We're now exactly one week into the 2026-27 NBA season, and the league is already chock full of pleasant surprises.

Although they haven't exactly faced a murderer's row of opponents yet, the rebuilding Memphis Grizzlies are 4-0. Ja Morant, Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers are 2-0 and have the league's best net rating. And save for a beatdown at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks, the LaMelo Ball-less Charlotte Hornets are already off and running despite being without both Kon Knueppel and Coby White.

But for every surprise, there's also been a disappointment. Such is life in a zero-sum league.

The reigning champion New York Knicks are still winless. The same goes for Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Miami Heat. Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs started the year 0-2 before beating up on the Cooper Flagg-less Dallas Mavericks. And we've already had our fair share of major injuries that could shake up the title race.

Here, we've assembled the seven biggest disappointments from the first week of the season, ranging from individual teams to general trends.

7. San Antonio Spurs

Out of all the teams featured here, the Spurs arguably have the least to worry about moving forward. While they started off 0-2, early-season losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets are hardly worth panicking about. With that said, a few red flags have popped up in the early going.

Victor Wembanyama had the worst shooting game of his career against the Thunder, finishing a ghastly 1-of-13 from the field. After Wemby made mincemeat out of Chet Holmgren in the Western Conference Finals, Holmgren and rookie center Aday Mara held their own against the French wunderkind in the season opener. Wemby bounced back with 25 points and 13 rebounds against the Rockets, although Amen Thompson blocked a potential game-tying Wemby layup in the waning seconds of the game to secure the win.

Perhaps Wemby will embrace his Destroyer Of Worlds destiny in the coming, but this has been a surprisingly muted start to the season for the player whom NBA general managers overwhelmingly picked as the MVP favorite coming into the year.

"I need to go back to playing the basketball I like," Wembanyama told reporters after the Thunder game. "This is not the sport I like right here. I've got no reason to be hesitant, no reason to not be myself. I'm good when I have fun. I missed a lot of shots I usually don't miss. But after that, I didn't go back to these shots, and I wasn't decisive. I might be overthinking it. I don't need to do more. I need to think less probably."

Tobias Harris (calf) has yet to make his Spurs debut, but his eventual return will also raise questions about whether San Antonio will stick with its three-guard starting lineup or if it prefers more size at the 4. The ascendance of both Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper make it seem like a matter of when De'Aaron Fox will be traded, not if, but the Spurs still have to bide their time until then.

6. Golden State Warriors

With Jimmy Butler (ACL) and Moses Moody (patellar tendon) sidelined to start the year, we knew the Warriors would be bad early on. Kristaps Porziņģis' ongoing issues with post orthostatic tachycardia syndrome aren't helping, either.

But did anyone foresee the Warriors being down so bad that they'd start two-way center Graham Ike in two of their first three games this season?

Getting spanked by Luka Dončić and the Los Angeles Lakers in the season opener was completely unsurprising, especially after Yaxel Lendeborg decided to tempt the fates and fire Luka up. Blowing a 12-point lead late in the fourth quarter against the Memphis Grizzlies is far less forgivable.

The Warriors have made it clear that they're planning on reining in Stephen Curry early in the season after a right knee injury wrecked the second half of his 2025-26 campaign. But the Warriors also might not have the margin of error to do so, at least until Moody, Butler and/or Porziņģis are back in the fold.

No one's going to shed too many tears for a franchise that won four championships over the past 12 years. But for anyone other than the most ardent Warriors haters, it's a bummer to see Curry and Draymond Green going out like this.

5. Denver Nuggets

In their season opener, the Denver Nuggets were held to only 84 points by the Thunder. Three-time MVP Nikola Jokić had only 13 points on 5-of-19 shooting, seven rebounds and five assists and was tied with Christian Braun for a team-worst minus-20.

Two nights later, the Nuggets needed to overcome a 20-plus-point second-half deficit against the New Orleans Pelicans, who are widely expected to be among the league's worst teams this season. Fans booed the Nuggets prior to their comeback, which drew the ire of Jokić afterward.

"We got booed at our first home game, and I think those fans who booed us, they don't need to come anymore," Jokić told reporters. "If you guys follow us, you know that we never quit and we've come back from much worse situations. So if they ask me, they are not welcome anymore."

On Monday, the boo birds were right back out at Ball Arena, as the Nuggets lost by double digits to the previously winless Golden State Warriors. Cameron Johnson missed that game with an ankle injury, but that alone shouldn't be the difference between a double-digit loss and a win.

The Nuggets lost Peyton Watson this offseason due to financial constraints, and their addition of DeMar DeRozan hasn't been enough to offset that in the early going. If they can't shake out of these early-season doldrums, will they be forced to consider a bigger shakeup at the trade deadline or next offseason?

4. New York Knicks

After the Knicks snapped their 53-year championship drought last season, it seemed as though they could do no wrong this year. That sentiment lasted exactly three games (if that).

