Will 2026-27 be different? Will one of the New York Knicks or San Antonio Spurs return to the NBA Finals or, in the case of the Knicks, break the parity streak and repeat as champions? Or will form hold and the NBA Finals feature two more teams that were on the outside looking in last season? The odds would favour the latter, as there are probably a dozen teams across the two conferences that believe that they could be lifting the trophy come June.

No matter which team pulls it off, the NBA’s six-month long marathon soap opera guarantees that there will be plenty of spotlight to share. In that inclusive spirit, here are 27 names of people who will shape the 2026-27 season.

For all the efforts the Oklahoma City Thunder have made to gather draft assets in the name of dynasty building, they haven’t had the San Antonio Spurs luck and found themselves picking in the upper reaches of the draft lottery all that often. Sure, OKC has managed to scrape by — getting Jaylin Williams with the 34^th pick in 2022 certainly helped. But it’s not like Nikola Topic (12^th in 2024) or Thomas Sorber (15^th in 2025) project to be part of their rotation. But if you take enough swings, eventually you’ll run into one, and the Thunder may have done that with Mara (taken 12^th this past June), the 7-foot-3 centre out of Spain, by way of Michigan. All he’s done in pre-season is average 13.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.4 blocks while shooting 78.8 per cent from the floor, looking like the second coming of Pau Gasol. It’s just pre-season, as they say, but the prospect of adding another elite seven-footer to a rotation that includes Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren could be crucial as the Thunder look to solve their nemesis: the San Antonio Spurs and 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama.

The Washington Wizards are very much done tanking, and Davis is very much in the market for a new contract. The intersection between those two lines could make for an interesting season in the District. The Wizards were finally rewarded for three miserable seasons of planned losing when they won the draft lottery and selected AJ Dybantsa, who could very well be the kind of generational talent that changes the course of a franchise, even the historically inept Wizards. They want to start winning which they signalled when they traded for veteran point guard Trae Young and Davis, who has played just 80 games over the past three seasons. Given he only has one year left on his contract after this season, Davis will likely be very motivated. The 33-year-old averaged 24.7 points, 12.6 rebounds and blocked 2.3 shots in his last healthy season, back in 2024-25 with the Lakers. An engaged and healthy Davis could either help the Wizards to the fringes of the Play-in Tournament or become one of the NBA’s most intriguing trade deadline targets.

The Warriors’ build around late-career Steph Curry has been perplexing. The “two timelines” strategy after a gap year never really panned out, and thanks in part to an untimely injury to Jimmy Butler, the greatest shooter of all time has been outside of the playoffs in two of the last three seasons. Now, Curry is 38, Butler is 37 and coming off a torn ACL, Draymond Green is 36, and Kristaps Porzingis is dealing with an undisclosed health issue. The Warriors desperately need someone to pop to support the aging core, and Brandin Podziemski is the likeliest candidate. As of this writing, he’s one of only seven players from the 2023 draft class to sign a rookie-scale extension (five years, $110 million); that shows an investment in him beyond just the Curry era, but he’ll be measured, for now, by his capacity for a fourth-year jump.

It’s a new era in Memphis. Again. With Ja Morant shipped to Portland and a pretty strong youth movement underway, all eyes will be on Boozer, the No. 3 overall pick in the NBA Draft. Boozer’s freshman year will be about more than just the Grizzlies’ future, too — a four-way battle between him, Caleb Wilson, Darryn Peterson and AJ Dybantsa has the potential to be one of those Rookie of the Year races that will be looked back on, debated and, if things really break, define the next wave of young, star talent in the NBA. In Boozer’s case, there’s a lot to love with size, scoring versatility and off-the-charts feel for the game, plus all the usage he can handle if he looks good early.

Assistant coaches and skill development coaches perform vital work in the NBA, helping players prepare tactically and identify and drill the kind of skills they will need to execute and enhance their careers long term. Usually, it’s quiet work done by largely anonymous tradesman. But Engelland who was hired by the Houston Rockets prior to the season, is a little bit different. He’s one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in the NBA because he has a proven record of successfully teaching the most vital skill of all: the ability to shoot the basketball. In his 17 years with the Spurs, he worked with Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and Dejounte Murray to great success. Then it was on to Oklahoma City where he helped turn Lu Dort into a credible three-point shooter. The Rockets are borderline contenders in the West, but if Engelland can turn Amen Thompson — a career 21.9 per cent three-point shooter — and Alperen Sengun (28.1 per cent) into league average three-point shooters (36 per cent last season), it might be enough for the Rockets to put some real pressure on the Thunder and the Spurs at the top of the West.

