![\"Luka](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2256532020-e1787749190986.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Luka Doncic #77 of the Los Angeles Lakers are No. 11 in the NBA power rankings<\/p>\n
With less than a week to go before the summer gives way to September, we can pretty much pronounce the bulk of NBA<\/a> business complete. Most teams have rounded out their rosters, and most free agents have found a home. There are still players lingering on the market, extensions to hash out, restricted free agents to be signed and\/or traded and, as always, there\u2019s Jonathan Kuminga, who appears to enjoy the attention of being the last guy to sign.<\/p>\n But with that business handled, we turned to some personnel folks to see how teams are stacking up heading into the 2026-27 season. After all, we are just 27 days<\/a> from teams participating in preseason games outside the US (Houston, Dallas, Toronto and Miami) opening their training camps, and just 34 days away from all teams getting started.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s check the power rankings, with thoughts from coaches and scouts.<\/p>\n NBA Power Rankings Top 10: Thunder Still the Best<\/p>\n The Knicks were the NBA champs, and the Spurs won the West, but it is important to remember that the Thunder had a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals despite playing without the team\u2019s second-best player, Jalen Williams. Maybe the Spurs would have won anyway, and maybe the Knicks could have taken down OKC.<\/p>\n And the Thunder had to dump three players\u2013Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins\u2013for financial reasons this summer.<\/p>\n Still, when healthy, the Thunder have the best roster in the league, and have championship credentials. Said one Western Conference coach: \u201cThe Spurs have great young players but no one is more complete than the Thunder.\u201d<\/p>\n Team to watch: Sixers. Eastern Conference scout says, \u201cPhiladelphia is a great fantasy league team but I want to see how they make this work on the court. They\u2019re going to talk about sacrifice a lot, and they might want to sacrifice. But doing it is a lot harder.\u201d<\/p>\n NBA Power Rankings:\u00a0 Lakers at 11<\/p>\n The most interesting teams in this bunch are probably the Pacers and Jazz, because both were intentionally terrible last season but stand to bounce back this year. It might be too early to count the Jazz as a legitimate playoff team in the\u00a0 West, but it\u2019s not hard to envision that unit coming together quickly.<\/p>\n The Lakers revamped the roster by dumping LeBron James, paying Austin Reaves, selling out for Walker Kessler and adding role players around Luka Doncic. Not everyone\u2019s a believer, though.<\/p>\n Team to watch: Lakers. Western Conference coach says, \u201cThey will score and they will be fun to watch, but they\u2019re lacking size and rebounding and they\u2019re asking too much of Kessler. They just have too many holes, I see them as a 46, 47-win team.\u201d<\/p>\n Down at 21-30 .. Bottom of the Barrel<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tSean Deveney<\/a> is a veteran sports reporter covering the NBA, NFL and MLB for Heavy.com. He has written for Heavy since 2019 and has more than two decades of experience covering the NBA, including 17 years as the lead NBA reporter for the Sporting News. Deveney is the author of 7 nonfiction books, including “Fun City,” “Before Wrigley became Wrigley,” and “Facing Michael Jordan.” More about Sean Deveney<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Luka Doncic #77 of the Los Angeles Lakers are No. 11 in the NBA power rankings With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-869062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}