— start the season as the team to beat, projected at — wins with a power score of —. — bring up the rear.
Power score = points per 100 possessions better (or worse) than an average team: player projection plus coaching, staff, fit, positional balance, schedule load, leadership and continuity. The bar under each team shows its chances of finishing in the playoffs, play-in or lottery, from 4,000 simulated seasons. Tap a team for its hub.
Final scores, full box scores (Basketball-Reference) and recaps. "Pregame model" is this page's own win probability before tip-off.
Win probability = this model's expected margin (0.60 × the power-score gap, adjusted for tonight's injury report, plus 2 points home court) converted with a 12-point game-to-game spread. Out = 0% chance to play, doubtful 15%, questionable 50%, probable 90%. The market line is SportRadar's pregame probability, for comparison. Injury report: ESPN, as of this morning.
Thirteen two-team trades covering 26 teams. Each one is legal under the 2026-27 salary rules, and for each team it either makes the roster better now in our model or, for a rebuilding team, adds future value without costing much this season. The model re-runs each roster after the trade: minutes, fit, positional balance, continuity and leadership. Gains are small because real trades rarely move a team more than a point or two per 100 possessions; one point is worth about 1.6 wins over the rest of the season.
For these four teams, no legal trade made them better without costing the partner too much. Here's the closest option and what's in the way.
Context = everything beyond the roster. Schedule rank: 1 = hardest. Projected wins include strength of schedule and load management.
| # | Team | Power | Players | Context | Wins |
|---|
ESPN positions; starter = highest-rated player at each spot. Circle shows the player's rating (0 = league average).
Adjustments in points per 100 possessions vs. the league average. Schedule strength and load management affect wins only.
Contribution = rating × expected minutes ÷ 48. Expected minutes already count likely missed games.
Rating = stats (BPM, WS/48, VORP, efficiency) + fitted age curve + injury-return + playoff + awards adjustments. Hover a name for the evidence.
| Player | Pos | Age | Career stage | Rating | Min | Contrib. | Playoffs | Status |
|---|
Positions are ESPN's depth-chart designations; within each position players are ranked by player rating and the top-rated player starts (players expected to miss most of the season are listed last). "est." = not on ESPN's chart, position estimated. Dashed = injured or limited.
Highest projected ratings (box plus-minus scale).
Best ratings among players 23 and under.
Usage-weighted shooting and net rating, 2025-26 (15+ expected minutes).
Most above expectation in the playoffs, 2022–26, after small-sample shrinkage.
Highest share of games played over three seasons (25+ expected minutes).
Award index, last three seasons (MVP and DPOY voting, All-NBA, All-Star, Finals and Cup MVP, and more).
Rating boost from the 2026-27 NBA.com GM survey (MVP, best at position, defense, ROY and breakout picks).
Best ratings among players 34 and older.
Every rostered player gets a rating on the box plus-minus scale. For 2025-26 it blends four inputs, each standardised across the league and weighted by minutes: BPM 40%, WS/48 25%, VORP per 2,000 minutes 15%, and efficiency 20%. 2024-25 uses the first three only (50/30/20).
Efficiency is half usage-weighted true shooting vs. the league average, and half individual net rating. In that net rating, offensive rating above average is scaled by usage, so a 125 ORtg on 30% usage counts far more than on 13%. Defensive rating gets half weight because it mostly reflects the team's defence.
2025-26 counts fully and 2024-25 at half weight. The total is pulled toward replacement level (−2.0) with the weight of 800 minutes, so small samples can't produce extreme ratings.
Rookies are rated from their 2026 preseason (NBA.com): Player Impact Estimate mapped onto the same scale, minus a point because preseason opposition is weaker. That is regressed hard toward a typical rookie (−2.5) with the weight of 300 minutes. Rookies with no preseason minutes start at −2.5.
Age adjustments come from real data: 703 players who logged 250+ minutes in two straight seasons (2023-24 to 2024-25, and 2024-25 to 2025-26). For each, the change in rating is measured against age, weighted by minutes. The fit removes regression to the mean, because players coming off great seasons tend to dip regardless of age.