Here are some of the luminaries that never managed to score 50 points in an NBA game as a teenager: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant or Victor Wembanyama — and yes, the list goes on. In fact, the only teenager to do it is Cooper Flagg, who had 51 in what ended up being a loss to Orlando last April.  It was just one of many highlights from Flagg’s rookie season, where he joined the likes of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor and Luka Doncic as one of eight players in NBA history to average at least 21 points, six rebounds and four assists as a rookie. And here’s the thing: the Dallas Mavericks prodigy will still be a teenager until the midpoint of this season. But Flagg’s potential is such that he could help lift the Mavericks into the fringes of the Western Conference playoff picture not at some theoretical point in the future, but here in 2026-27.

While Darius Acuff Jr. isn’t given quite the same odds to make it a five-man Rookie of the Year chase, it’d be wrong to sleep on him. After all, that’s an award that is often voted off the stat line, and there may not be a prospect with as much scoring — and highlight reel — upside. Acuff just feels like a Sacramento King, too, for better and worse. The peak Kings era was defined by highlight-fueled offensive talent, while more recent eras haven’t really cared about defence if the ball’s going in the hoop. The fit alongside Keegan Murray and Domantas Sabonis — and hey, Ben Simmons is here! — shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out, and there won’t be pressure to win early. League Pass surfers, take note of Acuff early.

Unlike some other top rookies, Darryn Peterson’s freshman year will include expectations at the team-level, and maybe even some immediate pressure as the No. 2 pick. The Jazz have been bad for four consecutive seasons, and their moves (plus the possibility of their 2027 pick being swapped downward) suggest they’d like to shift out of the rebuild. While keeping Walker Kessler for a frontcourt with three seven-footers would have been cool, Peterson alongside Keyonte George, Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. is pretty intriguing for the Western Conference play-in picture. Peterson might feel he has something to prove, too, after losing his status as the presumptive No. 1 pick despite the enormous all-around upside.

Rookies and the playoffs don’t mix, is an NBA axiom. The stakes are too high, the physicality too much, the in-game adjustments too rapid-fire and the opposition too good for even the most talented youngsters to excel. So how do you explain the 20-year-old San Antonio Spurs guard averaging 18 points, six rebounds and three assists (with a nearly 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio) while shooting nearly 50 per cent from the floor in the NBA Finals last June? Maybe having a father (Ron Harper) who won five NBA titles helps? Or maybe the burly, 6-foot-5 point guard is just … awesome? Regardless, if Harper’s NBA Finals breakout following an already impressive rookie season proves a launching pad for Harper to reach the level of stardom long predicted for the No.2 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, the Spurs will have a superstar point guard to mesh with Wembanyama, their superstar centre, and the NBA could be in deep trouble.

Remember this guy? You get the sense that now that Antetokounmpo has finally left Milwaukee and arrived in Miami, he’ll want to remind some people that that before he spent — what, three years? — as the NBA’s most chiselled trade rumour, he was and remains one of the best basketball players on the planet. Prior to last season when injuries limited him to just 36 games, Antetokounmpo had finished in the top seven of the league’s MVP voting for nine straight seasons and fourth or better in the previous seven, winning back-to-back MVPs in 2018-19 and 2019-20. And even last season on a horrible Bucks team that went 15-31 in the games he didn’t play, Antetokounmpo’s per/36 minutes numbers were eye-popping: 34.4 points,12.2 rebounds and 6.8 assists with a career-best 65.8 True Shooting percentage. All of which is to say if the soon-to-be 32-year-old plays 70 games or more, he has to be taken very seriously as an MVP candidate, and the Heat will have to be taken seriously too.

Suspensions, injuries and a shift in competitive timeline led to an unceremonious end to the Morant era in Memphis. A former Rookie of the Year and Most Improved Player who was briefly synonymous with Grizzlies basketball was dealt in June for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray — hardly a superstar’s return. With two years left on his deal, Morant has a lot to prove — that his massive drop-off in scoring efficiency was a ramping-up blip, that he can co-exist in a backcourt with Damian Lillard, Jure Holiday and Scoot Henderson, and maybe even that he can perform in a sixth man role (ROY, MIP and 6MOY would be a heck of a trophy case!). You might not be able to squint and see Morant’s path back to superstardom at this point, but at just 27, he has plenty of runway to reinvent himself and kickstart a fun second act in Portland.

