The NBA is back — and so is our annual breakouts column.
The aim here, as always, is to identify which players are set to make a leap, whether that’s to full-on stardom or simply to have a major career year. Last year, we successfully predicted the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Evan Mobley and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Jalen Williams would explode onto the scene. Both made their first All-Star game and significantly elevated their teams, with the latter helping the franchise win its first championship.
This process hinges not only on talent, but more importantly, on opportunity and circumstances. Every player on this list should enter a friendlier on-court situation than last year for a variety of reasons, whether that’s injuries, rotation openings or the team’s value on internal continuity.
In no particular order, here are the five players you should keep your eyes on this season as they climb the ranks of NBA notability.
An argument could be made that Thompson broke out last season, making the All-Defensive Team while providing some jaw-dropping flashes on the offensive end. He also was selected for the 2025 Rising Stars game. Now, the team is aligned for him to take on a larger share of playmaking responsibility.
With the addition of Kevin Durant and the departure of Jalen Green to Phoenix, there’s a major opportunity for Thompson to take on a more commanding role for the Rockets. Even before Fred VanVleet’s unfortunate ACL tear this offseason, Thompson was expected to bear more backcourt responsibility. Now, he’s stepping into that role with sophomore Reed Sheppard also filling in.
If these early games are any indication, the Rockets will likely deploy a lot of supersize lineups with no de facto point guard, using Durant and Alperen Sengun to help shoulder the load. But few players apply pressure on the paint the way Thompson can with his speed and explosion, and he’ll be asked to open things up for Houston’s offense off of penetration. Thompson won’t be the sole playmaker, but the spike in minutes and usage could propel him into All-Star consideration at age 22 (albeit it’s pretty tough to crack that group in the West).
There will be some adjustment time as his responsibility increases, and, of course, Thompson has to shoot better for this to all come together. A reliable jumper has been the missing component of his game, and though his willingness to take the shots has improved, he made just 68% of his free throws and 27% of 3s last season. Of course, it helped that Thompson shot 64% at the rim and can elevate quickly, playing off cuts. But 31.5% on all jump shots is something defenses are going to live with until he proves otherwise.
Houston will need to find the right lineup combinations to maximize on-court spacing for Thompson to operate. Without Van Vleet, expect some experimentation. Still, the sheer uptick in offensive opportunity, coupled with top-flight defensive impact, ought to lift Thompson toward proper stardom sooner rather than later.
Pritchard is another player you can argue already had a breakout season last year after he had career-best numbers across the board and won the Sixth Man Award. He has proved to be one of the league’s top 3-point shooters and a relatively mistake-free player over the past five seasons, becoming increasingly essential for Boston and dramatically outkicking his draft position. There may be more in store.
The logic here isn’t complicated. The absence of Jayson Tatum, out with an Achilles tear, creates a significant scoring vacancy that the Celtics will aggregate by committee to stay competitive. Boston made several cap-centric moves, shedding Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, among others, to avoid the second apron, and repositioned itself moving forward. That makes this a quasi-gap year of sorts, with lowered expectations but a ton of opportunity to be shared.
Boston still has a strong perimeter group, and Jaylen Brown and Derrick White will be the two principal leaders. Anfernee Simons and his large expiring contract may be more valuable as a trade option than as a part of the team’s long-term vision, so it’s in the Celtics’ best interest to dial Pritchard up more often and let him stretch his output, considering how well he has developed. And he may not necessarily need more on-ball reps to get more shot opportunities. He should be a beneficiary of what’s likely to be a faster and more egalitarian offensive approach in Boston.
Bottom line: The Celtics will need the best version of Pritchard to maximize their new-look group. There’s a pretty real chance he repeats Sixth Man honors and improves on those numbers as Boston jockeys for a lower-end playoff seed.
Much of the Pistons’ revival last season revolved around Cade Cunningham’s on-court growth. Duren’s on-court progress was a bit more of a footnote, but the 21-year-old big man started all 78 of his games last season, shot a career-best 69.2% from the field (the NBA’s second-highest clip behind Jarrett Allen) and averaged a double-double for the second straight season. Duren’s strength and physicality have always given him a pronounced advantage dating back to his prospect days, but he has turned that into consistent production and answered the old questions about his motor.
It’s hard to be more efficient finishing plays than Duren was last year, and he’s an outstanding rebounder, but there may be another gear here if he can harness his offensive talents. While not the focal point of the offense, Duren is a plus passer for his position, and the Pistons played through him a reasonable amount last season. He had at least five assists in 15 games, demonstrating his ability to open things up working out of the middle of the floor. The Pistons have largely deployed Duren in a platoon with Isaiah Stewart, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see his minutes tick over the 30 mark for the first time.
