Since we last experienced NBA basketball games that count, we have seen:
34 trades involving more than 90 players, including 11 All-Stars, plus a frankly ludicrous number of future draft picks;
An estimated $2.5 billion in contracts signed in free agency;
21 extensions of existing contracts totaling an additional $1.8 billion, headlined by Victor Wembanyama's five-year, $255 million not-quite-supermax;
The Los Angeles Clippers receiving the stiffest punishment in NBA history; and
The leading scorer in NBA history choosing to go to — and commute to — Philadelphia.
That's a ton of business to sift through as we get set for the start of the 2026-27 NBA season, and try to do some back-of-the-envelope math on which teams we expect to find — and expect to find themselves — in championship contention come June. So, as I've done at the start of each of the lastfiveseasons, with all of our hopes still high for the potential outcomes of all those just-signed deals and newly consummated trades, unsullied by high-velocity contact with the brick wall of reality: Let's get to siftin'.
Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Basketball league for the 2026-27 NBA season
According to BetMGM, nine teams enter this season with championship odds of 25-to-1 (+2500) or better. Those nine teams feature 10 of the 15 members of last season's All-NBA teams … and they also feature major questions that must be answered between now and the postseason.
Let's get reacclimated with the NBA's expected upper echelon by considering the cases for and against those top nine teams, beginning with a team looking to bounce back after falling short of a bid for a championship repeat:
Thunder • Spurs • 76ers • Knicks • Celtics • Cavs • Raptors • Nuggets • Wolves
Oklahoma City Thunder (+260)
The case for: They have the league's two-time reigning Most Valuable Player in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, which is a pretty good place to start. Also, they went the distance with Wemby and Co. in the Western Conference finals — a two-possession game in the final two minutes — despite their second- and third-best offensive creators, All-NBA wing Jalen Williams and breakout guard Ajay Mitchell, missing time with injuries over the course of the series.
Those guys are back and healthy, which should help Oklahoma City maintain the effectiveness of a group that has finished in the top six in offensive efficiency three years running. Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren return to backstop the NBA's best defense — a unit that allowed nine fewer points per 100 possessions than league average last season, which is the largest differential in 30 years, according to PBP Stats.
The Thunder don't boast quite the same level of continuity that they had heading into last year, after trading away longtime point-of-attack linchpin Luguentz Dort, sharpshooting guard Isaiah Joe and reserve swingman Aaron Wiggins to chop down their luxury tax bill. But with All-Defensive selection Cason Wallace ready to step into an even larger role in Dort's stead, Mitchell joining Alex Caruso and Jared McCain in what's still a talented reserve corps in the backcourt, and a slew of other recent draftees looking to compete for minutes — including rookies Aday Mara and Bennett Stirtz, who've looked impressive in preseason action — the Thunder still have the potential to be one of the league's deepest teams.
Oklahoma City finished with the West's No. 1 seed and the league's best net rating last season despite Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams, Hartenstein and Mitchell combining to miss 123 games. Get a slightly cleaner bill of health — for J-Dub, in particular — and some development from the youngsters, and the Thunder could very well push for a third straight 60-plus win campaign and a real shot at hoisting the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy once again.
The case against: As you might have heard, OKC struggles mightily with the Spurs, who beat the Thunder eight times in 12 tries last season and who don't appear to be going anywhere. Holmgren, in particular, seemed utterly bereft against Wembanyama in the Western finals; if he can't bounce back and find new answers to a particularly tall French problem that has plagued him since his prep days, the odds of Oklahoma City returning to the top of the mountain decline precipitously.
It's also possible that the Thunder's posited depth proves more theoretical than practical. If losing Dort, Wiggins and Joe requires more minutes for Caruso (whom OKC has essentially kept on a regular-season pitch count since his arrival) and veteran mainstay Kenrich Williams, will the Thunder's bench drop off? Mara and Stirtz look strong in preseason, but how effectively will they — or former lottery picks Nikola Topić and Thomas Sorber — translate to live action if pressed into duty against the likes of the Spurs?
I will grant that "can you get good minutes out of your ninth-through-14th guys" is the definition of a Champagne problem. When you've got championship expectations and you have to go through a monstrous opponent that has your number, though, all the pieces matter.
San Antonio Spurs (+260)
The case for: They return 98% of the postseason minutes from a team that finished in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency last season — one of just two NBA teams to do so, joining the Boston Celtics — and that went to the NBA Finals led by MVP finalist Wembanyama, who enters the season viewed by many as the ascendant best player in the world.
