It is 4:03 AM on the eve of NBA Opening Day, and I have finally completed an incomparably exhausting weekend of writing and research, save for this introduction. As such, you will not be getting my best paragraph here. My sincerest condolences to those of you who have not already scrolled to the first team and been jumpscared by the preposterous length of this article. I did not begin this exercise with the intention of dividing the articles by East and West – it is merely a trick to disguise the obscene disregard for your time suggested by my having written a 29-page season preview. 

There is much I am supposed to say here. The first edition of this article, published on the morning of Opening Day in 2023, featured 38 NBA futures bets. The second edition, published on Opening Day of 2024, featured 30 NBA futures bets. 47 of those 68 bets have cashed, the majority of which at longer than +100 odds. Had you placed $100 on each one, you would currently be enjoying a $4,400 profit. We correctly predicted the Thunder to win the championship last year and divined the ascension of the Detroit Pistons. 

But, truth be told, I fear gambling. I am a dedicated fan of this sport, to be sure. I watch multiple hours of League Pass every night throughout the season, I take notes! There’s no doubt I have some insight. This has not all been dumb luck. Nevertheless, my understanding remains that the house always wins. Do not wager an amount of money that is significant to you on professional sports, my bets or otherwise. Besides, the spirit of this blog is not, and never has been, a pursuit of money-making. I myself do not even place these bets! 

Hence, the outrageous length. I needed to get back to my roots. 448 words on the Charlotte Hornets? You’re damn right! This is my love letter to basketball after four frigid months apart. 

Eastern Conference

Cleveland Cavaliers

Projected Rotation

• Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, De’Andre Hunter, Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen
• Sam Merrill, Lonzo Ball, Dean Wade, Max Strus, Thomas Bryant

Ceiling: Win 60+ Games, NBA Champions

I have toiled all offseason over whether or not to trust the Cavs, and Opening Day fast approaches, so I’ve devised a little visualization exercise. This next page will be my attempt to vividly imagine a future in which the Cavs win the title, rife with the garnish and theatre I’d demand of any true story, and, when finished, I will reread it, deliberate, and assess my final verdict. I assure you this is necessary to my deeply serious process, so bear with me. 

With Darius Garland sidelined, the Cavaliers fail to produce anything resembling their 15-0 start to the 2024-2025 campaign. The offense leans heavily on Donovan Mitchell, who garners early MVP chatter for his gaudy scoring numbers, but it comes at the expense of the ball movement and schematic ingenuity that was the bedrock of their league-best 121 offensive rating the season prior. Ty Jerome’s departure for Memphis in the offseason left a sudden, gaping void in on-ball creation, one which sentenced the team to near league–worst scoring marks with Mitchell off the floor as of mid-November. At 10-9, the one seed appears all but out of the question; TV analysts have left them behind for the trendier Orlando Magic and rejuvenated Milwaukee Bucks. 

A discerning eye offers a different perspective. Though evidently a work in progress, nineteen games of expanded on-ball reps for Evan Mobley have yielded a tangible uptick in his assertiveness attacking mismatches, and persistent spacing deficits have forced him to get comfortable taking (and making) more shots from beyond the arc. With Garland’s return imminent, there is founded optimism that lineups with Mobley at center are primed to erupt over the back half of the season. 

Indeed, the results which follow eclipse even those of Oklahoma City once the calendar turns its pages to 2026. Cleveland loses just two games per month across January, February, and March, a 35-6 rampage that vaults them atop the Eastern Conference, captained by First Team All-NBA forward Evan Mobley and a backcourt duo which is systematically dismantling the resolve of opposing coaches by converting 41% of their 18 nightly three-point attempts. They enter the playoffs with a credible claim to rostering 3 of the 10 best players in the conference and are the odds-on favorites to emerge from the East. 

Round 1 is a polite dismissal of the rambunctious Toronto Raptors, and Round 2 is a likewise humorless victory over a banged-up Atlanta Hawks team coming off a seven-game war with Detroit. There are quibbles to be had with a defense that struggles to contain penetration from the perimeter and is vulnerable to teams that can play serious five-out offense, but with Boston and Indiana out of the picture, no such team exists in the Eastern Conference. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s versatility and intelligence has simply outpaced every modern defensive philosophy. It is too balanced a team to be effectively blitzed, too physically oppressive with Mobley and Allen on the floor to be countered by switch-heavy smallball, and far too devastating a shooting team for opponents to get away with radical help principles in service of shutting off the rim. De’Andre Hunter’s improved decisionmaking and continued excellence from beyond the arc has rendered flawed defenders utterly unplayable against the Cavs, with no place for them to hide and no ability to send help without being put in a blender by the league’s best passing team. Max Strus is up to his usual playoff shenanigans. 

