NBA Players to Watch in 2026-27: Sabonis, White, Kessler and More

Every NBA season misplaces a few careers.

Not the players who actually fall off. The ones whose box scores get mangled by bad timing — a torn knee at the wrong moment, a trade into a clogged rotation, a six-week shooting slump that stains a whole year. By the time summer hits, the narrative has drifted further than the talent ever did.

Heading into 2026-27, this group has something those players rarely get: leverage. New contracts. Bigger roles. Clean medical reports. And, in one format in particular — Yahoo Fantasy High Score — a scoring system that erases some of their biggest flaws.

Domantas Sabonis, Kings

The last time Domantas Sabonis was fully healthy for a season, only Nikola Jokić stacked more triple-doubles. That’s the entire list.

Across 2023-24 and 2024-25, Sabonis posted 36 triple-doubles, a nightly blend of scoring, rebounding and playmaking that doesn’t just vanish because of one bad year on the injury report. A torn meniscus in his left knee wiped out most of 2025-26 and forced season-ending surgery, but the timeline points toward full clearance for training camp.

He’ll be 30 when the season starts. For a big with his game — touch, vision, strength, not dependent on vertical pop — that’s still prime territory. Sacramento is retooling around him, not away from him, and that matters. With the roster in flux, Sabonis walks back in as the hub of everything: the first option as a playmaker, the first read on most possessions, the fulcrum of the half-court.

Fantasy outlook: In points leagues, you don’t overthink it. When he’s right, Sabonis is a top-15 piece because rebounds and assists are currency, and he prints both. Category formats are trickier. He’ll carry rebounds, pile on assists for a center, and juice your field-goal percentage. He’ll also give you almost nothing in blocks and cough up turnovers, which means he’s best on builds that have already decided to punt defensive stats.

High Score is where he becomes a cheat code. The scoring system doubles assists and ignores turnovers. So a typical Sabonis line — 20 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists — pushes toward 50 fantasy points without him doing anything out of character. Very few frontcourt players can live in that neighborhood on a “normal” night. When the triple-doubles return, so does a weekly ceiling that can tilt matchups by itself.

Coby White, Hornets

Teams don’t hand out three years and $74 million to a guard they see as a sixth man. The Hornets didn’t, anyway.

LaMelo Ball is gone to Minnesota. Charlotte’s backcourt now belongs to Coby White, and the franchise hasn’t hidden its intentions. They’re building around him, giving him the ball and the green light, and asking him to drag them back to a postseason they haven’t seen since 2015-16.

We’ve already seen the outline of what that looks like. In Chicago in 2024-25, with real volume and trust, White averaged 20.4 points and 4.5 assists in 33.1 minutes across 74 games. That’s not a hot streak. That’s a role. His 21-game stint in Charlotte after the deadline came off the bench in a messy rotation, the kind of sample you throw out as noise. This year, the noise is gone. Clear runway. Long-term commitment. A team that needs his scoring as much as he needs their minutes.

Fantasy outlook: Points leagues are his natural habitat. Usage is the whole game, and he’s about to live on it. Expect points, threes and assists to stack up as long as the minutes hold. In category leagues, managers need to be more selective. The scoring and perimeter volume are real, but the field-goal percentage has been a drag his entire career, and he doesn’t pile up steals. He fits best on rosters already strong in efficiency that just need raw production.

High Score is kinder to him than traditional category builds. A 28-point, six-assist night jumps into the mid-40s because of the doubled assist value, and his shooting woes don’t follow him into that format. On the right night, when Charlotte lets him hunt and the jumper is falling, he becomes the kind of guard who can swing a matchup from one slot.

Derrick White, Celtics

Strip away one number and Derrick White’s season looks like a career peak.

He set personal bests in points (16.5), steals (1.1), blocks (1.3) and assists (5.4) while Boston leaned on him heavily during a year when Jayson Tatum missed most of the campaign. He defended everywhere, organized the offense, and kept the Celtics’ structure intact.

