Kawhi Leonard’s move from the Clippers to Toronto, agreed June 30 for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, and a stack of picks, sat frozen for seven weeks while the league decided whether Steve Ballmer had quietly paid his star through a fake endorsement deal. Investigators cleared him Monday. And strangely, that is far from the wildest story of the summer so far.
Giannis Antetokounmpo — a two-time MVP who never once publicly demanded out but behind the scenes was actively looking to leave Milwaukee behind — was traded to Miami on the eve of the draft for Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakučionis, and a mountain of picks. Jaylen Brown, the Finals MVP from Boston’s 2024 title run, got flipped to Philadelphia for Paul George. And LeBron James, at 41, walked away from a $53 million Lakers salary to sign a two-year, $8 million deal with the 76ers, deciding after a month of weighing retirement that he wasn’t actually done.
Layer LaMelo Ball’s arrival in Minnesota on top of that — a four-team fever dream that took nearly three weeks to untangle Charlotte, Brooklyn, and Chicago into one deal — and you get a league that has reshuffled its hierarchy seemingly overnight. So, which teams have made the biggest strides this offseason, and could any of them be reborn in 2026-27?
Indiana Pacers
Nineteen wins. Sixty-three losses. The second-worst record in the NBA, one year after Indiana was two quarters from a championship. That alone tells you how violently a single Achilles tendon can rewrite a franchise’s trajectory. Tyrese Haliburton went down in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals against Oklahoma City, and Indiana spent 2025-26 finding out how much of its offense, identity, and ceiling had been walking around inside one 26-year-old’s legs.
The rehab hasn’t been clean — Haliburton developed facial shingles mid-recovery, nasty enough to swell his eye shut and bloat him with medication. He kept posting rehab videos anyway, marking the weeks: week 48 post-surgery by early summer. By July, league sources were telling reporters Indiana was “extremely optimistic” he’d be ready for 2026-27’s opening night. Haliburton put it more bluntly himself: “I am the source. I am healthy right now.” The Pacers open on the road against New Orleans — he’d assumed his return would come at home.
That’s the whole bet for those looking for an outside punt on the Pacers next season. The latest NBA betting at Bovada odds currently list Indiana as a +4000 fringe contender, and after the vast majority of its supporting cast, beyond adding Larry Nance Jr. and Kelly Oubre Jr., was left unchanged, that could well be a solid sleeper bet. Pascal Siakam and a healthy Haliburton still form a top-four Eastern Conference team on paper. The Pacers and their backers just need the paper to hold.
Washington Wizards
Trae Young was in tears driving into State Farm Arena on January 9, knowing he was about to play his last home game for Atlanta. Hours later, he was a Wizard, dealt for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert — a trade Washington fans watched with disbelief and dark comedy, this being a front office that turned Bradley Beal into Chris Paul, Paul into Jordan Poole, Poole into McCollum, and McCollum into a four-time All-Star, without ever really having cap space to spend. Young arrived nursing a quad contusion and an MCL sprain, a fittingly unglamorous handoff.
Six months later, Washington won the draft lottery outright and took Duke wing AJ Dybantsa No. 1, handing Young and Anthony Davis a third foundational piece nobody outside D.C. saw coming this fast. Three years of 15, 18, and 17 wins bought this front office exactly the kind of patience that usually gets executives fired, not vindicated. Nobody’s predicting a playoff berth around Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, and Kyshawn George just yet. But for the first time since the rebuild started, “foundation” isn’t a euphemism.
Philadelphia 76ers
Joel Embiid’s appendix ruptured overnight in Houston on April 9, forcing an emergency appendectomy two weeks before the playoffs. He came back off the bench for the play-in win over Orlando, sat out the first three games against Boston, then returned 17 days post-surgery for Game 4 — a game the Celtics won by 32 to go up 3-1. Philadelphia didn’t die there. They won three straight to eliminate Boston, extending the league’s longest playoff rivalry to 23 all-time meetings, before getting swept by the Knicks in the second round. Gutsy, gutted, and gone before anyone could enjoy it.
Then the offseason blew the whole thing up anyway. Philadelphia flipped George and picks to Boston for Jaylen Brown, the same team that had just eliminated them. And LeBron James, who could have chased a ring almost anywhere, chose the team that hasn’t reached a conference finals since 2001. Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Brown, and James now share a locker room, and every one of that quartet’s recent seasons has been defined by something breaking at the worst possible time. Philadelphia isn’t betting on talent. It’s betting the injury luck finally turns.
Minnesota Timberwolves
Back-to-back conference finals in 2024 and 2025 bought Minnesota real credibility — and 2025-26 nearly buried it. The Wolves went 49-33, upset Denver in the first round despite losing Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo to injury, then were eliminated by San Antonio in the conference semifinals. Same round, third straight year, a different rising Western power standing over them each time.
Tim Connelly’s response was the boldest of his tenure: ship out Julius Randle and fan favorite Naz Reid in a four-team swap, absorb the outrage from fans watching Reid go to Charlotte for what looked like spare parts, and land LaMelo Ball — a former Rookie of the Year who’s battled ankle injuries for three of his six seasons but stayed on the floor for 72 games last year.
The logic is simple even if the gamble isn’t: Edwards can’t keep shouldering a Western Conference run alone. Ball, paired with Edwards and Rudy Gobert, is either the co-star Minnesota’s been missing or the reason this era ages badly.
