Opening night is not too far away. On Oct. 20 the New York Knicks should raise their first championship banner since 1973 before hosting a Philadelphia team that looks nothing like the one they saw last spring. Boston opens in Detroit the same night, which is fitting, because our simulator thinks those two teams are the real story in the East this year.
Quick refresher: the Knicks beat San Antonio 4-1 in the Finals, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four wins. That included a 29-point comeback in Game 4 and a 45-point night from Jalen Brunson to close it out in Game 5, as the AP recapped. Then the rest of the conference spent the summer reloading.
We pulled projected 2026-27 rosters from our database and ran a full Eastern Conference round robin through Game Sim: every team played every other team 10 times at each venue, 2,100 games in all. Then we ran the key division matchups again with bigger samples. Where the raw numbers and common sense disagreed, we leaned on last season's record and the betting market to set the seeds. Then we played out the bracket.
The summer that rewired the East
For years the East ran through Giannis Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee and the Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown pairing in Boston. Both of those are gone.
Giannis is in Miami. The Heat landed him and Bobby Portis for Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis and a pile of picks. Miami kept Bam Adebayo, which is the good news. The bad news is that most of the shooting and ball handling went to Milwaukee in the deal, and Norman Powell left for Chicago.
Philadelphia went all in. The Sixers flipped Paul George and two first-round picks for Jaylen Brown, then signed LeBron James to a two-year, $8 million deal. Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, Brown and LeBron is the most talented starting group in the conference on paper. It is also the biggest health gamble in the league. CBS Sports gave Philly an A for the summer, even before LeBron signed.
Kawhi went home to Toronto. After a months-long delay tied to the league's investigation of the Clippers, the Raptors finally completed the deal in September, sending Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick and draft capital to L.A. Kawhi next to Scottie Barnes is a great fit, as long as Kawhi is on the floor.
Boston retooled instead of rebuilding. George replaces Brown, Mitchell Robinson came over from the Knicks, and Mike Conley adds a steady veteran hand. The real addition is a full season of a healthy Tatum.
Elsewhere, the champs ducked the second apron and lost Robinson, so Andre Drummond is now the backup big in New York. Charlotte traded LaMelo Ball to Minnesota and handed the keys to Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel. Washington has Trae Young, a full season of Anthony Davis and No. 1 pick AJ Dybantsa. Atlanta grabbed Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins from Oklahoma City. Indiana gets Tyrese Haliburton back. Milwaukee is starting over around Herro.
On the betting board, the East is a two-horse race with a crowd behind it. Per Sporting News' odds roundup, DraftKings has the Knicks at +340 to win the conference, the Sixers at +380, Boston at +550, Detroit at +800 and Cleveland at +900. For the title, Sports Illustrated has New York and Philadelphia tied at +900. Our simulator is not buying either one.
Likely division winners
Atlantic: Boston Celtics
This is the boldest call in the piece, and the sims were not close. Boston beat the Knicks in 70 percent of our head-to-head games, with an average score of 116.8 to 108.6. It beat the Sixers 70 percent of the time too. Tatum projects for 25.1 points, 9.2 rebounds and 5.3 assists, and the supporting cast is deep: Payton Pritchard projects at 18.6 points, Derrick White at 16.7, and George at 15.1. As SB Nation put it, the Celtics' recipe of lots of threes, offensive rebounds and tough defense wins a ton of regular-season games. Adding Robinson only helps on the glass.
The Knicks still beat Philly 58 percent of the time, and Brunson (25.7 projected points) and Karl-Anthony Towns (20.8 and 11.4) are as good a duo as anyone has. Toronto was the surprise, beating New York in 58 percent of sims. Philadelphia was the disappointment. With Embiid projected for just 49 games, the Sixers went 50-50 with the Raptors and finished under .500 in our full round robin.
Central: Detroit Pistons
Detroit won 60 games last year and was the No. 1 seed. Our model says that was not a fluke. Cade Cunningham projects for 24.9 points and 9.5 assists, Jalen Duren for 18.4 and 11.2, and the Pistons tied Boston for the best record in our 2,100-game round robin. They beat Cleveland 74 percent of the time (118.6 to 110.2) and handled a healthy Indiana team 58 percent of the time. The worry is the same as last spring: they still need a second shot creator, and nearly losing to Orlando in the first round is a recent memory.
