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Sentiment · 2026-27

Player sentiment

How fans and media talk about players and teams. The two are shown side by side, never merged into one number.

Data as of Oct 6, 2026Headlines· Oct 61,543 headlinesFans· Oct 631,071 fan postsCurated· Aug 22prototype values, not measured

A language model rates the tone of headlines, fan posts and comments toward the players they name. Team scores and fan posts from before the model still use a word list, so read those as rough.

Sources and method
  • Headlines· Oct 6Media lanes. 1,543 NBA headlines from 23 publishers, Jul 24 to Oct 6. A player needs 3 headlines in the last 7 days to get a score. A language model rates each headline as positive, neutral or negative toward each player it names. Checked against 127 labeled headlines, it matched the label about 7 times in 10 and never rated one the opposite way. Players named only in the summary, and team scores, still use a word list. 72% of this week's player mentions have a model rating.
  • Fans· Oct 6Fan lanes. 31,071 fan posts: 1,329 headlines from 30 team fan blogs, 1,919 social posts and 27,823 video comments, Jun 25 to Oct 6. A player or team needs 5 posts in the last 7 days to get a score. Comments under the same video share weight, so 100 comments on one video count for less than 100 posts spread across many places. Fan blog headlines get the same model rating as news headlines. Social posts and video comments that name a player are rated by the same model when they are collected, up to a nightly limit. Checked against 143 labeled fan posts, it matched the label about 3 times in 4 and rated 2 the opposite way. The word list matched about half and rated 18 the opposite way. Older posts, posts past the nightly limit and team scores keep the word list. 18% of this week's player mentions in posts and comments have a model rating.
  • Curated· Aug 22Hand-written prototype values dated Aug 22, 2026. They show how the board works and are not measurements.
How often the tone rating matches a hand labelSame as the labelOne step offOpposite side

News headlines 63 headlines

Language model71% match0 opp.
Word list52% match2 opp.

Social posts 72 posts

Language model76% match0 opp.
Word list44% match6 opp.

Video comments 71 comments

Language model72% match2 opp.
Word list54% match12 opp.

A coding agent labeled each one positive, neutral or negative toward one named player, not a human panel. One step off means a neutral rating where the label picked a side, or the reverse. The headline set leaves out the half used to tune the word list.

Fan and media tone are kept separate from performance metrics and Movement Center evidence. The privacy page lists what is kept from each source.

Players

266 players for 2026-27. 264 have at least one measured lane. Filtering topic extension.

How this works

Trend compares the last 7 days of headline tone with the 7 days before. It stays blank until both weeks have enough headlines. DRBL/100 is last season's.

Jalen DurenDET55%Fans80%Headlines+6451+2.0
Karl-Anthony TownsNYK53%Fans38%Headlines−746+0.3
Stephen CurryGSW60%Fans58%Headlines−443+1.2
Victor WembanyamaSAS57%Fans52%Headlines—20+1.7
Draymond GreenGSW46%Fans43%Headlines−2419-1.7
Anthony DavisWAS44%Fans34%Headlines−2417-0.2
Brandon Boston Jr.CHI57%Fans62%Headlines—17—
Dillon BrooksPHX48%Fans10%Headlines—15-0.0
Anthony EdwardsMIN63%Fans55%Headlines—13+1.4
Josh HartNYK53%Fans50%Headlines—11+0.0
Brandin PodziemskiGSW56%Fans85%Headlines—10+0.1
Klay ThompsonMIA66%Fans78%Headlines—10+0.1
Nikola JokicDEN64%Fans63%Headlines−910+1.4
Brandon MillerCHA73%Fans86%Headlines—8+0.6
Khaman MaluachPHX71%Fans74%Headlines—6-0.3
Mohamed DiawaraNYK66%Fans67%Headlines—6-0.1
Nikola JovicMIA69%Fans50%Headlines—6-1.7
OG AnunobyNYK58%Fans73%Headlines—6+1.0
Tyler HerroMIL53%Fans18%Headlines—6+0.7
Al HorfordGSW64%Fans70%Headlines—5-0.3
Cason WallaceOKC53%Fans30%Headlines—5+0.7
Donovan MitchellCLE52%Fans84%Headlines—5+1.4
Jalen BrunsonNYK59%Fans53%Headlines−395+0.6
Amen ThompsonHOU60%Fans61%Headlines—4+0.4
Bobby PortisMIA63%Fans75%Headlines—4+0.5
Jamal SheadTOR75%Fans100%Headlines—4-0.7
Kyle KuzmaMIL51%Fans5%Headlines—4-0.5
Miles McBrideNYK43%Fans50%Headlines—4+1.1
RJ BarrettTOR60%Fans26%Headlines—4+0.2
Scottie BarnesTOR45%Fans71%Headlines—4+0.0
Jaylon TysonCLE55%Fans46%Headlines—3+0.3
Payton PritchardBOS68%Fans67%Headlines—3+0.7
Chet HolmgrenOKC51%Fans56%Curated———+1.1
Deandre AytonWAS52%Fans————+0.5
Gary Payton IIGSW69%Fans————+0.8
Gary Trent Jr.MIL50%Fans————-0.5
James WisemanNYK67%Fans—————
Jaren Jackson Jr.UTA33%Curated41%Curated———+0.7
Landry ShametNYK59%Fans————+0.8
Pelle LarssonMIA65%Fans————-0.2

Showing 40 of 266 players. Trend is in percentage points on the 0–100% scale.