(I cannot believe I managed to finish this. Forgive me if there are typos; I am no longer physically able to type on a computer for extended periods due to a disc herniation in my neck, so this was all written on an iPhone in my bed.)

Performance review

• 2023-2024: +21.2 units on 38 recommended bets
• 2024-2025: +23.3 units on 30 recommended bets
• 2025-2026: +12.7 units on 23 recommended bets
• Overall: +57.2 units on 91 bets

• Had you wagered $10 on each bet I have recommended since 2023, you would be sitting on a profit of $572
• Both 2024 and 2025 featured correct predictions of the eventual champion.
  • 24-25: OKC to win the title (+600)
  • 25-26: NYK to win the title (+1200)

Disclaimer: I do not place these bets myself. I have significant concerns about the practice of gambling on sports and as such do not publicize these bets until the last possible second. I strongly advise you not to wager a meaningful amount of money on sports. I have found the bets to be a particularly objective method of tracking the accuracy of my analysis/predictions as compared to a replacement-level fan or analyst.

1. Boston Celtics

O/U 51.5 wins | +1300 championship odds

Expectation: 50-55 wins, reach Eastern Conference Semifinals

Notable additions: Paul George, Mitchell Robinson, Chris Cenac Jr (27th pick)

Notable departures: Jaylen Brown

Bet: Celtics to win more games than the 76ers (-105)

Bet: Celtics to win Group C of the NBA Cup (+140)

I have never been more wrong about a team than I was about the 2025-2026 Boston Celtics. I’ll put my exact words below for accountability.

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… 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).

This will sound obnoxious and insincere (I was obviously fuming at the time and desperately rooting against them), but that miss was profoundly instructive for me. My logic fixated on personnel without paying respect to the overwhelming mathematical edge the Celtics have constructed in the Joe Mazzulla era, expanding far beyond their notorious three-point volume. The Celtics funnel their opponents into taking more midrange shot attempts than any other defense (30% of opponent shots) while completely shutting down access to the rim with swarming help (25% of opponent shots came at the rim, the lowest rate in the league). They take obsessive pride in winning the possession margin; they commit fewer turnovers than any other team (11 per game) and were one of just three teams (Knicks and Hornets) to finish top six in both offensive and defensive rebounding.

If we consent to adopt this view of the Celtics as a systemic (regular season) juggernaut, rather than one driven by individual heroics, it follows that the departure of Jaylen Brown, particularly given the acquisition of Paul George and the return of Jayson Tatum, is unlikely to cause significant harm. The Celtics somewhat famously performed much better with him off the court (+12.9 points per 100 possessions in 1200 minutes) than they did with him on (+6.7 in 2200 minutes), though I have mixed feelings about those figures and wrote nearly 1,000 words on my Jaylen Brown ambivalence in last year’s All-NBA article.

This isn’t a team I particularly believe in come playoff time, but they have proven themselves to me as a regular season wins machine. They are my tentative choice to nab the 1 seed in this demonic conference, and I had planned to recommend a straightforward ‘over’ until I saw the head-to-head bet against Philadelphia, who I project to win 45 games and flirt with the play-in (we will discuss at length, I promise).

The NBA Cup bet is a silly looking one, so let me convince you in less than thirty seconds. Their group consists of the following teams: the Atlanta Hawks, the Charlotte Hornets, the Washington Wizards, and the Chicago Bulls. These are the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th best teams in the Eastern Conference. Boston will at worst be a -300 favorite on average across the four games, which implies a 75% win probability. At a conservative 75% win probability, the odds of the Celtics going 3-1 or better across these four group stage games, all but guaranteeing they win the group, is 73.8%. The current price, +140, implies a probability of 41.7%. It’s transparently miscalculated.

2. New York Knicks

O/U 52.5 wins | +900 championship odds

Expectation: 50 wins, Eastern Conference Champions

Notable additions: Andre Drummond

Notable departures: Mitchell Robinson

Bet: Knicks to win 49-52 games (+310)

Last year’s Celtics assessment may have been my worst career miss, but it was gleefully overshadowed by the greatest prediction of my life – the New York Knicks to win the title at preseason odds of +1200.

