2025-26 Predictions

Forecasting as much as possible about the forthcoming season

Jared Dubin

20 Oct 2025 — 7 min read

Photo by Joshua Gateley/Getty Images

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As is becoming tradition, we had some late-breaking contract extension news over the weekend. First was Kevin Durant signing a two-year, $90 million extension with the Rockets. Then it was Toumani Camara getting four years and $82 million from the Blazers. And finally it was Camara's teammate, Shaedon Sharpe, getting $90 million over four years from Portland.

Assuming he plays out the deal, KD will now have the most career earnings in NBA history, narrowly surpassing LeBron James — unless LeBron plays another season beyond this one, which obviously isn't out of the question.

He took about $30 million less than the maximum he could have gotten on an extension from Houston, which is certainly notable. With all the guys coming up that the Rockets will have to pay, any sort of discount they can get, anywhere they can get it, is big.

They've shown that they're willing to play hard ball with pretty much anybody in order to get one of those discounts, but it doesn't seem like that was required here. Durant took a deal that compensates him handsomely — and probably at an appropriate level, given his age and injury history — for what could very well be the last few years of his career, so that he can play for a title contender during that span.

In classic KD fashion, he also did some vintage Posting on the subject.

Some day in the near-ish future this man will retire from American professional basketball, but I hope he never retires from being a Poster. He's too good at it — by far the best of any player in NBA history. Keep posting forever, Kev.

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I'm a big fan of the Blazers' deal for Camara. He's one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and he got better at almost everything offensively last year. He made an All-Dubin Team for his efforts:

The Blazers stealing Camara in what used to be known (from the perspective of who they acquired) as the Deandre Ayton trade but will eventually become known as the Toumani Camara trade will go down as an all-time heist. Hot damn can this dude defend. (Tom Haberstroh has been banging this particular drum about defensive stops all year.)

He kind of reminds me of Tayshaun Prince with his arms that are about 47 feet long. (His wingspan is actually 7-foot-1 but still.) He should absolutely be heavily in the mix for an All-Defensive team, and if there were separate awards for bigs and perimeter players, he’d have a pretty decent case for a spot on a DPOY ballot.

Oh, and he’s improved as both a shooter (over 37% from deep) and passer (nearly 2.5 assists per 36 minutes) this season, which is obviously important when it comes to keeping himself on the court as his career moves forward. He’s nowhere close to a zero on offense. Terrific role player.

I got the Sharpe situation dead wrong, predicting in the Blazers' Three Things Preview that he wouldn't come to an extension agreement and might even get traded at some point this year if he didn't make it clear by the deadline that he's A Guy. The skill set for him to do just that is there, but we do need to see more if he's going to live up to this contract:

He's got to get back to shooting from the outside like he did during his rookie season (36% from deep) or even better (which will help in his efforts to get to his pull-ups and rim attacks), and he's got to lock the hell in defensively.

He has the tools to be a better defender than he has been, given his size and length and agility. He needs to pay better attention (he was briefly benched for inattentiveness last year) and he needs to leverage the skills he does have to be a playmaker on that end of the floor to make up for the fact that he isn't always in the right spot at the right time.

He should get ample opportunity to prove he's up to those challenges, even in a more crowded guard rotation, especially because Scoot Henderson will be out to start the year.

I think this situation is somewhat similar to the one I wrote about with Jalen Green last year, where Sharpe probably hasn't yet played up to the level of this contract but the Blazers are betting that either a) he will do just that and they'll be very happy to keep him around on an affordable deal; or b) he'll maintain enough value to be used in a trade next summer, should they choose to go after a big fish.

With guys like Sharpe (on whom I was very high after his rookie season, only to be slightly disappointed with him the last couple years), I usually want to see them prove it before paying them and am okay taking the risk that they make me regret it. (Basically, what's the realistic scenario that occurs this season where you're really regretting not paying him right now? Where he gets four years and like $120 million instead of this deal?) Especially with the leverage of restricted free agency next summer, there's not a lot of financial downside unless Sharpe blossoms into a full-blown star, but in that case, again, you're probably okay with it because now you have a star.

In the new cap environment, though, I suppose there's an argument to be made that getting the deal at your price early, rather than waiting and paying even a few million dollars more, makes some degree of sense. You need all the room under the aprons that you can get, so if you think there's a possibility that he commands even something like $100 million next summer, then getting the $2.5 million per year "discount" is worth it.

Basically, this might not have been my ideal plan, but I get it from the Blazers' perspective for several reasons, including both the cap environment and the possibility of more easily using him in a trade next summer than if you had to do a sign-and-trade deal.

With all that out of the way, let's get to the predictions...

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