The most important players of a given NBA season are the best ones. Shocker. The 2027 NBA champion will probably hinge first and foremost on the Victor Wembanyamas and Shai Gilgeous-Alexanders of the world. We know they're great. It's not as though the stars cancel each other out, but we take their greatness as a given and make predictions accordingly. Where our predictions are usually wrong, though, is a tier or two down.

A reserve becomes a starter. A starter becomes an All-Star. An All-Star becomes a legend. Someone, or multiple someones, vastly outperforms expectations in a way that pushes his team over the top. These are the X-Factors of a given season, the players whose development or fit or health has a chance to turn a contender into a champion. We've now seen a week of games in the 2026-27 season, and these are the players who stand out as the major swing pieces in the 2027 championship race.

1. Ajay Mitchell, Thunder

The Oklahoma City Thunder gave 11 players at least 900 minutes last season. Five of those players, due to either trade or injury, are either gone or should not be expected to return this season. The Thunder preemptively replaced Isaiah Joe with Jared McCain in a move that now looks brilliant. The addition of Aday Mara deepens the front-court enough to potentially offset some of the lost wing depth, like Aaron Wiggins.

The defensive losses of Lu Dort and Cason Wallace are substantial. The same is true for Jalen Williams, perhaps more than either, because of his size. Still, the Thunder have an incredible collection of rim-protectors, and they still have Alex Caruso, who can guard anyone on the planet. They'll be able to find a wing defender on the trade market if they want to. Whether it's someone like Derrick Jones Jr. on the lower end or Herb Jones on the pricier one, adding defense is doable given their available assets and salary circumstances.

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But replacing Williams-level shot-creation is a much, much taller order, and unless the Thunder are willing to put an amount of draft capital on the table that we can't presently foresee, it's going to have to come internally. The Thunder had no path to good shots against the Spurs last season with Williams and Ajay Mitchell hurt. The offense became mostly contested Shai Gilgeous-Alexander mid-rangers in that series, with a dash of hot shooting from Caruso and McCain barely keeping them afloat.

For now, Mitchell remains healthy, and his volume has soared since Williams went down. The Thunder, for now, will likely treat him as their No. 2 option. The mid-range scoring is there. The finishing and the pull-up shooting -- both necessities for advantage creation against Victor Wembanyama -- have to improve. Mitchell has already grown plenty in two NBA seasons, and the opportunity now in front of him is a tremendous one. He's drawn Jalen Brunson comparisons for the past year. Well... who just slayed Wembanyama in the Finals? Mitchell has a ways to go before he can live up to a name that lofty, but he flashed future stardom in the first two rounds of Oklahoma City's run a year ago. That's where he'll have to go if the Thunder are going to avenge last year's loss to San Antonio.

2. Ivica Zubac, Pacers

Ivica Zubac had 15 rebounds on opening night. Do you remember the last time Myles Turner had 15 rebounds in a game? November 2021. Six years ago. For players with relatively similar levels of career accomplishment, you may not find two players who differ so much stylistically at the same position. The Indiana Pacers won the East with five-out spacing and all of the offensive advantages that came with it. Indiana no longer has that. They've traded it in for, well, everything else.

He's the far sturdier defender at this point. Rebounding is, well, something new for Indiana out of its centers. Zubac is a stronger screener and passer than Turner, and he's a more capable interior scorer as well. Figuring out how to integrate all of those skills without letting his lack of 3-point shooting get in the way of everything they already had is going to be a process, and early injuries to both Zubac and Tyrese Haliburton will slow that process.

Zubac and Haliburton have only played 52 minutes together, but the early returns here are positive. It can be hard to find a place to stick non-shooting bigs when two other players run pick-and-roll, but Haliburton's ability to draw two to the ball and Pascal Siakam's ability to attack basically any coverage balances the court comfortably enough for Zubac to feast from the dunker's spot.

When Zubac is screening in these actions, his passing against 4-on-3s fits Indiana should almost always lead to good looks.

The Brooklyn Nets and New Orleans Pelicans in October are hardly the sort of defenses Indiana should expect to see when it counts, but the Pacers will dial up the offensive sophistication as the comfort here grows. For now, everyone is just getting to know each other, but if the Pacers can figure out how to take advantage of all of the new things Zubac brings to the table, their offense is going to be even more diverse for this playoff run than it was in 2025.

3. LaMelo Ball, Timberwolves

The Charlotte Hornets didn't think LaMelo Ball could be their franchise player. The Minnesota Timberwolves didn't need him to be. Putting him next to Anthony Edwards would theoretically amplify the best elements of his game and sand down some of its edges. You don't have to take as many circus shots or try the sort of audacious things that lead to turnovers that Ball has been doing forever when defenses are fixated mostly on someone else. In small doses, those things lead to the sort of "giddiness" that Chris Finch has welcomed. In more concentrated form, well, you get unserious basketball, the sort Charlotte is trying to get away from.

That's what makes this early Edwards injury so enormous for Minnesota. It's not just the absence of his productivity. It's the fact that this is a relatively new and young team still figuring out its identity, and the last team that had Ball decided that the foibles that come with building everything around him were not an identity they wanted to try to sustain. Minnesota looked great in its first four games with Ball and Edwards together. 

