buying the idea he at least took his offseason work more seriously than he has in the past.
If Dončić is in shape, and if he enters the season with renewed focus, he's going to climb back over the 30-point mark with ease. The Lakers are his team, and he should be eager to prove that last season was just an anomaly.
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder
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Though maybe not the most exciting pick after his scoring title a year ago, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is still the safest.
He has averaged at least 30.0 points per game in each of the last three seasons and has a pair of skills—isolation scoring and premium foul-drawing craft—that set his points-per-game floor at a very high level.
SGA led the NBA in total field-goal attempts last season, despite ranking just 18th in minutes played. We should probably spend some time analyzing why, as the Oklahoma City Thunder’s supporting cast has improved over the last three years, he has actually increased his shot attempts per 100 possessions in each of them.
You would think the rise of Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren would produce a more even shot distribution among Thunder players, but that hasn’t been happening.
Even if SGA cedes a little offensive control to J-Dub and the rest of his teammates, he’s still the surest bet to get up tons of shots, make at least half of them and lead the league in made free-throws, which he’s done three years running.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
