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For a few years there, the NBA's biggest stars got along so well it was almost uncomfortable to watch. Thanks to AAU circuits, shoe company camps and brand collaborations, players understand everything is content. Collaboration is key. So friendships were formed from training together every August. No wonder Generation Z players hugged after playoff eliminations like the series had been a group project.
But this season, things have gotten chippy. Within a week of the 2026-27 opener, Kalshi built Dillon Brooks a gadget that mutes LeBron James. Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg guarded Luka Doncic in his NBA debut and told reporters afterward that Doncic no longer had his respect.
Jaylen Brown went into Bleacher Report's Instagram comments to accuse Jayson Tatum of capping about the trade that sent Brown to Philadelphia with a blue hat emoji. The Thunder and Spurs, whose West finals went seven games, just needed one night to start scuffling again.
The beef is back, so we ranked it. Every feud on this list had to clear two bars to get here.
First, it had to be personal. That means two players going at each other—or, in one case, a player and his own locker room. Team rivalries alone don't qualify, and neither do owners. Kevin Durant spent a weekend this month trading shots online with Suns owner Mat Ishbia, and it missed the cut mostly because Ishbia has never had to guard him.
The feud also needed a pulse. Both players have to be active, and neither side can have called a public truce. Jayson Tatum insists there's no beef with Brown. Brown's emoji kept them on the list.
From there, we prioritized how recently a feud boiled over and how ugly it got. A suspension or a flagrant foul pushed it higher. Obviously, Game 7 means more than a regular-season scrum.
The countdown starts with a chokehold.
This one got physical when Green put Gobert in a chokehold during a Warriors-Timberwolves game on Nov. 14, 2023. The NBA quickly suspended him five games. Gobert called it "clown behavior." When reporters asked Green about Gobert's comments after the suspension, he was silent...for a whole 16 seconds.
Before any of that, Green called Gobert "soft" on his podcast. When the teams met in the 2025 playoffs, a Warriors staffer rebounded for Green at shootaround in a Gobert jersey. Green later told Fred VanVleet's podcast that he didn't realize how long he held on during the chokehold. He's now the outspoken locker room mentor to a rookie who spent his debut jawing at Luka Doncic, and that rookie shows up later at No. 5.
Green and Gobert haven't had a serious incident since the 2025 playoffs, so they're ranked at the bottom.
In Game 3 of their 2024 first-round series, Embiid grabbed Robinson's leg from the floor and pulled him down. Officials gave him only a flagrant-1.
Asked about the foul afterward, then-Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau answered, "which one?"
Robinson left that night in a walking boot. Embiid said he was trying to keep Robinson from landing on him, citing his own knee history. A year later, Robinson liked a social media post about Embiid's career ending.
Before the teams met again in May, a reporter asked Robinson whether Embiid is a dirty player, and he downplayed the question. In response, New York swept that series. Embiid became public-enemy number one for Knicks fans, cementing his legacy as a dirty, flopping player. But Robinson got his lick back when he posterized Embiid in the Eastern Conference Semifinals on the way to a chip.
Robinson's dunk on Embiid was sweet revenge for Knicks fans, who made quick work of the image on merch across social media.
Robinson then left the champions for a three-year, $47.4 million deal with the Celtics. The 76ers eliminated Boston from the 2026 playoffs with a Game 7 win at TD Garden, and the two teams share a division.
The worst of this beef happened in 2024, and since this list favors recent incidents, it drops to ninth.
During the February All-Star break, messages from an alleged burner account called @gethigher77 leaked online, criticizing Rockets players Alperen Sengun and Jabari Smith Jr. along with Durant's former Warriors teammates. Durant told reporters he wasn't there to get into "Twitter nonsense" and that his teammates knew what it was. Team sources told ESPN the Rockets took it seriously internally, and Durant talked it through with teammates after the break. ESPN also reported it's unclear whether Durant ever told his teammates if the account was his.
Durant played one game in Houston's six-game first-round loss to the Lakers, and the young core won two elimination games without him.
ESPN reported that Durant's moodiness began to wear on younger players once Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams were out of the locker room. This summer he worked out with Orlando's Paolo Banchero instead of his Rockets teammates, and Kendrick Perkins called him out for it.
Rockets general manager Rafael Stone has defended him publicly.
No Rockets player has criticized Durant on the record, and most of what's public comes from leaks and ESPN's reporting, so the ambiguity keeps it eighth.
The Warriors started Lendeborg in his debut and had him guard Doncic for much of the game. Afterward the rookie said he'd "lost all respect" for Doncic because of the way he begs for calls.
Lendeborg held him to 1-of-6 shooting as the primary defender. Doncic answered with a 48-foot bank shot at the halftime buzzer and pointed at him. The Lakers won 127-105, and Doncic scored 28 in three quarters.
Green backed the rookie and said a player who starts talking should keep going until he can't.
