The regular season is over, and NBA players will have all the motivation in the world when the playoffs begin a few days from now.
Allow us to add bulletin-board material to the list of incentives.
In one of its questions, The Athletic’s 2026 Anonymous NBA Player Poll asked 161 players to name the team, other than their own franchise, that will win the title in June. We granted the players anonymity to give them the freedom to answer honestly, without fearing reprisals from opponents, teammates or fans. From late February to early this month, 146 players, a large segment of the league, offered their championship predictions.
Every postseason club — including the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, the up-and-coming San Antonio Spurs, old standbys such as the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets, and the East’s best regular-season team, the Detroit Pistons — can conjure additional fuel from the poll’s results.
The Thunder are considered the team to beat, and for good reason. They own the league’s best regular-season record, going 64-18, they’re postseason-proven, and as the first installment in our player poll series indicated, they boast the person who would be the players’ choice for Most Valuable Player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, on their roster.
“They’re the most dominant team,” a player who voted for the Thunder told us.
Material offerings such as a gemstone-encrusted championship ring and a larger share of the postseason bonus pool are sizable considerations, but even those incentives pale in comparison to what winning a title represents. Hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy fulfills a collective quest. To know you are part of something larger than yourself — to contribute to the best team in the world’s best basketball league — is truly irreplaceable.
We would never say the results of a poll will outweigh all those tangible and intangible considerations.
But the desire to prove doubters wrong is a very human emotion. And perhaps, just perhaps, postseason participants will remember these results when, feeling exhausted in the fourth quarter of a difficult playoff game or drained weeks into the playoffs, they need a little extra jolt of emotion.
Or maybe these results will prompt fans to cheer just a bit louder during a crucial Game 5, with a playoff series tied at two games apiece.
The results will mean different things to different teams and fan bases.
This is what the results mean to us.
The Thunder aren’t considered invincible
Exactly half of the players who predicted the eventual champion chose the Thunder.
“They won it last year,” one voter said. “Obviously, it’s really hard to repeat, but they brought back a lot of the same dudes and added some good pieces.”
So, winning 50.0 percent of the players’ vote should mean something, right?
Yes, it should. That does mean a lot.
But Oklahoma City received “only” half of the vote. This is the fifth year The Athletic has conducted its Anonymous NBA Player Poll, and in each prior instance, the predicted champion earned a larger share of the vote than the Thunder did this year.
The 2018-19 Golden State Warriors received a whopping 79.5 percent of that season’s vote. The 2022-23 Milwaukee Bucks were named by 62.2 percent of respondents. The 2023-24 Nuggets garnered 55.9 percent. And last year, the Celtics were considered the championship favorites by 57.7 percent of the players.
Fifty percent is all the defending-champion Thunder could muster? Even with Gilgeous-Alexander likely headed to his second consecutive regular-season MVP award? The Thunder had the league’s best defense by a wide margin — allowing only 106.6 points per 100 possessions — and one would think that would have inspired more confidence in their chances to repeat.
Being from one of the league’s smallest markets has always given the Thunder, and their passionate fans, an “us against them” mentality. Perhaps this poll’s data will confirm that perception in the eyes of the Thunder’s decision-makers, players and fans.
Can Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs make noise in the playoffs? The players think so. Scott Wachter / Imagn Images
Players believe in Wemby, and his Spurs
In the NBA, it’s rare for a team that is not playoff-tested, or even playoff-proven, to win a title. Even Larry Bird’s Celtics, Julius Erving’s Philadelphia 76ers, Isiah Thomas’ Pistons, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets had to endure playoff disappointment — usually, more than one painful playoff exit — before they finally won titles.
But 25.3 percent of the players who cast votes for the title winner think Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs will overcome that years-long trend.
Keep in mind that this postseason will be the Spurs’ first playoff appearance since the 2018-19 postseason. Wembanyama has never played in the NBA playoffs, although some of his veteran teammates (Harrison Barnes, De’Aaron Fox, Kelly Olynyk and Bismack Biyombo) have.
“They have a really good shot,” a player who voted for the Spurs said. “I think the biggest problem they’ll run into is their lack of experience at that point of the year. But (with) just their size, length, athleticism and shooting, I think they’re a high-level team.”
It certainly adds to the Spurs’ perceived chances that they won four of five games against the Thunder during the regular season. One of those San Antonio victories was a thrilling 111-109 victory on Dec. 13 in the NBA Cup semifinals in Las Vegas. The eyes of the entire league were on both teams that night, with added intrigue stemming from Wembanyama making his return from a month away with an injury.
The West is still best
A Western Conference team has won 16 of the last 25 NBA championships, and it appears the league’s players still think the top of the West is far better than the top of the East.
As the Thunder and Spurs went first and second in the players’ voting, Nikola Jokić’s Nuggets finished fourth, with 7.5 percent of the vote.
“My answer switches every week,” one player answered. “I think if Denver gets healthy, they got a good chance.”
Another player said: “I trust Nikola.”
Detroit got dissed?
OK, “dissed” is a bit too strong a word. Only by a bit, though.
The Pistons have been the Eastern Conference’s best team by record for the majority of the season, and they finished the regular season 60-22 and secured home-court advantage throughout the East playoffs.
There’s a lot to like about the Pistons, including star Cade Cunningham and the tough, maximum-effort persona of the Pistons as a whole.
“Tough team out the East,” one player who voted for the Pistons said. “Not an easy team to beat. They play physical as hell. They dictate the physicality of the game, and if you don’t go in there and play physical with them, they will beat you. They’ll beat the s— out of you.”
Still, despite the respect the Pistons earned, the Celtics led all East teams in the vote, finishing third with 8.2 percent. Jaylen Brown is a deserving MVP candidate, as our balloting revealed, and the relatively recent return of Jayson Tatum from an Achilles tendon tear adds to the Celtics’ chances in the players’ eyes.
Detroit finished fifth in our poll, receiving 4.1 percent of the vote.
Cunningham’s health no doubt played a central role. He suffered a collapsed lung March 17, at the height of our balloting, and didn’t return until April 8, one week after our balloting ended.
“The Pistons are really, really good,” one voter said. “But it’s hard not to pick the Thunder again.”
The Athletic jinx?
Not so long ago, when Sports Illustrated was a weekly magazine, there was such a thing as the Sports Illustrated jinx. Invariably, it seemed, the person or team that appeared on the cover soon suffered some kind of unfortunate circumstance: a defeat or, heaven forbid, an injury.
All right, jinxes don’t exist. Or, at least, we think they don’t exist.
But in the four previous editions of The Athletic’s Anonymous NBA Player Poll, none of the teams that were chosen as the eventual title winner wound up winning the championship.
Not the 2018-19 Warriors. Not the 2022-23 Bucks. Not the 2023-24 Nuggets. And not last year’s Celtics.
So Thunder, beware.
The Athletic Anonymous NBA Player Poll previous title results
Note: The Athletic did not conduct polls in 2020, 2021 or 2022.
