Biggest Winners and Losers from Week 1 of the 2025-26 NBA Season

One week into the 2025-26 NBA season, and we know everything we need to know about who'll win MVP, who'll secure a championship in June, which coach will get fired first and which trends are guaranteed to persist all year.

Just kidding, it's still early.

We'll get undisputed certainty on all those issues after two weeks. Three, tops. For now, everything is speculative and subject to change. Well, except for Victor Wembanyama's shocking two-way dominance. That's not going anywhere.

Let's check in on Luka Dončić's early work with the Los Angeles Lakers, the Orlando Magic's eerily familiar struggles, Stephen Curry's championship outlook and several other top angles from the season's first week of action.

The Los Angeles Lakers' first week wasn't perfect, but they emerge as winners because Luka Dončić was on fire, and in shape, and doing all the things he's always done whenever he's been physically right. This means the Lakers have officially tackled the hardest part of mapping out their post-LeBron James future: finding the next superstar around which everybody else orbits.

Maybe you thought this was a given from the moment L.A. landed Dončić last February, but many of us weren't so sure. That's not to say Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison deserved the benefit of the doubt. The trade will forever be a complete catastrophe for the Mavs (shop around just a little, fellas!), but there was always a possible scenario in which all the worst assumptions about Dončic on the Dallas side would be borne out.

After a franchise-record 92 points in his first two games, Dončić is both the guy he used to be and the guy the Lakers need going forward. He even got some help, when Austin Reaves racked up 51 points in a win Dončić missed against the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 26.

The Lakers still don't have nearly enough around Luka, and James' return this season won't turn them into true contenders. But the organization has enough flexibility to construct something like what Dallas did around Doncic when he was leading Finals runs not so long ago. And more importantly, they have some time to put that roster together because Luka's peak form now looks likely to persist for several more years. 

Everywhere you looked during the season's first week, members of the 2025 draft class were piling up highlights, playing meaningful minutes and generally proving that this crop of rookies is going to be special.

The showcase started at the top, with No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg manning the point for the Dallas Mavericks. Their crummy offense isn't his fault (more on that later), and it's stunning that a collegiate forward who entered Duke with questions about his perimeter game is running an NBA offense less than a year later.

Dylan Harper flashed elite driving and finishing craft for the San Antonio Spurs, VJ Edgecombe debuted with 34 points against the Boston Celtics, Kon Knueppel is shooting 57.9 percent from three across his first three starts, Jeremiah Fears got wherever he wanted with his incredible handle and quickness—the list goes on.

After all the talk of the 2024 class lacking a transformative star mostly turned out to be true, this season's edition might have a half-dozen cornerstones in it. The league is going to be in great hands going forward.

On an MVP tear, Victor Wembanyama averaged 33.3 points, 13.3 rebounds and 6.0 blocks per game across his three contests last week, all San Antonio Spurs wins. Those numbers tell roughly half the story of his dominance, as his vastly expanded and more aggressive offensive game now make him nearly as dangerous on the attack as he is on defense.

Similarly, the usual rim-protection numbers he's produced undersell his actual impact. Sure, Spurs' opponents attempted 9.1 percent fewer shots at the rim with Wemby on the floor, and they finished those shots 10.3 percent less accurately. But those numbers come nowhere close to capturing the way Wembanyama alters the flow of the game defensively.

Put simply: Paint touches, arguably the most important aspect of modern NBA offense, are basically worthless with Wemby around.

Every offense wants to threaten the rim by getting the ball into the lane, whether via a drive, a diving roll man or a crisp pass. Defenses have to scramble, rotate and compromise themselves to put out that fire. Those compromises create scoring opportunities all over the floor: kick-outs for threes, ball rotations to weak-side drivers, etc. Or, at least they used to.

With Wembanyama on the floor, paint touches are no longer threatening. He eliminates floaters, layups and easy lobs, which means San Antonio's other defenders can stay home on shooters and preserve defensive integrity. They don't need to help because Wemby has the entire lane handled by himself.

This is a core alteration of modern basketball. If Wembanyama can nullify the value of paint touches, offenses will have to subsist on much more difficult, well-defended shots. Keep an eye on this. It could be a change on the level of the three-point revolution—except no other team has a player to replicate it.

Despite Jalen Williams sitting out the entire first week while recovering from wrist surgery, the Oklahoma City Thunder escaped undefeated.

