Haliburton, Kyrie and Damian Lillard among the NBA’s “comeback” candidates heading into August

The NBA’s next story line is not just about what changed this offseason, but how quickly certain players can return to form. In a new Yahoo Sports feature looking at the league’s most interesting “comeback” candidates, Tyrese Haliburton, Kyrie Irving and Damian Lillard were grouped among the stars viewed as poised to get back in the game in 2026-27.

The framing matters because “comeback” language in the NBA is rarely about a single event. It often reflects a wider arc, where a player’s role, rhythm, or team fit has to reassert itself after a period in which expectations either shifted or the player had to rebuild momentum. In that sense, the offseason becomes less a reset button and more a runway: training camp and the early weeks provide the first public measurement of how real the bounce-back will be.

Haliburton is one of the league’s clearest barometers for how an offense operates when everything is flowing. When a playmaking guard is operating at a high level, pace, spacing, and decision-making tend to stabilize across an entire roster. That is why the idea of a “comeback” matters for any team leaning on him, even if the first question fans will ask is simple: will his on-court leadership look fully restored once the season begins?

Irving, too, fits the comeback conversation because of the gap that can exist between talent and timing. When he is at his best, he brings a demanding skill set that compresses defenses and can tilt games in the final possessions. A comeback label, in this context, becomes less about whether the skill is present and more about whether the rest of the lineup can cohere around it, game after game.

Lillard’s inclusion indicates another angle of NBA comebacks, one that centers on a veteran’s ability to reestablish impact. For a star who has already been defined by long stretches of elite playmaking and scoring, the stakes are still the same, but the storyline changes. The question becomes how quickly he can restore his level of gravity, especially as defensive schemes and roster construction evolve to limit what older stars can do without support.

The Yahoo piece also situates these narratives within the broader offseason timeline. It notes that most of the 2026 offseason’s player movement is now concluded, and that with August underway, attention shifts from transactions to fit, health, and early-season performance. That shift is important across the league, because even when rosters are set on paper, the real evaluation starts when teams begin to run their full offensive and defensive identities.

For fans and team staff, the practical “watch next” questions are straightforward: which version of each player shows up early, how the rotations look around them, and whether their teams treat the first weeks as a foundation-building period or as an immediate competitiveness test. Even without dramatic offseason headlines, comebacks like these can become decisive if they happen before the standings separate contenders from the rest.