A little on my basketball fandom: I’ve never had a long-term favorite team. For reasons that I’m sure warrant psychoanalysis, I have rooted A) for individual players I adore and B) in accordance with my preseason predictions for every year of my adult life. I imagine this must be utterly insufferable for those around me. I was a Cavs fan in 2018, primarily because I wanted more ammunition for my LeBron GOAT case. I was a Raptors fan in 2019 in response to what I felt was mean-spirited punditry about Kawhi Leonard and his chronic injuries; he had become severely underrated and underappreciated, so, not yet a serious analyst and not knowing any better, I picked them to win the championship in October. I was a Lakers fan in 2020, again for LeBron’s sake, though I picked the Clippers. I was a Bucks fan in 2021 because I loudly insisted they were better than the redundant Big Three Nets, which marked the first time I had a rooting interest birthed entirely by my prediction. I stuck by them and the Clippers for the next three seasons. In 2025 I jumped ship for the Oklahoma City Thunder. In 2026, it was the Knicks. The NBA has seen eight different champions crowned in the last eight seasons, yet I personally have won the championship five times.

Forgive me my terminal case of uniqueness, but what surely separates my experience from that of the traditional bandwagoner is that it takes less than six months for me to form a life-or-death attachment to and investment in these teams. I wore a Raptors jersey to my high school graduation the day after they hoisted the Larry O’Brien. My girlfriend and I tackled each other into a concrete pole in her basement wearing matching Giannis jerseys in a delirious, shrieking haze when the Bucks won it all. I sobbed when the Thunder won the championship in 2025. As mortifying as this is to confess, my emotions during those championships were about me. I had staked what felt like a lot reputationally on my belief in them and formed lonely, parasocial attachments to the players while never so much as meeting a native, lifelong fan.

I live in New York. My dad is a lifelong, diehard Knicks fan. My best friends are all Knicks fans. I’ve been going to Madison Square Garden twenty times a season for the last half-decade. I was in the building for the miraculous six-point comeback in Game 2 against Philadelphia in 2024, for the Game 7 catastrophe against Indiana the next round, and for the Haliburton bounce in Game 1 of the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals. Somehow, owing to what must have been a stygian void in my soul, none of this was sufficient to make me a Knicks fan. I was always fond of them, and I cherished the opportunity to cheer them on with my Dad in person, but my deepest loyalties always lay elsewhere.

The moment I settled on picking them last season, I figured I had signed up for the most gutting, heart-rattling journey of my basketball life, and in many ways it was. The season ran in parallel with an onslaught of devastating developments in my personal life. I watched helplessly as my girlfriend grew horribly sick with myalgic encephalomyelitis. I lost the ability to play sports due to degenerative changes in my neck. My dog died. I’d forget about it all after wins and sink back into it after losses.

As you can imagine, the playoffs were a bit of a fever dream. Monday night, I’m on the phone with my girlfriend’s dad talking through the logistics of a potential multi-week hospital stay. Tuesday night, the Knicks erase a 22-point 4th quarter deficit and I’m sprinting down 7th Avenue with my Dad, jubilantly roaring at strangers about Landry Shamet, Captain of the Death Lineup. The night before Game 4 of the NBA Finals was one of the scariest of my life; 24 hours later, the Knicks complete the greatest comeback in the history of professional sports and I am storming the court with Dad, fainting from some divine amalgam of euphoria and dehydration after three hours of unrelenting battle cries. We watched Game 5 huddled up in the living room as the Knicks erased yet another 16-point deficit, and I braced myself for an avalanche of tears. I’d sobbed when the Thunder won last year, for heaven’s sake. OG Anunoby hit the clinching free throw, I suffered a momentary cardiac arrest as Jeremy Sochan recklessly contested Wemby’s three, and the final buzzer sounded. I hugged my Dad fifteen, maybe sixteen times. I hugged my Mom. I hugged my friends. The biggest, happiest smile I’d ever known plastered itself to my face as I watched my Dad, the ebullient toddler, unable to contain his joy, bumping and banging into tables and walls on his way to cannonball into the pool. I was transfixed, enraptured, ablaze with life as I soaked up the rapture. But I didn’t cry.

