Who's going to win the next six NBA titles?

TrueHoop's department of the future.

By DAVID THORPE and HENRY ABBOTT

We made a spreadsheet for every year from 2025-2030, and each projected every team’s odds of winning each of those years. In the future we can dig in deeper, but for now here’s a big pie chart showing six years of odds smashed together. The unlabeled slices are, in order, the Pistons, Pacers, Warriors, Knicks, Hornets, Nets, Blazers, 76ers, Jazz, Raptors, Heat, Wizards, and Clippers. Eight teams didn’t get a single vote: the Bulls, Hawks, Bucks, Grizzlies, Kings, Mavericks, Suns, and Pelicans.

A few years ago a friend explained to me that the Thunder have four employees whose whole job is just to project the future. They want to be ahead of the game in knowing which opposing teams will have the most valuable draft picks, what the salary cap might do, who the Nuggets might target to play alongside Nikola Jokić, and what defenders will be most useful slowing Victor Wembanyama.

David and I have just tried to make our own Department of the Future, to ask the most important question: which NBA teams will contend between now and 2030?