Reporting note: this article draws on sports.yahoo.com; LodiScore provides the summary and editorial framing.
The NBA storylines to watch going into 2026-27 start with the offseason itself. In a preview for Yahoo Sports, Kelly Iko describes a summer of signings, scrimmaging and scandal, and argues that combination has laid the runway for one of the most compelling campaigns in recent memory.
That framing sets the terms of the season before any of it has been played. Rather than waiting for results to generate interest, the league enters the year with its questions already fixed — and two of them sit at the top of Iko's list.
NBA storylines to watch begin with the summer's aftermath
Iko treats the summer as more than a transaction log. Signings, scrimmaging and scandal are grouped together as the texture of the past few months, which is a useful way to think about how a season actually arrives: rarely clean, usually carrying unfinished business from July into October.
The piece does not present the offseason as a tidy set of answers. It presents it as material — the raw stuff that a season then tests. That distinction matters for readers trying to work out which of the summer's developments will hold up once rotations tighten and games start counting.
Philadelphia 76ers and the question of sacrifice
The first question Iko raises is whether the Philadelphia 76ers can sacrifice. It is framed as an open question rather than a verdict, and the wording carries the weight: sacrifice implies giving something up, whether that is touches, minutes or a preferred role.
For a team with established players and expectations attached to them, that is a harder ask than it sounds. The answer will not come from a press conference or a training camp quote. It will show up in how the 76ers play when the ball is not moving the way someone wants it to.
Victor Wembanyama and the limits of defense
The second question is blunter: is Victor Wembanyama unstoppable? Iko poses it without hedging, which is itself a statement about how the league now regards him — not as a curiosity to be managed, but as a problem opponents have to solve.
The phrasing shifts the burden onto the defensive side. Stopping Wembanyama is not a scheme one coach invents in isolation; it is a season-long project shared across the league, revisited each time he is on the floor. Whether anyone finds an answer is one of the year's genuine unknowns.
What the season still has to settle
Preview writing has a limited shelf life. The value of Iko's list is that it identifies the questions that will not be resolved by a single game or a single month, and that will look different in March than they do now.
For the 76ers, the test is behavioural — whether a group with individual ambitions can subordinate them. For Wembanyama, the test belongs to everyone else. Both will be settled on the court, in the specific possessions that decide whether the summer's promise turns into anything.
The original report was published by sports.yahoo.com.
