C.S.S. + Strat-O-Matic Simulation Predicts 2025–26 NBA Champion

The dust hasn't yet settled on the 2024-25 NBA season or the 2025 NBA Draft, but we already know who'll hoist the 2025-26 Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. We think.

Jun 27, 2025

THE OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER are designing their 2024-25 championship rings.

The Dallas Mavericks are hosting a dozen Cooper Flagg parties.

The Chicago Bulls are making mistakes left and right.

And Chicago Sports Stuff and Strat-O-Matic have already gamed out the 2025-26 regular season and playoffs…and we crowned a champion.

Incorporating this week’s flurry of trades and draft picks, the O.G. of fantasy sports dumped a bunch of names, facts, and figures into my iMac G4, and boom, we learned how next season will look.

Spoiler alert: The Chicago Bulls are way worse than you’d expect.

Regular Season: Eastern Conference

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THE EAST, according to our sim, is about what you’d expect: Top heavy af.

Two of the four division winners—the Cavs and the Pacers tied for the Central crown, thus the four teams rather than three—took their respective divisions by a double-digits-in-wins margin, with the 61-win Knicks pulling out the East championship.

With newly-acquired sharpshooter Desmond Bane in the house, Orlando made a huge 12-win leap, locking down the Southeast by a whopping 11 games.

The Central was a mess, with Detroit finishing just two games above .500, and the Bucks and the Bulls pooping the bed a whole bunch, combining for 62 wins, one less than the Knicks.

The good news for Chicago fans is that thanks to their miserable 24-win campaign, we won’t have to again watch the franchise stank up the Play-In Tournament.

Regular Season: Western Conference

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HERE’S A SHOCKER for those of you on the West-Is-Way-Better-Than-the-East train: SOM’s algos prognosticate that both conferences will produce eight plus-.500 teams. We’re also told that each of the two Conference’s top franchises will finish the year with 61 wins.

That said, the West has fewer have-nots than the East, as OKC won the Northwest by four games, while the Lakers took the Pacific by a mere three, topping, of all teams, Sacramento.

To nobody’s surprise, Utah, Portland, New Orleans, and Phoenix were all really, really bad at basketball, each managing fewer than 23 wins. And the Nuggets and the Mavs disappointed, with both concluding the campaign barely above .500.

Playoffs: Eastern Conference

The East postseason was, in a word, dull.

Only one of the series went seven games—Indy snuck by Orlando 4-3 in the first round—and two of the six remaining matchups went six. The remainder were barely competitive.

The Finals pitted the Conference-winning Knicks against the upstart Cavs, a series that New York pulled out 4-2, sending them to their first NBA Finals since 1999.

Playoffs: Western Conference

Things out West were a scootch more competitive, with pair of seven-gamers in the mix, one of which was a nail-biting Conference Finals that catapulted OKC to their second consecutive NBA Finals appearance.

Luka, LeBron, and the Lakers were 8-3 on their road to a clash with the Thunder in the Finals, taking down the 57-win Houston Rockets along the way.

Will we have our first repeat champ since Golden State pulled it off in 2017 and 2018?

Another spoiler alert: It’ll be one helluva series.