Apr 13, 2026 4 min read

Regular Season Predictions vs. Actual

As always, my predictions ended up being as clear as mud, especially in the unpredictable East. But we still had fun, didn't we??? (Image Credit: "Man of Steel")

OK, a quick one today. As you likely know, I enjoy making predictions. Predictions are not only fun, but they also allow you to establish whether you're credible or a crank, and most importantly, they help you tell the story of the season. Betting lines do too, I suppose, but you and I don't control how some shadowy Ace Rothstein type is going to set the lines. Hence, predictions.

If you go back and read the season predictions piece I wrote, there is certainly a lot of truth in the individual team capsules whether I was right about where the team would land in the standings, but where I picked them to finish is what actually matters. So let's look at that, starting with the West:

I got four teams precisely correct. The one I feel best about is the Clippers. I also feel really good about my Spurs pick. Fourth really did seem bold at the time, and I think I got a lot closer than did most people. The Rockets are my biggest West disappointment, even though I was more wrong about Dallas and Phoenix.

Interestingly, those two teams that I got deathly wrong were nearly inverses of each other, so it didn't throw my overall conference picks off by much, and I was still able to be in the ballpark on nearly the entire conference as a result. The one that stings the most is Minnesota, as I had them sixth until the very last second, and then I slid them up to fifth and bumped the Lakers back. A perfect shot gone awry, as my father likes to say. Alas.

What an absolute cluster fuck. Toronto and Indiana, again, were nearly inverse to each other, but I feel much worse about reading them wrong than I do Dallas and Phoenix. I still think Toronto's ceiling is limited by the fact that Scottie Barnes can't shoot, but I punished them far more in my predictions for this than was remotely reasonable.

Elsewhere, the whole conference was thrown off its axis. A lot of that has to do with the Celtics. If you go back and look at other analysts' predictions, I think you'll find that I was among the most aggressive, having pegged them for sixth. It was still way off, and I've never been so happy to be wrong! It wasn't just the C's, of course. Detroit ascended so early in the season that probably most people at this point will claim they were on Detroit all along. They weren't.

Atlanta salvaged a lot of their season in the end, but the team that I thought would be third really "finished" 11th before it was burnt to the ground and rebuilt, like a phoenix, rising from Arizona. I knew Milwaukee would suck, but I still gave them too much respect. Ditto with Miami. Oddly, same with Orlando. I even said "I am always going to be lower on Orlando until they prove they can win a playoff series." It's just that most people had them top three, so putting them fifth felt like a slap in the face. I should have slapped harder, given that I never believed in them. We'll see now that they're whole heading into the postseason. If they get there.

Philly I think comes down to two things: 1) I didn't think VJ Edgecombe would be so impactful, and 2) as crazy as Nick Nurse is, I really didn't think he'd play Tyrese Maxey 38 minutes per game. In the history of the NBA, 1,130 players have averaged at least 37 minutes per game while playing at least 2,500 minutes per season. But only 17 players have done so in the past 10 seasons. Maxey tops them in minutes per game at 38 even. If you move the thresholds to 38 minutes per game where Maxey actually was, it becomes 750 and one. Just Maxey. As I've said before, Nick Nurse is a lunatic.

Overall, things look pretty good:

I got more than half the league (18 teams) within two places of where they actually finished, and was only deathly wrong on four teams. The two teams I was four spots off on (Philly and Boston) I feel OK about, and of the six teams I was three spots off on (Houston, Milwaukee, Miami, Orlando, Detroit, and Atlanta), I only spiritually feel bad about Detroit and Houston (Detroit is much better, Houston much worse). Atlanta is almost a completely different team than they were at the start of the season, and the other teams I feel like even if the precise prediction was off, they more or less are who I thought they were.

There are two pieces I want to write this week. We'll see if I have time:

Jaylen Brown Was Better Than Luka Dončić This Season
Playoff Predictions

Hopefully I get to both. Either way, I'm starting to feel giddy about the playoffs. We journeyed across an ocean full of tankers to get here, but we're finally here, and now get to watch the good basketball!