The 2026 Eastern Conference Finals has all the makings of a legendary series. Stars abound, the cities ablaze… alas, the Cavs are not here for your entertainment. The superstar duo of Jalen Brunson and Karl Anthony-Towns are made the whimpering, withering victims of Cleveland’s merciless offensive machine. The relentless targeting of KAT in the pick and roll becomes a ritual of humiliation; a cruel, nigh-unsportsmanlike depantsing of a good man and dedicated NBA ambassador. Brunson suffers in silence, shrouded by help defenders, each possession a crushing validation of his darkest insecurities, an indictment of his stature. The outcome is never in question. Cleveland demonstrates its class in an eviscerating sweep, one which would ultimately put an end to Karl-Anthony Towns’ tenure as a New York Knick.

Adversity at last arrives in the form of four-time MVP Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals. Denver steals homecourt advantage on the back of 46, 11, and 11 from the Joker in Game 1, and a poor shooting night in Game 3 puts the championship run in grave jeopardy. So, with his back to the wall, Coach Kenny Atkinson takes a page out of the 2023 Minnesota Timberwolves’ playbook: Evan Mobley would be the primary defender on Jokic, and Jarrett Allen would ignore Aaron Gordon on the perimeter to roam behind Mobley and deny access to the rim. No doubt, this is a desperate play. Aaron Gordon has comprehensively reconfigured his mechanics since that Timberwolves series to turn himself into a lethal shooter (41% since 2024), but the decision wagered that this newfound efficiency wouldn’t scale with a large spike in attempts for a player who has never attempted a high number of threes per game. 

Aaron Gordon would go on to shoot 6/31 from beyond the arc in Games 4, 5, and 6, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are crowned NBA Champions, a fitting addition to a decade in which ingenuity and innovation have triumphed over superstardom. 

Verdict: Believable… enough

This was a 64-win team last season built around the best backcourt in the league and a 23-year-old who just won Defensive Player of the Year while averaging 20/10 on 64% True Shooting (56/37/73 splits). The Pacers series was soul-crushing, but it also requires scrutiny. Darius Garland missed multiple games and was a shell of himself when active due to an injury that required immediate offseason surgery and a 5-month recovery timeline. Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter both got hurt in Game 1 of the series, missed Game Two (a one-point loss), and tried to gut it out but were visibly hobbled and limited throughout the remaining three games. Donovan Mitchell exited Game 4 early with an ankle injury and himself winced his way through the deciding Game 5. So, for one, they were ravaged by injuries. Despite that, this would almost assuredly have been a close series if not for a comical disparity in three-point percentage, the kind that has become synonymous with Eastern Conference Playoff basketball in the 2020s. Cleveland, who converted threes at the second-highest rate in the league last season (38.3%), shot 57/194 (29%), while Indiana knocked down 42%. That is not the reason they lost the series – I am a well-documented respecter of the Indiana Pacers – but it is necessary context for any predictive analysis regarding the 2025-2026 Cavaliers. 

The last two years have undeniably revealed a vulnerability to five-out, drive-and-kick offenses: the 2024 Celtics and 2025 Pacers ran this Cleveland defense off the floor to the tune of nearly 120 points per 100 possessions. Just one problem – neither of those teams exist in 2025-2026, and the only viable competitors in the Eastern Conference are a Knicks team that would rather relocate to Buffalo than play egalitarian, five-out basketball, and a conglomerate of bricklayers in Orlando that just pulled off the worst three-point shooting regular season (31.8% teamwide) since the 17-65 Lakers of 2016 (31.7%). 

Bet: Cavs to win the NBA Championship (+850)

My strongest feeling about the current futures market is that the implied disparity in strength between the East and West is wildly miscalibrated. I considered including “Eastern Conference to win the Finals” at +200 because I find that price to be comically stupid, but I ultimately preferred to just bet the two conference favorites. I cannot see anyone other than the Knicks or Cavs emerging, and I feel outstanding about getting  near 3:1 odds on a theoretical finals matchup against whatever exhausted pile of limbs emerges from the daunting, crowded West.  

New York Knicks

Ceiling: 55-60 wins, NBA Champions

Projected Rotation

• Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mitchell Robinson
• Josh Hart, Deuce McBride, Jordan Clarkson, Landry Shamet, Guerschon Yabusele

Don’t worry, I wouldn’t put either of us through thirty stories in that style, but I needed to visualize it with Cleveland given their perfunctory postseason exit and moderate talent drain. I find the Knicks case to be fractionally more straightforward: continuity. 

On October 3rd of 2024, less than three weeks before the start of the regular season, the Knicks traded Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Karl-Anthony Towns, a move which represented a radical and abrupt overhauling of the team’s identity and direction. The 2023-2024 Knicks (50-32, 5th in net rating) were a gritty collective that demoralized teams with their relentlessness. Isaiah Hartenstein and Josh Hart powered them to an NBA-best 30% offensive rebounding rate and bolstered an excellent defense, one which produced elite marks in rim protection and turnover margin once OG Anunoby arrived to pressure opposing playmakers alongside Donte DiVincenzo and Deuce McBride. The offense mirrored the approach of the 2024-2025 Detroit Pistons, methodical and heliocentric (Brunson/Cade) due to a deficit in supporting on-ball talent, heavily reliant on offensive rebounding and a single elite shooter (Beasley/Divincenzo) to keep defenses honest. 

