NBA Vegas preseason power rankings: Thunder ranked No. 1, ahead of Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs

Prior to the NFL season, I published an article on the preseason NFL power ranking for all 32 teams on Yahoo Sports. In that article, I explained how to use a ratings system to help price spreads, how to use it to action bets and what potential pitfalls in the process exist. I highly recommend reading that article to also lay the foundation for my NBA power ratings below.

Instead of retooling the same concepts into NBA terms, I am going to provide my ratings and then note which teams I see as potential risers and fallers once the NBA regular season action begins. These are currently built off of using NBA regular season win totals, title odds to differentiate teams with the same win total number, current state of injury news, and the first few regular season games we have priced. I then add some manual adjustment. The only major difference to note in using these instead of NFL is the change in home-court rating from 1.5 to 3 points from a neutral site.

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Here are my NBA preseason power ratings for all 30 NBA teams.

Rank

Team

Rating

1

Oklahoma City Thunder

+8.1

2

San Antonio Spurs

+7.4

3

Boston Celtics

+4.8

4

Detroit Pistons

+3.9

5

New York Knicks

+3.9

6

Houston Rockets

+3.7

7

Philadelphia 76ers

+2.9

8

Cleveland Cavaliers

+2.8

9

Minnesota Timberwolves

+2.6

10

Denver Nuggets

+2.4

11

Los Angeles Lakers

+2.2

12

Toronto Raptors

+2.2

13

Miami Heat

+2.1

14

Atlanta Hawks

+1.8

15

Orlando Magic

+1.7

16

Indiana Pacers

+1.1

17

Phoenix Suns

+0.6

18

Golden State Warriors

+0.2

19

Portland Trailblazers

-0.3

20

Charlotte Hornets

-0.5

21

Utah Jazz

-1.4

22

Dallas Mavericks

-2.5

23

Washington Wizards

-3.2

24

Memphis Grizzlies

-3.5

25

Los Angeles Clippers

-3.6

26

Chicago Bulls

-4.1

27

New Orleans Pelicans

-4.1

28

Brooklyn Nets

-6

29

Milwaukee Bucks

-6.8

30

Sacramento Kings

-7.5

Three potential risers

Houston Rockets

The Rockets were second in overall market rating last season prior to Steven Adams getting injured and missing the rest of the season. At the time, they were the No. 1 rebounding team, and the NBA’s best in 3-point shooting team. The latter might be surprising, but these concepts relate: Forcing opposing teams to crash the glass…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/betting/article/nba-vegas-preseason-power-rankings-thunder-ranked-no-1-ahead-of-victor-wembanyamas-spurs-210916195.html

Author : Michael Fiddle

Publish date : 2026-10-15 21:09:00

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