NBA: Opening Week Takeaways

Last Updated on Outubro 29, 2026 8:27 pm by Erwin Noguera

Memphis was projected to win 28.5 games. They are 4-0. Houston was projected at 48.5 and are the only 5-0 team in the NBA. Portland was projected at 43.5 and had the best net rating in basketball at plus 18.6.

Ten days ago, we published a board on which the Eastern Conference out-projected the Western Conference by twenty-one wins. Through opening week, the West are 36-30, and the East are 32-38, and because games inside a conference cancel out, that gap is entirely interconference. The East have lost six more games against the West than they have won.

One caution before any of it. Teams have played between three and five games. Portland’s plus-18.6 comes from three games and Houston’s 5-0 from five, so every rate in this article is a sample, not a season. We have used per-game figures throughout for that reason.

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The Standings After Opening Week

Conferência Oeste

Conferência Leste

1. Houston Are 5-0, and the Reason Is Efficiency

Three Rockets are shooting better than 54% from the field, and two of them are taking more than fifteen shots a night.

Alperen Sengun is averaging 24.5 points, 9.0 rebounds, and 7.0 assists on 58.1% shooting.Kevin Durant is at 22.4 points on 54.0%.Amen Thompson is at 18.2 points and 8.0 rebounds on 55.6%. Jabari Smith Jr. adds 16.2 points and 5.8.

That is a 123-point-per-game offence that is not built on volume. Houston were projected at 48.5 wins, the eighth highest in the league, and they are the only team in the NBA to have won five games.

The number that matter is 108.8 points allowed, because that is what separates a hot start from a contender. A plus-14.2 net rating over five games is the best mark of any team with more than four games played.

2. Memphis Were Written Off and Are Undefeated

A 28.5-win projection was the third lowest in the Western Conference. Memphis is 4-0 with a plus-9.8 net rating.

Measured against their projected pace, they are the most wrongly priced team in the league by distance; a 4-0 start annualizes to a figure no one will hold, but the gap between 28.5 and undefeated is the largest on the board.

Ty Jerome is the reason, and nobody had him on a list.29.8 points, 6.5 assists, and 3.5 rebounds on 50.6% shooting. Third in the league in scoring behind Luka Dončić and Anthony Edwards. Jaylen Wells is adding 14.8 to 60.0%, and Cedric Coward 13.3 with 9.7 rebounds.

We picked Cameron Boozer for Rookie of the Year, and that is going less well.He is averaging 14.8 points and 10.5 rebounds with 4.8 assists, on 27.9% shooting from the field. The rebounding and the playmaking are real. The shooting is the worst of any high-minutes rookie we looked at, and we said volume would not be his problem. Accuracy is.

3. Portland Have the Best Net Rating in Basketball

Plus 18.6, from three games, which are both the headline and the caveat.

Portland has played fewer games than anybody and are scoring 129.3 points a game.Deni Avdija leads them at 22.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 6.3 assists, com Damian Lillard at 21.7 and Ja Morant at 16.3 on 58.8% shooting. Toumani Camara is shooting 65.4%.

They opened by beating Phoenix 124-83, a 41-point win, which is doing most of the work in that differential. Three games and one blowout is not evidence of a 43.5-win projection being wrong. It is evidence that we should look again in three weeks.

4. Giannis Is in Miami, Playing Well, and Miami Are 1-4

27.6 points, 11.2 rebounds, and 4.6 assists on 56.7% shooting. The Heat has a minus-7.8 net rating.

This is the widest gap in the league between individual performance and team results. Miami was projected at 46.5 wins, sixth highest in the East. They have won once in five.

We flagged Milwaukee’s 26.5-win total as “the market pricing a full teardown without saying so.” That read has held (the Bucks are 1-4 at minus 10.8), but the other half of the trade is not working either. Both the team that lost Giannis and the team that acquired him are 1-4.

5. The Market Flipped the Conferences and the Floor Fell Out of the East

Ten teams in the East were projected at 43.5 wins or better against seven in the West. Here is where those teams are.

The East’s two highest projections are New York at 52.5 and Boston at 51.5.New York is 2-3 with a plus-0.2 net rating. Boston is 3-1 and plus 8.0.Orlando at 43.5 is 1-3 and minus 12.5. Miami at 46.5 is 1-4.

Meanwhile, the conference’s best net rating belongs to Toronto at plus 15.0, on a 45.5 projection, and Detroit at plus 6.4 in total the market expected them to miss.