The Spurs went 35-7 — a 69-win pace — from mid-January through the start of the playoffs. They were dominant through the first two rounds of the postseason, and outclassed the defending champion Thunder, beating them in Oklahoma City in Games 1 and 7.
Yes, they came up short in the Finals, with the New York Knicks outscoring them by 26 points in fourth quarters, as they struggled with offensive execution and ball security, particularly in close-and-late situations. But they're already excellent, and the prospect of their most critical players — Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and rising sophomore Dylan Harper — actually getting better with another year of experience and development is downright frightening. (Ditto for forward Carter Bryant, a hyper-athletic defensive monster with the tools to carve out a bigger role in Year 2.)
If the youngsters grow from their defeat, if De'Aaron Fox can play more like the steady set of hands that earned an All-Star nod than the injured-and-shaky version that disappointed in the Finals, and if incoming vet Tobias Harris can add another reliable two-way frontcourt presence alongside Sixth Man of the Year Keldon Johnson, the re-signed Julian Champagnie and Harrison Barnes, then San Antonio could have everything it needs to not only make another run at a ring, but finish the job this time.
The case against: Progress isn't always linear. It's possible that, despite their arrows all seemingly trending straight up, Wembanyama, Castle, Harper and the rest of the Spurs' bright young things hit more developmental speed bumps this season than they did last year.
Maybe leaning harder into three-guard alignments to more frequently feature Harper upsets the lineup balance that head coach Mitch Johnson found over the course of the Finals run. Maybe Fox struggles to get past his frustrating Finals, and the already loud rumblings over whether Harper should start in his place grow deafening.
Or, y'know, maybe things go swimmingly, and the Spurs just find themselves on the short end of the stick this time against a Thunder team that projects as at least their equal. Getting to within arm's reach of the brass ring is hard; staying there is even harder.
Philadelphia 76ers (+850)
The case for: A team that won 45 games and made it to the second round of the playoffs added Jaylen Brown, an All-NBA two-way forward who finished sixth in MVP voting last season, and LeBron James, who was the best player on a team that won a Western Conference playoff series six months ago and who should be precisely the kind of connective playmaker who can help turn a talented roster into more than the sum of its parts.
James and Brown join former MVP Joel Embiid, All-NBA point guard Tyrese Maxey and Rookie of the Year finalist VJ Edgecombe in a lineup that just might be the most talented starting five in the NBA. New arrivals Dean Wade, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Anfernee Simons bolster the second unit; first-round pick Labaron Philon Jr. adds some pop in the backcourt.
New general manager Mike Gansey has given head coach Nick Nurse plenty of toys to play with as he works to improve on last season's 17th-place finishes in offensive and defensive efficiency, to build on the Sixers' first playoff series win in three years, and to wash away the bitter taste of their second-round sweep at the hands of the eventual champion Knicks. Philly has its fair share of questions to answer; it also has every reason to harbor real hopes about its chances of breaking through the second-round ceiling and, at long last, legitimately competing for a championship.
The case against: It starts, as ever, with the health, availability and effectiveness of Embiid, who has played just 109 total regular-season and playoff games over the last three seasons. In that span, the Sixers have outscored opponents by 356 points with Embiid on the floor, and have been outscored by 729 points with him off it.
Backup center Ariel Hukporti is already lost for the season; Adem Bona brings energy and rim protection, but isn't a big-minutes answer in the middle for a team with serious ambitions; small-ball looks with Wade, Dominick Barlow and LeBron at center run the risk of getting overwhelmed on the glass. For the Sixers to get where they want to go, the notably slimmed down Embiid has to stay upright and ambulatory — and prove better equipped to defend in space than he was against New York in Round 2 — in a way that we simply haven't seen from him deep into springtime.
Beyond Embiid, there's also the bit about the Sixers heavily relying on LeBron, who has played more minutes than anyone in NBA history and turns 42 in December, and skepticism in some quarters about how willingly and effectively Brown will operate in a context that will demand a dramatically reduced on-ball workload from what he enjoyed in Boston last season. If Nurse struggles to pull the right levers to get everyone their touches and put them all in position to succeed, the sheer talent on hand might not be enough to vault Philly to the top of the East, and ahead of their defending-champion rivals.
Hey, speaking of whom:
New York Knicks (+1000)
The case for: ICYMI: They just won the NBA championship, and put together arguably the most dominant single postseason run the sport's ever seen in the process.