Ball was dreadful in his first solo star outing, finishing with nearly as many turnovers (6) as he had points (8). His best season in Charlotte, a year ago, came after the arrival of Kon Knueppel and the emergence of Brandon Miller. Before the Hornets could actually support him, well, things were uglier.

That's not exactly exclusive to Ball, but it's the fear Minnesota is facing now. The Timberwolves are deeper than the Hornets teams Ball grew up with, but there's no Knueppel or Miller around anymore. For better or worse, he is going to fully define the next few months of Minnesota's season, and finding the balance between the things that make him special and the things that Charlotte was afraid made him expendable is going to be tricky considering just how much Minnesota now needs out of him. The stakes here are high. Oklahoma City's injuries create vulnerability atop this conference in a way that may not exist in a year. It's hard to imagine Minnesota taking advantage of that from the Play-In Tournament, so winning regular-season games while Edwards is out really matters. Doing so in a way that doesn't compromise the identity of the team Edwards comes back to matters more. 

4. Alperen Sengun, Rockets

One of the biggest storylines of the 2026 playoffs were the specific ways a handful of centers bothered Wembanyama. Very, very few bigs can genuinely do it offensively. Isaiah Hartenstein did so with his parabolic floater. Karl-Anthony Towns did so with his combination of shooting and driving. The Spurs, with Oklahoma City compromised, are the measuring stick right now. And something we're reminded of every time the Houston Rockets face San Antonio is how much Alperen Sengun seems to relish the challenge of attacking the NBA's best defender.

Sengun shot 17 of 23 with Wembanyama as his primary defender last season, according to NBA.com tracking data. He just posted a 29-point, seven-assist game against Wembanyama a week ago. He has a notable strength advantage over the Defensive Player of the Year, and his game is starting to round out in such a way that he poses many of the problems Towns did, albeit in different ways. 

He doesn't have a Hartenstein-level floater, but it's good enough and arcs high enough to force Wembanyama to step away from the rim to try to contest it, which in turn opens up the paint for Sengun as a passer. He's starting to take 3s again too, though we'll see how long that lasts. A year ago, Sengun took 3.4 3s per game in his first 11 appearances and more or less stopped from there. With Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams back, it's probably a skill Sengun leans into a bit more this season, and it's another spot on the floor that Wembanyama has to respect.

Having some sort of answer to the Wembanyama question is a contention prerequisite moving forward. You may not be able to neutralize him completely, but you have to find a way to render him defensively mortal. There are only a handful of bigs in the NBA that can do that. Houston may have one of them, and if that's indeed the case, with the Thunder hobbled, they are probably the single Western Conference team best suited to unseating San Antonio and reaching the Finals.

5. Joel Embiid, 76ers

They may share a uniform, but Joel Embiid and the rest of the Philadelphia 76ers often look as though they play for different teams. Everyone else in the starting lineup and most of the bench wants to run. Between the outlet passing of LeBron James, Jaylen Brown's ability to punish the wrong cross-matches and the sheer athleticism of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, Philadelphia should be among the best transition offenses in the NBA. They rank 27th in transition frequency and 21st in transition efficiency, according to Cleaning the Glass. This isn't just an Embiid problem, but he sticks out like a sore thumb in this respect.

This is by no means an insurmountable stylistic clash. Remember, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played center for the Showtime Lakers. The ability to modulate pace can be a lethal weapon, and Embiid remains a very effective player. Thus far, he's just not the sort of effective center who makes sense on this specific roster. Individual shot-creation is plentiful here. Someone bouncier, someone who uses fewer possessions and makes quicker decisions, probably fits a bit better here. Too bad. Embiid is on a three-year, super max contract that figures to be very difficult to trade. You don't always get the ideal stylistic fit. You make do with what you have.

He's made some concessions on this front. He's holding the ball almost a full second less per possession than he did a year ago. He's in good shape, moving better than he is in years... though still far from where he'll need to be against offenses that can put him in the blender as the New York Knicks did a year ago. He remains an effective rim-protector defensively, though he's closer to a stationary one. It's far too early to judge Philadelphia's defense as a whole. The on-off numbers are deceptive because of how limited Embiid's backups are and how absurdly lucky they've thus far gotten on opponents' 3-pointers when he's played.

It's not as though 2020 Anthony Davis is walking through that door (even if 2026-27 Davis is a popular fake trade target). Embiid is mostly who he is, and the Sixers are going to have to find ways to blend what he does best with what their four other starters actually need out of a center. It'd be nice if he started making his 3s again, a problem that has now persisted several seasons. This is one way the speed disparity here could be beneficial: trailer 3s. His shooting just about everywhere has been down thus far, and that's going to have to correct itself if he's going to justify his volume.

The theory of this roster was less about a specific style than sheer, overwhelming talent. The idea here is that Philadelphia can generate advantages and mismatches so easily with so many high-level players on the floor that even a version of the team that isn't optimized can be great. That's a lot easier in October than in May. Finding the synergies between these very different sorts of players will be the entire point of this regular season for the 76ers.