2026 NBA mock draft – Four players in the race for No. 1 pick

With Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, VJ Edgecombe and the rest of the 2025 class off to the NBA, we can shift our attention to the 2026 draft.

We’ve been scouting these players for quite some time, publishing our first mock draft in February. And there’s considerable excitement around the top of the 2026 class, with some league executives saying that the top five has historic star power. Darryn Peterson, A.J. Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Nate Ament are potential franchise-caliber players.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched the best prospects of the class mature, and we typically have a pretty accurate understanding of the top of the class; our June 2024 prediction of the 2025 draft accurately identified four of the top five players drafted and six of the first eight, a trend that has historically held true.

The number of 2025 college and international prospects who did not enter the draft, or withdrew at the deadline — up to two dozen prospects on our top 100 big board — has created unusual depth in our early first- and second-round projections for the 2026 draft.

Teams still have a lot to learn about the rest of the lottery and first round — this is not considered a deep high school senior class enrolling in college — and this is not the most exciting 2007-born group of international players who are about to become NBA draft-eligible for the first time.

Every year, we see plenty of lesser-known players rise during the college season — for example, Cedric Coward, Nique Clifford, Walter Clayton Jr. or Danny Wolf in this past draft cycle.

That’s the fun part of draft projections. No one truly knows when or where players will emerge, keeping NBA scouts on their toes.

Who’s No. 1 in 2026 and why?

There are four strong No. 1 pick candidates — Peterson, Dybantsa, Boozer and Ament — although most NBA teams think it would be difficult, but not impossible, to usurp Peterson and Dybantsa as the top two players, barring a major surprise.

We…