#361: 2026 Sub All-Stars!
Thinking Basketball
Thinking Basketball
4.8 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 95 minutes
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Summary
Who are the NEXT best players after the All-Stars? It's time for our annual sub all-star team – those players that move the needle but aren't quite All-Stars. Who do we think of as All-Stars? Who misses the cut? Where will rookies like Kon Knueppel and Cooper Flagg land? Who will crack the list for the first time and will any veterans miss out for the first time in years? Support at www.patreon.com/thinkingbasketball
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thinking Basketball podcast. My name is Ben. It is time for the eighth annual |
| 0:13.4 | sub-all-star team. I can't believe it. The eighth annual thinking basketball sub-all-star team |
| 0:19.5 | where we go through and we select the |
| 0:22.1 | well first we need to get the all-stars out of the way and then we select the next group of very |
| 0:26.5 | very very important players it feels like they become more important every decade that is the |
| 0:31.9 | players who are not quite good enough to be at all-star level but they still move the needle |
| 0:37.2 | in team basketball |
| 0:38.8 | in a significant meaningful way that usually gets us to about 50 players total, so 25 plus our |
| 0:45.2 | all-stars and then another 25 and change are sub-all-stars. That's what we're doing today. |
| 0:50.8 | Cody, do you have anything to get out of the way? How are you feeling? Are you nervous? Are you |
| 0:54.0 | excited? You're playing an accordion for those watching on YouTube. Yes, this is my accordion sound. I'm just ready to do some background music while you wax poetic about 50 of the best players in the league. Would you say that about however many sub all-stars there are at each season? What would you say? There's like 20 players that end up being sub-all-stars. What's a number? Yeah, 20 to 25 has historically been the range. Yeah. Okay. Would you say that that is fair, like grading on a curve, there's always going to be like 20 to 25, right? Like if the league keeps getting better and better, the sub all-stars will just |
| 1:28.1 | kind of like stay in that same range. That's a great question because I felt like when I |
| 1:33.8 | had this idea years ago before I had a podcast, it was more like 15 players, maybe 15 to 20 players. |
| 1:43.5 | And I still think you could make the argument now that, |
| 1:46.8 | you know, the handful of players that were just like, that's a slam dunk sub all-star, |
| 1:51.5 | you know, is there high range as a player, possibly an all-star level player? Maybe. Yeah. And maybe, |
| 1:59.8 | this is the tricky part. We have to like draw a line in the sand and say, this is a team because it's in the regular season. |
| 2:05.5 | It's in the spirit of the All-Star game. |
| 2:06.9 | We just selected the All-Stars, and now we have replacements and injury replacements |
| 2:10.2 | flying in like crazy. |
| 2:11.4 | So in the NBA this year, there might be like 31 All-Stars in real life with all the injury |
| 2:15.7 | replacements and the four, you know, |
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