The KAT trade threw this whole style out the window. The Knicks had been redesigned to be a five-out finesse team with Celtics-esque scoring efficiency, leaving poor Thibs just nineteen days to both master that system and architect a brand new defense with zero viable rim protectors and two outright liabilities in space. It should not have been a surprise to anyone that the Knicks had an underwhelming regular season and never appeared wholly trustworthy on either side of the ball outside of momentary flashes in the playoffs. They were 10th in net rating, 15th in defense, and 26th in three-point attempts despite having been built to emulate the most aggressive three-point shooting team in league history. Mitchell Robinson missed most of the season, every single bench player was a disaster, and the defense played 4 vs 5 throughout all of April and May with Brunson utterly immobilized by a lingering ankle injury. 

All this, and they came within two games of making the NBA Finals. The Pacers are gone. The Celtics are gone. The Knicks are returning all seven of their best players and hired a head coach (Mike Brown) who sculpted a record-shattering offense out of the Sacramento Kings in 2022. This is my affirmative pick to make the NBA Finals out East.

Bet: Knicks to win the NBA Championship (+1200)

Bet: Knicks seeding under 2.5 (+110)

• The Knicks are mispriced. I’m astonished by this, since the opposite tends to be true for popular teams, but I’m also not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Orlando Magic

Ceiling: 55 wins, NBA Finals

Projected rotation

• Jalen Suggs, Desmond Bane, Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero, Wendell Carter Jr
• Tyus Jones, Goga Bitadze, Jonathan Isaac, Jase Richardson, Anthony Black

My current understanding is that most NBA fans will take this projection as outrageous and scoff-worthy, and I absolutely understand why. The Magic were a miserable watch last season and somehow Desmond Bane, a 0-time All-Star and the third best player on a Grizzlies team that accomplished nothing in five years with him, is going to be the difference between a .500 team and a 55-win juggernaut? It feels hipsterish. 

I think a good place to start is appreciating the Orlando Magic as a team that would have been primed for drastic positive regression even without the addition of Desmond Bane. Orlando was one of the most injured teams in the league in 2024. 

Paolo Banchero’s season was instantly derailed by a torn oblique he suffered in the fifth game of the season, which cost him 36 games and seemingly nagged him throughout a frustrating and uncharacteristic January. This January slump puts a mask on what ought to have been one of the biggest stories of the NBA entering this season, that being Paolo’s ascension to superstardom in Year Three. Once finally healthy, which I’m eyeballing as post All-Star break, Paolo averaged 29 points, 8 rebounds, and 5 assists per game on 59% True Shooting in an abjectly horrendous offensive ecosystem that afforded him less space to operate than any other star in the league. He is still only 22 years old. 

Franz Wagner bizarrely joined Paolo in tearing his right oblique early in December of the 2024-2025 season, short-circuiting a scintillating start that saw him break into the top-10 in catch-all metrics like EPM while averaging 26/6/5. Wagner, himself just 24 years old, has been an analytics darling since entering the league as both a defensive pillar and mesmerizing slasher, a footprint that has sustained despite back-to-back catastrophic seasons from beyond the arc. 

We’re off to a good start in the regression olympics, but it actually gets far worse (better?). Jalen Suggs, who made 2nd team All-Defense while drilling 40% of his threes on five attempts per game in 2024, missed the vast majority of the season with back and knee injuries. Wendell Carter Jr missed time with plantar fasciitis, Mo Wagner tore his AC in January, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope blatantly forgot how to shoot a basketball for months on end. As mentioned, this was also an apocalyptically bad shooting team, and thus an overall offense that was outscored by the Utah Jazz, a team so shamelessly and egregiously tanking that it deployed twenty different players in its starting lineup throughout the season. 

So how in the wide blue yonder did this traveling hospital ward manage to win 41 games??? This was a .500 team! They made the playoffs! 

The short answer is defense. The 2024-2025 Orlando Magic ranked 3rd in the NBA in defensive rating, allowing just 109 points per 100 possessions despite enjoying none of the defensive luxuries associated with making shots and getting to set your defense. That should terrify you. This defense is adding 40 games of Jalen Suggs, 20 games of Franz Wagner, and 70 games of Desmond Bane? Do you think an offense with Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, each a year older, suddenly looking at two 40% three-point shooters in the backcourt beside them, is still going to be bottom-five in the NBA? 

Most likely, this team is going to need one more season to put all the pieces together and mature on-ball into an offense capable of winning the conference. But Paolo and Franz are incredible when they are right, and it isn’t out of the question that this team proves too physically imposing for the offensively-minded Knicks and Cavs.

