When it comes to NBA officials and the referees/umpires of other sports, the general rule of thumb is that fans knowing your name isn’t a good thing. That made the results of the National Basketball Players Association survey interesting.
The union publicly released the findings of its 2025-26 Referee Player Survey on Wednesday, with 411 players across all 30 teams rating the league’s collection of officials. All 73 refs were graded on a scale of 1 to 5.
The ratings were reportedly shared with the NBA league office in March and are presented as the official player recommendations for referee assignments for the 2026 NBA Playoffs.
The NBPA broke down the officials into three tiers, requesting that only Tier 1 and Tier 2 officials work the playoffs and only Tier 1 officials work the NBA Finals. Here are the groups:
Tier 1: Elite & Top Performers
Ray Acosta, Brent Barnaky, Curtis Blair, Tony Brothers, Nick Buchert, John Butler, James Capers, Kevin Cutler, Eric Dalen, Marc Davis, JB DeRosa, Mitchell Ervin, Jacyn Goble, Nate Green, Bill Kennedy, Courtney Kirkland, Karl Lane, Mark Lindsay, Tre Maddox, Ed Malloy, Phenizee Ransom, Dedric Taylor, Josh Tiven, James Williams, Sean Wright, Zach Zarba
Tier 2: Solid Performers
Brandon Adair, Derrick Collins, Sean Corbin, Mousa Dagher, Brian Forte, Scott Foster, Pat Fraher, Jason Goldenberg, David Guthrie, Matt Kallio, Marat Kogut, Sha'Rae Mitchell, Ashley Moyer-Gleich, Matt Myers, Andy Nagy, Brett Nansel, JT Orr, Gediminas Petraitis, JD Ralls, Kevin Scott, Aaron Smith, Jonathan Sterling, Ben Taylor, Scott Twardoski, Justin Van Duyne, CJ Washington, Leon Wood
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Tier 3: Needs Improvement
Dannica Baroody, John Conley, Che Flores, Tyler Ford, John Goble, Robert Hussey, Intae Hwang, Simone Jelks, Biniam Maru, Suyash Mehta, Rodney Mott, Pat O'Connell, Jenna Reneau, Tyler Ricks, Natalie Sago, Jenna Schroeder, Brandon Schwab, Danielle Scott, Evan Scott, Michael Smith
The NBPA also shared that Zach Zarba was ranked as the No. 1 ref overall in the NBA, with players from every team ranking him at least among the Top 12. Kevin Cutler also ranked highly, getting a No. 1 ranking from six different teams.
From the NBPA:
“I think officiating comes down to the person. I don’t think you can reform the calls themselves — people are human and they’re going to make mistakes,” said NBPA First Vice President Grant Williams at the State of the Game roundtable. “But the best officials in the league, according to the players, are the great communicators; the ones who understand when they’ve made a mistake. As long as you’re calling a game consistently, guys are willing to adapt. It’s about having control of the game while also respecting the players and their different personalities.”
The highest standard deviation belongs to perhaps the most maligned official in the NBA, Scott Foster. He was reportedly ranked as the top official by one team and had enough support to land in Tier 2.
Those results are somewhat at odds given Foster’s reputation, with his namecomingupmorethana fewtimesover the years.His feud with the recently retired Chris Paul was part of NBA lore, and his “The Extender” nickname is well-known enough to receivea 4,000-word Reddit analysis last year.
But more than a few players think he’s somewhere between OK and good. There are also a pair of Tier 1 officials who have had their own recent incidents, withTony Brothers getting called “completely unprofessional” by Timberwolves head coach Chris FinchandDevin Booker going after James Williams enough to get fined $35,000.
One other notable trend in the ratings is the fact that no women are in Tier 1 and only two — Sha’Rae Mitchell and Ashley Moyer-Gleich — are in Tier 2, compared to six in Tier 3. Che Flores, who is non-binary, is also in Tier 3. The NBPA partially addressed that, noting Moyer-Gleich and Mitchell reached Tier 2 because they “both received positive feedback from the players regarding improvement in their overall performance.”
When it comes to NBA officials and the referees/umpires of other sports, the general rule of thumb is that fans knowing your name isn’t...
