These seven storylines will define the 2026 NBA playoffs: Best player, Tatum's comeback, same old Knicks?

On that note... we're in pretty uncharted waters when it comes to Wembanyama's "best in the world" case. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar might have been the best player on Earth the moment he arrived in Milwaukee, but he played a full college career and turned 23 during his rookie season. You could argue that James scaled the mountain as early as 2007, when he improbably reached the NBA Finals at 22, but that was his fourth NBA season. This is Wembanyama's third, and it would take a few years before James achieved a true consensus over Kobe Bryant. If Wembanyama wins the championship here and now, there probably isn't going to be much of a debate.

Jokić probably has the most at stake in this regard. This may be Gilgeous-Alexander's best chance at the best in the world title, but he's the leader of a brewing dynasty. He's going to have years to burnish his résumé in other ways. Jokić is 31. He is by no means showing signs of aging, but he's certainly on the least desirable point of the standard aging curve of the three. That's true of him individually, but it's more broadly true of his team. The Thunder and Spurs are just getting started. The Nuggets have spent their draft picks and paid years of luxury taxes and collectively aged in all of the ways the NBA's roster-building ecosystem is designed to punish. They're set for a monster luxury tax bill next season, one that's probably either going to cost them key restricted free agent Peyton Watson or force them to trade another starter to keep him. They're probably never going to have a roster this deep again, and the Thunder and Spurs are only going to get more imposing in future postseasons.

When Jokić won his first championship, it didn't draw quite the respect it deserved because he didn't a single 50-win team on the way there. If he wins this title, going through both Wembanyama and Gilgeous-Alexander and their superior rosters to do it, that's going to open historical doors for him that very, very few players ever walk through. Wembanyama is pursuing even more exclusive company. We're all thinking it: he has "greatest of all time" potential. The long march to Jordan and James could well start now. And if Gilgeous-Alexander manages to avert it? Jordan may be out of reach, but pretty much every other all-time guard probably starts sweating. You won't find many postseasons in NBA history that had these sorts of all-time stakes for three different players.

2. Whatever is about to happen for LeBron James

The Houston Rockets are probably going to eliminate the Los Angeles Lakers in four or five games. It's a sad ending to a once-promising season, but it's the likeliest outcome with Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves likely sidelined for the series. There is a chance that nine days from now, JJ Redick calls a timeout with 30 seconds remaining, LeBron James exits the game to a standing ovation, and we never see him play in another NBA game.

It's possible that's where this is headed. A report on Friday suggested that retirement remains a "real possibility" for James when this season ends. More likely, James is knocked out relatively early and proceeds to hover over the entire rest of the postseason as the most significant free agent the NBA has had this decade. Every time New York or Cleveland loses, the whispers are going to get louder. There will inevitably be some mystery team eager to pitch the greatest player of this generation over the summer when they are eliminated. Denver has been trying to get that meeting since 2018.  We don't yet know what James' financial demands are going to be over the summer, but he's a 41-year-old billionaire. If he's willing to take the minimum as some of these rumors require, we're walking into the most fertile speculation ground in basketball history: the most famous player in the world plausibly available to every team in the league.

It's been two paragraphs and we haven't even considered a very basic possibility: what if he wins? What if a 41-year-old LeBron James manages to singlehandedly win a playoff series in which his team is currently a +520 underdog, or failing that, at least manages to hold the Rockets off long enough for Dončić and/or Reaves to return? Nobody's betting on that, but we can't exactly rule it out. It's not as though James hasn't solo'd his way through series before. He just averaged a tidy 28 points, 12.7 assists and 7.7 rebounds in the three full games he played after Dončić and Reaves went down. The Rockets are plenty dysfunctional.

We just spent 700 words or so doing legacy talk for players a decade LeBron's junior. His legacy is secure and there's little that could happen in his 40s that would affect it. But one last superhuman performance would be a perfect coda to an almost perfect career. Does James have one last masterpiece left in him? That question makes a series that will almost certainly be one-sided among the most interesting of the entire postseason.

3. Is Jayson Tatum about to have the greatest comeback ever?

What's the standard for midseason comebacks in NBA history? Probably Michael Jordan in 1995, right? He showed up in February, averaged 27 points in 17 games, and lost in the second round. In case you spent the 90s under a rock, Michael Jordan didn't lose in the second round very often. It just goes to show how rare it is to show up in March and expect to win in May and June. It just doesn't happen. A key player can miss extended stretches, sure. Chet Holmgren played 32 regular-season games in a championship season a year ago. But there's no precedent for a superstar missing more than half of the year, debuting at the end of the regular season and going on to win it all.

Tatum is trying to set one, and he's doing it after one of the speedier recoveries from a torn Achilles in recent NBA history. He's not quite at Jordan's statistical pace, but he's not far off either. Considering the increased degree of difficulty on Tatum's injury recovery relative to a baseball sabbatical, 22 points per game in 16 appearances seems almost miraculous. The Celtics are +150 favorites to reach the NBA Finals.