Fresh off a remarkable regular season, Detroit’s 22-year-old centre Jalen Duren had a regrettable playoffs, with his productivity falling off in every measurable category as the Pistons’ 60 wins and first-seed in the East resulted in an uninspiring second-round exit that probably would have been a first-round departure had the Orlando Magic not run into injury problems. Then came the NBA’s most contentious contract negotiation with Duren finally ‘settling’ for a five-year, $200-million deal that was either a steal for a fifth-year player coming of an All-NBA season where he averaged 19.5 points and 10.5 rebounds while shooting 65 per cent from the floor, or an overpay for a player that seemed overwhelmed in the playoff crucible. The Pistons have bet that Duren’s best days are to come. If they are right, the summer-long contract drama will fade away quickly as they continue their rise in the East.

The Atlanta Hawks boast one of the deepest rotations in the league, especially defensively. They finished the season on a 19-5 run and took the eventual champion Knicks deeper into a series than any other opponent did, even leading 2-1 at one point. So why isn’t there more buzz? That’s partially due to a very tough Eastern Conference. There may also be some caution around Jalen Johnson, who took an enormous step to All-NBA status last season but still doesn’t seem to be universally viewed as a true top guy. After averaging 22.5 points, 10.3 rebounds and 7.9 assists in the regular season, Johnson saw his playmaking and efficiency dip in the postseason, and the more advanced metrics grade him as great-not-elite. A super deep team with a lot of “great” can be, well, great over 82 games; Johnson’s offensive ceiling will determine how far they can go beyond 82.

It’s put up or shut up time for this Orlando Magic core. They’ve made the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive years, all of their young core pieces are on their second (and pricey!) contracts, and they already project to be well over the 2027-28 salary cap for less than half a roster, even before factoring in a new deal for Anthony Black. In the apron-restriction era, almost no team is going to deal with luxury tax hell for first-round exists, and the Magic don’t exactly have a rich history of spending (they are one of six teams to not pay into the luxury tax in the last 15 years). All that to say, if things don’t go well, Jalen Suggs becomes a very interesting name in that scenario. He has three years and $83 million owed to him beyond this year, but it’s with a declining salary structure, and that’s a reasonable hit for a starting-calibre defensive ace, even with the scoring limitations.

It’s another season of heavy change in Boston. Swapping Jaylen Brown out for Paul George drew the most headlines, and though it’s largely a product of the current apron era’s restrictive nature, swapping out a player who received some MVP votes is a massive bet that Jayson Tatum will be back to his prior level for 2026-27. Somewhat surprisingly, Tatum made it back in time for 16 regular season games last year, looking better than you might expect for the type of injury (Achilles) and length of layoff. He wasn’t super-efficient and he missed a pivotal Game 7 loss against Philadelphia in the first round, but it was surely helpful to shake some rust off with meaningful ball and enter the offseason mostly healthy. In the four years before his injury, Tatum had finished between fourth and sixth in MVP voting each season, making All-NBA First Team each year. Boston might be the league’s deepest team, which should mean Tatum can focus on getting back to that level by April, not by November.

The defending champions don’t have a ton left to prove on the court. Their starting five finally figured it out in the playoffs, stampeding through the field with one of the most dominant title runs in recent history. It wasn’t enough to secure Karl-Anthony Towns (or Josh Hart, or Deuce McBride) the extension he was eligible for, yet another product of the apron restrictions (and, depending on your perspective, the James Dolan of it all). From afar, the Knicks don’t seem like a group that would fall victim to Pat Riley’s “Disease of More,” and Towns is so resoundingly well-liked that it’s hard to see him letting that effect the group. Still, repeating has never been harder and there was a brief window last year where Mitchell Robinson (now a Celtic) closed a few games over an ineffective Towns. Plus, OG Anunoby got more lines on SNL, and Jalen Brunson got the Roman Reigns rub. Acknowledge KAT.

