Surprise, Surprise: Which NBA Teams Will Outperform Their Projections and Which Will Underperform?

There are surprise
teams and teams that disappoint every year in the
NBA.
Here are the most likely of each for 2025-26.

The great surprises of free agency are likely behind
us. 

With the NBA offseason almost over, fans will have to wait until
basketball is played for their next batch of surprises.

A few
weeks ago, we revealed our preseason power rankings – which
blend our in-house team and player metrics. However, even the best
projections don’t get it all right. There wouldn’t be much of a
point in playing the games if the projections were 100%
correct.

To account for this margin for error, we look at the teams that
will surprise the most when compared to our projections. Here are
three teams that could overperform and three that could
underperform.

NBA Teams That Will Overperform
Milwaukee Bucks

Preseason TRACR: 17th in NBA, 7th in Eastern
Conference 

Why They Will Overperform: The
2025 race for Giannis Antetokounmpo received an anti-climactic
ending, as, barring anything out of left field, it appears the
two-time MVP will remain with the only franchise he’s ever
known.

Even with the team retaining one of the best players on the
planet (8th in DRIP),
most folks see this as a gap year for the Bucks. But when you
really dig into their roster, this team could be really good.

As we saw
when Damian Lillard went down with injury toward the end of the
regular season, Antetokounmpo does better as a lone star with good
complementary pieces instead of an ill-fitting co-star. Right now,
the Bucks boast a ton of depth around the Greek Freak.

They have firebird scorers (Cole Anthony, Bobby Portis, Kyle
Kuzma and Kevin Porter Jr.), two-way wings/forwards (Ryan Rollins,
Amir Coffey, Taurean Prince, Gary Trent Jr., AJ Green and Andre
Jackson Jr.), a younger replacement to Brook Lopez (Myles Turner),
and a backup to relieve him (Jericho Sims).

If Antetokounmpo can stay healthy, pencil this team in for a
top-six spot in the East. 

Denver Nuggets

Preseason TRACR: 7th in NBA, 6th in Western
Conference

Why They Will Overperform: Outside of the
Indiana Pacers, no team pushed the defending-champion Oklahoma City
Thunder harder than the Nuggets.

The only thing that really held back the team that touts the
best player on the planet was its lack of depth. Last season, they
finished 27th in points per game off the bench.

How did they respond to that dilemma this summer? Only by
swapping out Michael Porter Jr. and Dario Saric (who was out of the
rotation by the end of the year) for Cam Johnson, Jonas
Valanciunas, Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr.

The team that finished fourth in the Western Conference with
virtually no bench significantly addressed this weakness and yet it
is projected to be worse? Feels like the perfect outperformer
situation to me.

Dallas Mavericks

Preseason TRACR: 20th in NBA, 12th in Western
Conference

Why They Will Overperform: Forget all the
stupidity surrounding the front office over the last six months.
Forget that Kyrie Irving (23rd in offensive DRIP or O-DRIP) could
miss the entire season rehabbing from a torn ACL. This team is
DEEP, particularly when it comes to wings, forwards and bigs.

Listen to this list of players: Anthony Davis, Dereck Lively II,
Daniel Gafford, PJ Washington, Cooper Flagg, Naji Marshall, Max
Christie, Caleb Martin and Klay Thompson. Two of those players
(Davis and Lively) finished in the top 30 in defensive DRIP
(D-DRIP), and Flagg (one of the best prospects of the last decade)
finished fourth in college basketball last year in
D-VAPR.

Sounds like a lock for a top-10 defense, right?

Well, our model currently expects them to be a bottom-10 unit
(21st in D-TRACR). Even if the Mavericks crumble offensively
without Irving, the defense alone should be enough to keep them
from being a bottom-feeder in the Western Conference. 

NBA Teams That Will Underperform
Boston Celtics

Preseason TRACR: 8th in NBA, 2nd in Eastern
Conference

Why They Will Underperform: Despite our model
accounting for the team being without Jayson Tatum for all of next
year, it still sees the Celtics being a strong contender in the
Eastern Conference. Part of the reason for this is that the model
assumes that Al Horford (89th percentile DRIP) will re-sign with
the team, which, at this point, is very
unlikely.

It also believes that Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and Payton
Pritchard will be enough to keep Boston afloat without Tatum. But
there has always been a big disconnect between the perception of
Brown and his impact on winning. Brown won the 2024 NBA Finals MVP,
but he wasn’t even in the top five on the team in DRIP when last
season ended.

On top of that, they have very little depth. Outside of the trio
we mentioned above, the only other surefire rotation players
currently on the roster are Anfernee Simons and Sam Hauser. Not to
mention the gaping hole this team has at the 5 spot (the Celtics
don’t have a single center in the top 200 in DRIP on their
roster). 

Minnesota
Timberwolves

Preseason TRACR: 2nd in NBA, 2nd in Western
Conference

Why They Will Underperform: The Timberwolves
went to their second straight Western Conference finals in 2025,
and with them set to welcome back their top eight players in DRIP,
our model sees them as a strong candidate to continue their success
in 2025-26.

But if we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that
the league is rapidly growing, and banking on continuity isn’t
enough to get the job done. There’s a reason we’ve had seven
straight new champions.

Losing Nickeil Alexander-Walker in free agency to the Atlanta
Hawks (a
great move by them, by the way) could be offset by the internal
development of young players like Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaylen
Clark and Rob Dillingham. But even then, this team stayed largely
the same, with key figures like Rudy Gobert, Julius Randle and Mike
Conley another year older, and multiple Western Conference
competitors getting notably stronger (the Denver Nuggets, Houston
Rockets, and Los Angeles Clippers).

Don’t be surprised if they go from West finalists to first-round
exit in just the span of a year.

Sacramento Kings

Preseason TRACR: 12th in NBA, 9th in the
Western Conference

Why They Will Underperform: Our supercomputer
is high on the Kings because their heavy-hitters (Domantas Sabonis,
DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Keegan Murray) are generally pretty
available. In this instance, though, availability isn’t the best
ability.

This roster makes very little sense. The Kings have way too many
guards (LaVine, DeRozan, Dennis Schroder, Malik Monk, Keon Ellis
and Devin Carter), no real backup center (Saric and Drew Eubanks
are currently slated behind Sabonis), and very little by way of
defense (which will make it tricky for them to finish outside the
bottom 10 in D-TRACR like our model projects).

We love the idea of
trading up to draft Nique Clifford, but outside of that, there
is little about this team that suggests that it won’t be a
bottom-five team in the Western Conference. 

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