New York returns the starting five that delivered the franchise's first championship in 53 years: Finals Most Valuable Player Jalen Brunson, the straw that stirs the drink; center Karl-Anthony Towns, who played career-best ball on both ends of the floor during the title run; and top-flight wings OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart. Key bench guards Miles "Deuce" McBride, Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado and Jordan Clarkson all return, too, while newcomer Andre Drummond gives head coach Mike Brown a veteran rebounding presence in the place of departed backup bigs Mitchell Robinson and Ariel Hukporti.
The Knicks entered the postseason as a very good team: 53 wins, a top-five offense, a top-10 defense, NBA Cup champions, with an elite clutch scoring option in Brunson. Between Game 3 against Atlanta and the final buzzer of Game 5 against San Antonio, though, they became a truly great team — a harmonic convergence of a roster that produced more than the sum of its already estimable parts, capable of playing splendid and damn near seamless basketball.
We've seen the Knicks lock into that rhythm and reach that rarefied air; we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are capable of getting to that level. Who's to say they can't do it again?
The case against: No team has Done It Again since 2018, and only three teams since the Shaq-Kobe-Phil-era Lakers' millennium-opening threepeat have successfully run it back: the Kobe-Pau Lakers (2009, 2010), the Big Three Heat (2012, 2013) and the KD Warriors (2017, 2018). Getting everything to go right once is hard enough; going through consecutive seasons without something significant going awry seems damn near impossible in the modern NBA, as Tom Haberstroh and I discussed this summer on The Big Number:
It's not just that we haven't had a repeat titlist in eight years; no conference champion has even gotten back to the Finals after winning it all since the Warriors and Cavaliers renewed their annual unpleasantries from 2014 through 2018 (with the Warriors getting back in 2019, too).
On one hand, maybe the Knicks' utter dominance in the postseason — two sweeps, a five-game Finals, no series going the distance — means they won't be bringing the same wear-and-tear into the title defense as their predecessors. On the other, they have worn their fair share of tread off the tires: All five members of New York's starting five have played at least 6,000 minutes over the past two seasons, a heavy enough workload to make you wonder whether fatigue could wind up being a factor for Brown's main players.
Add in the potential significance of losing Robinson in free agency, the overall sour vibes surrounding the no-longer-ongoing negotiations on contract extensions for Towns, Hart and McBride, the way the East's depth and quality have risen around them, and the unavoidable challenge of going from the hunter to the hunted and having to face every opponent's best shot, and the Knicks enter ring night with their work cut out for them.
Boston Celtics (+1400)
The case for: Coming off four straight seasons in which they'd won at least 50 games with three trips to the conference finals, two NBA Finals berths and one championship, Boston seemed poised to take a step back. Jayson Tatum was on the shelf after rupturing his Achilles tendon in the playoffs against the Knicks. Jrue Holiday, Al Horford and Kristaps Porziņġis were all gone, dealt in service of resetting the financial ledger; head coach Joe Mazzulla would now have to see what he could make out of half a championship rotation and a slew of unproven contributors.
What he made: a 56-win team that produced the NBA's second-best offense and fifth-best defense. Pretty good!
This year's model will be different from its predecessor, of course, remade by the stunning trade that sent Brown to Philly and imported Paul George — who has made it clear he's not trying to replace Brown, but whose higher-volume, higher-accuracy 3-point shooting and higher-end off-ball defensive work might make him a cleaner fit into the overarching possession-game-winning superstructure that Mazzulla, Brad Stevens and Co. have built at TD Garden.
Robinson comes in from the champs to fortify the frontcourt rotation alongside Neemias Queta. Mike Conley comes over from Minnesota to be the veteran sage in the room, bending the ears of ball-handlers Derrick White and the just-extended Payton Pritchard, young wings Baylor Scheierman, Hugo González and Jordan Walsh, and anyone else who might benefit from a little bit of hard-won wisdom at an opportune moment.
The pieces seem to fit. And if Tatum — who played less than 750 total minutes last season after his remarkable late-season return from Achilles rehab — is all the way back to his perennial All-NBA form as he steps into the central role that Brown occupied last season, it's easy to envision the Celtics cranking out another 50-plus-win campaign and entering the playoffs unafraid of any opponent they'll have to face.
The case against: Maybe Tatum, who missed the deciding Game 7 against the Sixers with left knee stiffness after his comeback, isn't all the way back to his perennial All-NBA form — or, at least, not enough to shoulder a superstar-level primary option workload.
