Every year, The Athletic’s anonymous NBA player poll sparks debates across the league, but the “most overrated” category almost always creates the loudest reaction. This year’s edition featured 81 player responses, and once the results became public, fans quickly noticed a striking trend throughout the list. The discussion rapidly shifted beyond basketball production and toward a broader conversation about how international players are perceived around the league.

According to the poll, Alperen Sengun received the highest percentage of “most overrated” votes at 12.3 percent. Rudy Gobert and Trae Young followed at 8.6 percent, while Karl-Anthony Towns landed at 7.4 percent. Further down the list were Deni Avdija, Scottie Barnes, Luka Doncic, Pascal Siakam, and Domantas Sabonis at 3.7 percent each. Once fans saw how heavily the list leaned toward international players, the online reaction escalated almost immediately.

The reaction surrounding Sengun centered heavily on his production relative to the label. The Rockets center averaged 20.4 points, 8.9 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 1.2 steals, and 1.1 blocks across 72 games while earning his second career All-Star selection. At just 23 years old, he also continued a three-year stretch of steady statistical growth.

The inclusion of Doncic generated even more disbelief online. A player with a career scoring average above 29 points per game and multiple MVP-caliber seasons appearing on the same list as rotational players immediately became one of the biggest talking points from the poll.

The irony surrounding Doncic’s placement became impossible for fans to ignore because the same poll also included him among the league’s top MVP candidates. That contradiction fueled another debate entirely. Many fans argued the voting reflected frustration more than objective evaluation, especially considering Doncic’s reputation for trash talk, shot-making, and routinely dominating opposing defenders in isolation. One fan put it bluntly on X: “Luka is on this list because he cooks his peers and trash-talks them. Legend for a reason.” The reasoning tracks, peers who have been on the wrong end of a pull-up three with a hand in their face and a sneer aimed at the bench have a strong motivation to tick the overrated box when the survey arrives.

Fans Call Out a Pattern: “NBA Players Hate Foreigners”

The reaction on X cut quickly past individual cases and arrived at a structural observation. “So… essentially NBA players hate foreigners. Good to know,” one fan wrote. The comment reads as sarcastic, but the statistical foundation behind it is difficult to dismiss entirely. Running through the full list, Sengun (Turkey), Gobert (France), Doncic (Slovenia), Avdija (Israel), Barnes (Canada), Siakam (Cameroon), Sabonis (Lithuania), Towns (Dominican-American), the international presence is conspicuous.

Of the 16 players named on the 2026 overrated list, the majority were either born outside the United States or raised in international basketball systems. Whether that reflects unconscious bias, competitive resentment toward players whose styles draw foreign comparisons, or simply the fact that international players dominate the upper tier of the league right now is a conversation the poll results alone cannot settle, but the observation is legitimate enough that it spread widely before any counterargument could land.

The pushback from Sengun’s supporters was equally pointed and considerably more specific. “We’ll see you all next year. You destroyed a player’s reputation in just three months. There’s no EuroBasket this summer. Next year, Sengün will average 25-10-10,” one fan wrote. The prediction is not irrational. Sengun is 23 years old, in just his fifth NBA season, and has improved his scoring, rebounding, and assist averages in each of the last three years. In the 2026 playoffs, he averaged 20.3 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 4.7 assists against the Lakers before Houston was eliminated in six games, a series that included eight assists in a Game 5 road win, a performance that matched anything a supposedly overrated player has a right to produce in a must-win environment.

A third fan questioned the entire enterprise: “None of the players here is overrated. Just disgruntled players who voted, as The Athletic tries to create some buzz. We saw what ‘overrated’ Haliburton’s worth was when he was healthy. The Pacers reached the finals thanks to him.” The point on Haliburton is hard to argue. Indiana’s run to the 2025 NBA Finals was built entirely on his court vision and decision-making, and his 2.5 percent appearance on the overrated list came in a year he missed significant time with injury, meaning players cast those votes based on limited or outdated evidence. The poll reveals genuine feelings. It does not always reveal an informed feeling.