Bet: NBA Cup Group B Winner (+220)

Bet: Magic over 49.5 wins (-130)

• The win number varies a lot across sportsbooks, so it’s worth mentioning that I think I’m comfortable taking the Magic up a game to 50.5 if necessary. As for the NBA Cup, they drew a very weak group – Pistons, Sixers, Celtics, Nets – and yet they are the favorite with the longest odds across all six groups. It’s a four game round robin, so anything can happen, but this should be more like +115 based on the minus-money odds attached to favorites in other Groups. 

Atlanta Hawks

Ceiling: 50-55 wins, Eastern Conference Finals

Projected rotation

• Trae Young, Dyson Daniels, Jalen Johnson, Zaccharie Risacher, Kristaps Porzingis
• Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Onyeka Okongwu, Luke Kennard, Mo Gueye, Vit Krejci

This article is on pace to be 171 pages, so let’s pick up the pace. The Atlanta Hawks have built a sharp, exciting roster that I believe is well-positioned to win a playoff series this season. Fittingly, the wings are the lifeblood of this Hawks team. Jalen Johnson (23) is a lunatic athlete who was good for 20/10/5 on an every game basis prior to a season-ending shoulder injury. Zaccharie Risacher (20) was the number one overall draft pick last season and looks poised to take a monster leap in Year Two. Dyson Daniels (22) finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting, registering obvious 99th percentile impact on that end and earning the nickname “The Great Barrier Thief.” In reserve is Nickeill Alexander-Walker, just one season removed from 99th percentile defensive impact per EPM in 2024, a certified disruptor with freakish length and solid shooting talent. Mo Gueye had a ludicrous defensive season last year – he has a hilarious wingspan and at times seemed to accumulate deflections on pace with his prodigious partner in crime Dyson Daniels. Onyeka Okongwu would be a starter for half the teams in the league. They are overflowing with the most coveted archetype of player in the Association, all of whom are young and on the rise. 

The acquisition of Kristaps Porzingis flew under the radar – health is never a given with Kristaps, but he has recorded a +3.5 EPM (~ top 25 player territory) in five of his last six seasons, which for me has passed the eye test. Porzingis is 7’2” shooting 39% on six threes per game, he protects the rim at a high level, and he is a one-man deterrent to indiscriminate switching defenses by virtue of being among the most efficient post-up scorers in the league.

Trae Young is a flawed player – inarguably one of the very worst defenders in the league – but I struggle to imagine a team better suited to accommodate him. Few questions remain about the star credentials offensively for a career 25.3 point per game scorer who just led the league in assists, but he might be in for the best season of his career as the floor general for a battalion of enormous slashers and shooters who thrive playing away from the ball. 

Making it all the way to the finals with Trae as the lead guy and the core this young probably requires too many things to go right, and demands a projection of year-over-year growth that is exceedingly optimistic. But can this team get home court advantage in Round 1, take care of business against Detroit/Milwaukee, then get hot and pull off an upset? Yeah, I really don’t see why not – a much worse Hawks team accomplished that feat four years ago. 

Bet: Hawks over 46.5 wins (-110)

• I thought about getting cute with alt overs or exact win totals, but this 46.5 number is so good I’d rather not mess around. 

Detroit Pistons

Ceiling: 45-50 wins, Eastern Conference Semifinals

Projected rotation

• Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Ausar Thompson, Tobias Harris, Jalen Duren
• Ron Holland II, Isaiah Stewart, Duncan Robinson, Caris LeVert, Marcus Sasser

The Pistons won 44 games in 2024, tripling their 2023 total en route to a magical season. I was all over the Pistons last year in preseason write-ups, gleefully watched nearly all of their games on League Pass, and could not be more charmed by this team and its superstar Cade Cunningham. I am grateful for the journey they took me on last season and I’ll continue to root for their success.

That being said, progress is rarely linear. The loss of Malik Beasley is categorically distressing – he was their second best player last year, a wire-to-wire flamethrower (42% on 9 threes per game) who single-handedly ensured sufficient spacing for a Pistons offense with massive shooting deficits. The loss of Schroder, too, though small by comparison, will be felt, as he played terrific, stabilizing basketball for Detroit down the stretch and accounted for an enormous on-ball creation void outside of Cade. Tim Hardaway Jr started all 77 games he played for the Pistons – he’ll be wearing a Denver Nuggets uniform in 2025. 

My best attempt at optimism is as follows. They lost Jaden Ivey for the back half of the season to a gruesome leg injury, who I have every reason to believe can and should be a ++ version of Dennis Schroder in this offense if his recovery proves to have gone well. With Ivey back in the picture, Detroit’s young core has absolutely intoxicating potential. Cade, Ivey, Ausar, and Duren are 22.5 years old on average, each an athletic outlier in their own right, all on hugely discounted contracts. Duren is the size of a grizzly bear, Ivey is one of the fastest humans in the league, Ausar might be in a two-man competition with only his own brother for most all-around explosive athlete in the league (and he is a savant defensively), and Cade is delivering on every vision imagined for him when he was selected 1st overall in 2021 as an all-time great prospect out of Oklahoma State. Excluding Giannis, is Cade the best player in the conference? The answer is no… but the answer could quickly become yes. 

