Every team in the NBA has made its debut in the 2026-27 season after the Denver Nuggets and Cleveland Cavaliers both played for the first time on Thursday night. The regular season is genuinely eternal with 82 games on the calendar for each franchise before the playoffs start, but it’s our right as sports fans to overreact to the first thing we see after the long summer layoff.

Some of these super trends aren’t going to last. Victor Wembanyama and Jayson Tatum were both terrible offensively in their season debuts, which put the San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics at the bottom of their respective conferences. I think both will be just fine. Jaxson Hayes leads the NBA in blocks after notching six in his first game as a member of the Utah Jazz. It’s my job to cover the NBA, and I’ll admit I didn’t even know Hayes was on the Jazz this season.

My overreactions after last year’s first games had a few truth bombs when I wrote that Wembanyama was the best player in the world and the Knicks were the team to beat in the East. How will my early overreactions age this season? Let’s get into it.

I didn’t put Ty Jerome on my breakout list for this season because I felt like he broke out last year when he ranked as the 8th best player in the NBA in EPM. Well, Jerome only played 15 games last year, so he’s still going to catch a lot of people by surprise. Jerome absolutely toyed with a poor Utah Jazz defense in his season opener by bombing threes, hitting off-balance runners off the dribble, and spraying out passes to his play finishers. Jerome was absolutely deadly as a pick-and-roll handler, and Jazz had no answer for him. It’s not a stretch to say he’s one of the best shot-makers alive. The Grizzlies are going to be good, and Jerome legitimately could be one of the better guards in the West.

The 2024-25 Boston Celtics shattered the NBA record for most three-point attempts in a single season with 3,955, which equated to 48.23 attempts per game. In their season opener, the Minnesota Timberwolves launched 50 threes, making 21 of them (41 percent), to beat the Miami Heat in Giannis Antetokounmpo’s debut. This was always the vision behind Minnesota’s off-season trade for LaMelo Ball, putting two expert pull-up three-point shooters together in his pairing with Anthony Edwards to keep opponents in a dangerous guessing game all year. I’ve maintained that if any team can beat the Spurs or Thunder in a playoff series this year, it’s the Wolves. They’re just going to attack defenses in highly unconventional ways, and if they get hot in a short series, anything can happen.

New Bulls lead executive Bryson Graham essentially said his team would be “Fun Bad” at media day, but there was nothing fun about Chicago’s 43-point loss to the Toronto Raptors to open the season. The Bulls are trying to turn rookie stud Caleb Wilson from an Amare Stoudemire or Shawn Kemp style play-finisher at the college level to a Paul George or Tracy McGrady style wing creator in the NBA, and there’s naturally going to be a lot of growing pains. Even if Wilson’s three-point shot is better than he showed at North Carolina, his ball handling is still very bad. The Bulls just don’t have much talent around him. Here’s how I put it on Twitter — and I don’t think there’s much else to say.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker won NBA Most Improved Player last season as he went from a reserve on the Timberwolves to a starter on the Atlanta Hawks. I don’t think he’s done improving. The 28-year-old is the rare guard who provides on- and off-ball utility while also being above-average defensively. He’s only getting more comfortable picking his spots and hunting his own offense, and his biggest shot of the night in a win over the Orlando Magic came off a play that started with him setting a hard screen. NAW has the size and versatility that star guards are made of, and I think his career will only continue to keep trending up.

An Achilles tear at age-35 would be the end of most players’ careers. Not Damian Lillard. The superstar guard returned home to the Portland Trail Blazers to rehab the injury last season, and taking his time to come back was a smart move. Lillard looked like his old self as the Blazers humiliated the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday night, with 25 points, six assists, and only one turnover on 7-of-12 shooting from the floor. Portland should continue to be smart with Dame by resting him at opportune times, especially when they have such great guard depth. In the right doses, Lillard sure looks like he can still be a killer on the offensive end, and that’s great to see.

Paul George was at or near the top of every “worst contracts in the NBA” list last year. That didn’t deter the Celtics from taking him on in the controversial Jaylen Brown trade despite $110 million over two years remaining on the deal. George is kind of the exact opposite of Brown: way less durable and less explosive going to the basket, but much better as an off-ball player on both ends of the floor. George’s Celtics debut was perfect: 38 points and five steals on 7-of-12 shooting from three. Well, it wasn’t actually perfect because Boston blew the biggest lead on opening night in league history. Still, George is going to be really good for the Celtics this year, and I still suspect Boston might come out on top in the Brown trade, depending how those future draft picks eventually turn out.

No one expected the Suns to win 45 games last year, but they turned into one of the league’s most pleasant surprises by crushing the margins at every opportunity. More than anything, Jordan Ott’s team just felt like it played harder than any other team in the league, but that style can only take you so far. The Suns looked flat-out unprepared to open the season as the Blazers ran them out of the gym from the first quarter. Cinderella stories usually aren’t built to last, and the clock could strike midnight early for Phoenix.

Dylan Harper gave some quotes to GQ in the preseason that indicated he didn’t want to come off the bench. I’m on Harper’s side on this one, but San Antonio’s decision to start all of Harper, De’Aaron Fox, and Stephon Castle felt like it was more based on personality management than actual tactics. The Spurs flipped their season last year by putting Julian Champagnie in the starting lineup, and I suspect that will happen again as the playoffs draw near. I like putting Fox and Castle off the bench and Champagnie and Devin Vassell in the starting lineup. What happens when Tobias Harris is healthy? The Spurs have a lot of buttons to push, and that’s a good thing, but championship teams demand sacrifice, and that’s going to have to happen eventually for San Antonio to reach its ceiling.

I thought I was picking the Thunder to win the 2027 NBA championship all offseason before I flipped my pick to the Spurs at the last second. I’m already regretting it. OKC still has the best roster in the league with Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell healthy. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is ready to fight MVP voter fatigue, and Chet Holmgren doesn’t want to go out sad again like he did last season. The title still runs through OKC.