NBA Over/Unders, Part 1: The West

The 2027 NBA season arrives with a structural change that Zach Lowe calls "a sea change" for the league: new tanking rules that penalize the bottom three teams by reducing their lottery balls from three to two. "No one is going to be trying to lose on purpose," Lowe says. "In fact, it's the opposite. The bad teams have an incentive to try to beat up on each other to get out of the bottom three." This creates a new calculus for every franchise, and it hangs over every over-under pick Bill Simmons, Zach Lowe, and Joe House make as they work through the Western Conference.

The Two-Tier West

Simmons identifies two teams "way more talented than all the other teams" in the West: the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder. The Spurs' over-under is 60.5 after winning 62 games last season and going 26-4 in their final 30. Lowe points out they were 35-15 against above-.500 teams, a metric he trusts. "They're hungry, they're deep, they have arguably the best player in the league," he says, taking the over. House agrees, noting that Victor Wembanyama has emerged as a villain figure—his daughter now calls him "the Jerkosaurus"—and that the experience of last year's finals run, including the pain of losing, was productive.