Everyone is lining up for another Thunder-Spurs showdown in the West, but the conference has more chaos baked into it than that. Minnesota changed its tone, Houston added stability in the backcourt, and the Lakers reset around Luka Doncic after letting LeBron James walk. With opening night closing in, here are five bold calls for the Western Conference.
The first one starts in Dallas, where Cooper Flagg is set up to explode. Vegas has the Mavericks at 34.5 wins, and that number looks too low.
Flagg’s rookie year was the stuff of instant legend: 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, the youngest player ever to score 50 in a game, and one of only two rookies ever to lead his team in total points, rebounds, assists and steals alongside Michael Jordan. He did it on a 26-56 team that played all season without Kyrie Irving and got Anthony Davis for just 20 games before the trade.
Now Irving is back from his torn ACL, Masai Ujiri is running the front office, Dusty May is coaching after a national title at Michigan, and the roster is stocked with wings and bigs. That’s enough to think Flagg takes the kind of second-year leap we’ve seen from LeBron, Kevin Durant and Doncic - and that Dallas sneaks into the playoffs as the West’s surprise team.
The Lakers, meanwhile, should have one of the league’s biggest individual scoring stories and one of its most frustrating endings. Doncic led the NBA with 33.5 points per game last season and earned his sixth straight All-NBA First Team nod before a hamstring strain in April knocked him out of the postseason and left him watching the Thunder sweep Los Angeles in the second round.
With LeBron gone, this is Luka’s team in every sense. Rob Pelinka brought back Austin Reaves, got Walker Kessler in a sign-and-trade and added Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton and Sandro Mamukelashvili.
The expectation here is simple: Doncic repeats as scoring champion and pushes toward 35 a night. The ending, though, doesn’t change much.
No second-round win again unless the Lakers crash the top two, because getting out of Round 1 means beating the Spurs, Thunder, Timberwolves, Rockets or Nuggets. That’s a steep climb, and it’s hard to see it happening.
If the Lakers fall short again, the Luka-AD trade still looks like a win - but Pelinka’s reluctance to go all in with Luka, LeBron and Reaves is what will hang over this era.
San Antonio’s most fascinating figure may not even be on the roster. Billy Donovan is now the Spurs’ lead assistant, and that alone makes him one of the most intriguing names in the conference.
He spent 11 seasons as an NBA head coach in Oklahoma City and Chicago, won two national titles at Florida, and has long been considered one of the sharpest minds in the sport. Now he’s next to Mitch Johnson, who just guided the Spurs to 62 wins and the NBA Finals at age 39.
That setup could go in opposite directions. In the best-case version, Donovan unlocks Victor Wembanyama’s offense, Wemby storms to MVP, and San Antonio rolls to 65-plus wins while staying the Thunder’s nightmare - they went 8-4 against OKC last season, playoffs included - and getting revenge for the Finals loss.
In the worst case, the offense stalls, the De’Aaron Fox-Stephon Castle-Dylan Harper point guard rotation turns messy, and Donovan ends up replacing Johnson midseason. That would be a very un-Spurs outcome, but hiring a big-name assistant to sit in the second chair is already a strange one.
Even with that uncertainty, the Thunder and Spurs still look built to separate from the pack in the regular season. The real question is whether Thunder-Spurs II ever happens.
The pick here is no, because Houston or Minnesota gets in the way in the second round. The Rockets have star talent in Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun, athleticism and defense from Amen Thompson and Tari Eason, rebounding from Steven Adams, and, unlike last season’s 52-win group, two proven playoff veterans to run the offense.
With Durant now 38 and the team holding valuable trade assets, including swap rights with Brooklyn in next summer’s draft, this feels like a real window. Still, the cleaner spoiler pick is Minnesota.
This has the feel of an Ant-Man MVP season. Anthony Edwards just put up career highs in scoring at 28.8 points per game, field-goal percentage at 48.9 and 3-point percentage at 39.9 while serving as the Timberwolves’ de facto point guard.
It ended with an injury during what could have been another run to the conference finals. Now LaMelo Ball and Ayo Dosunmu are there to create and space the floor, instead of Julius Randle clogging things up.
That’s a setup for a signature year from one of the league’s most magnetic stars.
And then there’s Golden State, where Draymond Green may end up shaping the title race somewhere else. Last season unraveled in January when Jimmy Butler tore his ACL, then Stephen Curry injured his knee days later.
The Warriors finished 37-45 and missed the playoffs. This year doesn’t look much cleaner.
Curry is 38 and reportedly still dealing with runner’s knee, Butler will miss the start of the season, Kristaps Porzingis is still battling a mysterious illness, and the Warriors are hard-capped at the second apron. That’s not a group built to stay still.
Green, who declined his $27.7 million player option to give Golden State room to chase LeBron before re-signing on the same one-year number, is the obvious trade chip. He’s on an expiring $27.7 million deal, still a four-time champion and former Defensive Player of the Year, and still capable of swinging a playoff series.
A move would likely need to be a three- or four-team deal, but Philadelphia could have interest now that one of Green’s friends has taken his talents to the City of Brotherly Love.
In Other News...
Spurs Camp Cuts Put New Focus On A Roster Battle To Watch
The Spurs trimmed their camp roster ahead of the 2026/27 season by waiving Taelon Peter, Malik Williams and Terry Taylor, part of the usual late-preseason sorting that comes with training camp competition. It is the kind of move that rarely grabs headlines on its own, but it does sharpen the focus on who is still standing as the Spurs continue to shape the back end of the roster.
Around the league, several other teams were making similar decisions, with the Hawks signing Giorgi Bezhanishvili to an Exhibit 10 deal, the Jazz adding Chance Moore and the Cavaliers waiving Jaxson Robinson. Cole Swider, DeAndre Williams and Steven Crowl were also let go by the Lakers, Clippers and Nuggets, respectively, underscoring how active this stretch can be as teams settle on their final looks before the season begins. [Read more 🡒]
Spurs May Be Seeing An Early Answer Behind Victor Wembanyama
The Spurs have spent the preseason looking for the kind of sturdy interior presence that can take some of the burden off Victor Wembanyama, and rookie center Tarris Reed Jr. has given them a promising early look. Reed has stood out for his work on the glass and around the rim, including a 17-rebound game against Utah and another strong showing against Phoenix, where he finished with three blocks and nine rebounds.
For a young big trying to earn trust in a crowded rotation, that sort of consistency matters as much as the headline numbers. Reed said he plans to keep bringing effort and persistence, and San Antonio will be watching to see whether that carries into a steady role as the season gets closer. The Spurs could use a reliable backup behind Wembanyama, and Reed has at least made that conversation worth having. [Read more 🡒]
Spurs Already Have One Big Concern With This Wembanyama Experiment
The Spurs spent a preseason look against Phoenixs backups trying something ambitious, dropping DeAaron Fox, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, Devin Vassell and Victor Wembanyama into a guard-heavy lineup that was always going to be watched closely. It was the first time that group had played together, according to coach Mitch Johnson, and even in a small sample it hinted at both sides of the equation San Antonio is trying to balance: enough ballhandling and perimeter talent to pressure defenses, plus the kind of size and activity Wembanyama brings to everything around him.
What showed up quickly, though, was the downside. The group flashed defensive promise, but the spacing and shooting issues were apparent early, leaving the Spurs with a familiar preseason question as they keep sorting through rotations before the games start to count. The idea is intriguing enough to keep revisiting, but the early returns suggest there is still plenty to iron out before this kind of look can be counted on in regular-season minutes. [Read more 🡒]