Ryan Rollins and Deni Avdija among the most impressive discoveries to start the 2025-26 NBA season

With most teams having played at least 20 games, the NBA season has reached the quarter-hour mark, so it’s time to take stock of what we’re seeing. Yesterday, we covered seven teams that stood out with a surprising start to the 2025-26 NBA season. Some for better reasons than others. Today we’ll look at which individual players provided some of the most impressive early season hits.

Austin Reaves – Guard, Los Angeles Lakers

Earlier this season, Austin Reaves and the Lakers had to figure something out entering his free agency next summer: Could he thrive and be the No. 2 offensive option they needed next to? Luca Doncic? Twenty games into the season, the only question is how much the Lakers will have to pay Reaves next summer to keep him. He averages 28.1 points and 6.6 assists per game, has shown he can work alongside Doncic when the Slovenian is healthy and, more importantly, has shown he can take control of the offense when Doncic is out – and even hit a game-winning goal.

“There’s a cadence right now in his game,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said of Reaves. “He has a great understanding of when he has a good matchup. He has a great understanding of how to play with Luca [Doncic]. And therefore the flow state that every athlete seeks. It’s right there now.”

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Reaves is expected to be an All-Star this season and will be in the All-NBA conversation as well. All of which will earn him a huge pay raise this summer.

Jalen Duren – Center, Detroit Pistons

Last summer, when the Pistons and Jalen Duren talked about extending his rookie contract, Duren and his agent threw a big fee on the table. Detroit refused. The Pistons had questions about how well Duren would fit Cade Cunningham and if he could defend the paint well enough as a big man.

Looking back, the Pistons probably should have accepted Duren’s offer, because his play so far this season has earned him an even bigger payday. Duren is averaging 19.6 points per game on 66% shooting, while also pulling down 11.8 rebounds per game. However, the raw numbers don’t tell the story of how he fits into the offense. Duren has become Cunningham’s best pick-and-roll partner: Detroit scores a team-best 1.45 points per possession when he’s the pick-and-roll screener, and shoots 83.3 percent when he puts the ball back on the rim (stats via Basketball University).

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Then there’s the biggest reason Duren looks like a first-time All-Star (and is perhaps the favorite for Most Improved Player): his defense. He’s transformed from a guy that teams tried to isolate against into a solid, physical defender who helps anchor the Pistons’ second-ranked defense. Duren will get paid this summer and he will have earned it.

Alex Sarr – Center, Washington Wizards

Another big man who deserves to receive more attention is Wizards center Alex Sarr. Yes, the Wizards are bad, but Sarr is part of an exciting future they have there (along with Kyshawn George, who Eric interviewed earlier in the season). Last season, Sarr was the second overall pick in the NBA Draft, but at 19, he seemed overmatched. He averaged 13 points, 6.5 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.4 blocks per game, but shot just 39.4 percent from the field and took more than five 3-pointers per game, despite shooting a 30 percent clip from deep. This season he has become a much more efficient and effective scorer, averaging 19.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.0 blocks on 51.5% shooting.

Sarr now takes nearly six shots per game in the restricted area and shoots 74% on those shots, after taking just 2.9 shots per game since that shutout last year and shooting 63.5%. He is also used as a pick-and-roll selector 24% of the time with the team scoring 1.05 points per possession on those looks, which is up from the 0.79 points per possession he scored with his 26.3% pick-and-roll usage last year. He has also become a strong rim protector, as his 50.8% block percentage ranks seventh among all NBA starters, and his 11.0 contested shots per game ranks 2nd among all centers. Considering he’s only 20 years old, the bar for Sarr becomes significantly higher.

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Ryan Rollins – Guard, Milwaukee Bucks

There is perhaps no better story in basketball this year than Ryan Rollins. The Bucks guard took the long and winding road to get to this point. He was a 2022 second-round pick by Toledo and barely played for a veteran-led Warriors team. It was then traded in 2023 for Jordan Poole in Washington, where he played 10 games before being released after being caught shoplifting. The Bucks then signed him to a two-way deal in 2024, by which time he had averaged about 5.5 minutes per game in 25 career games over two years. He wasn’t asked to do much last year, but he played well in limited opportunities when Damian Lillard he got injured, so the Bucks re-signed him to a three-year, $12 million contract. Bucks general manager Jon Horst said it then that Rollins could have topped that deal, and boy did he ever.

With Kevin Porter Jr. injured earlier in the year, Rollins got a chance to start at point guard and hasn’t looked back. The 23-year-old is averaging 17.9 points, 5.9 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game. He is shooting 48.5% from the field and 39.4% from beyond the arc on 6.0 three-point attempts per game. He earned the admiration of his teammates Giannis Antetokounmpoand he appears to be a real part of the Bucks’ future, whether that future contains Giannis or not.

Deni Avdija – Forward for the Portland Trail Blazers

There are some front office people around the league who look at this successful Deni Avdija season in Portland and cringe, thinking about how their team had a chance to get him while Washington didn’t realize what they had, but their teams chose another direction.

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Portland did, and now benefits from a physical 6’8″ forward who can run the floor, run the offense, and is leading the surprising Trail Blazers with averages of 25.8 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 6.1 assists per game, all while shooting 38% from 3-point range. He leads the league in drives, averaging 19.4 per game – which is more than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – and shoots at 50% when he lowers his head and goes hard towards the basket. On the other end of the pitch, he fit in well with one of the league’s high-pressure defense-attack teams, and was asked to guard bigger wings and thrived in that role.

Even in the Deep West, Avdija needs to be an All-Star for the first time this season. In a Portland team that is starting to build something serious, Avdija has become a cornerstone.

Keyonte George – Guard, Utah Jazz

It’s a bit of a lost season in Utah Walker Kessler out for the season, and Lauri Markkanen subject of numerous commercial rumours. However, the Jazz have to be happy with what they saw from third-year guard Keyonte George. The 22-year-old has become a much more effective scorer on his drives and mid-range, which has led him to increase his scoring from 16.8 points per game to 22.8 points per game on 44.6 percent from the field, compared to the same 39.1 percent in each of his first two seasons. He also gets to the free throw line much more often, averaging 7.0 attempts per game after averaging 4.3 last season.

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A major component of this is his newfound aggression. George is averaging 10.7 drives per game and shooting 47.1% on those drives. Last season, he averaged just 8.6 drives per game and shot 42.8%. Additionally, 76.5% of his shots end up in points this year, a notable increase from last year’s 62.2%. George now takes 5.5 shots per game in the paint after taking just 3.4 last year. It reached 50.9% this year too, after achieving only 41% last year. We’ve also noticed growth in his mid-range game, with him now taking 2.4 mid-range shots per game and connecting at 43.8%, a huge step up from last year, when he was only taking 1.2 mid-range shots per game at a 35.4% clip. Yes, George remains a subpar defender, and that will likely always be a component of his game, but his offensive improvements cannot be denied, and that’s at least something Jazz fans can get excited about.