It has all the makings of a feel-good movie: after heading home to find his fortune in sunny Los Angeles, the prodigal son returns, realizing that there is only one place where he is truly appreciated as a Fun Guy and hall-of-fame talent. Now, Los Angeles Clippers fans might find fault with that storyline, given the mess Kawhi Leonard left behind after seven seasons with their franchise that yielded just one trip to the Western Conference Finals and chaos otherwise. But in Toronto? Leonard is the super star that got away (when he joined the Clippers in free agency after leading the Raptors to the 2019 NBA championship) and now that he’s back, hopes are high that even at age 35 he can elevate the Raptors into contention again. It’s a big ask given he’s joining a core that has never won a playoff series. But another All-NBA season by Leonard could change that in a hurry and give his basketball biopic a spectacular ending.

The Rookie of the Year runner-up nearly pulled off the Cooper Flagg upset, thanks to one of the greatest rookie shooting seasons in league history. The volume, the percentages, the versatility — Kon Knueppel looked like a guy you can build an offence around, almost immediately. The Hornets seem to have agreed, making pretty wholesale roster changes. With LaMelo Ball and others outbound, it’s not immediately clear what the Hornets will look like, stylistically. Nor is it clear whether the net effect of all those changes is a better team in 2026-27, or just one set up to be better in 2028 and beyond. However the new pieces fit, Knueppel’s development now that every defence will be gunning to shut him down will be the most important predictor of the team’s future.

We finally get to find out if the super-gifted point guard is actually a franchise-lifting talent, or merely a flaky, injury-prone tease with unimaginable car insurance premiums. Unlike his driving record, LaMelo Ball’s basketball talent has never been questioned. The 6-foot-7 guard can drive offence like few others with his combination of quick-trigger passing and willingness to launch threes with volume from distance, if not always accurately (36.8 per cent for his career). He helped the surprising Charlotte Hornets post the league’s fourth-best record and second-best offence in the second half of last season, but the Hornets still chose to trade him even if Charlotte was 11.2 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than when he sat. Could it be they determined his porous defence, so-so efficiency and penchant for turnovers wasn’t the path to championship contention? Were they concerned for the pedestrians of Charlotte? Maybe, but the Minnesota Timberwolves — already championship contenders — decided that his brand of make-things-happen offence was what they needed to pair with Anthony Edwards to get them over the hump in the West. It could work or it could fail as miserably as Ball driving in snow. In either event, it should be exciting.

A year-and-a-half of Luka Doncic paired with LeBron James was unquestionably fun, and it’s a bummer that Doncic was injured for a second-round playoff series with the Thunder. That pairing always felt a little short-term, though, with the Doncic acquisition as much about what the Lakers would look like post-LeBron as it was maximizing the LeBron window. Now, Doncic and Austin Reaves have a roster around them with far less star appeal but with an eye toward 3-and-D or rim-running pieces that fit around a Doncic-centric offence. How good can that group be? Well, Doncic has made All-NBA First Team in six of the last seven seasons (only 16 players have ever made more, let alone by age 26). He finished top six in MVP voting in five of those. He took the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2024. He ranked sixth in on-court impact last season, by EPM. And the West is still tough, but it’s not quite so deep that a Doncic-led group can’t make noise. The questions are more about whether the supporting pieces were the right ones rather than whether Doncic is the right centrepiece.

Give an NBA head coach the choice between a team with a high ceiling and plenty of question marks, or a predictable floor but limited ceiling and they’ll choose the high ceiling group every time. Or at least they should. There is no coach in the NBA who has had more talent injected into his lineup over the summer than Nick Nurse has with the 76ers. But it will take some expert massaging. He got to make a roster relying on the iffy availability of Joel Embiid, the quirkiness of LeBron James as he turns 42(!), the strengths and weakness of Jaylen Brown and the (relative) youth of Tyrese Maxey and V.J. Edgecombe and mold them into an NBA champion. Anything less will be considered a failure. There is plenty to work with — including some solid bench pieces — but so many unknowns too. Nurse has always prided himself on his ability to deal with a little bit of basketball chaos and he’s proven that when the spotlight shines brightest, his hard-earned coaching instincts hold up.  Navigating this Sixers group through the regular season and into the playoffs will be high-wire act with potential for grievous career damage if things go wrong, but it’s the kind of risk Nurse would never not sign on for.