To me, this year is about Jaden Ivey. He’s going to get these 82 games to prove whether or not the Pistons should commit to the Cade and Ivey backcourt, or if they should try to make a big splash to get a proven, veteran asset as the Number Two and go seriously contend in 2026. It’s thus difficult to imagine with this roster that the spacing will be good enough to field a top 10-12 scoring unit, and without that kind of offensive ceiling you aren’t going to do more than win an uproarious first round series and bow out respectfully in Round 2. 

Bet: Pistons under 46.5 wins (-110)

• It breaks my heart to do this, and I’d love to be wrong, but the Pistons won 44 games last year and got worse in the offseason. 

Milwaukee Bucks

Ceiling: 45-50 wins, Eastern Conference Semifinals

Projected rotation

• Kevin Porter Jr, Gary Trent Jr, Kyle Kuzma, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Myles Turner
• Cole Anthony, Bobby Portis, AJ Green, Ryan Rollins, Taurean Prince, Andre Jackson Jr

I have come to passionately resent the Milwaukee Bucks and everything they stand for. Kyle Kuzma, Taurean Prince, and Jericho Sims are a blight upon my television screen. Every decision Kyle Kuzma has made on a basketball court since leaving the Lakers has been the wrong decision. If he’s covered he shoots, if he’s open he dribbles into a turnover, if he’s in help defense he stands still, if he’s in on-ball defense he fouls, he never rebounds, he can’t hit free throws, he can’t shoot threes, and his next good pass will be his first. Taurean Prince might be the only player in the history of the EPM database to shoot 40% from three yet be graded as a net-negative offensive player, except somehow he has done it four of the last five years, across five completely different teams. He plays basketball like he is several thousand years into an infinite punishment, souldead and hollow-eyed, pacing himself for eternity. 31% of Jericho Sims possessions ended in a turnover last season. Yes, that is the real number, yes it is the highest number, no I don’t know why the Bucks are entering the season with him as their full-time backup Center. I have stopped questioning why the Bucks do anything. 

Why do I care so much? It’s simple – these ridiculous shams they call a supporting cast are preventing people from appreciating that Giannis Antetokounmpo is putting together one of the ten greatest individual peaks in the history of the sport. Last season, Giannis averaged 31, 12, and 7 on 60% from the field and 63% True Shooting in the regular season, then 33/15/7 on 65% True Shooting in the playoffs with my grandma as his second-best player. It was his fourth season in a row of 30+ PPG scoring on 99th percentile efficiency, all of which have taken place since the season he won both MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, and overlapping with the year he won Finals MVP averaging 35/13/5 on 66% True Shooting with a mutilated knee, one of the three greatest Finals performances in the history of the sport. He is second only to Lebron as NBA history’s most dominant player in transition and requires a five-man defensive wall to be contained in the halfcourt. He has been a top-three scorer, a top-ten passer, and a top-fifteen defender in each of the last four seasons, yet injuries, embarrassing coaching, and pathetic supporting casts have kept him from even returning to the Eastern Conference Finals. 

Ideally, Giannis will get traded, but I’ll let that be a nice surprise if it happens. For now, my working assumption is that he will play one final year in Milwaukee, try to win MVP, lose valiantly in a Round 1 playoff series, and request a trade in the offseason. If that turns out to be correct, then I must mortifyingly confess to thinking the Bucks are slightly undervalued entering this season. Myles Turner is a strict, substantial upgrade over the crumbling skeleton of Brook Lopez that took the floor last season, and Milwaukee should continue to be one of the best three-point shooting teams in the league thanks to Giannis’ downhill gravity. 

Bet (half-unit): Giannis Antetokounmpo to win League MVP (+1200)

• If he stays in Milwaukee, he will have a runway to put up some of the dumbest statlines we have ever seen. I think 46 wins and the 5 seed would put him at the very top of the MVP conversation, and +1200 is a disrespectful price for a player as legendarily dominant as Giannis. 

Philadelphia 76ers

Ceiling: 45-50 wins, Eastern Conference Finals

Projected Rotation

• Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Kelly Oubre Jr, Paul George, Joel Embiid
• Quentin Grimes, Kyle Lowry, Eric Gordon, Adem Bona, Justin Edwards, Andre Drummond

How am I to be expected to provide a prediction for a team like this? Two years ago, Joel Embiid looked like the best player in the world, Tyrese Maxey was an All-Star, and Paul George had the 7th highest EPM in basketball (+5.0). They all got hurt last season, the Sixers were atrocious, and the summer newsletters were populated by countless variations of Joel Embiid’s obituary. His knee would never be the same, he wasn’t close to ready for the season. Then he played in the preseason yesterday. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Will Paul George be back before New Year’s? Is Jared McCain ever going to get healthy? Why did this team forget to sign backup players, such that Adem Bona, Justin Edwards, and Eric Gordon (37) are all in prominent reserve roles to start the season? 

