The 2025–26 NBPA Referee Player Survey has provided a rare inside look at how NBA players evaluate officiating across the league, with 411 players contributing to the results.
The survey splits referees into three tiers based on player feedback, ranging from the most consistently trusted officials in Tier 1 to the lowest-rated group in Tier 3.
Tier 1 features the league’s highest-rated referees, led by experienced names such as Zach Zarba, Marc Davis, and Bill Kennedy, alongside a long list of established officials including James Capers, Sean Wright, and Courtney Kirkland.
The group also includes Kevin Cutler, Curtis Blair, Mitchell Ervin, Mark Lindsay, and Eric Dalen, reflecting a blend of long-tenured officials and consistent playoff-level assignments.
Additional Tier 1 officials such as Josh Tiven, Tony Brothers, Ed Malloy, JB DeRosa, and Ray Acosta appear on both conference-heavy and postseason game rotations, indicating strong player trust in high-pressure environments.
Tier 2 reflects a broader middle group of referees viewed as more inconsistent by players, including Scott Foster, David Guthrie, Ben Taylor, Brian Forte, and Ashley Moyer-Gleich.
This tier also includes officials such as Jonathan Sterling, Pat Fraher, JT Orr, Justin Van Duyne, and Marat Kogut, all of whom regularly handle regular-season assignments and select playoff rotations.
Tier 2 extends further with names like Gediminas Petraitis, Sean Corbin, Kevin Scott, and Leon Wood, showing a wide spread of experience levels across the group.
Tier 3 contains the lowest-rated officials according to player responses, including Rodney Mott, Tyler Ford, Simone Jelks, Natalie Sago, and Danielle Scott.
Other officials in Tier 3 include John Goble, Michael Smith, Pat O’Connell, and Suyash Mehta, alongside several newer or rotational referees such as Che Flores, Jenna Schroeder, and Jenna Reneau.
The survey highlights how players collectively evaluate consistency, game control, and communication across different officiating crews throughout the season.
The NBPA report is widely used as a feedback tool rather than an official league ranking, but it remains one of the clearest indicators of player sentiment toward refereeing performance in the NBA ecosystem.
