NBPA releases player ratings of officials and no, Scott Foster isn't in the bottom tier

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 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 Scott Foster is apparently a divisive figure among NBA players. Jason Miller via Getty Images 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.