I could talk myself into anything. Embiid, Paul George, and Maxey could all just play at two-thirds of the level they did two years ago and this would be a 50-win team. VJ Edgecombe looked really good in preseason! I’m a huge fan of Quentin Grimes! I even thought about sprinkling a +3500 hail mary on this team to win the title, but why put myself through this again? I am a changed man from years of fruitless Clippers optimism. 

Bet: No bet

Toronto Raptors

Ceiling: 40-45 wins, Make the Playoffs, lose Round 1

Projected Rotation

• Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Brandon Ingram, Scottie Barnes, Jakob Poeltl
• Gradey Dick, Ochai Agbaji, Jamal Shead, Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo

Surprise – I think the Raptors are going to be good! They have built a team full of B-minus players that I believe is well suited to win more games than they lose in this “weakest link” era of modern basketball. Congratulations to them. But I don’t really understand what we are doing here in any meaningful sense. Please, explain the Raptors path to championship contention with these contracts. 

• Brandon Ingram: 3 years, $120 million 
• Scottie Barnes: 5 years, $225 million
• Immanuel Quickley: 5 years, $175 million
• Jakob Poeltl: 4 years, $105 million
• RJ Barrett: 2 years, $58 million

So, uh… I hope you like it, because this is the team for the next half decade! Five years of mediocre shooting, mediocre playmaking, mediocre defense, no passing, and a whole lot of tough buckets from Brandon Ingram in lopsided first round playoff exits. Is the idea that Scottie Barnes is still going to become a star? Because that ship sailed when he procured 44/27/73 shooting splits with a 14% turnover rate as the lead banana in Toronto last season. Gradey Dick and Ochai Agbaji are fun names and decent players (great shooters), but neither of them has a visit to Springfield in their future. Those nauseating contracts for Quickley and Poeltl should be pills you only begrudgingly swallow to keep a contending team together – they serve no purpose here! 

Why am I so sure this team will even be decent this year after a 30-52 record last year? Poeltl, Quickley, Barrett, and Barnes missed a combined 116 games (29 each), and Agbaji and Dick missed an added 65 games. Simply put, they were one of the most injured teams in the league last season. They also did not yet have Brandon Ingram. 

Bet: Raptors over 39.5 wins (+105)

• They spent $700 million to be a .500 team and they’ll be damned if they don’t get their money’s worth. I’d set this at 42.5, so, embarrassingly, the Raptors are one of my favorite bets on the board. 

Indiana Pacers

Ceiling: 40-45 wins, Make the Playoffs, lose Round 1

Projected Rotation

• Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin, Aaron Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, Isaiah Jackson
• Ben Sheppard, Obi Toppin, T.J. McConnell, Jarace Walker, Jay Huff

The Pacers are a heartbreaking team to discuss. The ruthless precision and unflinching loyalty to their process they demonstrated throughout the 2025 postseason sincerely reshaped my understanding of basketball. The Pacers treated every second of the shot clock like it was precious, sometimes crossing halfcourt in less than three seconds in a rush not to score, but to initiate an onslaught of cuts, screens, and passes. The approach was a probabilistic one – every action or miniature play that is run represents an opportunity (call it 5%) for the defense to make a mistake that leaves someone open – through sheer volume of dice rolls, the Pacers would easily outpace rates of open layups and threes generated by teams that meticulously organize possessions around one more complex and clever play. The secondary effect of this was a unique and beautiful on-court aesthetic, that being a spellbinding synchrony of navy and yellow, at all times in tune with itself and impervious to swings in momentum. This noble stoicism was the organizing principle for their legendary comebacks. As opponents turtled into prevent offense, obsessed with running out the clock, Indiana insisted on executing their system at the highest level on both ends, which defensively looked like disciplined, legal, yet uncompromisingly ferocious pressure in the backcourt, on the inbounds, and at the point of attack. 

We all know how it ended. Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in the first quarter of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the Pacers lost, and Myles Turner signed with Milwaukee in free agency, leaving us to analyze the hollow remains of a team I will forever admire. 

I squinted really hard in the hopes of seeing a playoff team here. Pascal Siakam is a star, Andrew Nembhard has shown an ability to be commandingly effective in every role, Aaron Nesmith has transformed himself into a world class three-and-D wing, and… I’ve run out of players. Benedict Mathurin is not a player I believe meshes well with a Pacer offense fueled by world-class processing speed and constant movement – to my eye, he is a ball stopper and a poor defender, and I worry that an additional fifteen Mathurin possessions per game will fail to service the pursuit of victory. Isaiah Jackson is an unserious starting Center. Jay Huff, Reed Sheppard, and Obi Toppin are luxuries as 8th or 9th men in a rotation, but 25-30 minutes per game of them will rapidly lose its appeal. The market broadly supports my pessimism – their win total sits at a very sad 37.5, and they are significant underdogs to make the playoffs. I wish Tyrese Haliburton a speedy and whole recovery, and hope that next year the Pacers re-invest at the Center position and return to the spotlight. 

