A TrueHoop Time Machine

Projecting needle-moving players of 2025-2026

BY DAVID THORPE

As of this moment, 2025-2026’s highest paid NBA players will be Stephen Curry ($60 million), Kevin Durant ($53 million), and Jimmy Butler ($52 million). By then, they’ll all be among the oldest players in the league, and much older than any player who has ever led a team to an NBA title. 

At almost every moment of every season, Vegas’s NBA favors teams led by proven mega-stars: LeBron’s team, Durant’s team, Curry’s team, and—after a title—Giannis’s team. (Even right now, the Western-champions, the Suns, are distant contenders to those stars because great and young though they may be, Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton aren’t in that top tier.) But five years from now, the top tier will have new leaders, who won’t be 40-year-olds. As Henry Abbott noted the other day, it’s incredibly rare for a top-20 NBA player to be even 33 or older. We’re going to have to allow some more names into the pantheon.

Today’s question: Which current NBA players have a great chance to make big wav…