Doncic drew 16 technicals and a one-game suspension last season, and he says he's working on not talking back.
The teams meet again Friday in San Francisco.
It's one game old (for now), so stays at seven.
The Knicks signed Brunson in the summer of 2022 and tried to trade for Mitchell that same summer before he landed in Cleveland. The league treated them as the East's marquee matchup last season and scheduled Knicks-Cavs for opening night and Christmas.
Game 1 of the East finals ended with the Knicks erasing a 22-point fourth-quarter deficit and winning in overtime, led by Brunson's 38.
New York finished the sweep in Cleveland, and Brunson won series MVP in a unanimous vote.
Mitchell averaged 27.3 points, more than Brunson's 25.5, and still lost in four. Afterward he said Cleveland's core would stay intact. (LOL.)
The Knicks swept the last series, and that one-sided result keeps this at No. 6.
The Suns drafted Deandre Ayton with the first overall pick in the 2018 draft and passed on Doncic. In their 2022 playoff series, Booker mocked Doncic's flopping, and Doncic's Mavericks sent Phoenix home. After a 2023 dustup, Doncic told reporters, "Next time, don't wait until there's three seconds left to talk."
Booker trolled the Mavericks on social media after they traded Doncic, and the trade put the two stars in the same division. In his first game against Phoenix as a Laker, Doncic talked trash at the Suns through a 107-96 win. He has said trash talk gets him going.
Plus, Doncic's classic smile while standing next to Booker entered NBA meme hall-of-fame.
A playoff drought between them since 2022, plus Doncic being traded to Los Angeles, holds this one at fifth.
Like Jay-Z said, "It was all good, just a week ago."
Boston traded Brown to Philadelphia in July for Paul George and draft picks. In his YouTube series, Tatum said he was "just as much caught off guard as the rest of the world," and he described the Celtics coach who broke the news handing him a towel to put over his face. Brown had felt underappreciated since it came out that Boston included him in talks for Giannis Antetokounmpo. On a Twitch stream, he said he was excited for what comes next despite the "lack of respect" from his old team.
When Bleacher Report posted Tatum's clip on Instagram, Brown commented with a 🧢 emoji. Tatum spent most of his postgame news conference after a 36-point game against the Knicks answering questions about it. He said he called and texted Brown the day of the trade.
Philadelphia eliminated Boston in Game 7 at TD Garden in May, after the Celtics blew a 3-1 series lead. Brown played for Boston in that series and now plays for the team that knocked it out.
Tatum and Brown have only sniped through the media so far, and that keeps them out of the top three.
We're entering historic beef territory now. The Warriors suspended Green one game in November 2018 after an argument with Durant during a loss to the Clippers carried into the locker room. Green later said he lost Durant's trust. Durant left Golden State after that season and told The Wall Street Journal he never truly felt like one of the guys there.
When screenshots from the alleged burner surfaced in February, Green said on his podcast that Durant needed to address them publicly. He joked that walking back into practice would feel like a "Key & Peele" sketch. In August, after Durant said this year's 76ers look more dominant on paper than the 2017-18 Warriors, Green posted on Threads, "Slim thought he was on his burner?"
It ranks top three because the history goes back to the 2018 suspension and Green was still taking public shots at Durant in August.
Everything started in 2021, when James hit shots over Brooks and taunted him as too small. Brooks answered during their 2023 playoff series by calling James old, then got ejected from Game 3 for hitting him in the groin. James has mostly brushed him off.
Brooks set the internet on fire when he showed up to Game 4 of the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder playoff series, iced out in all black, laughing like a supervillain in the stands.
This month Brooks starred in a Kalshi commercial for the King Blocker 9000, a mock device that mutes any mention of James. Kalshi is giving away 23 of them.
James signed with rival Polymarket in September in a deal reportedly worth about $15 million a year, so each man now has a prediction market in his corner.
Brooks also sat behind the basket at a Lakers playoff game against Oklahoma City last spring. Some fans took it as a troll.
He's already in another feud this season, after John Collins grabbed him by the throat in the preseason opener.
Five years of history and dueling prediction-market deals put it second.
Wembanyama picked out Holmgren as his rival years before either reached the NBA.
Last December, he waved off the idea anyway, saying, "There's no comparison between us." Holmgren finished second to him in the 2024 Rookie of the Year race, and then second again in April when Wembanyama became the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year.
Less than three minutes into Game 7 of the West finals, Wembanyama dunked over Holmgren's outstretched arm. Holmgren attempted two shots all game. He averaged 10.7 points in the series after scoring 17.1 a game in the regular season. San Antonio ended Oklahoma City's title defense on the Thunder's home floor.
The schedule sent the Thunder back to San Antonio for the Oct. 20 opener. A De'Aaron Fox foul on Holmgren set off a scuffle, and Jalen Williams and Jaylin Williams ran in to defend him. B/R's video makes clear the tension from the West Finals is still there.
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