Bet: No bet

Boston Celtics

Ceiling: 40-45 wins, Eastern Conference Semifinals

Projected Rotation

• Payton Pritchard, Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, Sam Hauser, Neemias Queta
• Anfernee Simons, Chirs Boucher, Baylor Scheierman, Xavier Tillman, Hugo Gonzalez

I refer to EPM a lot. It’s very noisy, and I think a lot of my analytically-minded compatriots tend to overindex on it, but it is the best all-in-one stat we have for at least directionally capturing the less visible elements of individual impact on a basketball court. I tend to outsource about 10% of my player evaluation to it – wherever I land on a player from my own studies, I apply a 10% current in the direction of their EPM. 

One metric offered in the EPM database that I have never once referred to is the “Estimated Wins” column. Best I can tell, Estimated Wins is just an extrapolation of EPM using games played and minutes played to give something akin to WAR in baseball. So, just for fun, let’s take a look at the “Expected Wins” consequences of losing Jayson Tatum (13.1), Kristaps Porzingis (5.5), Jrue Holiday (5.5), Al Horford (4.8), and Luke Kornet (4.9) all to either injury, trade, or free agency this summer, while only bringing in Anfernee Simons (4.3) and Chris Boucher (2.4). 

The sum of that equation is 27.1 fewer wins. If we were to trust that number blindly, which we’re not going to, that would take the Celtics from a 61-win team to a 34-win team.

That’s the nerd case. Here is the basketball case. I think the Celtics have the worst frontcourt in the league. Maybe Charlotte can make a case they are worse, but just look at this monstrosity of nonsense. Neemias Queta is in the starting lineup. That’s not because Joe Mazzulla is an idiot. That is because Neemias Queta is the only player above six foot eight on this entire roster! Have you prepared yourself for 22 minutes a night of Baylor Scheierman? The X-Man, Xavier Tillman? The foundation of this basketball team was to have five shooters on the court at once, all of whom can punish an overly aggressive closeout off the dribble and ignite gorgeous, lethal possessions of ring around the rosie ball movement. They are now handing the keys to Jaylen Brown, whose reputation continues to drastically exceed his play. He is not an efficient scorer, he is not a reliable shooter (32% from three last season, 34% since 2020), he is an untrustworthy ball-handler, and he is no longer a particularly good or consistent defender (I am not alone in thinking this). I am too awed by Derrick White (and Pritchard to a lesser extent) to go as low as I want to on this team, but I expect them to miss the playoffs and I’d be unsurprised if the wheels fell off midseason. (And no, I don’t expect Tatum to return, though it would be astoundingly impressive). 

Bet: Celtics under 41.5 wins (-105)

Bet: Derrick White to average 20+ points per game (+180)

• This team is no longer good at the things that made it good. One of these frontcourt players would have to emerge out of nowhere as a legitimately good NBA player for this team to win more games than it loses. Meanwhile, Derrick White averaged 21.6 points per 75 possessions with Tatum off the floor last season (800 minutes). +180 is way too good to pass up. 

Chicago Bulls

Ceiling: 40 wins, Participate in the Play-in Tournament

Projected Rotation

• Josh Giddey, Coby White, Isaac Okoro, Matas Buzelis, Nikola Vucevic
• Ayo Dosunmu, Tre Jones, Kevin Huerter, Patrick Williams, Zach Collins

I don’t have very much to say about the Bulls, except that they were a 39-win team last season and bring essentially the same exact team to 2025-2026, minus 42 games of Zach LaVine. They went 21-19 in games without LaVine with a young core of Giddey (22), White (24), and Buzelis (20) I figure will get incrementally better. The bench is full of promising names coming off disappointing seasons, but it is at least going to be a relatively professional operation across the board. 

Bet: Bulls to win 34-37 games (+350)

• Here is where my intrigue lies. What in the world is this price? The Bulls win total is 32.5, which I think they will exceed, but the fewer games a team is expected to win, the more diluted the prices should be on these four-win ranges. 38 wins is a significantly more difficult feat for a team projected to win 32 than 58 wins is for a team projected to win 52. The prices I’ve seen reflect the opposite, so I’ll be returning to this category for another bet later. 

Miami Heat

Ceiling: 35-40 wins, Participate in the Play-in Tournament

Projected Rotation

• Tyler Herro, Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins, Bam Adebayo, Kel’el Ware
• Davion Mitchell, Terry Rozier, Jaime Jaquez Jr, Nikola Jovic, Pelle Larson, Kasparas Jakucionis

Pat Riley and the Miami Heat have worked tirelessly to brand themselves as an organization that wins not thanks to its players, but thanks to its culture. Winning is a character trait, they’ve said. Just shut up, put your head down, work hard, and let Riley and Spoelstra’s unparalleled basketball acumen do the rest. There’s no I in Heat Culture. They don’t need big egos like Jimmy Butler getting in the way. 