The aggregate is unambiguous for now.The West are 36-30, the East 32-38, and the average net rating is plus 1.66 in the West against minus 1.75 in the East.Games inside a conference cancel out, so the East’s six-game deficit against .500 is entirely the product of losing to the West.

6. Sacramento Are Exactly What the Market Said

The lowest win total on the board at 20.5. They are 0-4 with a minus-17.7 net rating, the worst in the league.

They are scoring 107.8 and conceding 125.5.Zach LaVine is averaging 27.3 points on 52.2% shooting, and it has produced nothing, which is the clearest illustration available of why individual scoring and team results are different questions.

Our value Rookie of the Year play was Darius Acuff Jr. at +1200, on the reasoning that “he has minutes available precisely because nothing else is working.”He is averaging 21.5 points and 4.8 assists on 34.4% shooting. The minutes arrived exactly as described. So did the efficiency problem that comes with being the only option on a 0-4 team, and we should have weighed that more heavily when we called it a value play.

New Orleans and Brooklyn are also 0-4, projected at 27.5 and 24.5 respectively, and neither is a surprise.

7. The Scoring Board Is Led by a Lakers Team Nobody Favored

Luka Dončić is averaging 36.0 points, 8.3 assists, and 6.8 rebounds on 48.4% shooting, and the Lakers are 4-1 at plus 9.6 on a 46.5 projection.

The top of the leaderboard, through games played between three and five:

Two things stand out.Jalen Brunson is tenth in scoring on 40.2% shooting, which is a lot of volume for a 2-3 team. And Cooper Flagg is twelfth at 25.3 points, 6.8 assists, and 52.2% shooting for a 3-2 Dallas side projected at 34.5 wins, with Charlotte’s Brandon Miller eleventh on 25.6.

Our Scorecard

Opening night went as well as it could have for the two picks that matter.

We picked Philadelphia to win the East and to win the title at 10%. They beat New York 106-100 on the night the defending champions raised the banner, and they are 4-1.Crucially, Joel Embiid has played four of the five games (averaging 21.5 points and 10.0 rebounds), and we wrote that the entire pick was conditional on his availability. So far, the condition holds. Tyrese Maxey is fifth in the league in scoring, and Jaylen Brown is contributing; LeBron James is at 15.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 6.8 assists in four games.

We picked Oklahoma City to win the West. They beat San Antonio 116-104 in San Antonio on opening night and are 4-1.The caution is the margin: a plus-3.6 net rating is modest for the highest win total on the board, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 26.0 points on 45.9% is solid rather than an MVP run.

Our Toronto team over 45.5 is winning, and not for the reason we gave. Toronto is 3-1 with the East’s best net rating at plus 15.0, but we justified it with Kawhi Leonard, and he does not appear among Toronto’s five leading scorers.RJ Barrett at 22.0, Scottie Barnes at 19.8, and Immanuel Quickley at 17.5 are carrying it. We cannot confirm his status and are not going to speculate. Right call, wrong reasoning, and the distinction matters.

Our Detroit under 49.5 is losing.Detroit is 4-1 at plus 6.4 with Cade Cunningham averaging 22.6 points and 7.8 assists. We argued the 60-win season was the outlier and that a center who missed camp made the repeat unlikely. Five games in, the market’s 49.5 looks low rather than high.

Our MVP pick is alive and unremarkable.Victor Wembanyama is averaging 25.0 points and 11.4 rebounds on 48.0% shooting, which puts him outside the top ten scorers, with San Antonio 3-2. We backed him at +200 against Gilgeous-Alexander at +450. Neither has separated.

And our general lean to unders is marginally ahead.Seventeen of thirty teams are behind their projected win pace; thirteen are ahead.

O Número Único

1,228.6.

That is the sum of every team’s current winning pace, annualized over 82 games. A season contains 1,230 wins.

Ten days ago we pointed out that the market’s thirty-win totals added up to 1,242: twelve more victories than exist.Opening week has allocated 1,228.6, which is almost exactly right.

That is a coincidence of small samples rather than a discovery, and we will say so. But it makes the point the preview was built on: the overs and unders on a win-total board cannot all be correct, and the market’s aggregate error was in one direction.Seventeen teams behind pace against thirteen ahead is what the beginning of that correction looks like.

The number we will be watching is Houston’s.Five wins, no losses, three starters above 54% from the field, and a 48.5 projection that already looks like the wrong side of the board.

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