I’ve reflected on this a lot. At first, I assumed this meant that the Thunder championship had been more meaningful, shocking as that seemed, but what I have come to believe is that the emotion I had been experiencing in prior championship seasons was relief. I had made the rooting experience so egocentric and placed so much pressure on myself to be right that the final buzzer came as an unburdening so violent and visceral that it brought me to my knees. The stakes of the Knicks championship were higher for my Dad than for me, and he was all I could think about when they won. It’s a far more stubborn memory, as beautiful and exceedingly cheesy as that is. Once the first couple weeks passed, I hardly revisited the Thunder’s title run. I’ve watched highlights of the Knicks playoff run every day since June 13th; it has made me smile every single time.

So… am I a Knicks fan now? I think so. If all goes to plan, I’ll get a chance to prove it to myself. I think we are in line for an NBA Finals rematch (I have not felt this way since 2017), but I’m fairly confident the Spurs will win this time around. Have I changed? In doing this self-examination, I can’t help but fear I’ve pulled back the curtain on the rottenness of man.

Would my ego finally rest? I hope so.

(The Knicks are my official pick to win the East [by plurality outcome], but the conference is too difficult for me to bet on them at +300 with adequate conviction. As for the regular season, they have won 53, 51, 50, and 47 games the last four years; I expect them to be in that exact range again.)

3. Detroit Pistons

O/U 48.5 wins | +2500 championship odds

Expectation: 45-50 wins, lose in Round 1

Notable additions: John Collins, Isaiah Joe, Ebuka Okorie (17th pick)

Notable departures: Tobias Harris, Isaiah Stewart, Caris LeVert

Bet: None

Brace yourself, for we will now be forging through the inscrutable octet of Eastern Conference playoff hopefuls: Detroit, Indiana, Philadelphia, Toronto, Cleveland, Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta. Each of these teams, in a vacuum, is an obvious playoff team.

• Detroit won 60 games last season.
• Indiana made the finals 2 years ago.
• Philadelphia added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown to a 45-37 team that won a playoff series last year.
• Toronto made the playoffs last season and added Kawhi Leonard.
• Cleveland just made the Eastern Conference Finals and improved their starting lineup with the acquisition of Peyton Watson.
• Miami added Giannis Antetokounmpo for some picks and a pile of scraps.
• Orlando has the highest payroll in basketball and, despite injuries, took the #1 seed to Game 7 in the playoffs last year.
• Atlanta finished the season 20-6 and took 2 games off of the Knicks in Round 1, more than the next three Knicks’ opponents managed to win combined.

This is, without question, the toughest, deepest conference we’ve seen in a decade. Between those eight teams, the Celtics, and the Knicks, we have just six playoff spots and four tickets to the play-in tournament. To the extent my analysis moving forward will sound like I’m concern trolling about excellent teams with rock solid foundations, it will be because I am grading relative to the difficulty of this environment.

The Pistons are my reluctant choice for “least likely to fall into the play-in.” Being the quintessential hustle team, they won 60 games last season by dominating the offensive glass and forcing a bunch of turnovers (the most in the NBA, edging out OKC). They’re the only elite defensive unit (DRTG below 110) of the last five years to be captained by a perimeter player in Ausar Thompson, a phenomenon which is both a credit to him and a key to why this great defense feels less impenetrable than others come playoff time. Still, Ausar logged a defensive EPM of +4.3 last season, making it the most impactful defensive season by any guard since Tony Allen in 2014, and his presence all but guarantees Detroit will have a top-ten defense again in 2027. The pairing of Ausar and Duren makes their halfcourt offense dysfunctional in a playoff setting, but the regular season lacks the same rigorous, exploitative gameplanning such that Detroit can get by on transition scoring and tough jumpers from Cade.

John Collins is a substantial downgrade from Tobias Harris, to be sure, and Isaiah Joe is a mediocre depth option I worry they’ll rely on too heavily to treat their claustrophobia in the halfcourt, but this is all priced in; 48.5 wins suggests that the market is expecting 12 games of regression from last season. The Pistons present theoretical matchup problems for New York on account of their athleticism, but I’m highly skeptical they can get far enough in the playoffs to test that theory. I’ll pass on any wagers here.