So let’s put it to the test! Before us stands an appalling roster. These Miami Heat, bereft of offensive talent to begin with, will be without Tyler Herro for two months, and are coming off a season in which they played at a 34-win pace without Jimmy Butler (24-33). Their best scorer from now until Christmas will be Norman Powell, their bench is populated exclusively by players who had awful 2024 seasons both by the eye test and the metrics, and yet their win total is 38.5 and they are more or less a coin flip to make the playoffs. 

Bet: Heat under 38.5 wins (-110)

• A parlay of the following three things must hit if the Heat plan on being a .500 team and flirting with playoff contention. One, Tyler Herro must return within the first twenty games of the season and remain healthy. Two, Nikola Jovic must take a gigantic leap such that he becomes a strong member of the starting lineup down the stretch. Three, either Bam Adebayo or Kel’el Ware must figure out how to make threes consistently so that they may coexist offensively. I’m happy to bet against it. 

Charlotte Hornets

Ceiling: Win 36 games, Participate in the Play-in Tournament

Projected Rotation

• Lamelo Ball, Brandon Miller, Kon Knueppel, Miles Bridges, Moussa Diabate
• Collin Sexton, Tre Mann, Josh Green, Grant Williams, Tidjane Salaun

I’m… pretty fired up to watch the 2025-2026 Charlotte Hornets? Lamelo Ball has been memed to the moon and back, but I am begging you to watch him play basketball for a full game. The man is insane! I don’t understand how a player this popular has become underrated, but Lamelo is already impacting the game at a superstar level on offense. His statline, 25/5/7 on 54% True Shooting, does not come close to explaining the phenomenon – he routinely finds windows for shots and passes that I have literally never seen before. With Lamelo on the floor, the Hornets scored 114 points per 100 possessions, a perfectly respectable mark consistent with the NBA league average. With Lamelo on the bench, they were more inept than the 2019 New York Knicks, who posted a league-worst offensive rating of 104.6 and trotted out an Opening Day starting lineup of Frank Ntilikina, Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr, Lance Thomas, and Enes Kanter. EPM pegged him as the 10th most impactful offensive player in all of basketball last season. 

Two of his teammates, Brandon Miller and Miles Bridges, had strong positive signals per EPM as well, which had me very confused as to why this team was so awful (19-63) until I realized that the trio missed 108 combined games last season. Positive regression is on our side, as is the introduction of Collin Sexton, who might as well be Michael Jordan compared to some of the hobgoblins the Hornets were employing last season. Sexton just put together consecutive seasons of 18.5 points per game on practically 50/40/90 shooting splits (48/40/86, 60% TS) – how did he end up in Charlotte? Kon Knueppel was the fourth pick in the draft, he could be awesome! I understand this team does not employ any serviceable bigs but who cares!!! Their offense might be good! They have Eric Collins announcing the games! Go watch the Hornets this year. 

Bet: Hornets over 27.5 (+105)

• I thought so hard about taking the Hornets to finish 3rd in the division at +700. The Hawks and Magic are unimpeachable in the top two spots, and the Wizards are a near lock for 5th, which makes this a head-to-head race between the Hornets and Heat for 3rd at eight-to-one odds. It is a great bet, and I endorse it if you want to take it… but again I’m playing it safer. If Lamelo plays 65 or more games, this will hit. 

Washington Wizards

Ceiling: Win 30 games

Projected Rotation

• Bub Carrington, CJ McCollum, Khris Middleton, Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr
• Tre Johnson, Kyshawn George, Corey Kispert, Cam Whitmore, Tristan Vukcevic

No more funny business. The Wizards are bad. There is no sneaky analytics cockadoodledoo I can whip up to pretend otherwise. They are a bad team that is conducting a totally fine rebuild on a totally fine schedule. There is nothing to make fun of, nothing to bet, and no young player who has yet emerged as a budding star for them. Coulibaly is a fun defender and athlete but a difficult rehabilitation project with limited skills, Alex Sarr had an okay rookie season as the 2nd overall pick and deserves grace/time, and Tre Johnson (their new rookie) has generated a fair bit of preseason buzz. I think that’s plenty of Wizards talk.

Bet: No bet

Brooklyn Nets

Ceiling: Win 27 games

Projected Rotation

• Egor Demin, Cam Thomas, Terrance Mann, Michael Porter Jr, Nic Claxton
• Nolan Traore, Ziare Williams, Ben Saraf, Danny Wolf, Noah Clowney, Day’Ron Sharpe

Two problems here for me as an analyst. One, I don’t watch college basketball, so I have no opinion on these incoming prospects until I see them play in the NBA, and half of the Nets projected rotation is rookies. Two, the Nets are blacked out on League Pass in New York, and they are mercifully never on national TV games, so they are the team I watched the least of last year by a gargantuan margin. I don’t like pretending to know things that I do not know. I could make up some gibberish about half of these players being “underrated passers” or “strong help defenders” and none of you would know the difference, but lying is bad for the soul. I don’t (can’t?) really watch this team and have no further comment at this time. 

Bet: No bet