Tatum has obviously done so before, winning the title in 2024 and coming two games short in 2022, but it all felt so... workmanlike. We've spent years debating who would eventually replace James as the face of the league and Celtics fans are perpetually annoyed that Tatum is left out of those conversations. Tatum's never quite reached the level as a player needed for such a distinction. He has no top-three MVP finishes and typically hovered between the middle and back of the top-10 in "best in the world" rankings before his injury. But productivity was never really the issue. Being the face of the league is about something bigger than just basketball. It's about your place in the broader NBA narrative, and Tatum, for as successful as he's been as a player, has never been an especially compelling character.

What's the hook? His playing style is lethal and under-appreciated, but not nearly as exciting to watch as some of his peers. He's good at everything. His superpower is having no weaknesses. That's an enormously valuable team-building trait and a comic book that would never sell any copies. He's not a James-esque athlete or a Jokić or Curry-esque innovator, and he doesn't make up for it with his personality like, say, Anthony Edwards does. He got drafted, immediately started winning and never really stopped. He's been nothing but a consummate professional without a shred of drama. Great for the Celtics. Understandably boring as a character, and not boring in the fun ways that players like Tim Duncan or Kawhi Leonard have been.

This is part of what has made Tatum's remarkable comeback so captivating. Not even Jordan could return mid-season and win it all. Kevin Durant was the previous standard for Achilles recoveries, but he sat twice as long as Tatum did and still hasn't won it all since. Klay Thompson won a championship after a two-and-a-half-year absence, but as a supporting piece on Stephen Curry's team. Tatum has an opportunity to outdo all of them. For the first time, there's a story for fans outside of Boston to connect to. It's a chance for him to do something no other player has done, to finally carve out that unique place in basketball lore with the greatest comeback in the history of the sport.

4. Do the Pistons need to adjust to the playoffs? Or do the playoffs need to adjust to the Pistons?

Half-court offense wins championships. At least, that's what history says, and if you doubt the Detroit Pistons as a realistic championship contender, this is probably why. They ranked 16th in the NBA in half-court points per play, according to Cleaning the Glass, which has tracked this metric since the 2003-04 season. Can you guess how many Finals teams have ranked 16th or lower since then? Only four:

• The 2022-23 Heat ranked 23rd, but remember, they got pretty lucky with opponents' injuries. Giannis Antetokounmpo got hurt in their first-round series and Jayson Tatum got hurt early in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. Plus, Jimmy Butler's track record as a playoff riser is well-known.
• The 2019-20 Lakers ranked 16th, but had historic playoff riser LeBron James, the shooting boost Anthony Davis got in the Orlando bubble, and playoff Rajon Rondo leading their bench units.
• The 2006-07 Cavaliers ranked 25th... but also had LeBron.
• The 2004-05 Pistons ranked 25th, but benefited from their expected preseason competition, Indiana, losing Ron Artest to a season-long suspension and Miami star Dwyane Wade getting hurt in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals.

So history basically says there are two paths to the Finals with a below-average half-court offense. You can either be a great defense that gets a bit of luck in who they face, or you can have LeBron James. The Pistons don't have LeBron James. They do have a great defense, but we can't exactly predict for luck. History says, on this metric at least, they're pretty unlikely to make the Finals.

But the NBA ecosystem isn't static. In the regular season, it's already shifting in Detroit's direction. A decade ago, 81.1% of plays were classified as half-court, and the NBA teams, on average, rebounded 27% of their own misses. This season, only 78.8% of plays were classified as half-court, and the average NBA team rebounded 29.3% of their own misses. Teams are running more and they're emphasizing the offensive glass more. The Pistons thrive on both fronts. No team spends less time running half-court offense. Only the Rockets, Blazers and Hornets get more offensive rebounds.

The NBA, it seems, is shifting in ways that are favorable towards the Pistons. Anecdotally, we started to see bits of this drift into the playoffs last year. The Pacers are a sorely underrated half-court offense, but they ran plenty en route to last year's Finals. The Rockets nearly stole a series against the Warriors almost entirely on the back of offensive rebounding. The Pistons are hoping that these broader league changes start to show up more prominently in the playoffs. Or, perhaps more accurate, they're hoping to impose these changes on the rest of the postseason field.

If you just ignore their half-court offense, the Pistons profile as a championship contender in practically every other way. They won 60 games. They're the No. 2 defense. They win the turnover battle convincingly most nights, and while they foul more than anyone, they get to the line more than basically everyone else. They outscore their opponents by a whopping 14.2 points per game in the paint! Shooting has been king in the NBA for the past decade or so. The ability to create and make tough shots has dominated basically all of playoff history. The Pistons—historically a face of the opposing 'defense wins championships' cliché—are about to test some of our most sacred preconceptions about winning championships in the 2020s, and if they pull this off, might force their competition to rethink their own approaches to roster-building moving forward.