Then there’s the 32.7% from three. That’s the blemish. A sharp drop from 38.4% the season before, the kind of swing that usually corrects over time rather than signaling a new normal. The cold stretch bled into the playoffs, tanked his scoring efficiency and, predictably, cooled his fantasy stock.

Opportunity is still sitting there. Boston flipped Jaylen Brown for Paul George, but George is heading into his age-37 season and has topped 70 games just once since 2019-20. White, by contrast, has cleared 73 games every year since 2021-22. Availability is part of his value, and right now, it’s one of his biggest edges.

Fantasy outlook: In category leagues, a guard who gives you better than a steal and a block per game is gold. That combination props up two of the rarest columns on any roster, and it lets you chase upside elsewhere. If the three-point percentage even partially rebounds, the overall profile jumps a tier.

High Score might be an even better stage. Steals and blocks are worth three points apiece there, so White’s defensive baseline alone keeps him draftable. When the scoring clicks, his ceiling games explode — a 20-point outing with five assists, two steals and two blocks blows past 45 fantasy points. Over a long season, his durability in points and roto formats blends with that multi-category punch to make him one of the safest bets on the board.

Walker Kessler, Lakers

For five games last season, Walker Kessler looked like he’d kicked down the door.

He averaged 14.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 1.8 blocks and 1.4 steals in that tiny window before his shoulder gave out and ended his year. The Lakers saw enough. They traded for him, then backed the move with a four-year, $130 million contract in July, paying for what they think is coming, not what’s already on the résumé.

The caveat is obvious. Shoulder surgery, a history of on-and-off availability since his rookie season — none of that disappears with a signature. What does travel is the skill set: elite rim protection, soft hands around the basket and rebounding volume that very few centers can touch. At 25, he now steps into a Lakers offense with better spacing and better playmaking than he’s ever had.

Fantasy outlook: In category leagues, Kessler is not a glue guy. He’s a pillar. You build around what he does. Blocks, rebounds and field-goal percentage can tilt entire matchups, and he has the tools to dominate all three. The risk comes at the free-throw line, where he can hurt you enough that he makes more sense as a punt-FT% cornerstone than a balanced contributor.

High Score is the format that really unlocks him. With blocks and steals tripled, a routine line — 16 points, 13 boards, three blocks — sits around 40 fantasy points without a single assist. Add even one steal and he spikes again. With three frontcourt slots to fill in that game, this is exactly the type of profile that wins weeks: low-usage offense, massive defensive counting stats, no penalty for the rough edges.

Christian Braun, Nuggets

Denver doesn’t hand out five years and $125 million to passengers.

Christian Braun earned that deal in October 2025 on the back of a breakout: 15.4 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game as a starter for a contender at age 24. He defended, cut, hit shots, and fit perfectly around stars who needed someone to do everything else.

Then last season unraveled. Just 44 games played. A 30.1% mark from three, well below what he’d already shown he could do. The numbers look less like a new reality and more like a year that never quite got on track. Trade rumors have floated around his name, but the most likely outcome is the simplest: he stays in Denver, in a role he already proved he can handle, even with DeMar DeRozan arriving to soak up some possessions. Braun’s value has never relied on high usage.

Fantasy outlook: He’s the most format-neutral name in this group. Category leagues squeeze the most juice out of his game: points, threes, steals and a solid field-goal percentage across four categories, with that three-point rate screaming for a bounce-back. In points leagues, he profiles as a steady late-round starter who doesn’t kill you anywhere and quietly fills gaps.

High Score is the one place where the shine dulls. His game is built on doing several things well rather than one or two things at a volume that breaks the scoring model. Without big assist or block totals, his ceiling games usually land in the low 30s, and this format is unforgiving to that kind of balanced-but-unspectacular profile. He’s a bench piece there, a luxury rather than a priority, even as he remains a target almost everywhere else.

Some careers get buried by circumstance. This group walks into 2026-27 with the chance to dig out — and in the right fantasy format, to flip the script entirely.