The NBA season starts Tuesday, Oct. 20, and ESPN has multiple previews to guide readers, including a ranking of the top 100 players, a look at the top players in new places and capsules on each team, with the most important stats that affect teams' win-loss records.
Now it's time for a season preview using ESPN's Basketball Power Index (BPI), which evaluates two different strength measures for all 30 NBA teams: one based on players currently available, and the other based on players who should be available during the playoffs. Then, to create preseason projections, the BPI takes into account win totals from the betting market in conjunction with each team's schedule and other factors, simulating the season thousands of times, with the results forming these projections.
Once the season begins, the BPI watches what happens in games and updates both its current BPI and its playoff BPI. There are numerous benefits to this, particularly that it adjusts game predictions on the fly when there are reports of players missing games. If Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to miss a game, for instance, the BPI marks down the Miami Heat's chance to win that game by an amount suggested by history. Sometimes, those injury reports are late or inaccurate (ahem, Joel Embiid) and it annoys us, the BPI and the league as a whole. But don't hold that against the BPI's model.
One thing the BPI isn't seeing this season is a secret prediction edge over Las Vegas. There aren't major deviations in this model's rankings from what Vegas is forecasting.
Let's dig into the projections, including how it ranks teams from 1 to 30 and which teams have the best chance to win the NBA Finals.
Jump to a section:
1-30 team rankings
NBA playoff projections
NBA Finals projections
More takeaways
Regular-season projections
The BPI values shown are the current numbers, not the version for the playoffs. The Golden State Warriors are down at No. 20, reflecting the absence of Jimmy Butler III, who tore his ACL in January and could return around midseason. The Warriors would be No. 12 if they were at full strength.
There is only one other team with an injury causing significant deviations between their current and playoff power: Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers. That's because we know from history Embiid is going to miss games -- he has played 41 games per season since he was drafted and has played just 96 over the past three seasons -- and he is a good enough player that it matters. With Embiid, the Sixers have the third-best playoff BPI, consistent with the expectation they are among the favorites to come out of the East.
There are a few things to note from the overall league rankings. First, the Denver Nuggets finished last season as the league's best offense in the league, and the BPI isn't going to argue that they got worse. They've been in the top six on offense for seven years now. They're, of course, led by Nikola Jokic, who was the No. 1-ranked player in our top 100.
Second, the Oklahoma City Thunder are far and away the best-ranked defense at plus-5.7 to the second-place San Antonio Spurs at plus-4.2. The Thunder have been No. 1 on that side of the ball the past two seasons and just missed at No. 2 the season before.
Third, notice that the best teams are driven by defense (Thunder, Spurs, Detroit Pistons) and the worst teams are, well, likely driving their coaches wild with bad defense (Sacramento Kings, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Pelicans). In most years, offense drives the greatest difference across teams, but not this season. The range between the best and worst offenses is 8.0 net points per game, but it's 10.4 on defense. This is merely a forecast and not a fact, but it's something to watch as the game continues to evolve.
NBA playoff projections
The BPI can occasionally be a little overconfident. The model believes six teams in the West have an 85% chance to make the playoffs. Those numbers imply that it's unlikely that even one of those slips out of the playoffs. I have my doubts.
That doubt comes from knowing there is a realistic chance that someone on those top six teams gets hurt and it matters. Maybe that's Jokic or Kevin Durant or Luka Doncic. Those stars are important, having all been in the top 10 in overall Net Points added last season. Plus, those teams don't have the bench of the Thunder, whose bench could have gotten a No. 7 or 8 seed by itself based on a reasonable interpretation of their talent. They seem more fragile than a 10% chance of missing the playoffs.
On the Eastern side of the ledger, the story isn't all that different, though the bottom few teams are a little messier. From No. 6 to No. 10, there is plenty of room for teams to make it or fall out of the playoffs, where the Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards are not even shown because we stopped at 10 teams.
Not mentioned in these season projections: The Boston Celtics have a 75% chance of having at least the same record as the rival Sixers. But, if they are to meet in the playoffs, that is where the healthy Embiid factor kicks in and the Sixers have a 52% chance to beat the Celtics in a series.
NBA Finals projections
The Thunder have about a 1 chance in 4 to win the title, per the BPI's projections. Here are some game scenarios about equal to a 25% chance to win, to give that a little perspective:
Being behind by eight points at halftime
Trailing by four points with about five minutes left to go
Down 2 with a minute to go, but without possession
These are exciting situations. No one is leaving the game then unless they were only there to watch a mascot make a reverse half-court shot. Having a 28% chance doesn't sound like much, but it is an interesting number. It makes the rest of the league feel like they have a good chance, but those Thunder fans are also feeling good.
The Sixers' 8% chance needs perspective, too. That 8% doesn't change much if they rise to the No. 1 seed, where they'd go up to about 12%, or if they drop to the No. 6 seed, where it remains about 8%. Because the East looks fairly even across the playoff teams, the depth of the Sixers' stars keeps them competitive in the playoffs (especially if Embiid is healthy), no matter which teams they play. But even Embiid doesn't significantly bring up their chances to win it all when the Thunder and Spurs are so strong.
More takeaways from ESPN's BPI projections
This is the first season of the new anti-tanking rules. The updated draft lottery format means that really bad teams actually have a lower chance to get the No. 1 pick compared to merely ordinary bad teams. We put the new lottery rules into the BPI's system and let it project what expected picks teams would get. The big news out of that is -- and this is a little depressing for fans of competitive balance -- the Thunder have the third-best odds of getting the No. 1 pick in the 2027 draft. Fortunately, it's only at about 11%, but they have about a 75% chance of getting a top-10 pick.
ESPN Analytics built this cool simulation of the lottery if you like watching balls bounce around to determine the fate of a franchise. I did it once just as I was writing the previous paragraph and it landed the Thunder the No. 3 pick. I had to remind myself this was just a simulation and not reality.
In general, the odds of landing the No. 1 pick are much more flat, due to the new rules and the forecast of how teams will do this season. The Kings, for example, are projected to be the worst team in the league and their chances to get the top pick are about 7%, which ranks seventh. The Dallas Mavericks are predicted to win 10 more games than the Kings and have an 8% chance at the No. 1 pick. The new lottery rules create incentive to pay attention in real time during the season to where teams are likely to end up.
Finally, just for fun, the BPI can predict the likelihood of winning and losing streaks. Two teams are at about 70% to have at least a 10-game winning streak -- the usual suspects in the Thunder and Spurs. Both had streaks that long last season, but so did the Pistons, Nuggets and Atlanta Hawks. Last season, though, was when tanking teams were happy to fall into someone else's winning streak. Three teams had 16-game losing streaks and that lack of competitiveness probably raised the number of double-digit win streaks, too.
Of course, the most surprising streak of the season was that of the New York Knicks, who won 13 straight in the playoffs. Beating good teams over and over again in a march to a title is a dream, a statistical marvel. As much as we'd like to believe in the data and the calculations of the BPI, the basketball season that is about to start has a lot of the human factor and reason to watch beyond the highlights. You don't need the predictions. Enjoy the ups and downs of a game. The BPI didn't need to predict ups and downs because they will happen. Doncic, Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jayson Tatum, LeBron James and many other stars will have amazing games. You don't have to predict them but watch them when you can.
Roll out the basketballs and let's play.