5. Are these the same old Knicks?

Knicks fans had a laundry list of complaints for Tom Thibodeau in the buildup to his ouster last spring. Mike Brown has addressed basically all of them. The Knicks jumped from 28th to 12th in 3-point attempt rate and 18th to 14th in passes per game. Tracking data is an imperfect measurement of player movement, but it's worth noting that they also jumped from 21st to 10th in average distance traveled offensively. Their No. 7 defense outranked any of Thibodeau's, and lineups featuring Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns together jumped from the 41st to the 52nd percentile in defensive efficiency. Their bench has been so good that there's active speculation that the Knicks have benched standout rookie Mo Diawara just to hide him ahead of restricted free agency. Whether or not this is true, the Knicks have been deep enough that it's plausible. On paper, this is a different team, the exact team the Knicks were supposed to want, the one that would finally take them back to the Finals.

So why doesn't it feel different? You could point to the starters once again underwhelming, at least together. Championship starting lineups tend to post double-digit net ratings. New York's standard openers were at +3.3 last year and +2.3 this season. Too many games still tend to hinge on whether or not Josh Hart's 3s are going in. Mikal Bridges too easily fades into the background of games. Towns is having an admirable defensive season. Nobody buys it lasting through a playoff run in which he's going to again get picked on, especially by Boston. More concerning: both his shooting and drive numbers are meaningfully down. Towns can justify his defensive foibles when he's the best offensive center in the NBA not named Nikola Jokić. It's a bit harder when the shot isn't falling and he's committing dumb turnovers.

New York's core players are all in their prime. They are healthy and their best reserves remain affordable. The East isn't as weak as they might have hoped, but it's weaker than it's going to be in the years to come as Tatum gets some distance from his injury, Tyrese Haliburton returns and young teams like the Pistons, Hawks and Hornets age into their primes. If it's ever going to happen for this Knicks team... it probably needs to happen now. There are real statistical signals that it could. And yet, no one will actually believe it until it happens.

6. Who's the party crasher?

The NBA playoffs aren't nearly as formulaic as critics think, or at least they haven't been lately. The last three NBA Finals have featured a No. 4 seed (last year's Pacers), a No. 5 seed (the 2024 Mavericks) and a No. 8 seed (the 2023 Heat). Neither No. 1 seed reached the Finals in 2021 or 2022. And in 2020, the fifth-seeded Heat got there. Someone unexpected is going to make a real run. Who's it going to be? Here are three quick candidates:

• Does Cleveland count as unexpected? The Cavaliers are a No. 4 seed, at least, though they have plenty of reason to believe they're better than that. They won 64 games a year ago, injuries and lost depth hampered them this year. They don't have a single five-man lineup that has played even 90 minutes together or appeared in more than 10 games. You know what group has worked though? The four-man core of Donovan Mitchell, James Harden, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, which has outscored opponents by 52 points in 92 minutes.
• Can Philadelphia hang on long enough to get Joel Embiid back? The 76ers face the Celtics in the first round, and the answer is probably no. But remember, James Harden stole a road win in Boston without Embiid in Game 1 of their 2023 matchup. If Tyrese Maxey can do the same and Embiid can make it back in the middle of the series, the 76ers are so loaded with star-level talent that they'd pose a threat to just about anyone.
• The Timberwolves have made consecutive Western Conference finals. Their road back as a No. 6 seed will be more precarious than ever: back-to-back matchups with the Nuggets and, likely, the Spurs. But they've beaten the Nuggets in the playoffs before and the Spurs have never been here. They're an unusually strong No. 6 seed that has struggled with health issues in the second half of the season, but fortified the bench with Ayo Dosunmu and is now ready to throw some haymakers.

7. Who's going to panic when they lose?

We've seen more Cinderellas in recent postseasons, but that's also created quite a bit more disappointed stepsisters. Some team is going to lose earlier than it expects to, and that team is going to make serious as a result. Who are our "blow it up" candidates? Here are the top three:

• Yes Cleveland makes both categories. That's what happens when you trade a 26-year-old All-Star for a 36-year-old All-Star. That's as "win now" as trades get, and if it doesn't lead to immediate winning, virtually anything is potentially on the table. An Evan Mobley-for-Giannis Antetokounmpo swap? A second LeBron James return? A Donovan Mitchell trade? The Cavaliers haven't made the conference finals since James left. They've now had Mitchell for four years. He's not waiting forever.
• An owner sharing Finals expectations in a radio interview never bodes well for those responsible if they don't live up to them. James Dolan did so earlier this season, and that put even more pressure on the Knicks in this vital postseason. If the Knicks fall short, everyone but Brunson is probably on the table in pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
• The Raptors were linked to just about every big name on the trade market in February. They have some of the same profile questions that the Pistons do: great defense, great in transition, nobody trusts them to score late in close playoff games. They also have a full complement of tradable first-round picks and several mid-sized contracts to deal. If Cleveland dispatches them as easily as expected, they're going to be aggressive in upgrading this offseason.