4. Indiana Pacers

O/U 44.5 wins | +4000 championship odds

Expectation: 47-50 wins, reach Eastern Conference Finals

Notable additions: Kelly Oubre Jr, Ivica Zubac

Notable departures: None

Bet: Pacers to win a playoff series, advance to the Eastern Conference Semifinals (+230)

There is no team that poses a greater threat to the Knicks’ repeat chances than the healthy Indiana Pacers, who are offensively mispriced at 14:1 to win the conference and 40:1 to win the title. The pervasive attitude of dismissal towards Indiana’s finals run in 2025 is bizarre to me; they were on a 34-14 run going into those playoffs with the 4th best offense and the 9th best defense after having already made the conference finals the prior season. They annihilated the Bucks, handled the injured Cavs, beat the Knicks in six games, and pushed an all-time great Thunder team to a Game 7 whereupon Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles. For 24 months, the Pacers played relentlessly fast and disciplined basketball on both ends led by two legitimate All-Stars, a Hall of Fame coach, and a deep, talented bench, yet they’re consistently lumped in with fluky aberrations like the eighth-seeded 2023 Heat. The Pacers have lost nobody from that 2025 team except Myles Turner, who they replaced with a far better basketball player in Ivica Zubac, Tyrese Haliburton is fully healthy and 500 days removed from the Achilles rupture, they added Kelly Oubre Jr as a 9th man in the rotation, and nevertheless they find themselves neck-and-neck with the Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks for the honor of 8th-highest odds to win the conference. It’s disrespectful and unserious.

5. Toronto Raptors

O/U 46.5 wins | +2500 championship odds

Expectation: 45-50 wins, reach Eastern Conference Semifinals

Notable additions: Kawhi Leonard, Allen Graves (19th pick)

Notable departures: Brandon Ingram, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Gradey Dick

Bet: None

The Raptors are another team I’d like to see the Knicks avoid if possible. To the extent New York is vulnerable, their primary weaknesses are speed and secondary ball-handling. Young, disruptive, perimeter-oriented teams that play with pace can cause the Knicks to stagnate offensively and put a lot of pressure on Brunson and Towns’ mobility. The Knicks swept the Raptors last season (5-0), but those games were lost on account of Toronto’s grievously unprofessional halfcourt offense, for which Kawhi Leonard is the premier antidote. Kawhi averaged 28 points per game last season with 50/39/89 shooting splits (63% TS) on a diet consisting overwhelmingly of contested midrange buckets; 51% of his FGA across 65 games played last season were middies, and he converted them at a 98th percentile clip.

Kawhi joins a fairly raucous defensive nucleus consisting of Scottie Barnes, Collin Murray-Boyles, RJ Barrett, and Jamal Shead, supplemented by Immanuel Quickley and Ja’Kobe Walter for a bit of shooting. It’s a good team; I’d rather not go down the Kawhi health/availability rabbit hole, particularly since there are other more pressing regular season concerns. Jakob Poeltl is bad. Toronto cannot afford to play him more than CMB this season, which, despite my faith in Darko Rajakovic, may nevertheless continue to happen given Poeltl’s insane contract. Scottie Barnes has to become a more serviceable shooter than 30.1% on 3.4 attempts per game. For context, Giannis is a 29% career three-point shooter on 2.5 attempts per game. The difference between Scottie being a Giannis-level liability from beyond the arc and Scottie being a league average shooter is probably what determines whether the Raptors are a play-in team or a conference finalist. Again, I’ll pass on any wagers.

6. Cleveland Cavaliers

O/U 47.5 wins | +2200 championship odds

Expectation: 45-50 wins, lose in Round 1

Notable additions: Peyton Watson

Notable departures: Max Strus, Dennis Schroder, Dean Wade, Keon Ellis, Georges Niang

Bet: None

I’m so bored of this team. 2026-2027 will be Year Five of the Donovan Mitchell era in Cleveland, during which they’ve been the 4 seed, the 4 seed, the 1 seed, and the 4 seed, each followed by an equivalently perfunctory playoff exit; swept by the Knicks in ‘26, gentleman’s swept (4-1) by the Pacers in ‘25, gentleman’s swept by the Celtics in ‘24, and gentleman’s swept by the Knicks in ‘23. They always leave you with a disgusting taste in your mouth, you root for them to blow it up and trade everyone, then they run it back and win 48-55 games again. I see no reason to believe they’re any more likely to implode this regular season than they were any of those others.

