One of these teams is likely to get back to the playoffs. One is, um, not. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
We are roughly one week into the 2025-26 NBA season, so it’s a little early to draw any sweeping conclusions about how the year will progress — lest we think Cedric Coward, Tre Jones and Matisse Thybulle will be MVP candidates by season’s end.
But we can at least look ahead to trends that are tracking to be meaningful in the early going. And one of those which I always like to scan for is signs of a shakeup in the playoff picture, with the help of my 🏀 NBA Elo Forecast model 📈:
🏀 2025-26 NBA Elo Forecast and Player Ratings 📈
As of Tuesday, seven different teams who missed the playoffs last season have at least a 25 percent chance to get back this year, according to the “composite” version of my projection (which mixes Elo forecasts with betting odds to zero in more on a team’s best-guess probability). Five of those teams are above 40 percent, and three are above 65 percent:
The big headline: Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs are the most likely non-playoff team to rise up and join the field this season, which would somehow be the franchise’s first appearance since 2019. Wemby is playing like the MVP and the Spurs overall are killing it, sitting atop the league on Tuesday with a +16.6 net rating and a defensive rating 10.0 points per 100 better than average. (They also ranked No. 6 on offense.) That’s an incredible improvement for a team that ranked 21st in net rating and 25th on defense a year ago, and it already has them looking at the next logical evolution in Wemby’s career path.
The others above the 65 percent mark are the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers. The former is a perennial play-in squad who squandered the 8 seed from the end of the regular season to miss the playoffs, and they’re not exactly out to the greatest of starts in 2025-26, but there’s enough residual left from their preseason playoff probability of 76 percent to still think they’re more likely to make it than not. As for the latter, the Sixers have bounced back well from the season from hell last year thanks to the play of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Kelly Oubre Jr. — much to the thrill of our friends over at
! As a former Philly resident and expat sympathizer, let’s hope it continues.
Among the next tier of teams around a coin-flip (give or take), it’s surprising to me that the Dallas Mavericks were down at 33 percent on Tuesday afternoon, below the Toronto Raptors and Chicago Bulls. The Mavs were higher (46 percent) before the season, but they’ve been up and down, and Cooper Flagg is still adjusting to the NBA. Given their still-solid playoff rating, they could be an interesting team if they’re healthy and sneak in by season’s end, but a return is looking less likely than a week ago.
Now, of course, for every team who gets into the playoffs from the outside, another team has to fall out of the field in equal measure. Here are the 2024-25 playoff teams most likely to drop out of the postseason by the odds:
It’s sad to see that the Indiana Pacers are the least likely playoff return, given their valiant near-championship run from a year ago. After two straight years in the Top 12 of net rating, Indy has fallen to No. 27 to start this season, with their offense cratering to 28th as Pascal Siakam hasn’t had much help with Tyrese Haliburton sidelined. The other really notably low playoff probability among 2024-25 entries belongs to the Memphis Grizzlies, who’ve dropped to 20th in net rating and 24th on D. Neither team was given especially high odds going into the season anyway — both were below 50 percent in the preseason — after the injuries and offseason shakeups, but their numbers have eroded over the past week as well.
Every other playoff team from last year is at least above 50 percent to return, although a couple of perennial playoff fixtures are on the edge in the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics. Neither has missed the playoffs since the 2010s — Boston was last on the outs in 2014, and before that 2007! — so it would be strange to have a postseason without them. And the Heat have actually been good anyway, ranking 3rd in net rating, so their odds above are an improvement from preseason. Boston has been closer to the middle of the league (14th), but both will be worth watching.
As for the rest, they’re living in a zone where they seem safe enough for now, though a good month (or a bad one) can change that formula. So stay tuned.
One week of data doesn’t make a season, and these odds will surely change a lot over the months to come. But they’re a reminder that every season, a handful of teams come and go from the postseason picture — some of whom return after a short absence, and some who spent a longer time waiting. This time around, we might get a mix of both types rejoining the playoffs, including one led by a certain 7-foot-5 (more or less) phenomenon who could usher in the NBA’s next era.
Filed under: NBA