Maybe George, who has played more than 56 games just once in the past seven years, and Robinson, who has logged just over 2,200 minutes over the last three seasons amid various lower leg injuries and load-management plans, aren't on the floor enough to make the kind of possession-tilting impact that Stevens envisions. Maybe White, fresh off the worst shooting season of his career, can't iron out the kinks on his jumper. And maybe, as overwhelming a mathematical advantage as Mazzullaball grants the Celtics over the broader 82-game sample, the spring once again finds them between a rock and a hard place if the jumpers stop falling and Boston doesn't have quite enough of a point-producing Plan B.
Cleveland Cavaliers (+2500)
The case for: They bring back six of the nine guys who played at least 100 postseason minutes from a team that just made the Eastern Conference finals — the first time any Cavs team not featuring LeBron James has made it that far since 1992 — and swung a big trade that they hope will fill the hole they've had on the wing ever since their once and future King headed west to L.A.
The Cavs went 21-9 after the franchise-shifting trade of Darius Garland for James Harden, fielding the NBA's No. 4 offense in that span and outscoring opponents by nearly seven points per 100 possessions that Harden shared with All-NBA guard Donovan Mitchell. Their backcourt playmaking, combined with the defensive acumen of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, helped Cleveland grit its way through seven-game slugfests against the Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistons to make it to a third-round showdown with the Knicks.
If not for blowing a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter of Game 1, a chin-check from which they never fully seemed to recover, they might've been the ones staring down Wemby in June. Alas.
Rather than look to tear the foundation asunder after such a demoralizing defeat, the Cavs held firm: a massive extension for Mitchell, an attempt to reunite with LeBron, an eventual re-up for Harden, no mammoth tear-down swaps of Mobley or Allen. Instead, Cleveland shuffled the deck on the wing, taking part in a five-team, six-player, multi-pick sign-and-trade to land Peyton Watson, and subsequently sign the former Denver Nuggets swingman to a four-year, $88 million contract extension to man the 3 spot between their All-Star guards and bigs. (Also: Mario Hezonja's here!)
It's a bet on Watson, who just turned 24, being able to both play a complementary role on both ends of the floor to plug Cleveland's gaps and eventually build on the strong stretch of scoring prowess he showed last season when the injury-plagued Nuggets put the ball in his hands and let him run with it. It's a bet that, with more reps together, the Mitchell-Harden partnership can reach an even higher ceiling, putting the Cavs in position to once again field a top-five-caliber offense. And it's a bet that, as ugly as that four-game sweep at the hands of the Knicks was, Cleveland's ongoing championship construction project — step by step, brick by brick, over the last half-decade — is closer to completion than its skeptics might think.
The case against: There's a reason those skeptics keep arching their eyebrows — the sense that, no matter how good the Cavs can look during the regular season or for any discrete set of possessions in the course of the postseason, they lack the kind of cohesion and collective oomph that can get a team through its dark night of the soul.
Maybe that's too facile an analysis. This team did survive Game 7 twice, after all, knocking out the No. 1 seed Pistons to advance to the third round, and the 6-foot-8 Watson provides the kind of length, athleticism and pop that Cleveland sorely lacked during the Knicks series. At this point, though, it doesn't seem wholly unreasonable to want to see this Cleveland core — Mitchell, Allen, Mobley and now Harden and Watson — prove that it can make it out of the East before you believe they've got the goods to do so.
Toronto Raptors (+2500)
The case for: The Raptors exited last season as a 46-win team with a top-seven defense and enough toughness and physicality to push the Cavs to Game 7 … but with an offense that too often profiled as rickety at best.
Toronto ranked in the top-10 in half-court offensive efficiency during the regular season, but that dropped to 16th against opponents with top-10 point differentials; the Raps' 95.3 points-per-100 half-court mark in the playoffs would have ranked 25th during the regular season. They were 15th in clutch offensive efficiency during the regular season, and their playoff mark would've ranked 26th during the regular season. They've finished 22nd or lower in the total share of their shots that come from 3-point range in each of the last five seasons; they made just 123 pull-up 3s en masse last season, dead last in the NBA by 46 triples.
All of which is to say: It's difficult to overstate just how perfectly Kawhi Leonard — who last season made 88 pull-up 3s by himself, led the NBA in points per touch, averaged a career-high 27.9 points per game on 51/39/89 shooting splits and was one of the most prolific fourth-quarter scorers in the league — fills the gaps in this team's résumé.
