Call it the Great Southern Point Guard Malaise.
It’s amazing how much has changed in three years. Think back to the 2022 NBA All-Star Game: Three precocious young point guards — the Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young, the Memphis Grizzlies’ Ja Morant and the Charlotte Hornets’ LaMelo Ball — made the squad and played on the same team in Cleveland.
In each case, the future for both player and team seemed bright, but fast forward to 2025, and that’s not the case. Young’s Hawks made the Eastern Conference finals in 2021, Ball’s Hornets won 43 games in 2022 and Morant’s Grizzlies were the second seed in the Western Conference in consecutive seasons. Unbelievably, none of the three have won a playoff series since 2022. This doesn’t look like the year the streak will end, with the Hawks and Grizzlies in Play-In territory and Ball’s Hornets again headed for the draft lottery.
Similarly, all three have seen their career trajectories go sideways, even if it’s happened more in slow motion than in one rapid swoon. Injuries have plagued all three, but unserious defense and stalled development trajectories are also to blame. Ball has been the topic of trade rumors and even a rumored trade demand; Young is a potential free agent this summer whose team has made no serious move toward extending his contract; Morant’s unreliability was a key factor in Memphis’ offseason reset, and he’s already been suspended by his own team this season.
There might be other individual players who have been more disappointing this season, but as a class, the Southern point guard trio has moved into a league of its own. As a result, those three top my All-Disappointment Team for 2025-26.
My squad is a list of players who have done the most to fall short of our hopes and expectations, however misplaced they might have been. While I focused more on significant players on big contracts, I sprinkled in a few middle-class guys and developmental cases as well.
We’re barely one-third of the way into an 82-game season. Things can and do change, and inevitably, some players will play themselves off this list. But as 2026 begins, here are the envelopes. (Stats as of Wednesday afternoon.)
Ja Morant
Morant has to be No. 1 on any list of the season’s biggest disappointments, with his continuously sporadic availability compounded by a marked decline in his level of play.
Morant has only played 18 games this season for the Memphis Grizzlies and has yet to play more than six consecutive games at any point since March 2023. At one moment, he’s active and engaged in every huddle, even while sitting out with an injury; at another, he’s complaining about his coach or the system or openly mailing in a winnable game. Even after Tuesday’s 16-of-22 shooting night in a 40-point outing against the Philadelphia 76ers, he’s still only at 40.2 percent from the field for the season, including an ugly 21.3 percent from 3. Opponents duck under screens against him with impunity, taking away his driving lanes, and his scoring and rebounding rates are far below his 2023 peak.
Also, regardless of what else he’s doing, Morant’s remains a minimalist on defense. You want to maybe try stopping this guy?
Morant has been on better behavior of late, and perhaps this is a turning point, but maybe it’s just another blip before he either gets himself in trouble off the court or collides with his coach on it. Just staying on the court at all would be the first step. Can he extend his current Ironman streak from three games to seven?
LaMelo Ball
Since making the All-Star team in 2022, Ball has yet to play more than 47 games in a season for the Charlotte Hornets; he is constantly spraining his ankles, and that has undermined some of his promise. A savant as a passer, especially in transition, Ball has the highest assist rate of his career this season. He’s also a long-range threat who is able to make 3s from what we might call unconventional platforms.
However, Ball’s effectiveness as a scorer has always been plagued by poor shot selection and below-average finishing. Too many of his 3s are early-clock, off-balance chucks, and as a result, his percentage from deep (35 percent this season, 36.3 percent career) has never matched his skill. He’s only made 45.3 percent of his 2s this season, and he doesn’t draw fouls at a high rate. For all his talent in other areas, he’s never been a particularly instinctive finisher, and his thin frame doesn’t shrug off contact easily.
Defensively, Ball is a gambler who chases himself out of position, although he does add plus rebounding from the point guard spot. The overall package isn’t terrible — he has a 19.6 PER this season — but 53.2 percent true shooting is pretty disappointing for a go-to guy, and he’s capable of so much more on both ends. He’s also on a max contract for three years beyond this one.
Trae Young
Young had been healthier than Morant and Ball until this season, when a knee injury has limited him to fewer than a dozen games for the Atlanta Hawks. At just 164 pounds and lacking crazy athleticism, he’s a constant mark on defense who can’t be part of any switching scheme, and his effort on that end, while improved since his rookie year, will never see him compared to Tony Allen.
All of that was fine when Young was so dynamic with the ball that he was basically an offense unto himself, but that part of his game has taken a step backward over the last two seasons. Young led the league in assists last season, partly because he was having a much harder time scoring by himself, something that’s shown itself again in some late-game situations this season. His 2024-25 PER of 18.3 was his lowest since his rookie year, as was his 56.7 percent true shooting mark. While he has deep shooting range, Young’s 3-point threat hasn’t been quite at the level of his early career either, dipping to 34 percent last season and 30.5 percent in a small sample this year. It also doesn’t help that the league legislated away some of his favorite foul-grifting moves.
