When the calendar turned to 2025, I released a series of predictions for how the rest of the decade would play out. Some of them turned out quite well! Nickeil Alexander-Walker really has emerged as the next Derrick White-esque breakout guard. I said Giannis Antetokounmpo would be the best player traded in 2026 and so far, that looks pretty reasonable. Feel free to ignore my 2025 championship prediction (Cleveland), but otherwise, the exercise was fun and hopefully slightly informative.
We can’t quite repeat it in 2026 because, well, it isn’t one of those nice, milestone numbers. We only have four years left in the decade, so there’s no sense in revising last year’s predictions. So instead, we’ll drill down on the next 12 months, specifically. Below are five bold NBA predictions for 2026. The window we’re operating in is the calendar year. Anything before Jan. 1, 2027 is fair game, and we’re going out on a limb with these predictions. I’m not asking for credit on a Thunder championship pick. Big swings, folks.
1. Giannis gets traded…. to the Heat
Everyone in Milwaukee is bungling the Giannis Antetokounmpo situation right now. The Bucks have effectively stuck their fingers in their ears and chanted “la-la-la we can’t hear you” every time the rumors pick up, pretending this era is salvageable and setting themselves up for a disappointing return when the inevitable deal materializes. Antetokounmpo, meanwhile, refuses to rip off the band-aid, ostensibly out of fear of becoming a villain in the only city he’s ever played for. In the process, he’s denying Bucks fans closure and again hurting the return Milwaukee will eventually receive, doing far more damage than he would have if he’d just admit that he wants out. The two sides appear poised to continue lying to themselves through February’s deadline, setting the offseason up for some sort of final resolution.
The Bucks will surely offer a long-term contract extension, which he becomes eligible to sign later in the offseason. Antetokounmpo will reject it if he means anything he’s ever said about wanting to win a second championship. The moment that happens, a trade becomes inevitable, but with only one year left on his deal, the pool of teams that could justify making a significant offer shrinks considerably. Very few teams are going to be eager to pay out the nose for someone who can walk for nothing in 2027 free agency.
With that leverage in mind, Antetokounmpo will make it known that he wants to join the New York Knicks, who we’ll say lose in the NBA Finals. That immediately scares off the small-market lurkers. The big boys will be more open-minded about taking the risk. The Lakers would do it, but with Austin Reaves a free agent and therefore able to keep himself out of trade talks, their best asset is functionally unavailable. The Spurs and Rockets seem happy enough with what they have. So who has the assets to outbid New York and the confidence to assume Antetokounmpo would eventually re-sign?
The Miami Heat. Antetokounmpo shares an agent, Alex Saratsis, with Bam Adebayo. Miami could build an offer around Tyler Herro, Kel’El Ware and all of its remaining draft capital to top whatever veteran-based package New York puts together without splitting up the Saratsis duo. Miami’s record of attracting stars is legendary, and Pat Riley will surely try for one last heist. For now, the stars are aligning to give him a real shot at executing it. Unless one of the asset-rich younger teams has a disappointing postseason and pivots sharply, this is probably ending with a bidding war between the glamour markets. As it stands right now, Miami probably has the most to trade in that scenario and the most to lose by missing out. After all, the Knicks might make the Finals as is. The Lakers have an MVP candidate in his mid-20s. The Heat need this, and that’s going to get it across the finish line.
2. The Charlotte Hornets make the Play-In Tournament
A slightly lower stakes prediction, but a related one. After all, if we assume Washington, Indiana and Brooklyn are all taking the year off, Charlotte’s floor in the Eastern Conference is No. 12. That means they’d have to pass two of the top 10 teams to sneak into the Play-In Tournament. Chicago is a reasonable enough prediction for one such slot. The Bulls have run hot and cold all year, starting 6-1 before losing 15 of their next 20. They followed that up with a five-game winning streak, but their defense remains atrocious and that inconsistency makes them vulnerable. The other team we’re predicting Charlotte passes? The Bucks, putting the final nail in the Antetokounmpo era’s coffin.
Antetokounmpo only just returned from a calf strain, and the Bucks are still outside of the top 10 in the East. They are 3-10 without him thus far this season, so if he misses anymore team, they’re going to continue to tumble down the standings. Their January schedule is brutal. Between Jan. 9 and Jan. 21, they play all six of the current Western Conference playoff teams, four of them on the road. And lurking in the background here: the Bucks are deceptively capable of tanking if they want to. Remember, they may not control their pick, but if they lose theirs, they get New Orleans’, so if the Bucks really do want to take one last home run swing to keep Antetokounmpo, it might behoove them to use his calf injury as a pretense to shut him down, get a lottery pick, and then try to trade for veteran help this summer to try to avert a formal trade request.