Each position's curve is pulled toward the all-player curve (positions have small samples) and can't rise with age. Stage labels follow the fitted values. The data can't see players who declined so far they left the league, so declines after 33 may be understated. Rookies get no age adjustment, since their rating already reflects a typical rookie season.
Current injuries come from ESPN's report as of Oct 20, 2026, covering every team. Each expected return date becomes the share of the season the player should be available: a Jan 2 return is about 57% of the season, and an Apr 2 return about 5%. Day-to-day players count 98%, and season-ending injuries 0%. Earlier reports (Covers, FantasyAlarm) fill gaps, and the more cautious figure is used when sources differ.
Injury history: durability is the share of games played over the last three seasons, weighted 50/30/20. It sets baseline availability from 55% to 95%. Players returning from a major injury (Achilles, ACL, patellar tendon) also lose 0.4 to 1.0 points of rating in their first season back.
Each player's playoff BPM and true shooting from the last five postseasons (2022–2026) are compared with his own regular season in the same years. The comparison is against what's expected for a player of his level, not against zero. Across all 2022–26 playoff players, a player's BPM changes by about +0.27 − 0.18 × his regular-season BPM, and his TS by +0.136 − 0.272 × his regular-season TS%. Stars are expected to dip more, because of tougher competition, more defensive attention and regression to the mean.
Playoff score = BPM vs. expected + 0.15 × TS points vs. expected, pulled toward neutral with the weight of 600 playoff minutes. Beating expectations adds 0.30 per point (up to +0.8). Falling short subtracts only 0.15 per point (down to −0.5), since it comes against better competition. Labels: riser at +0.75 or more, dip at −0.75 or less (after small-sample shrinkage). Players with no recent playoff minutes aren't adjusted.
Awards carry information the box score misses, so each player gets an award index over the last three seasons (weights 1 / 0.6 / 0.35, latest first). Points: MVP vote share ×4; All-NBA 1st/2nd/3rd 2 / 1.5 / 1; All-Star 0.75; DPOY share ×1.5; All-Defensive 1st/2nd 0.75 / 0.4; Finals MVP 1; NBA Cup MVP 0.3; Clutch Player share ×0.5; Rookie of the Year share ×1; Sixth Man and Most Improved shares ×0.5; scoring title 0.5.
Does it matter? Across 290 players with 500+ minutes in both 2024-25 and 2025-26, each index point predicted +0.29 rating the next season beyond the prior season's stats (standard error 0.09); players with no awards slightly under-performed their stats. The model already blends two seasons, which captures part of that signal, so the applied value is 0.20 per point, capped at +1.5.
The 2026-27 NBA.com GM survey adds a forward-looking scout's view: each vote share is weighted by question (MVP 1.0, best at position and start-a-franchise 0.5, best defender 0.4, breakout 0.6, Rookie of the Year 1.0, smaller weights for skills questions) and converted at 0.5 rating per point, capped at +0.75; for rookies it counts double, since their ratings rest only on preseason games. Awards and GM votes together are capped at +2.0.
Example: Victor Wembanyama (2026 DPOY, MVP runner-up, 77% of GM MVP votes) gets the full +2.0; Cameron Boozer (50% of GM Rookie of the Year votes) gets +0.5. Sources: Basketball-Reference award voting 2022–2026, Wikipedia All-Star rosters 2025–26, NBA.com 2026-27 GM Survey.
Each player's expected minutes start from his recent minutes per game, nudged by rating and scaled by availability. Every team then fills exactly 240 minutes, cutting from the end of the bench first. Team projection = Σ rating × minutes ÷ 48, centred so the league average is 0.
Continuity is the share of projected minutes going to players who ended 2025-26 on the same team. The edge is 4 points per 100% difference from the league average, and it halves every 15 games played.
Once games start, the score blends toward actual net rating: actual weight = games ÷ (games + 20). After 20 games it's half and half.
Quality: the coach's regular-season record, regressed toward .500 with the weight of 400 games. Only a quarter of it is credited to the coach, because rosters drive most of a record. Up to +0.6 more comes from career playoff wins (full credit at 100).
