A Reddit user on r/nba posed a question that sounds like a bar bet and solved it like a constraint-satisfaction problem: What is the fewest number of current NBA players whose names collectively contain every letter from A to Z?
Four. And three is provably impossible.
The optimal roster: DaQuan Jeffries, Maxi Kleber, Micah Peavy, and Moritz Wagner. Their combined names — 46 letters excluding spaces and punctuation — cover all 26 characters, with each player contributing letters nobody else in the group supplies.
The breakdown reads like a depth chart for rare characters. DaQuan Jeffries carries the heaviest load, packing Q, F, J, and U into a single name — extraordinary efficiency given how scarce Q is across the NBA player pool. Maxi Kleber delivers B, K, L, and the coveted X. Micah Peavy covers C, H, P, V, and Y. Moritz Wagner closes the set with G, O, T, W, and Z.
The poster claims to have tested every one-, two-, and three-player combination. None completed the alphabet. The bottleneck isn’t the common letters — A, E, I, N, and R appear throughout the league — but the rare ones: Q, X, F, and Z. Squeezing all four into three names while still covering the other 22 proved impossible.
That claim invites skepticism. “I tested every combination” is easy to type and hard to verify independently. But the logic holds up under a spot check. Q appears in a handful of NBA names — Jaquez, DaQuan, Queta. X is rarer still, largely limited to Gilgeous-Alexander, Kleber, and a few others. Z shows up in Wagner, Jaquez, Porziņģis. Three names covering all four rare letters while filling 22 common ones is a tight enough constraint that the impossibility is credible.
The poster also offered a second four-player group optimized for basketball quality rather than alphabetical efficiency: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Jaime Jaquez Jr., and Kyle Filipowski. This quartet also covers all 26 letters. Gilgeous-Alexander supplies the X and a broad base of common letters. Wembanyama brings V, W, B, and Y. Jaquez contributes both Q and J — the poster calls him “a rare-letter cheat code.” Filipowski fills the remaining gaps with F, K, and P.
One correction: the post identifies Gilgeous-Alexander as a two-time MVP. He won the 2024-25 award, his first. The basketball-reference link the poster cites does not support the claim of two MVPs.
The poster notes that short, repetitive names are nearly useless for this exercise. Bol Bol, for instance, contributes only B, O, and L. “He’s useless,” the post reads — a harsh assessment for a 7-foot-6 center, but alphabetically accurate.