Importing an All-NBA offense-unto-himself reduces the playmaking and shot-creation burden on every other Raptor, which should result in Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Co. having more space to operate, cleaner looks to cash out, and easier opportunities than they saw in an often congested half-court attack. And slotting in Leonard — who finished top-15 in the league in steals and deflections last season — should only further fortify Darko Rajaković's pressure-packing defense; the prospect of trying to probe for openings in lineups featuring Leonard, Barnes, rising sophomore Collin Murray-Boyles, Ja'Kobe Walter and the just-extended Jamal Shead is enough to induce claustrophobia in opposing perimeter players.
It's been understandably and justifiably obscured by the drama surrounding the investigation into salary-cap circumvention and his subsequent exit from L.A., but the version of Leonard we just saw was arguably one of the five or six best players in the entire NBA last season. If the Raptors get that version for 2,000 minutes — and, obviously and most crucially, get it into April, May and hopefully June — then this becomes a seriously dangerous outfit.
The case against: If they don't get that version — and here's where we remind ourselves that Kawhi has played 65 games just twice in the last nine years, hasn't finished a postseason healthy since 2020, and hasn't played more than two postseason rounds since the Raptors' 2019 title — then all that stuff goes up in smoke.
(More practically: If the Raptors wind up leaning into smaller-ball looks, with CMB replacing veteran Jakob Poeltl at the 5, will their rim protection and rebounding suffer against the best opponents? And even with Leonard stepping in for Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick, is there still not quite enough shooting on this roster?)
We're about three and a half years removed from a team trading a bunch of draft capital for a 34-year-old All-NBA forward with the expectation that it would help vault them into the upper reaches of contention; the Kevin Durant era in Phoenix didn't work out so hot. Maybe, due to the presence of Barnes and the picks they've still got access to, the Raptors are better positioned to weather such a disappointment without cratering. But getting Kawhi at a bargain price doesn't mean there's no downside risk of relying on him to get where you want to go.
Denver Nuggets (+2500)
The case for: They still have Nikola Jokić, and you still don't.
Even with Jokić, Aaron Gordon, Christian Braun, Cameron Johnson and Peyton Watson combining to miss 129 games, Denver still fielded by far the NBA's No. 1 offense and won 54 games last season. The Nuggets annihilated opponents by 18.8 points-per-100 with Jokić, Murray and Gordon all on the floor last season; the framework of what's made this team work at such a high level for the better part of a decade is still here. Get healthier seasons from Gordon and Johnson, a bounce-back from Braun — who shot just 30.1% from 3-point range last season after knocking 'em down at a 38.4% clip over his first three years — and just a sprinkling of production from someone off the bench (DeMar DeRozan? Tyus Jones? Marvin Bagley?) and nobody's going to want to see this offense come springtime.
The case against: They will, however, probably be excited to see a Denver defense that has finished 21st in points allowed per possession in each of the last two seasons. The Nuggets don't force turnovers, don't protect the rim and really don't stop opponents on the fast break; they've allowed more than 1.3 points per play in transition in each of the last two seasons, bottom-two marks in the league.
If that doesn't improve dramatically, the Nuggets' chances of winning three playoff series — already complicated by the presence of Oklahoma City and San Antonio, and by the drip-by-drip defections of depth since their 2023 title run — are likely somewhere between slim and none. And if the 31-year-old Gordon, who has missed 77 games over the past two seasons and been hampered by recurring hamstring injuries in consecutive playoff runs, can't stay upright and on the floor, "slim" may have already left town.
Minnesota Timberwolves (+2500)
The case for: After making consecutive trips to the Western Conference finals, the Timberwolves took down the Nuggets and pushed the Spurs to six with Anthony Edwards hobbled, Ayo Dosunmu limited, Donte DiVincenzo sidelined and precious little point guard play to speak of. Well, they've got a point guard now. And he likes to go fast.
The theory of the case: The arrival of LaMelo Ball to pair with Anthony Edwards cranks up the offensive variance in Minnesota to a senses-shattering degree, affording the Wolves the opportunity to explore new frontiers in pull-up 3-point shooting volume and geometry warping on offense. Force the defense to cover more ground and you open up more driving lanes and opportunities to feast on the inside. Hunt early offense with LaMelo's penchant for hit-aheads and half-court lobs to the likes of Edwards, Jaden McDaniels and newcomer Jonathan Kuminga, and a Minnesota offense that has largely lagged behind its elite Rudy Gobert-helmed defense might finally catch up — a stylistic pivot that could make the Wolves considerably more formidable, and give them a hell of a puncher's chance, against Oklahoma City and San Antonio in a best-of-seven.