Cleveland is the Central team we are least sure about. Donovan Mitchell (26.3) and James Harden are still elite scorers, but the Cavs let Dean Wade and Keon Ellis walk and did not replace them. That is a lot of defense to lose. Indiana, with Haliburton back next to Pascal Siakam and Ivica Zubac, split its games with Cleveland.
Southeast: Atlanta Hawks
This division is a mess, in a fun way. Miami and Atlanta split their sims exactly 50-50. Miami and Orlando did too. Atlanta edged Orlando 52 percent of the time. We are taking the Hawks because they won 46 games last year, they have the deepest wing rotation in the division, and Jalen Johnson (22.3 points, 9.8 rebounds, 7.7 assists projected) is turning into a star.
Giannis will make the Heat dangerous on any given night. He projects for 29.7 points and 10.5 rebounds. But Miami gave up a lot of shooting to get him, and our sims noticed: Charlotte beat the Heat in 68 percent of games and Washington in 60 percent. We think those numbers are a little generous to the Hornets and Wizards, but they do show that Miami has real holes around its stars.
Projected East standings
- Detroit Pistons
- Boston Celtics
- New York Knicks
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Toronto Raptors
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Atlanta Hawks (play-in)
- Miami Heat (play-in)
- Indiana Pacers (play-in)
- Orlando Magic (play-in)
- Charlotte Hornets
- Washington Wizards
- Milwaukee Bucks
- Chicago Bulls
- Brooklyn Nets
Charlotte and Washington were better in our sims than this list suggests, and both could crash the play-in. Chicago, with No. 4 pick Caleb Wilson, and Brooklyn, with Julius Randle and Michael Porter Jr., are building toward later.
Simulated East playoffs
Single play-in games were simulated 50 times each. Every playoff series was simulated 49 times, with 28 games at the higher seed and 21 on the road to match the 2-2-1-1-1 format. Whoever won more games advanced.
Play-in
- Heat over Hawks (Miami won 56 percent in Atlanta, avg 113.8-111.6). Miami takes the 7 seed.
- Pacers over Magic (68 percent, avg 112.6-106.8)
- Hawks over Pacers (58 percent, avg 113.5-108.0). Atlanta takes the 8 seed.
First round
- Pistons over Hawks (67 percent, avg 111.4-105.1)
- Raptors over 76ers (Toronto 61 percent, avg 110.3-108.8)
- Knicks over Cavaliers (61 percent, avg 118.7-110.7)
- Celtics over Heat (69 percent, avg 116.5-107.1)
The headline is Philadelphia going out in the first round. Toronto won in Philly in two-thirds of the road games, and Kawhi against LeBron and Brown makes for a great series. Our numbers just do not trust a Sixers roster that needs four stars to stay healthy at once. Giannis gave Boston a fight, but the Celtics' depth won out.
Second round
- Pistons over Raptors (59 percent, avg 121.1-116.0)
- Celtics over Knicks (69 percent, avg 112.9-105.4)
Boston ending the champs' title defense is going to get some angry replies, and we get it. This Knicks team has made a habit of erasing deficits that should be impossible. But Boston won 62 percent of the games played at Madison Square Garden in our sims, and losing Robinson's minutes hurt New York on the glass in every version we ran.
Eastern Conference Finals
Boston Celtics over Detroit Pistons. Boston won 36 of 49 simulated games (73.5 percent) with an average score of 116.3 to 104.2. That includes 64 percent of the games played in Detroit.
This was the most lopsided series in the bracket, and it surprised us. Detroit was the better team for 82 games in our round robin, but in a seven-game series Boston's shooting and second-chance points kept piling up. Cunningham can win any single game. Winning four of seven against the Celtics is a different problem.
The pick
Eastern Conference champion: Boston Celtics.
That goes against the sportsbooks, which have Boston third in the East behind New York and Philadelphia. It goes against CBS's C-minus grade for the Celtics' offseason. It does line up with what happened every time we pressed simulate. Detroit is the regular-season juggernaut, Toronto is the dark horse nobody wants to see in April, and the Knicks are the Knicks, which means we would not be shocked to be wrong. But if you made us name the East's Finals team before tipoff, we are taking the Celtics.
The West preview is coming next, and that is where we will name a champion. In the meantime, run your own matchups on our NBA Game Simulator, check the nightly numbers on the NBA predictions board, or keep an eye on the NBA injury report as camps wrap up. Opening night is Oct. 20. The arguments start now.