The NBA moves quickly, even when you’re moving right along with it. Since winning the championship in 2023, the Nuggets have only won two (of five) playoff series, changed coaches (on the eve of the postseason), and tweaked the supporting cast as apron restrictions dictated. Nikola Jokic, though, has been Jokic through it all — he won MVP in their run-it-back season and came second in each of the last two years (despite missing 17 games in 2025-26). He’s the world’s best passer, a great rebounder and has fashioned himself into a damn good three-point shooter just for kicks, too. Other than the missed games, there really aren’t questions about Jokic’s play. Still, he’ll be 32 later this season, and nobody has won an MVP over age 30 since Steve Nash, and the Nuggets are still having to replace lost pieces (Peyton Watson) with veteran fliers (DeMar DeRozan). Jokic has to be near MVP level for this to all work and disrupt the presumed Thunder-Spurs top two. Oh, and Jokic can be a free agent after the season, which everyone will surely be reasonable about.

The Chicago Bulls finally appear to have embraced the need to properly rebuild instead of living in the play-in. That didn’t mean a full youth movement, though; Chicago brought in a few veterans to help guide the younger core and to soak up playing time until more youth is in the door through future drafts. All eyes will be on Caleb Wilson for the bulk of the season. Norman Powell, though, is one of the most well-regarded plug-and-play rotation pieces in the league. On a two-year, $44-million deal, he is exactly the kind of player a half-dozen contenders will be calling about at deadline time. Given how hard it is to find two-way players in February, let alone ones who don’t require a ton of outgoing salary to match with, Chicago’s Powell addition might end up being a high-return rental that has a big impact on the playoff race elsewhere.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have averaged 54 wins the past four seasons and won four playoff series in the past three, including advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals last season. But they’ve done it with a lineup loaded at guard and the front court, but lacking at the wings. So what if they added a bouncy, 6-foot-7 defender who averaged 20 points a game on elite efficiency to fill out that hole? Would that be good? The Cavaliers certainly hope so as they pushed all their remaining roster building chips in to acquire Peyton Watson from Denver this past summer. Watson put himself on the radar with a torrid 24-game mid-season run when he had to shoulder more offensive responsibility than he ever had previously for the injury-plagued Nuggets. If those numbers hold up — especially his three-point shooting (41 per cent on the season) — Watson could be the piece that pushes the Cavaliers to the top in the East.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has done some incredible things in his still (relatively) young NBA career, but the Oklahoma City star has a chance to build on his growing legend by doing something only Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Larry Bird have ever done: win three consecutive MVP awards. The competition for the award seems to only be get stiffer: Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo — multiple MVP award winners themselves — are still able to put up jaw-dropping numbers; a big year by Luka Doncic with the Lakers would generate buzz; you have to assume that Victor Wembanyama — who finished third in the voting last season — will be coming for the top spot, too. But it’s safe to say that the Hamilton-raised point guard would trade another individual trophy for a chance to raise the Larry O’Brien for the second time in three years after losing to the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals last season.

The sight of the Indiana Pacers point guard writhing in pain, slamming his fist to the floor in frustration is not one that many NBA fans — and Pacers fans especially — will ever forget. It was Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals and Tyrese Haliburton — playing through a calf strain — was trying to guide Indiana to an upset for the ages and help the franchise win its first NBA title. Instead, Haliburton’s Achilles tendon gave out and OKC went on to win their first championship. Haliburton missed the entire 2025-26 season and the injury-plagued Pacers were forced into taking a gap year. But one of the NBA’s most dynamic floor generals is back and one of the looming questions that will impact the Eastern Conference playoff race is whether or not he will be able to re-ignite the frantic pace Indiana used to roar through the East in the second half of the 2024-25 season. If he picks up where he left off before his injury, the East will be even more beastly than already projected, and Haliburton could nudge his way into the MVP race.

Victor Wembanyama will likely be on lists like this for however long his career lasts. The hype has been very, very real. Prior to last season the only players in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and a steal per game were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Patrick Ewing. Wembanyama joined that list last season and put himself in a category of one by becoming the only player in league history to do it before his age 26 season (Wembanyama was 22) and — perhaps more incredibly — the only one to do it while playing less than 36 minutes a game. Wembanyama put together one of the greatest seasons in league history while working part-time, basically, at 29.6 minutes per game.  But the most concerning element of all of this for the NBA at large is that in the midst of leading the Spurs to 62 wins and an unexpected run to the NBA Finals, Wembanyama was somewhat humbled as the Knicks were able to defeat the Spurs in five games in part because the young Spurs star proved not quite ready for all the tests required at the pinnacle of the sport: He was fatigued, made some crucial mistakes and lacked a battle-tested late-game offensive repertoire. It’s extremely unlikely that Wembanyama hasn’t taken those lessons to heart. If so, the NBA’s ‘parity era’ could be coming to a screeching halt.