The case against: It starts, as these so often do, with health. Ball played 72 games and 2,017 minutes last season, recurring ankle issues led him to average 35 appearances and 1,161 minutes over the previous three; if he can't stay healthy, he can't supercharge the offense in the ways Tim Connelly and Co. are hoping.
It remains to be seen how effectively head coach Chris Finch can maintain an elite defense around Ball. And how comfortably LaMelo can shoulder the quantum leap in operational duties required of the primary ball-handler and table-setter of a team that harbors legitimate championship aspirations. And how neatly Kuminga, once again singing for his supper after taking a bargain-bin deal on a team that likely needs him to fit in (read: defense, rebounding, screening, running the floor) more than stand out (read: hunt isos, try to score 20). And how the defense holds up when the 34-year-old Gobert — quietly one of the most interesting potential free agents in the league right now — takes a rest. And how a second unit that's now heavily dependent on both Dosunmu maintaining his level of play and leaps from second-year center Joan Beringer and Terrence Shannon Jr. holds up against the best of the best.
That's a lot of questions. They're different ones, though — and, for a team looking to zag in pursuit of a new angle of attack against the conference's top flight, maybe that's enough for now.
Honorable mentions
Hey, here's a fun fact: I've written this column five times, and each year, at least one eventual NBA Finals participant was not included in it!
Last year, the Spurs didn't make the cut. The year before that, the Indiana Pacers didn't. The 2023 edition didn't include the Dallas Mavericks. The 2022 version didn't feature either the Nuggets or Miami Heat. And the first go-round, back in 2021, didn't have the Celtics on it.
Which is to say: We're almost guaranteed to see someone that you didn't just read about playing for the Larry O'B come June! (That's how probability works, right?)
The teams that didn't come in under +2500, but that bear monitoring in the big picture, include:
Detroit Pistons (+3000): Yes, the Jalen Duren drama was taxing, and yes, I have my questions about the net outcome of effectively swapping Tobias Harris for John Collins. But the Pistons added shooting (Collins, Isaiah Joe, Taurean Prince) to the core of a team that won 60 games, finished with the East's No. 1 seed, came within one game of the Eastern Conference finals, and absolutely hammered the eventual champion Knicks during the regular season with Cade Cunningham at the controls. Maybe we shouldn't be too quick to overlook them?
Miami Heat (+3000): Hey, remember these guys? They finished above .500 and just outside the top 10 on both ends of the floor last season, and they just traded for Giannis Antetokounmpo — one of the few players who can at any given point lay legitimate claim to being the best player on the planet. If he's able to play closer to 70 games than the 36 he managed last season, and if Erik Spoelstra's able to find the right balance between bully-ball and pace-and-space lineup combinations, the Giannis-Bam Adebayo partnership could be lethal.
Los Angeles Lakers (+3500): The last time Luka Dončić had a properly built team around him — screen-and-dive rim-protecting center, high-efficiency secondary scorers and playmakers, active 3-and-D wings — he went to the NBA Finals. Now he's got Walker Kessler, Austin Reaves, Quentin Grimes, Matisse Thybulle, Ziaire Williams and Collin Sexton. Maybe that's not enough to put the fear of God into OKC and San Antonio. But maybe it is.
Indiana Pacers (+4000): The last time we saw Tyrese Haliburton healthy, he had the Thunder on the ropes in Game 7 in their own gym. I can't blame anyone who wants to pump the brakes on the Pacers getting back to that level. But I also don't have too hard a time seeing Indiana — now with Ivica Zubac to join the rest of that Finals core — hitting the gas to return to what it views as its rightful perch.
Houston Rockets (+5000): A 52-win team that finished top-seven on both ends of the floor gets back the organizing-principle point guard (Fred VanVleet) that it missed for all of last season and the goliath offensive-rebounding center (Steven Adams) who helped form its ground-and-pound point-scoring identity, and adds a tough-as-nails veteran defender (Marcus Smart) who should be a perfect fit for the postseason pressure cooker. Oh, and they still have Kevin Durant, who just averaged 26 a night on 52/41/87 shooting, and a handful of 25-and-under dudes — Alperen Şengün, Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr., Reed Sheppard, Tari Eason — who all still have the potential to take another step forward in their development. This team's floor is really high; if a couple of things break right, its ceiling could be championship-caliber.