New-coach discount: up to −1.0 in a coach's first season with a team, reduced by his pedigree. Pedigree is 60% NBA games coached (full at 800) and 40% playoff wins (full at 60). A first-time coach takes the full discount, and a long-tenured winner almost none. First-time head coaches also start at −0.2 quality. The discount halves every 15 games.
Former NBA head coaches on the assistant staff add up to +0.5. Each counts by his head-coaching games (full at 400), scaled by his win rate and playoff wins.
Staff continuity, the share of assistants back from last season, adds or subtracts up to about ±0.5 and fades like roster continuity. Dallas and Phoenix haven't published 2026-27 staffs, so they're scored as league-average.
The rotation's minutes-weighted spacing (3-point rate × shooting accuracy), playmaking (assist rate), rim protection (block rate) and rebounding are each compared with the league. Shortfalls cost more than surpluses help.
There's also −0.5 with no regular creator (an assist rate of 25% or more in 24+ minutes), and a penalty when the top five players' usage adds up to over 125 or under 100. The result is centred on the league average and capped at ±1.0.
Minutes are split into guards, wings and bigs from roster positions and heights. Only extremes are penalised: guards outside 25–55% of minutes, wings outside 15–50%, bigs outside 15–40%. The penalty is 0.04 per percentage point outside the range, then centred on the league average.
Schedule load comes from the published 2026-27 schedule: back-to-backs, three games in four nights, games with less rest than the opponent, and travel miles. It's averaged across the season and is small by design, since one back-to-back costs about 1.5 points in that game only.
Strength of schedule is the average calibrated strength (see 11a) of the opponents each team actually faces. It changes projected wins but not the power score.
Wins = 82 × (0.5 + 0.033 × (expected net rating − schedule strength)), where 0.033 is the standard 2.7 wins per point of net rating. Before games are played, the expected net rating is the power score × 0.60.
Why shrink: projected strength is noisier than real strength, so uncalibrated projections spread too wide (an SD of 16.6 wins, with six teams at 60+, which has never happened; the record is four, in 1997-98). Two independent checks set the factor. Actual win totals in 2024-26 had an SD of about 13.5 and good preseason projections miss by about 8.5, implying a projection SD near 10.5 (factor 0.63). The Oct 15, 2026 betting win totals (SD 10.3) track our raw projection with a slope of 0.56 (correlation 0.90). The model uses 0.60: projected wins now have an SD of 10.3, sum to 1,230, and one team clears 60.
The power score and the ranking order are not shrunk. Once games are played, actual net rating takes over (weight GP / (GP + 20)) without shrinkage. Playoff, play-in and lottery odds simulate each season with ±8.5 wins of outcome noise.
Measured from NBA.com game logs for 2023-24 to 2025-26. For each team's top three players by minutes, I compared their miss rate in the last 15 games with earlier in the season, and on the second night of back-to-backs with other nights, grouped by final seed.
Each player's availability already reflects his own history, typical rest included, so only a tier's difference from the league average is applied. Each team's tier chances come from 4,000 simulated seasons (projected wins ± 8.5). Each extra game a top player sits costs his value over a replacement-level fill-in. The adjustment is zero-sum across the league and changes projected wins only, about ±0.25 at most, not the power score.
There's no direct statistic for leadership, so this uses measurable proxies for the team's top three players by minutes: career playoff games (45%, full at 80), career championships (35%), and years in the league (20%, full at 12).
It's centred on the league average and capped at ±0.8. It can't see locker-room influence, communication or temperament.
Basketball-Reference: advanced stats and games played for 2023-24 through 2025-26; 2026-27 rosters, positions, birthdates, head coaches and assistant staffs; coach records; and career playoff games and titles, playoff history for 2017 to 2026. NBA.com: 2026 preseason rookie stats and the 2026-27 schedule. Covers and FantasyAlarm: injury reports as of Oct 15–19, 2026. Data pulled Oct 20, 2026.
Not modelled: in-season trades, and the two NBA Cup games not yet scheduled.