The National Basketball Players Association publicly released its 2025-26 referee-player survey on Wednesday, and among the clearest headlines was that Tony Brothers was placed in Tier 1 — the union’s designation for elite and top performers — a group the NBPA said should supply only the officials for the 2026 NBA Finals.
The survey polled 411 players across all 30 NBA teams and asked them to rate all 73 NBA officials on a scale from 1 to 5. Players grouped 26 referees into Tier 1, and the NBPA asked that Tier 1 and Tier 2 officials work the playoffs while reserving Finals assignments exclusively for Tier 1. Zach Zarba finished ranked as the No. 1 official overall, Kevin Cutler was also placed in Tier 1, Scott Foster was listed in Tier 2 as a solid performer, and John Goble landed in Tier 3 as needing improvement. The NBPA described the findings as the official player recommendation for referee assignments for the 2026 playoffs and the 2026 NBA Finals.
The union said the survey is intended to inform the NBA on which officials players prefer for postseason matchups. The NBPA grouped officials into three tiers — Elite and Top Performers, Solid Performers, and Need Improvement — and on Wednesday set those tiers out publicly after ratings were reportedly shared with the NBA league office in March 2025.
There is a friction point between what players said in the survey and the public narratives that sometimes surround individual referees. Brothers, who was named in Tier 1, had recently been involved in a public spat with Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch, yet players still rated him among their top officials. At the same time, Foster, long described in the release as one of the league’s most polarizing officials, sits in Tier 2 rather than Tier 1, underscoring a split between reputation and player judgment.
Players explained why communication and consistency matter in their evaluations. Forward Grant Williams told the NBPA that officiating often comes down to the individual and that mistakes are human, but that the best officials are those who communicate well, acknowledge errors and run games consistently — officials who can control the game while respecting players’ different personalities.
What happens next is the central question from the release: the NBPA has labeled its survey the official player recommendation for the 2026 playoffs and the 2026 Finals, and by doing so it has put its preferences squarely in front of the league. If the NBA adopts the NBPA’s request to limit Finals crews to the 26 officials players placed in Tier 1, those referees — including Brothers and Zarba — would become the only eligible crews for the championship series. Whether the league will follow that recommendation is the single most consequential unanswered question arising from the survey.