Like the other two guards, the puzzling part of this is that Young should be hitting his prime years right now. He’s only 27, while Morant is 26 and Ball is 24. Yet all three have taken a notable step back from where they were in their early 20s, to the point that their futures in each city are in question.
Paolo Banchero
I’m not sure if “disappointment” is the right word, but Banchero certainly hasn’t erupted in his fourth season.
There’s been an odd dynamic in the Orlando Magic’s offense lately: Banchero is shooting a whole lot less than he used to, while Desmond Bane and Anthony Black take on much bigger roles. Even with Franz Wagner out of the lineup, Banchero took just eight shots in a recent win over the Portland Trail Blazers that I attended; at times, you forgot he was even on the court.
“Paolo’s trying to win the game,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said when I asked about Banchero’s oddly restrained performance. “That’s what he knows and what he does. He saw that Anthony Black had it going, and he doesn’t have it going … and he was just facilitating. He’s calling plays for him. He’s just making the right play.”
Whatever the aim, it’s notable. Banchero’s 21.6 field goal attempts per 100 possessions is a career low and a far cry from the 28.8 he took a year ago. The trend has accelerated in the 11 games since he returned from a groin strain. In fact, in December, Black’s usage rate (25.5) is higher than Banchero’s (25.3), a bet you would have gotten exactly zero people to take at the start of the season.
What’s unusual is that the reduced shot attempts haven’t helped Banchero’s efficiency at all; his true shooting mark is just 50.1 in December, and while a 9-for-49 mark from 3 doesn’t help, he’s also made fewer than half of his 2s. As a result, Banchero’s big-pure stats pale beside his last two seasons, averaging 19.9 points per game on 54.0 percent true shooting with a 16.6 PER.
Is it just a short-term phase while he plays his way back from an injury? Or does it mark a bigger shift in the Magic’s offensive approach?
Draymond Green
You knew Father Time was coming for the Golden State Warriors’ stars at some point, and while Green’s off-the-charts IQ still gives him plus value on defense, the offensive side of the equation is tilting sharply negative.
Green is a starting center who doesn’t rim run or post up, shoots 47.6 percent on 2s and is left unattended to shoot as many 3s as he wants. He has a meager 9.4 PER, and he’s at the epicenter of Golden State’s turnover plague.
The Warriors have the league’s fourth-worst turnover rate, dragging down an offense that has Steph Curry and Jimmy Butler but still ranks only 19th in efficiency. While turnovers come with the territory in the Warriors’ pass-heavy system, they were 11th-best in that category as recently as last season.
Green has far and away the league’s highest turnover rate, including an 11-game stretch where he had at least three miscues in each. This has happened despite most of his shots being uncontested catch-and-shoot 3s and his dribble rarely being pressured. He has always been a high-turnover player, operating as a fulcrum of the offense whirring around Curry; for years, he more than made up for the miscues with high-value assists.
That equation is changing before our eyes: The peak version of Green averaged three assists for every turnover, and even two years ago, he was at 2.5. This year, he’s at 1.7, and it’s not hard to see why on the tape, where he’s fearlessly firing balls into coverage like a late-model Brett Favre. Green already has 57 bad-pass turnovers this year in 734 minutes, or about 2.3 per 30 minutes.
Watch here as the Raptors totally disregard the threat of him posting up. Ja’Kobe Walter is just standing in the lane on a direct line to Green’s pass, but he throws it anyway:
At other times, especially in transition, it’s more fling-and-a-prayer:
The bigger-picture issue is the connection between his declining scoring ability and the turnovers. Because nobody is guarding him, he throws a lot more passes into tight or nonexistent windows, and the risk-reward equation is tipping badly negative.
Indiana’s youth
Yes, the big-picture reason the Indiana Pacers are so bad is that Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles and Myles Turner left in free agency. But another low-key issue has been how underwhelming their recent first-round picks have been. Players such as Bennedict Mathurin, Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard were supposed to give this team a floor, but instead, the bottom has dropped out.
Mathurin’s output in the Pacers’ 2025 NBA Finals run conjured images of a breakout scoring year in his fourth season; instead, if anything, he’s slightly regressed. He can still draw fouls and has shot well from 3, but he misses too many open teammates and has too many wild forays to the cup when he can’t get a whistle. A 12.9 PER on 57.7 percent true shooting is fine, but it’s the profile of a backup, especially with Mathurin’s defensive issues. Entering a contract year on a team with luxury tax issues, this may be his last hurrah in Indy.
Mathurin, however, has been miles better than Walker and Sheppard. The Pacers’ two first-rounders in 2023 looked set to take solid steps forward this year, but neither can find the basket. Sheppard is mired at 27.3 percent from 3, 35.4 percent overall and a 7.3 PER; Walker, meanwhile, has had arguably an even more staggering shooting regression, hitting 31.3 percent from 3, 38.5 percent on 2s and sporting a 7.4 PER. Among players with at least 500 minutes played, only two have a worse PER than Sheppard and Walker; Walker’s BPM is also the worst of any player with at least 600 minutes.