The Cavs are an irritant in this playoff picture because they are almost certainly going to make the tournament only to get beaten lifeless, and in doing so preclude a far more entertaining team from participating. The Donovan Mitchell and James Harden backcourt paired with an Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen frontcourt makes them too deep and too big to fail in the regular season, though I so fervently hope they do.

7. Miami Heat

O/U 45.5 wins | +3000 championship odds

Expectation: 45-50 wins, lose in Round 1

Notable additions: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Klay Thompson, Bobby Portis, Tim Hardaway Jr, Nick Richards

Notable departures: Tyler Herro, Norman Powell, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr, Kasparas Jakučionis

Bet: Heat to participate in the Eastern Conference Play-in Tournament (+170)

That’s it for the playoffs!!! Sorry Giannis and LeBron, but we only have six spots. You’ll have to make your way in via the play-in tournament.

I wish I were joking, but this is our reality in 2027. Having prime Giannis, a top-15 player in the history of the sport, Erik Spoelstra, a top-15 coach in the history of the sport, and Bam Adebayo, the second-highest individual game scorer in the history of the sport, is no longer enough to guarantee a ticket to the dance in the Eastern Conference. I hate it here.

As with every team in this octet, I can easily envision a path to 50-55 wins for the Miami Heat. Giannis has won an average of 54.4 games per year since ascending to an MVP level for the first time in 2018. The Bucks were 380-197 (.659) in games he played and 60-77 (.437) without him, with Giannis himself averaging a hilarious 30, 12, and 6 on 59% from the field and 63% True Shooting en route to capturing two MVPs, a finals MVP, a Defensive Player of the Year, four 1st team All-Defense nods, and seven consecutive 1st team All-NBAs. He is a pantheon legend still in his relative prime (31 years old). Legends of his status do not historically find themselves scratching and clawing for a 7th seeded playoff spot often.

Alas, that is the future I see for the Miami Heat in year 1 of his tenure. Any two-dollar schmuck with a microphone or a keyboard can tell you that this team lacks spacing and shooting, and I’m not about to argue otherwise. Giannis and Bam make for a clunky offensive fit, Wiggins and Davion are relatively low-volume shooters for their positions, and Klay Thompson is 57 years old. I think, however, from the perspective of the regular season, this won’t be too much of an issue. People overrate Giannis’ reliance on spacing and driving lanes; he is so strong that he tends to plow through help defenders anyway, and extra hands reaching and digging at the ball will only inflate his already league-best rate of generating free throws. My bigger concern is the lack of secondary creation and what the Heat will look like when Giannis is on the bench. Their best ‘advantage creator’ after Giannis is Andrew Wiggins, who has been tasked with a larger scoring burden several times already in his career and never once succeeded in scaling up with respectable efficiency. Klay, Davion, Tim Hardaway Jr, and Bobby Portis are zeroes in this regard. Can Pelle Larsson mature into a reliable on-ball guard? He’s a massive swing player for them after showing flashes of excellence in 54 starts for Miami last season.

The math for this bet (Heat to make the play-in at +170) was super straightforward. I think the Knicks and Celtics are in, which leaves the aforementioned eight teams to compete for four playoff spots and four play-in spots. If I bet “play-in” for each member of the octet, the breakeven price would be +100. +170 implies just a 37% chance for the Heat to fall between the seventh and tenth seeds, or in other words a 63% chance that they finish with a better record than four of the seven teams (DET, CLE, TOR, IND, PHI, ORL, ATL). I think that’s off by about twenty percentage points.

8. Philadelphia 76ers

O/U 50.5 wins | +900 championship odds

Expectation: 45 wins, lose in Round 1

Notable additions: LeBron James, Jaylen Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Dean Wade, Anfernee Simons, Labaron Philon Jr (22nd pick)

Notable departures: Paul George, Kelly Oubre Jr, Quentin Grimes, Andre Drummond

Bet (0.5 unit): 76ers to finish as the 7 seed in the Eastern Conference (+1200)

Bet (0.5 unit): 76ers to finish as the 8 seed in the Eastern Conference (+1500)

I badly want this to work. It’s a star-studded roster in a great sports city playing for a legendary franchise that hasn’t won a title in 40 years, and it’s LeBron’s final chapter. The GOAT’s final resting place.

