Sports — Noozify Original — October 16, 2026

2026-27 NBA Preview: Title Favorites, LeBron's Move, and Rookies to Watch

By Dan Chafetz

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There is a figure going into the 2026-2027 NBA season that reads like a typo at first glance. LeBron James, who collected nearly $53 million from the Lakers last year, has agreed to a two-year deal with the Philadelphia 76ers worth about $8 million. I kept circling one question while reading through the preseason coverage: what does a final run at a championship actually cost, and who ends up paying for it?

The sticker price is the easy part. James signed for the league's minimum salary for a player with his years of service, and ESPN's analysts pointed out that it is less than a tenth of what comparable forwards command. James, who is 41, framed the decision as a reckoning, saying that "I still truly love this game, and I have more to give" after he had initially thought he was done playing. His agent, Rich Paul, had said the move was about "basketball happiness", a phrase the 76ers, who have gone 43 years without a title, were delighted to read as a mandate to win.

The sportsbooks responded with a speed that borders on the comic. Oddsmakers express a team's chances as a price, and by BetMGM's own price history, Philadelphia began the summer as a 60-to-1 long shot, the kind of number that says nobody expects much. The price fell to 20-to-1 when guard Jaylen Brown arrived from Boston, and within hours of James's announcement it had dropped to about 9-to-1, roughly one chance in ten. That left the Sixers with the fourth-best odds in July, and they have since drawn level with the Knicks for third. San Antonio and Oklahoma City sit essentially level at the top of the title odds, each given roughly one chance in four of winning the championship at the major books, and they enter the year having met twelve times across the regular season, the in-season NBA Cup, and the playoffs.

The favorites are favorites for sound reasons. Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio's young center, was the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, the youngest ever, and the first to be chosen without a dissenting vote, and the sportsbooks now make him the favorite for Most Valuable Player, giving him about a one-in-three chance. Ahead of him in last spring's MVP voting stood Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is chasing a third consecutive MVP, something nobody has managed since Larry Bird in the mid-1980s, and Denver's Nikola Jokic. Jokic and Luka Doncic, who averaged 33.5 points a game for the Lakers last season, round out a field in which nobody can be dismissed.

Oklahoma City will look a little different from the team that lost Game 7 of the Western Conference finals at home to the Spurs. The Thunder let go of supporting players such as Isaiah Joe, Lu Dort, and Aaron Wiggins, and how good they can be may hinge on how healthy forward Jalen Williams stays. San Antonio's season, by contrast, depends on how much young players like Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper improve.

Here is where the question I started with takes its first turn. The defending champion Knicks, who ended a title drought stretching back to 1973 by beating San Antonio in five games behind Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, were a 12-to-1 shot when last season tipped off, longer odds than Philadelphia carries now. Since 2015, every champion has begun its season with the oddsmakers giving it at least about one chance in twenty, which is another way of saying that the oddsmakers are usually right about the neighborhood the champion comes from, and the Sixers now live comfortably inside it. Those same Knicks swept Philadelphia in four straight games in the second round of last spring's playoffs, so it is fair to ask how much really changed.

A great deal, as it happens, and not only in Philadelphia. Forward Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded from Milwaukee to Miami on June 22nd, forward Kawhi Leonard went to Toronto and guard LaMelo Ball to Minnesota, and Boston sent Brown to Philadelphia for forward Paul George and draft picks, leaving a more crowded Eastern Conference with eight of the top fourteen title contenders. For the Sixers, the difference is as much about sharing the load as adding talent. Guard Tyrese Maxey, who scored a career-high 28.3 points per game last season, has said he is willing to take a smaller role beside two former Finals MVPs in James and Brown, and a starting five of Maxey, guard VJ Edgecombe, Brown, James, and center Joel Embiid gives coach Nick Nurse enough depth to rest James and Embiid when they need it.

Whether the chemistry holds is another matter. Nurse conceded early in training camp that "It is going to be different", on the day James's helicopter drowned out a teammate's press conference, and a broadcaster's anecdote about James chiding Embiid for being late to practice drew public rebuttals from both James and Nurse. Noise, in other words, is now a roster member.

Meanwhile, an unusually deep rookie class is about to arrive. In June's draft, AJ Dybantsa went first to Washington, Darryn Peterson second to Utah, and Cameron Boozer third to Memphis, and by September Boozer and Chicago's Caleb Wilson were the joint favorites for Rookie of the Year at BetMGM. Boozer, the college player of the year at Duke, averaged 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 4.1 assists in 38 games there, and he lands on a Grizzlies roster that has traded away Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Ja Morant since June 2025.

The oddsmakers' thinking there is instructive. Dybantsa, the top pick, sits behind Boozer partly because it is less clear how big his role in Washington will be, a reminder that this award often tracks opportunity as faithfully as it tracks talent. Even so, nine of the last ten winners were drafted in the top five, so I would not bet against the headliners.

All of which returns me to the opening question, and I think the answer is that the price of one more run is not measured in dollars at all. At media day, each of the Sixers' starters spoke about the sacrifices needed to win it all: Maxey giving up shots, Brown reshaping his role, Embiid being asked, as ever, to stay healthy. James wrote in July that he had asked himself what he was really playing for, and the roster he has joined suggests an answer in which the bargain salary is only the first installment. None of this makes Philadelphia the favorite; San Antonio and Oklahoma City remain the likelier champions. The first payment comes due on Tuesday night, October 20th, at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks will raise their championship banner before the Sixers tip off, and James will make his home debut two nights later against Cleveland, the team that drafted him in 2003.