Losing on ring night to the newly star-studded Philadelphia 76ers can be hand-waved away fairly easily. The same goes about their second loss to the Boston Celtics, as Jayson Tatum just buried them with timely shot after timely shot in crunch time. But it's far more difficult to overlook their loss to the Orlando Magic, particularly since Paolo Banchero was sidelined with an ankle injury and Jalen Suggs exited early with a knee injury as well.

"Games like this will tell us, our crap stinks. It does," Knicks head coach Mike Brown told reporters after the loss to the Magic. "And we're the only ones who can do anything about it. There's no light switch we can just turn on and go and win the ballgame. Nobody's giving us anything, so we have to be better with the little things until we start shooting the ball."

An overwhelming majority of GMs picked the Knicks as either the best or second-best team in the East heading into the season, but they've been anything but that in the first week. Losing Mitchell Robinson to the Celtics in free agency thanks to James Dolan's pathological fear of the second apron was a quietly big deal for the Knicks, as Andre Drummond and James Wiseman are a clear downgrade from him.

The Knicks still have plenty of time to turn their season around, and they proved last year that an up-and-down regular season doesn't necessarily preclude them from winning a championship. But their dominant playoff run might have caused them to be overrated heading into the year.

3. The NBA's infinite greed

LINE MUST ALWAYS GO UP.

The NBA has reached deals with Kalshi and Polymarket to make them the league's preferred prediction markets partners. The companies can now use NBA IP on their platforms, while the NBA gets right of approval on markets that they offer. That and more:https://t.co/3Vtq57f361

— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) October 26, 2026

As part of this partnership, the NBA will have control over what types of trades the prediction markets are allowed to offer, according to Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. Meanwhile, Kalshi and Polymarket "will help the league identify suspicious trading, help try to prohibit insider trading and share data with the league for investigations."

"We think we’re in a better position to protect our games by engaging with these companies, partnering with them, getting access to their data, understanding what’s happening in the trading, and having the transparency into the activity versus, you know, hiding our head in the sand," Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA's head of media distributions and partnerships, told Vorkunov.

Helping to legitimize these companies in any way is a black eye for the NBA, but most (if not all) of the league's billionaire owners sacrificed their morals long ago. Can we at least bet on which NBA player will be implicated in the next point-shaving scandal, or which team will be the next to get punished for salary-cap circumvention?

2. Miami Heat

You know your season is off to a good start when your marquee offseason acquisition is saying this after the first game of the year.

"We got to trust each other," new Miami Heat star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo told reporters after the Minnesota Timberwolves blasted them in their season opener, 131-106. "When things don't go our way, we got to dig in. We didn't do that tonight. Our effort has to be better. It starts with me. My effort has to be better. I set the tone."

Two nights later, the Heat got blown out again by the Pistons. And on Saturday, they lost to the Knueppel- and White-less Hornets, as Brandon Miller (34 points), Dennis Schröder (25 points), Naz Reid (23 points) and Grayson Allen (20 points) all took turns lighting them up.

And lest you thought a visit from Cooper Flagg and the Dallas Mavericks would lead to Miami's first win on Monday, think again. Even though the Greek Freak had a 29-14-11 triple-double in 39 minutes, Flagg had 29 points, 11 assists and six rebounds of his own in a 113-109 Dallas victory.

As it turns out, trading nearly all of your young depth and having to rely on a bunch of washed veterans alongside Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo might not be the best idea. Who knew?

1. Injuries, injuries and more injuries

OK, fess up: Who forgot to turn the injury switch off before the season started?

We've already had a number of key injuries, many of which could impact the playoff and/or title race:

• Magic forward Paolo Banchero may be out for 4-6 weeks because of a "low-grade right high ankle sprain," according to ESPN's Shams Charania.
• Magic guard Jalen Suggs suffered a "mild bone bruise in his right knee" and will be re-evaluated in two weeks, per Charania.
• Pistons center Jalen Duren is out for at least two weeks with a strained right hamstring.
• Pacers center Ivica Zubac suffered a left ankle sprain on Sunday. It's unclear how long he'll be sidelined for.
• Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen (wrist) and big man Jaren Jackson Jr. (knee) both got injured in Monday's loss to the Grizzlies, although details are sparse for now.

And the big one(s):

BREAKING: Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams has a dislocated left ankle and fractured fibula; Cason Wallace has a torn labrum in his left shoulder. Both will undergo surgery and be sidelined for several months -- most, if not the entire season. pic.twitter.com/62OxZtIGRc

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) October 26, 2026

The Thunder's depth already took a hit this offseason when they salary-dumped Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe. Losing Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace on the same night to potentially season-ending injuries might be a death blow to their title chances.

The NBA is better when its stars are healthy. Unfortunately, the first week of the 2026-27 season begged to differ.