ESPN's predicted standings for the 2026-27 season are out, and the short version is that six teams got slotted somewhere the room does not believe they belong. The two loudest names on that list: Kawhi Leonard's Raptors and the new-look Lakers.
Start with Toronto, because that is the sentence that stops you. Kawhi Leonard in a Raptors uniform again is a full circle that nobody had drawn even a year ago, and a preseason panel trying to place that team in an order is essentially guessing at how much of the 2019 version of that partnership still exists. I do not have the complete Toronto depth chart in front of me yet, so I am not going to pretend I know how the minutes shake out. But the name alone reorganizes a conference.
checked the almanac: the last time Leonard wore that jersey it ended with a corner jumper in Game 7 against Philadelphia that bounced on the rim four times before it fell, and then a championship. that is not a prediction. that is just a thing that happened, and it is still one of the great ten seconds in the sport's history.
The Lakers land in the same bucket for a different reason. "New-look" is doing heavy lifting in that phrase, and prediction panels historically handle roster churn badly. They tend to average the parts instead of imagining the fit, which is how a reconstructed team gets filed three or four spots off where it finishes.
And the reaction tells you how seriously the league takes these exercises, which is to say very. Miami reshaped its whole championship outlook this offseason and still got left out of the six most likely Eastern Conference finalists. Utah got overlooked again, which by now is practically a franchise tradition. Nobody admits they read the list. Everybody reads the list.
What comes next is the only thing that ever settles it. Camp opens, the rotations get real, the guys who were traded in July have to actually play together in October, and every one of these placements either ages into wisdom or into a screenshot. Toronto is the one I will be watching hardest, because a healthy Leonard changes the ceiling of an entire conference, and health is the only variable that has ever mattered with him.