But enough about the Bucks. We’re here to talk about the Hornets. Have they fattened up against bad teams? Yes. The defense is still messy. They’re still very young. But they’re quickly developing a pretty interesting and counterintuitive identity. The team that entered the season without a veteran center is among the best rebounding groups in the NBA. The offense is far slower than you’d expect out of a LaMelo Ball team, but with Kon Knueppel and Brandon Miller ascending, it’s been reasonably effective and takes all of the right shots. They have the cap flexibility and picks to add talent at the deadline if they want to make a real run at the postseason. They’re still a few years away from making genuine noise, but the Hornets aren’t pushovers anymore. If Milwaukee and Chicago fade, they’re ready to sneak into a weak postseason field.
Derik Queen has replaced Zion Williamson in New Orleans. While Williamson has played very well since returning from his latest injury, New Orleans can’t justify paying a max salary for someone who’s rarely healthy enough to contribute. He and Queen can’t coexist defensively, so New Orleans needs to start exploring ways of using the money earmarked for Williamson to get a rim-protector in the building. The Pelicans will explore the trade market, sure, but when they find that any deal involving meaningful assets also comes with toxic salary, they’ll determine that their best course is simply to waive Williamson. His contract situation is complex. It’s non-guaranteed, but can guarantee if he hits certain games-played triggers. Of course, the Pelicans can simply bench him to ensure that money doesn’t guarantee if they decide to go down this path. His injury history suggests there’s a good chance they don’t need to.
So where does he go from there? Well, it depends on what he’s looking for. In basketball terms, he’d ideally land on a contender that could bring him off of the bench and limit his minutes. The question is where. The Lakers have the money, but not the need. They’ll spend on defense and retention. San Antonio could create the money as well, and perhaps view Williamson as a lower-cost path to the sort of rim dominance an Antetokounmpo trade would give them. But such a move would be pretty out of character for the Spurs. It seems likelier that they keep Harrison Barnes and either work to develop Carter Bryant as their long-term power forward or trade for someone who more closely aligns with Barnes’ skill set as a shooter. We have the Heat acquiring Antetokounmpo here, so they’re out. Most other winners are apron’d out or just don’t need Williamson’s skill set. Besides, he’ll likely seek more than the sort of mid-level offers most would probably make.
So instead, we look to the cap space teams. The Clippers can’t justify another injury risk. The Jazz are loaded at forward so long as Lauri Markkanen is there. The Nets aren’t loaded anywhere, but Michael Porter Jr. plays power forward. The Wizards are two years away from being two years away. The Bulls are really the only team that checks any significant Williamson boxes. They fortunately check several.
Chicago seemingly prizes draft pedigree more than most teams. They’ve made a habit in recent years of trading good veterans for high draft picks that underperformed on their original teams, with Josh Giddey and Isaac Okoro as the obvious examples. Go back a bit further and we even see a template for the sort of contract Chicago could offer. In 2018, the Bulls signed Jabari Parker, an offense-centric No. 2 overall pick with injury issues, to a two-year, $40 million deal with a team option on the second season. Chicago has the cap space to offer a high cap figure. That matters in obvious financial terms, but also subtler reputational ones. Players don’t like taking significant pay cuts in part because they fear teams will start to think of them as being worth their new salary rather than their old one. However, that big, short-term cap figure would almost certainly come with non-guarantees or options as a balancing mechanism.
The Bulls view Giddey as a Tyrese Haliburton-esque figure, and are now seeking their version of Pascal Siakam. Well, most such players are prohibitively expensive in trades. The Bulls haven’t spent meaningful draft capital on a veteran since landing DeMar DeRozan in 2021. Williamson represents a low-risk, high-reward shot at that sort of player. If it doesn’t work, they can just move on and make their big trade later.
Would it be a great basketball fit? No. Williamson needs the ball. So does Giddey. It’s not clear if Williamson can even play at the breakneck pace Chicago prefers anymore, and the Bulls need rim-protection more than rim-gravity. But the Bulls do need to take a talent swing at some point, and they love selling tickets. Williamson makes sense on both counts and will be gettable without making a major long-term bet. That’s good enough for the Bulls.
4. The Denver Nuggets win the 2026 NBA Finals
Look, we’re going for bold predictions here. If you want statistical likelihoods, you should always pick “the field” over any specific team to win a championship, and if you want a mathematical favorite, it’s almost certainly the Thunder. So in order to make any sort of bold championship pick, it has to be someone else, and it obviously has to be more specific than “the field.”
With Indiana out of the mix this year, Denver is the only team in the field with any sort of track record for challenging Oklahoma City in a playoff setting. If the Thunder have weaknesses, the Nuggets are equipped to exploit them. Oklahoma City blows games open with its turnovers. The Nuggets never give the ball away. The Thunder still struggle against zone defenses. Denver uses the sixth-most zone defense in the NBA, according to Synergy Sports, and the Nuggets obviously played zone very successfully in last year’s series. Denver’s bench minutes have been a nightmare throughout its postseason history. The Nuggets are at least surviving Nikola Jokić’s brief rests this season (and we’ll see how it goes with Jokić set to miss significant time at the start of the calendar year), and that was with several starters out. You’d have to assume the Nuggets will be healthier and deeper than they were in last year’s series, when Aaron Gordon got hurt midway through the festivities and Michael Porter Jr. played with one arm.
