Sports Predict: NBA Playoffs and What We Learned from the Regular Season

Looking forward to the playoffs and back at a WEIRD NBA season

First, I’m happy to announce that Sports Predict is opening its lobby for the incoming NBA Playoffs! You’re all welcome to compete, free of charge,with potential prizes to be won.

Speaking of which, a congratulations to our NBA Season Win Totals champions, who now will split a $1000 cash prize. Great job JohnKane, Peter V and staggo.

I noticed that a few prominent NBA podcasters were getting crushed for poor Win Total records, and looking over this season data, I sympathize. I could be wrong, but this seemed like an especially difficult NBA season to clock. I’m thankful to the data folks at Sports Predict for sending over some information on which teams especially surprised. It’s a nice little time capsule of past expectations.

Easiest and hardest teams to predict:

• Easiest: Sacramento Kings (79% correct), Washington Wizards (71%), Brooklyn Nets (70%) — bad teams are predictable, perhaps ever more so in a tank heavy era.

• Hardest: Milwaukee Bucks (only 24% correct), Chicago Bulls (26%), Los Angeles Lakers (27%) — the middle of the pack fooled everyone.

• The Bucks were the ultimate trap — 76% of players picked OVER and got burned. Add this outcome to Doc Rivers’ résumé.

The season’s biggest shockers:

• Charlotte Hornets (44 wins, line 27.5) — only 48% got this right. A +16.5 win swing that split the field almost evenly. LaMelo Ball might be a “clown,” but he’s certainly had some success.

• San Antonio Spurs (62 wins, line 44.5) — 56% got this right. Wemby believers were rewarded, but nearly half the field missed a 17.5 win jump.

• Detroit Pistons (60 wins, line 46.5) — Exactly 50% got it right. Nobody saw 60 wins coming.

• Indiana Pacers (19 wins, line 38.5) — only 52% called this collapse correctly, which is odd because it was theoretically so predictable.

• Sacramento Kings (22 wins, line 35.5) — 79% nailed this one. Most people saw the Kings falling off. They are indeed the Kings.

AI vs Humans:

• Grok, Gemini, KIMI, Deepseek, and OpenAI all competed. Grok and Deepseek finished in the top half. OpenAI finished in the bottom third. The robots are beatable. But that was before the season began. Those robots develop very fast these days…

Contrarian edge:

• Players whose contrarian picks outperformed their consensus picks dominated the leaderboard. Going against the crowd paid off this season.

Speaking of our beloved human contrarians…

A shout out to the best performers for NBA picks this season:

Overall winner

• Eli Groner (Not the first time he’s won)

  Record: 93 wins, 15 losses

  PnL: +2,284

  Win rate: 86.1%

Other top overall finishers

• Lucy The Cat

• Sid Kali

• Kenth Lumahang

Best by question type

• Best on game winners / moneyline: Eli Groner

• Best on game totals: Wow

• Best on spreads: Artcast23

• Best on player threes: Drail940

• Best on points + assists props: Shaharlin

• Best on rebounds + assists props: RADIOHEAD

My final note, and hopefully he’s reading this, but I’d like to invite Eli Groner on the podcast to discuss how the hell he makes sports predictions so accurately. Thanks again to all who participated and please do join the NBA Playoff lobby. Let’s see how you do with the players now giving full effort!