Sadly, from a basketball perspective, I’m totally confused and underwhelmed by his choice. The 76ers just put forth the worst defensive performance in a playoff series by any team this century, surrendering a 133 Offensive Rating to the Knicks in a humiliating, uncompetitive sweep. How is 42-year-old LeBron James the solution to this? Joel Embiid evidently has one playoff series in him at most – this is not his fault, his body has betrayed him – but how the hell is this team going to achieve anything with Adem Bona at center? Ah, never mind, they just signed Tacko Fall to a two-way contract. Well that fixes it. All is well.

I won’t do the Jaylen Brown conversation for a fifth time on the blog – refer to essentially any of my previous articles if you want extended reasoning for my hostility towards the notion that he provides anything approaching superstar impact – but I hope at the very least we can agree he’s not a defensive upgrade on Paul George. How is this team going to defend anyone??? Joel Embiid, bless him, cannot move. LeBron James is a grandfather of two. Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe both weigh less than 190 pounds, and their backups are Labaron Philon Jr (a 179 pound rookie) and Anfernee Simons. Is Dean Wade going to guard all five positions? How about 33-year-old and robustly washed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope? I truly and sincerely do not have any semblance of an idea what this team is going to do on the defensive end of the court in this conference. The relentless, young athletic teams (Detroit, Atlanta, Indiana, Toronto) will run them out of the gym. Giannis will eat them alive. We just saw the Knicks depants them. Who are they going to defend, Cleveland? Orlando?

“Defense, schmefense. They’ve got LeBron, Maxey, Embiid, AND Jaylen Brown. Who’s gonna stop this offense?”

For the nine games they share the court together they’ll be a bit scary, sure, but you must understand that stars’ production don’t summate linearly when thrown on the same team. An offense is a cohesive operation, and at the most rudimentary level there are two ways for an offense to be great: it must either score efficiently, or generate extra shots via offensive rebounding. Those are the only two variables – how many shots do you take? (more is better), and how many shots do you make? (more is also better). The most efficient offenses had a true shooting percentage of 60-62% last season, while the “possession maxing” offenses vacuumed 32-38% of their misses. Let’s set the names aside for a moment. Here is the Sixers lineup expressed as just the 2025-2026 True Shooting % of each member, followed by their percentile impact on the offensive glass.

• PG: 59% TS, 1st percentile OREBs
• SG: 54% TS, 55th percentile OREBs
• SF: 57% TS, 39th percentile OREBs
• PF: 59% TS, 13th percentile OREBs
• C: 60% TS, 63rd percentile OREBs
• Average: 57.8% TS (would rank 19th last season), 8.6 OREBs per 100 possessions (would rank 30th last season)

Trust me, I appreciate how grossly oversimplified that is. Interconnectivity is the heart of the sport, and these players will open space for each other, but how much? How much credit can I possibly give to the theoretical interconnectedness of a severely injury-prone lineup that has never played together before, populated exclusively by mediocre shooters outside of Tyrese Maxey? This prospective starting five collectively shot 34.7% from three last season (9.8/28.2 per game), with both Jaylen and LeBron having established histories of sub-average outside shooting for their positions.

—-

Apparently, the market thinks I’m a babbling fool. The Philadelphia 76ers are tied with the New York Knicks for the third-best title odds after OKC and San Antonio, their win total is 50.5, and half of ESPN experts picked them to emerge from the Eastern Conference. I’d be lying if I said this all didn’t make me a bit queasy. I accept the possibility that I am overthinking it. Implicit in my posture about this team is a conviction that LeBron James is not evaluating the basketball prospects of the roster he’s chosen as coherently as Justin the Blogger, which… look. What is the point of writing anything on this blog if I just defer to the wisdom of consensus and authority? If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’ll try to learn from it, as I did with Boston last year.

As for the specific bet, it is functionally a +675 bet on the 76ers to be the 7 or 8 seed. Philly was priced at +300 to make the play-in (7-10), and I think they’re considerably more likely to be in the top half of that play-in than the bottom half given their agency over injury/load management down the stretch, so I opted for this narrow longshot angle. Returning to the math of the octet, even if I granted Philly as equally likely to finish in any of the four seeding bands (3 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, 9 to 10), AND gave an extra half chance to each of (1 to 2) and (11 to 15), you’d have breakeven odds of +400. We get 1.6x better odds than that thanks to the bookies’ love affair with this team.