Maybe you could argue they looked vulnerable because they needed double-overtime to win each of their first two games. That would seem to suggest they're not as dominant as last year's 68 wins made them seem, and scratching out success also falls in line with the criticism that OKC went to seven games in two of last spring's playoff series—including the Finals.

Counterpoint: They won then, and they've just kept winning. Who cares how it happens?

More than that, the Thunder are getting a couple of step-up efforts that should alarm the rest of the league. Chet Holmgren's offensive game looks further evolved, while second-year guard Ajay Mitchell appears to be a legitimate starting-caliber weapon who can shoot it from deep, run a pick-and-roll and make plays in a Thunder offense that sometimes needs additional creators.

Everyone has long known Cason Wallace is capable of more, and if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander continues to benefit from a whistle that seems even friendlier to his unique foul-drawing craft, Williams' return will basically render Oklahoma City unbeatable.

The Orlando Magic attempted 26.4 threes per 100 possessions across their first three games of the season, a figure that ranked just 28th in the league. Their hit rate on those shots was just 28.2 percent, dead last in the NBA.

Uh oh.

Orlando defined itself by three-point futility last season, posting a 31.8 percent accuracy mark that ranked as the worst by any team with at least 2,500 attempts in NBA history. They traded away a half-decade's worth of first-round assets for Desmond Bane and his 41.0 percent career mark from deep and also acquired Tyus Jones to keep the ball moving. The obvious hope was to create more threes and, ideally, hit them once in a while.

The sample is small, so it may not be time to panic just yet. Bane won't keep shooting under 30.0 percent for the season.

That said, the volume numbers are jarring. One would have hoped to see the Magic come out firing, setting a tone and emphasizing three-point volume after last year's failure to take or make enough triples. Instead, Orlando is as gun shy as ever and struggling on offense as a result. Its 1-2 start rates as one of the most disappointing in the league.

If this stylistic aversion to the long ball persists, regardless of accuracy, head coach Jamahl Mosley will feel his seat heating up.

Stephen Curry rates as a winner individually because he quickly proved he's still got it—"it" being the ability to joyously dominate games in the late going. He hauled the Golden State Warriors back into the home-opener against the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 23 by scoring 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime.

That victory wouldn't have been possible without Curry's signature brand of giggle-inducing heroism, but it also wouldn't have happened if the rest of the Warriors hadn't done their part.

That's where Curry rates as a winner from a team perspective. Jimmy Butler's chaos-neutralizing control of the non-Steph minutes (aided by preternatural foul-grifting prowess) makes Golden State dangerous without its top weapon in the game. Al Horford's defense, passing and shooting add a level of versatile value to the center position Curry has never seen.

The result is a version of the Warriors that, at full strength, looked very much like a contender during opening week. Even Jonathan Kuminga showed a little growth, hitting some key threes, rebounding with purpose and making smart defensive rotations he never did in the past.

The clear counter to Curry's winner status arose in a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Oct. 24. He went for 35 points and hit seven threes, but Horford sat out on the second night of a back-to-back while Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler plodded around looking their age. There will be many nights like that one, given the mileage on all these old legs.

Nonetheless, Steph is still Steph, and the Warriors' best punch is good enough to knock anyone out. That's a win for a player and team that probably thought 2022 was the cherry-on-top championship.

Cooper Flagg scored 22 points and logged zero turnovers in the Dallas Mavericks' first win of the season, a 139-129 romp over the Toronto Raptors that included 70 points in the paint. That was the recipe for Dallas' success coming into the season, but it was one the team hadn't cooked up yet.

The Mavs posted the league's worst offensive rating through their first two games, a predictable result for a team starting a rookie forward at point guard and surrounding him with four bigs who don't qualify as playmakers by even the most generous interpretation of the term. The hulking Mavs lost by 33 to the Spurs in their opener and dropped a 117-107 stinker to the lowly Washington Wizards in their second contest, triggering chants of "Fire Nico" from the home crowd.

This roster construction was a choice, and it's worth respecting it as a bold experiment on some level. But it's hard to be sympathetic when a team that completely ignores backcourt playmaking (and further hamstrings itself by doing things like benching D'Angelo Russell for an entire half against Washington) runs into exactly the kind of issues everyone expected.

That Flagg is figuring things out while being grossly overtaxed and played out of position reflects well on him. Maybe this trial by fire will forge an even better version of the No. 1 pick. As far as this season goes, though, Dallas is going to have a ton of nights where it can't move the ball, can't generate good looks and can't score.

Was this the vision Harrison imagined?

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.