Jared McCain
McCain was arguably the league’s best rookie in 2024-25 before a torn meniscus ended his season after 23 games. In 2025-26, he has not been anywhere close to the best sophomore.
His 22 games to start this season have featured a ghastly 46.2 percent true shooting mark — a 12-point drop from a year ago — and a halving of his free-throw rate. The drop in his 3-point shooting from 38.3 percent to 32.5 percent can perhaps be written off as noise, with a fall thumb injury thrown in as well. Of more concern is his inability to score inside the arc — he’s made just 39.1 percent of his 2s, with the floaters and middies that were a big part of his rookie output now skimming harmlessly off the rim.
Making matters worse, the Philadelphia 76ers have a new hotshot rookie at the same position. The arrival of VJ Edgecombe has pushed McCain into a reserve role, and his play hasn’t justified extended run on most nights. He saw only 13 minutes in an overtime win Tuesday over Memphis, scoring just two points.
Guerschon Yabusele
Remember when the New York Knicks got a deal because Yabusele took a slight haircut on his taxpayer midlevel exception contract to keep New York below the second apron? Welp.
He was one of the best stories of 2024-25, parlaying his stellar play for the French national team into a key role on the Sixers, but his New York experience has been less magnifique. Yabusele has been exiled to the basketball Elba that is the end of Mike Brown’s bench after 27 ineffective games with the Knickerbockers, even as deep-bench guys like Kevin McCullar and Mohamed Diawara get chances to shine during Josh Hart’s injury absence.
Yabusele has struggled to make an impact at either end, sporting an 8.7 PER and shooting a modest 34 percent from 3 — where most of his attempts come from. In fact, the biggest difference between this season and his last one in Philly is that he’s made almost no impact whatsoever inside the arc; on a per-possession basis, he has half as many 2-point baskets and free throws as he did a season ago.
Darius Garland
Among many reasons the Cleveland Cavaliers have been unexpectedly average through the first third of the season, Garland’s play has arguably been the biggest. For starters, he’s only been available for 18 games, but even in the games he’s played, the lingering effects of last season’s toe injury don’t seem completely behind him.
Garland hasn’t had the same juice as an offensive creator, making only 44.3 percent of his shots inside the arc and seeing an uptick in turnovers to 4.6 per 100. His steal rate is barely half of last season’s, and while he’s still getting up a lot of 3s, he hasn’t seemed able to dance into wide-open ones as easily. Last season’s 40.1 percent mark from 3 is down to a more pedestrian 36.5 percent.
If there’s a glass half full to this story, it’s that Garland’s numbers seem to be on the uptick. He made fewer than half his shots in each of his first 13 games but is at 50 percent from the field and 13-of-25 from 3 in the five games since, including the Cavs’ impressive win Monday at San Antonio.
Herb Jones hasn’t been the 3-and-D force the Pelicans have hoped for this season. (Stephen Lew / Imagn Images)
Herb Jones
We’re less than two years removed from Jones shooting 41.8 percent from 3 and finishing fifth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting. He’s 27 and should be in his prime, but his on-court impact has been extremely meh for the struggling New Orleans Pelicans.
The idea of extending his contract before the season (three years and $68 million) was that Jones would be an elite 3-and-D guy. The reality is that he’s shooting 34 percent from 3, and the defense hasn’t been nearly as remarkable as hoped; while the steal rate remains high, he fouls as much as any wing in the league.
Offensively, Jones has always been erratic on the ball, so the decline in his shooting has left him as a marginal offensive player, with a 10.2 PER on 51.7 percent true shooting. And that extension? It doesn’t even kick in until 2027-28.
Cam Johnson
The fact that Michael Porter, Jr. is hooping in Brooklyn right now doesn’t help things, but even compared to Johnson’s own performance as a Net (or Porter’s as a Denver Nugget), it’s been a slow start.
While Johnson’s 3-ball remains potent (42.9 percent), he hasn’t been able to squeeze off nearly as many of them in Denver’s cut-heavy system — his rate of 7.1 per 100 possessions shatters his career low.
He hasn’t made up for it in other areas, either. He’s only shooting 49.6 percent inside the arc — also a career low — and his rates of rebounds and steals also represent career worsts by pretty significant margins. Through 28 games, his 11.2 PER and minus-2.2 BPM hardly justify the inclusion of an unprotected 2032 lottery pick to acquire him, regardless of what Porter is doing.
The good news is that the Nuggets have managed to put together an awesome offense even with Johnson struggling. The bad news is that, with Nikola Jokić out for the next month or so, there’s likely to be a lot more pressure on Johnson to deliver bigger numbers.