9. Orlando Magic

O/U 43.5 wins | +8000 championship odds

Expectation: 45-50 wins, lose in play-in tournament

Notable additions: Nikola Vučević

Notable departures: Moritz Wagner

Bet: Magic over 43.5 wins (-110)

I officially need to speed up. Between the first 8 teams of the East and the completed West, we’re at 14,000 words. It’s 2:27 a.m. on the eve of the opening tip.

Thankfully, the hard part is over, and these remaining seven teams will be skimmed through by most readers regardless of what I say.

The Magic are being totally slept on as a dark horse to crash the Eastern Conference playoff party and kick out one of the superstars. Orlando had a win total of 50.5 entering last season, they were 3rd in the East in finals odds, and they had the highest payroll in basketball. They encountered two problems: health and coaching. Their best player, Franz Wagner, missed 50 games last season. Jalen Suggs missed 30 games. They hardly ran organized plays, leaning instead on Jamahl Mosley’s stated preference for a “read-and-react offense,” and wasted 48 games featuring Tyus Jones, one of the worst players in basketball. Mosley and Paolo all but openly hated each other, Desmond Bane took fewer threes than he’s taken in any other season of his career, and still they found themselves up 3-1 in a playoff series against the 60-win Pistons. With a new coach (Sean Sweeney) and better health, I’m confident they’re closer to a 50-win team than a .500 team.

10. Atlanta Hawks

O/U 43.5 wins | +7000 championship odds

Expectation: 40-45 wins, lose in play-in tournament

Notable additions: Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins, Dorian Finney-Smith, Kingston Flemings (8th pick), Zuby Ejiofor (23rd pick)

Notable departures: Jonathan Kuminga, Zaccharie Risacher, Buddy Hield

Bet: Hawks to miss the playoffs (+135)

“The Hawks won more games off the Knicks than any other team, bro!” – the dumbest person you know

We cannot be doing another round of Hawks gaslighting. This imaginary good team is built entirely on a 20-6 stretch after the All-Star break featuring sixteen wins against awful, tanking teams and a pair of miraculous one-point victories against a Knicks team that had overcomplicated its scheme and rotations and paralyzed their players. The Knicks stopped engaging in saboteurish malpractice, ran a basic flex offense, and promptly powerbombed the Hawks into the mantle of the Earth by a score of 380 to 284 over the final three games of the series.

Why is every analyst obsessed with paying their respects to the Atlanta Hawks? I promise you this is not some niche, analytical ball knowledge litmus test. The Hawks are a fine, .500ish team that I expect will be hopelessly outmatched in the playoff race by the nine monsters ahead of them. How is it possible that they are +135 to miss the playoffs? Did I miss a memo that the league is expanding and there are now ten playoff spots? We just went over the other nine teams. If the Hawks are 58% likely to make it, as implied by these odds, then which two of the nine teams ahead of them are missing? It’s mass psychosis. This might be the best bet on my whole portfolio.

11. Washington Wizards

O/U 34.5 wins | +15000 championship odds

Expectation: 35-40 wins, barely miss the cut

Notable additions: AJ Dybantsa (1st pick), Trae Young, Anthony Davis, Deandre Ayton, Khris Middleton

Notable departures: None

Bet: Wizards over 34.5 wins (-105)

You know who else might be better than the Atlanta Hawks? The Wizards!!! This team is going to be baskets of fun and plenty skilled with Trae Young, AJ Dybantsa, and Anthony Davis plus a ton of spunky young guys (Alex Sarr, Kyshawn George, Bilal Coulibaly, and Tre Johnson, listed roughly in order of my belief in their talent).

The East is unfortunately too good, so I can’t make them a playoff team, but a 50-win ceiling outcome is on the table here at 10-15%. Not breaking any news here, but I’m concerned about Anthony Davis’ availability – he’s only played more than 54 games in one out of his last six seasons. I’m not so much concerned about his talent; his production and metrics have remained at an All-NBA level in each of his healthy stints. I’ll take the simple over on 34.5 wins and root for good health.