The obvious analog here is Bam Adebayo, another physically gifted center who more than doubled his assists in his age-22 season (averaging 5.1) and made the All-Star team that year. Considering the presence of Cunningham and Ausar Thompson (plus Jaden Ivey, who will miss at least the first month of the season after having knee surgery last week), it’s hard to expect quite that level of playmaking jump, but whatever Duren can give them will be a plus. He should have plenty of opportunities to do damage playing out of short rolls and to continue building chemistry with Detroit’s guards.
Duren and the Pistons didn’t come to terms on an extension this week, slating him for restricted free agency next summer. Continuing to expand his game should pay off.
Johnson achieved a remarkable feat last season by being appreciably efficient as a featured option on a Brooklyn Nets team that won just 26 games. Already regarded as one of the top shooters in the league (now at 39.2% from 3 for his career), Johnson also made plays out of secondary actions and displayed a level of offensive versatility that wasn’t always apparent in his early stint with the Phoenix Suns. That diversification of his game bodes extremely well for the 29-year-old’s adjustment in Denver, where he’ll step in for Michael Porter Jr. after the two were traded for one another in the offseason.
Considering the broad similarities in Johnson’s and Porter’s skill sets, it’s easy to envision the former standing in cleanly and quickly as a high-impact starter for Denver. He’ll space the floor and should benefit heavily from playing with Nikola Jokic, a master at delivering teammates clean looks, and Jamal Murray, who’s beginning the season healthy. Johnson is somewhat limited defensively and smaller than Porter, but the fit feels clean, and he’s an improved player sliding into a cushy situation.
What I’m more curious about is how Johnson factors into Denver’s minutes when Jokic is off the floor. Figuring out how to balance lineups to win those stretches has always been critical for the Nuggets. The secondary playmaking Johnson displayed in Brooklyn, as well as his ability to do it off movement and the threat of his shot, might prove to be a key separator from Porter, who has never been the most willing passer. Considering the Nuggets are thin on guards — Bruce Brown returns to the mix, and the unproven Jalen Pickett is Denver’s backup point — you can envision Johnson being significantly more effective within their ball-movement-centric attack. Helping solidify those minutes might make a major difference in the grand scheme.
The Nuggets figure to be a deeper, more balanced team after their offseason tweaks, and Jokic’s orbit tends to prop up anyone who can read the game quickly enough to play at his speed. This is the best situation Johnson has stepped into, and coming off his best individual season — he averaged 18.8 points and shot 47% from the field last year in Brooklyn — he could easily outpace those career bests. He’ll get to do it in a more meaningful context, as Denver mounts another run at the top of the West.
The Pacers entered the season in an uncertain state after Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles tear and the departure of Myles Turner. Nembhard was slated as their primary ball handler, before a shoulder injury in Indiana’s first game — an NBA Finals rematch — sidelined him. The exact timeline for his return is unclear, but after playing an instrumental role in Indiana’s Finals run, Nembhard, a second-round pick in 2022, will eventually return with the keys to the offense, akin to how he played before arriving in the NBA.
While expectations here are realistic — the Pacers can take this season to recalibrate without Haliburton — Indiana will have to source offense from the rest of the roster in the meantime. Expect Pascal Siakam to take on more usage and more volume from Bennedict Mathurin (who also is dealing with an injury) and Aaron Nesmith. Fine-tuning the mix is going to be a challenge. But the glaring lack of playmaking sans Haliburton points to Nembhard as the main beneficiary, with T.J. McConnell staggering in off the bench.
Nembhard is a canny playmaker with plus size for a lead guard, and while nobody expects him to fully replace one of the NBA’s best passers, expect an uptick in assists and overall usage. The bigger challenge will be scoring efficiently with a higher workload. Although Nembhard has made progress as a scorer overall — making 45.2% of shots off the dribble and 61.8% at the rim last season — he has never been a high-volume shooter by trade. He made just 29% of his 3-point attempts last season, a number that will have to improve to keep defenses from sagging off at the point of attack.
Whether Nembhard can maintain his high level of defensive play with a boost in offensive workload is another question. This season will be a fascinating stress test for the Pacers’ entire supporting cast. And if Nembhard can use the opportunity to get to another level, there should be long-term benefits even when Haliburton returns — with Nembhard under contract through 2027-28. Assuming Haliburton is back sooner than later, Nembhard should get plenty of valuable reps and prove up to the task — although it’s possible the season could go south quickly for the already banged-up Pacers.