Power Rankings, Off-Season 2026: Nobody Took the Crown Off alecb5 This Summer

alecb5 won the title at 14-7 and then did the thing champions do when nobody's looking: he quietly got better. The Giddey trade is the deal this league keeps re-litigating, and you know the shape of it by now, blakeeverroad shipped Josh Giddey for Walker Kessler and two first-round picks and alecb5 turned that into a championship. Here's the part that should scare everybody. He gave Kessler up in that deal, and then he went and got Kessler back this summer, flipping Tyler Herro and Chet Holmgren and a 2028 first to matticus808 to pull in Tyrese Haliburton and Kessler both. So the centerpiece he traded for Giddey is back on the roster, next to Luka Dončić, Jaylen Brown, Bam Adebayo, and Haliburton. You don't get to do that, he did it anyway. The champ is the champ.

avery228 is the new franchise that scares me, and it isn't close. Slot one in the dispersal draft, Anthony Edwards first overall, and then a roster that filled out like somebody who's done this before: Jalen Brunson, Franz Wagner, Pascal Siakam, Ivica Zubac, with Derrick White and Josh Hart and Shaedon Sharpe sitting on the bench like it's nothing. Zubac reportedly fractured a rib that ended his real-world season, but this is the off-season and the dynasty value is the value, so that's a footnote, not a wound. The counter-case is that we've never seen this GM lose a game in this league, that 0-0 is a record nobody's tested. Fine. Show me the hole in that roster first.

goochshot went 18-3 and has never won a thing, and now he's made the most goochshot move imaginable: he traded Victor Wembanyama. Sent Wemby and a stack of picks to lilsweet96 and came back with Scottie Barnes, Paolo Banchero, and Kon Knueppel, then bought Trey Murphy from matticus808 for two more firsts. So the best regular-season team that can't crack the bracket answered the question of why by trading away the most valuable young big in basketball for win-now bodies. James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Tyrese Maxey, Banchero, Barnes. That team will win a lot of games again. We have eighteen wins of evidence about what happens next.

brodiedean8 is the villain, and the villain is on the clock. The roster still reads like a fever dream, Stephen Curry and LeBron James and Nikola Jokić in one starting five, with Cade Cunningham and Amen Thompson keeping it from being a retirement home. Amen Thompson is reportedly the favorite for Most Improved, which is the one line on this team that points forward. Everything else points at the calendar. Jokić reportedly hyperextended his knee in December and missed a month, LeBron is reportedly an unrestricted free agent the Lakers have barely spoken to, and brodie does not hold his own first-round pick in 2027 or 2028 because he spent that future chasing this exact window. He went 19-2 last year and lost in Round 1. This is the roster of a man who decided the answer to that was more, not different. He bought Trae Young from 44Colt this off-season, sending out Jrue Holiday and Brandon Ingram and two more players to do it. The trophy case is full of regular seasons. The window is open right now or it isn't open at all.

BigSuge went 6-15 and then went shopping, and you have to respect the audacity even while you're circling the landmines. He bought Ja Morant and Jalen Green from Natebarrett5 with his own picks, bought Kyrie Irving and Darius Garland from lilsweet96, and already had Anthony Davis from an earlier raid on brodie. Kyrie, AD, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Ja, LaMelo Ball. That's a marquee. It's also a medical chart: Tatum's calf issue reportedly carries Achilles risk, AD has reportedly never been a sure thing for a full season, and Ja's availability has been a career-long coin flip. Don't hang last year's 6-15 on this group, because half of them weren't here for it. But a team built entirely out of names that come with asterisks is a team built to break in March.

44Colt runs a franchise literally named The Injury Report, went 13-8, and then assembled the most on-brand roster in league history. Kawhi Leonard and Kristaps Porziņģis came over from Natebarrett5 in February for a haul of future firsts. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker, Brandon Ingram, all under one roof. Then look down the list: Zach LaVine reportedly had season-ending hand surgery, Ingram reportedly had off-season heel surgery with recovery targeted for camp. The talent here is real and it's deep enough to win the league. Whether eight of these guys are upright at the same time in March is the entire season, and the team name is not a coincidence.

lilsweet96 is the new franchise that bet everything on one player, and his team name tells you who. Wemby and friends. He pried Victor Wembanyama out of goochshot, paying with Scottie Barnes and Paolo Banchero and Kon Knueppel, then turned around and sold Kyrie and Garland to BigSuge. lilsweet96 now holds the cornerstone every other GM wishes they'd kept. Around him sit Domantas Sabonis, De'Aaron Fox, Mikal Bridges, and a young swing in Ace Bailey. It's a real roster built around an irreplaceable bet. The bet is the whole thing.

Nighthawk2334 is the one who beat the villain, and you can never take that away from him. He bounced brodie out of Round 1, finished 11-10, and he's still got Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who's reportedly in the actual MVP race. The problem is what's behind SGA. Jamal Murray, Alperen Sengun, and Austin Reaves are a real core, but Fred VanVleet reportedly tore his ACL and missed all of last year, and Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson are parked on IR too. He added Tyler Herro this off-season for scoring punch. The top is a contender. The depth is a prayer.

Natebarrett5 went 3-18, then 10-11, and is now running the smartest slow build in the league. The Coopa Troopas drafted Cooper Flagg and added AJ Dybantsa with the third pick in the rookie draft, sitting them next to Dylan Harper, with Joel Embiid and Zion Williamson as the veteran ballast (Embiid's reportedly working back from an appendectomy and knee trouble, so that ballast comes with a question). The real work was selling: Kawhi and Porziņģis to 44Colt, Ja and Jalen Green to BigSuge, every deal coming back in young players and future firsts. This isn't a contender yet, it's the franchise everyone else's win-now gambles are quietly funding.

matticus808 is the burner account come to life, and the name fits the plan: hoard everything, contend never, at least not yet. He turned Haliburton and Kessler into Chet Holmgren and a stack of picks, cashed Tyler Herro into youth and seconds, and stockpiled a war chest of future firsts and rookies, Darryn Peterson, Kingston Flemings, Morez Johnson. There is no record because there's no season yet, and there's no veteran core because that was never the point. Everybody else is doing math on this season. He's doing math on 2029.

The dispersal draft handed three GMs a head start. Only one of them used it to build something the champ has to worry about, and it wasn't the one who landed Wemby.