The Spurs just beat the Thunder thrice. Their shooting makes them a slightly iffier playoff proposition, but they’ve proven they have a real shot. Houston has a puncher’s chance against the Thunder as well. While Denver can slow the game down, Houston can dirty it up with defense and rebounding. Oklahoma City isn’t a surefire champion because those don’t actually exist. Denver stands out as the prime challenger simply because of Jokić. He can control a series on his own in ways that no Rocket or Spur or Timberwolf can. The closest analogue in the Western Conference would be Luka Dončić, but his Lakers are too slow and unathletic to last seven games with the Thunder. We saw Jokić nearly slay the dragon last spring. This year, we’re betting he finishes the job.
5. LeBron returns to the Cavs as a free agent
If the Lakers were planning for a multi-year run with LeBron James, it would have made sense to extend him last offseason. In the summer of 2024, James offered to take a pay cut to help the Lakers recruit talent. He likely would have done the same in 2025 if he could have secured a multi-year deal. The Lakers seemingly weren’t interested in giving him one. James released a passive aggressive statement about the Lakers pivoting to the future and him wanting to compete for a championship.
If the Lakers were set to genuinely contend for the 2026 championship, they might be inclined to re-sign James and go for it. As it stands right now, they look at the very least a shade worse than the Thunder, Nuggets, Spurs and Rockets, the latter two in that group having smacked the Lakers around in marquee games in December. The Lakers have their virtues, most notably when it comes to ball-handling, but this team is so unathletic and defensively deficient that it just doesn’t have a championship ceiling right now. Maybe they could change that through a trade, but with only one first-round pick at their disposal heading into the deadline, they have pretty limited ammo to try to do that with.
The Lakers have a golden opportunity to spend cap space in 2026. Austin Reaves will be an unrestricted free agent, but still have a relatively low $20.9 million cap hold that will allow them to spend almost $55 million in cap space if they want to. The moment he signs his next deal, creating space becomes substantially harder. Re-signing James at any sort of substantial salary cuts into that spendable space. Everything the Lakers have done since landing Dončić suggests that they would rather spend their money building a team for the next five years. They don’t want to placate James for one extra season when, at the moment, it doesn’t look like he’s capable of leading them to a championship.
Could James re-sign with the Lakers at a smaller salary? Sure. He might even be tempted if they improve the team enough. He’s made it very clear that he wants to win a fifth championship. But James is no fool. Having won the Eastern Conference nine times, he’s acutely aware of where the easiest path to the Finals lies. He’s also very image-conscious. How would it look for James if he re-signed in Los Angeles at a price lower than whatever they give a key free agent or two? He’d try to frame it as team-first generosity. His detractors would say it’s all he’s worth.
At the end of the day, you ultimately want to play where you’re wanted. If the Lakers, with cap space and full Bird Rights, don’t tender a significant financial offer, the implication will be that they are ready to move on. And if that’s the case, well, James won’t have much trouble wrangling suitors if he drops the price point low enough. He’s been flirting with the Knicks for years. The Warriors already tried to trade for him. But come on. You know neither would be his first choice. For LeBron James, all roads lead back to Cleveland.
Last summer, when a trade briefly seemed possible, such a reunion was still impractical. Cleveland’s second apron status made matching salary all but impossible without gutting its team. The Cavaliers had just won 64 games. They weren’t going to detonate that roster for a quadragenarian. But things have changed. Cleveland has lost nearly as many games thus far this year as it did all of last season. There’s still a considerable amount of talent here, though if this season ends in yet another disappointment, there will almost definitely be changes on the fringes. Not enough to import James at his true market value, but likely enough to appeal to James for his last dance. If he took the minimum in Cleveland, it’s a much easier spin than a pay cut with the Lakers. He’s not being forced to sacrifice to accommodate his team’s newfound direction. He’s giving his hometown team a discount to try to save them after a mess of a season. There would no doubt be leaks about all of the other teams that were eager to pay him more in the process.
We haven’t mentioned the idea of retirement yet. It’s certainly possible, but would feel out of character if it came after this season. Does LeBron James seem like the sort of player who would go out quietly following an early playoff exit? Of course not. He’d want a retirement tour. He’d want a year of genuflection. He could get that as a Laker, but it would be different in Cleveland, where he wouldn’t be taking such an obvious backseat to Dončić and the future. The team may belong to Donovan Mitchell, but the city is LeBron’s, now and forever. If the Lakers really do move in another direction, there’s just no other team that can give him the sort of ending he’s going to want.