12. Charlotte Hornets

O/U 38.5 wins | +10000 championship odds

Expectation: 35 wins

Notable additions: Naz Reid, Grayson Allen, Royce O’Neale, Dennis Schroder, Hannes Steinbach (14th pick), Christian Anderson Jr (18th pick)

Notable departures: LaMelo Ball, Josh Green, Miles Bridges

Bet: None (see Jazz section of Western Conference article)

I’m so bummed by the Hornets trading LaMelo after he had unironically transformed them into a borderline championship contender last season. Here is what I wrote about this team in LaMelo’s All-NBA blurb last season.

LaMelo’s disarming style and deeply unserious off-court behavior rendered him hopelessly underrated and underappreciated for years, perhaps appropriately so, but he has weaponized his flair for the dramatic into a teamwide hailstorm of chaos that turned Charlotte into the most terrifying force in the Association for three months. The Hornets are 32-16 since January 1st with the best offense in basketball (120.8 ORTG) and second-best net rating (+10.4) to San Antonio, launching and converting on the most threes of anyone (17.3/44.6 per game) with a starting lineup that outscored opponents by the largest margin of any starting lineup in NBA history (+29.1 per 100 possessions). There is a potent Tyrese Haliburton aroma to LaMelo’s impact – at 20 points per game on 55% True Shooting and 7.3 assists, his statistical profile is underwhelming, but, through a combination of urgency initiating offense and masterful court mapping, he singularly elevates the performance of all other players on the roster. Kon Knueppel goes from 59% True Shooting to 67% True Shooting with LaMelo on the court alongside him. Brandon Miller’s true shooting improves by 5 percentage points (55 -> 60), Diabate’s by 9 (60 -> 69), Bridges’ by 9 (52 -> 61), Grant Williams’ by 6 (58 -> 64), and Sion James’ by 11 (50 -> 61). LaMelo makes every player around him better to an absurd degree. The Hornets have a 126 offensive rating when LaMelo plays, which would be the NBA record by 5 points per 100 possessions. His advanced analytical footprint is accordingly superb (+4.6 EPM, 11th in NBA), and his per 36 stats are more in line with a traditional superstar: 26 points (on 13 three-point attempts), 6 rebounds, and 9 assists per game.

It is unforgivable that they didn’t run this team back. Is LaMelo’s immaturity so intolerable that it overrides everything he brings on the court? I acknowledge that the Hornets may know something about his health or his personality that helps to explain the move, but I can’t blindly speculate and thus cannot temper my disappointment. Half the team is injured, too, entering the season. I’m betting against Charlotte on principle.

13. Chicago Bulls

O/U 29.5 wins | +70000 championship odds

Expectation: 25-30 wins

Notable additions: Caleb Wilson (4th pick), Dailyn Swain (15th pick), Norman Powell, Buddy Hield, Nic Claxton

Notable departures: Collin Sexton, Nick Richards, Anfernee Simons

Bet: None

I am exercising my free will and electing not to talk about the Chicago Bulls. Caleb Wilson seems pretty fun, I hope he works out. I find Josh Giddey’s allegations confusing. I will try not to watch too many Bulls games.

14. Brooklyn Nets

O/U 24.5 wins | +100000 championship odds

Expectation: 25 wins

Notable additions: Julius Randle, Mikel Brown Jr (6th pick), Joshua Jefferson (28th pick), Keon Ellis, Moritz Wagner

Notable departures: Nic Claxton, Ochai Agbaji, Ziaire Williams

Bet: None

I cannot watch the Brooklyn Nets. I watch multiple basketball games every night during the regular season, taping them all on League Pass, but Nets games are blacked out in New York unless you have cable (I don’t) and, unlike the Knicks, they are never on national TV and I never attend the games in person. They might as well not exist. If they become relevant I’ll have to solve this problem, but we’re at least 25 years away from that.

15. Milwaukee Bucks

O/U 25.5 wins | +70000 championship odds

Expectation: Catastrophe

Notable additions: Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr, Kasparas Jakučionis, Caris LeVert, Brayden Burries (10th pick), Nate Ament (13th pick)

Notable departures: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis

Bet: None

It’s important to understand your rights. I don’t actually have to write about the Milwaukee Bucks. I am under no contractual obligation to do anything, I run this blog and I have at most 31 readers. If one of you is a Bucks fan, email me, and I’ll give you my earnest thoughts. Spoiler: the team is horrendous and the future is bleak.