NBA playoff predictions 2026: First-round winners, OKC’s biggest threat and title pick

Atlantic76ersCelticsKnicksNetsRaptorsCentralBucksBullsCavaliersPacersPistonsSoutheastHawksHeatHornetsMagicWizardsSouthwestGrizzliesMavericksPelicansRocketsSpursNorthwestJazzNuggetsThunderTimberwolvesTrail BlazersPacificClippersKingsLakersSunsWarriorsScores & ScheduleStandingsThe Bounce NewsletterNBA DraftPodcastsFantasyNBA OddsNBA PicksWhat To Know About The First RoundHollinger's Playoff PreviewThe Bucks' Season From HellPlayer Poll: Who Will Win Title?NBA Postseason The Thunder begin their playoffs Sunday looking to be the NBA's first repeat champion since 2018. Matthew Stockman / Getty Images Share articleWhich team is best positioned to challenge an Oklahoma City Thunder repeat? And in the end, will the defending champions be the last team standing? With the playoffs starting Saturday, The Athletic posed those questions to its NBA staff and solicited their choices for how the first round will shake out. To analyze those picks, we’ve brought in Mavericks writer Christian Clark, senior writer Fred Katz, Power Rankings guru Law Murray and chairman of The Bounce Zach Harper. (Figures are rounded to the nearest tenth.) Clark: The Magic have not been my favorite team to watch this season. Their offense looks stuck in the mud a lot of the time. I think Cade Cunninham gets the first playoff series win of his career rather easily. Harper: This will be a really ugly series. The Pistons like to make everything physical and disjointed, and the Magic just make their own stuff disjointed. Murray: When the season started, I viewed the Magic as a potential conference finalist. This would be their chance to salvage what has been a rocky season. This should be the most brutal of the eight first-round series, and I expect the Magic to make it interesting due to their chops in clutch time. Harper: The big thing is if/when Joel Embiid can play. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before. The Sixers like to play faster with the Tyrese Maxey/VJ Edgecombe backcourt, but that might play right into the Celtics’ comfort zone. Murray: Including the history of the Syracuse Nationals, this is the 23rd time these franchises have met in the playoffs. Biggest X-Factor: The return of Playoff P! Katz: Watch the Celtics’ approach to the offensive boards. Boston crashes the glass more aggressively and in a greater variety of ways than any other NBA team. The strategy will pick at Philadelphia’s weak spot. Without Embiid, they could struggle there even more than usual. Clark: I can’t wait to see Dyson Daniels — one of the NBA’s best on-ball defenders — try to hound Jalen Brunson. When the Hawks are on offense, I’m sure the Knicks will leave Daniels wide open. Can he make enough 3s? Knicks win because of their big men. Murray: I love the symmetry of Mike Brown’s first playoff series coming against the same team that Tom Thibodeau’s first playoff series as Knicks coach ended against five years ago. And you even have a New York mayor bringing up Trae Young’s name! Fortunately for both teams, Young isn’t playing in this series; fortunately for the Knicks, Brunson is, and that better be worth something. Katz: This is a Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson series. The Hawks don’t have an ideal defender for Towns or one who could reasonably keep Robinson, the league’s most ferocious offensive rebounder, off the glass. If they exploit their advantages, the Knicks will be in good shape. If the Hawks cobble together ways to bother Towns, then they have a chance. Clark: The Raptors’ record against elite competition this season doesn’t inspire a lot of optimism. As our colleague Eric Koreen noted, Toronto went 5-22 against the West’s top six teams and the East’s top four. I don’t love that Immanuel Quickley is coming off a hamstring injury either. Harper: I have serious questions about how the Cavs expect to defend with James Harden and Donovan Mitchell on the court together. Lucky for them, I’m not sure the Raptors have enough offensively to pose those questions. Katz: I could see this being a short series. The Cavaliers’ firepower is too strong. Toronto is a hard-playing, defensively capable squad but lacks the half-court attack to keep up with Cleveland’s explosive scorers. Clark: The Knicks were my preseason pick, and I’m sticking with them. Four teams finished in the top seven in offense and defense this season: Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Boston and New York. I like the Knicks’ balance and believe Mitchell Robinson will be an enormous difference-maker off the bench. Murray: I’m also sticking with my preseason Knicks pick, but they need the Cavaliers to do them a solid and take the Pistons out, because there was nothing about those Pistons-Knicks games that made me think New York has anything for Detroit. Harper: I’m going Celtics. I think the Knicks have the best team, but the style of play and the identity of the Celtics are stronger. The Knicks can get there, and whoever wins that second-round matchup likely wins the conference. Boston just seems to know itself better right now. Katz: Celtics. They have a distinct identity, and Jayson Tatum looks leaps and bounds better than anyone could have hoped. I wouldn’t bet my life on them winning the East. It wouldn’t surprise me if any team in the conference’s top four won three playoff series, but I think Boston is the best choice. Clark: Devin Booker must deal with the Lu Dort-Cason Wallace-Alex Caruso three-headed monster. Godspeed. Oklahoma City is a machine that I don’t think will play with its food this series. It’s simply a major accomplishment for the Suns to even make it here. Harper: The Suns are a great story this season with how they’ve demolished the low expectations for them. They’ll have to keep that story in mind as the Thunder sweep them. Katz: We all know who will win this series, so I’ll make an off-the-beaten-path prediction: This will be the most-contentious series of the first round. It has more irritants than any other. At some point, Dillon Brooks will infuriate at least six Thunder players. Dort will do the same to Booker. There is an obvious talent gap between the Suns and Thunder, but in some ways, they are alike. Both teams are hypercompetitive. Their brand is playing hard. That could make for some raucous playoff moments. Clark: Deni Avdija, who made eight shots at the rim in Portland’s Play-In Tournament win, is a