CLIP: Our Boldest NBA Predictions for the 2026-27 Season

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**Danny Leroux** (1:01)
All right, welcome to the RealGM Radio Summer Roundtable Series. This is our third edition of this that we're doing all of August. We're going live on YouTube on Wednesday mornings. And then we're posting the show on your podcast feeds after that. So make sure you hit that subscribe button on YouTube so you don't miss the live stream next week. We have a couple of different topics that we want to talk about today. In a little bit, we're going to be talking about whether the second apron is actually the big problem that people seem to be making it out to be. But we're going to start the show by playing a little game of NBA hindsight, except that we're going to be doing it before we have all of the hindsight. I want us to each identify something that feels debatable or uncertain right now that by the end of the season, we think everybody's going to look back and say, well, yeah, that was obvious. It could be about a player, a team, a trend, a contender, whatever you think. Mike, this was your idea when we were talking about ideas for today's show in our group text.
So let's start with you. What did you have in mind here?

**Mike Shearer** (1:57)
Since I'm starting us off, I feel like it's appropriate to take the lowest hanging fruit possible. I think by the end of the 2026, 2027 season, it'll be pretty obvious that Victor Wimminyama is the best player in the NBA. You could make a case for him right now, but I think you could also make a case for Nikola Jokic, and you could also make a case for Shea Gill, just Alexander, and a lot of people did.
Wimminyama was not MVP this year, obviously. After the playoff run he had, I think people are starting to lean that way. But if you think he can build even 5% on what he did last season while maintaining all defensive everything, I think we're going to look back and be like, this is definitely the guy, no question about it.

**Jared Dubin** (2:36)
Jared?
Yeah, I feel like this happened in game one of the Western Conference Finals as my dog has joined the show, and this is deciding to maybe agree, maybe not agree with this take. But I feel like it happened in game one of the Western Conference Finals where he had that just preposterous games in the game into overtime and everything. Like he's already by far the best defensive player in the league. And like Mike said, if he gets like 5% better offensively, I feel like this is something that just becomes very obvious.

**Danny Leroux** (3:00)
Where is he now? Is he just clearly top five, clearly top three?

**Jared Dubin** (3:06)
Yeah, he's clearly in that range. If he's not already the top one, you know?

**Danny Leroux** (3:11)
Right. Mike, you agree?

**Mike Shearer** (3:14)
Yeah, clearly top three.
I think, you know, I think it really is very close between those guys as of the end of last season. And I think that this is going to be the year, especially with Jokic starting to decline a tiny, tiny bit with age. This could be the year where it just becomes a separate, he's a separate tier unto himself, which right now I don't think that you could say that.

**Danny Leroux** (3:35)