downhill driver. I predict he’s going to have a hard time with Victor Wembanyama waiting for him. Murray: This matchup intrigues me because Donovan Clingan has the kind of interior presence that matters against Wembanyama, who was born to prevent Scoot Henderson from being the top pick of the 2023 NBA Draft. Speaking of Henderson, he needs to be good for Portland to have any kind of chance. Katz: Avdija has become the NBA’s most relentless attacker of the basket. He drove to the basket 19.4 times a game during the regular season, tops in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum. And now, he faces the man who scares drivers away from the paint more than anyone. Will he, for the first time all season, think twice before jetting into the paint? Clark: My enduring memory of Minnesota’s seven-game win over Denver in 2024 is Jamal Murray struggling to bring the ball up the floor against the Timberwolves’ defensive pressure. Murray is coming off his best regular season ever. I think he’ll have a good series. Harper: The Nuggets rolled into the playoffs on a high but have some injury concerns. The Wolves limped into the playoffs with some injury concerns, but the Wolves really get up for Denver, and these two teams have a fun history. I have the Nuggets in seven (the cowards’ pick), but I’m not convinced they win. Katz: This series has it all. Superstars in Nikola Jokić and Anthony Edwards; All-NBA performers in Murray, Rudy Gobert and Julius Randle; aggressive defenders and brilliant ball-movers. Most importantly, it has history. This is the third time in four postseasons these two teams have met. They’ve split the previous two series. The last time they played, it went seven games. There aren’t many great rivalries in the NBA anymore, but this has a chance to become one. Clark: If ever there was a time for DeAndre Ayton to show he’s a cut above prime Clint Capela, it’s now. Murray: If this were paper, then the Rockets should win this series quite easily, but they are thoroughly untrustworthy. The Lakers have home-court advantage and had enough time to prepare to play without Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, and with LeBron James getting as many touches as he could want. Harper: Even if Dončić or Reaves get to this series at some point, will they be healthy enough to swing it? How early do they have to come back to give the Lakers what they need? At the same time, as Law said above, Houston is not trustworthy at all. Clark: The Thunder. The Nuggets were my preseason pick in the West, but their road to the finals, which would likely require them to beat the Timberwolves, Spurs and Thunder, looks brutal. OKC shouldn’t have to expend nearly as much energy. Murray: I’m going with the Thunder, but similar to the East, there is a contending threat that Oklahoma City does not want to see in the conference finals. The difference between San Antonio’s rim protection and Denver’s rim protection is vast, and the Thunder need their biggest threat to get handled in the second round. Harper: I’d love to get cute and pick Denver or San Antonio. I would have gone with Denver before the Jokić injury. He hasn’t been the same since getting back, even though he’s still been absurd. If Denver were fully healthy, I’d pick it, but OKC gets the nod; however, the Thunder need Jalen Williams to get back to his All-NBA form. Katz: The Thunder. The Spurs are awesome, but they’re too young. The Nuggets are impressive, and maybe I’ll eat crow for doubting Jokić, but their bottom-10 defense is too much of a deterrent. Clark: I think it’s still the Nuggets, who took the Thunder to seven games last year in the second round. The Nuggets’ defense wasn’t very good this season, but a lot of that was related to Aaron Gordon only playing 36 games. I worry about Gordon’s body holding up this postseason. If Denver can stay relatively healthy, I think Jokić, Murray and the rest of the gang can challenge Oklahoma City. Murray: The Thunder lost 18 games this season. 22.2 percent of those losses were to a Spurs team that beat them in three states. The Spurs were the only West team that the Thunder couldn’t beat multiple times. Any talk of Thunder threats has to begin and end deep in the heart of Texas. Harper: I know the Spurs were so fun against OKC and dominated it in the regular season, but I’m going with Denver. A chaotic Denver team took the Thunder to seven games last year. The Nuggets still have Gordon’s hamstring injuries to worry about, and you can add Peyton Watson to that, too. But this team is deeper and better than last year’s team. OKC has been injured enough to worry. Katz: Boston. After the Celtics beat the Thunder at the end of March, there were OKC people who left the building thinking they just saw the team best fit to ruin their chance at a repeat. The Celtics can exploit one of the Thunder’s only weaknesses, their so-so production on the glass. Boston is one of the NBA’s best ball-control teams, which is especially important against the Thunder’s high-turnover defense. The Celtics can deploy multiple creators at once, and they take enough 3-pointers that, if they get hot four out of seven times, they could end their season with a victory. Clark: The NBA will have its first repeat champion since the Warriors went back-to-back in 2017 and 2018. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is, somehow, better than he was a year ago. Ajay Mitchell will have big moments during the postseason. Jared McCain’s TikTok dance will be the Thunder’s version of Red Auerbach lighting up a cigar. Murray: I would pick the field against the Thunder if I were betting, but I don’t have those apps on my phone, and the Thunder have done what they needed to do to remain the favorites. They will need to be better this postseason than they were last year to repeat. Harper: I am very on record for being anti-parity; it’s not what makes the NBA great. You need villains. You need dynasties. Most importantly, you need the toppling of those villains and dynasties. The Thunder are turning into a villainous dynasty, and we need that. Give me the Thunder to repeat. Katz: The Thunder. They weren’t even healthy this season. Their All-NBA wing Williams missed more than half the season. Mitchell and Isaiah Hartenstein were out for long stretches. And they still finished as the obvious best team. They won it all last season. Now, they’re more experienced and deeper. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms