The Oklahoma City Thunder are hoping to repeat as NBA champions. While that is always a challenging task, never has it been as difficult as current day. The league is sitting in the midst of a parity era for the first time in NBA history. The previous seven winners have failed to make it out of the second-round. <\/p>\n
While the NBA world is at a stand still awaiting for training camps to open up at the end of the month, the release of the new NBA 2K video game, NBA 2K26, serves as a hold-over until the real thing begins. <\/p>\n
This weekend, as the game released, we set up a season simulation that features no new injuries or trades. Just a flat-out simulation of how things currently stand. Let’s dive into the interesting results as we take you through the regular season, postseason, award season and see if the Thunder accomplish their goals in the digital space. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, NBA 2K26 \/ NBA 2K <\/p>\n
L.A. Clippers (62-20)Minnesota Timberwolves (59-23)\u00a0Dallas Mavericks (57-25)\u00a0Houston Rockets (53-29)Oklahoma City Thunder (52-30)Golden State Warriors (49-33)\u00a0Denver Nuggets (49-33)\u00a0San Antonio Spurs (45-37)\u00a0Phoenix Suns (44-38)\u00a0Sacramento Kings (42-40)\u00a0Los Angeles Lakers (38-44)\u00a0Portland Trail Blazers (31-51)\u00a0New Orleans Pelicans (29-53)\u00a0Memphis Grizzlies (29-53)\u00a0Utah Jazz (21-61) New York Knicks (57-25)\u00a0Atlanta Hawks (53-29)Cleveland Cavaliers (53-29)\u00a0Detroit Pistons (51-31)\u00a0Indiana Pacers (44-38)\u00a0Chicago Bulls (41-41)\u00a0Boston Celtics (41-41)\u00a0Milwaukee Bucks (38-44)\u00a0Orlando Magic (37-45)\u00a0Miami Heat (35-47)\u00a0Toronto Raptors (35-47)\u00a0Philadelphia 76ers (30-52)\u00a0Charlotte Hornets (22-60)\u00a0Brooklyn Nets (20-62)\u00a0Washington Wizards (11-71) <\/p>\n
The regular season in the Western Conference got wacky. The Oklahoma City Thunder had a tough time recovering from an 11-10 start to the season to climb up the ladder. Though, in the Eastern Conference the lone true outlier is the Orlando Magic falling to the No. 9 seed despite being projected as a home court advantage squad ahead of this season. <\/p>\n
The NBA Playoffs simulated at a more realistic level in the video game world than the regular season did with still some surprises along the way. <\/p>\n
First Round: <\/p>\n
Second Round <\/p>\n
Conference Finals<\/p>\n
NBA Finals<\/p>\n
In this simulation the Oklahoma City Thunder represent the NBA’s first repeat winners in eight years. Gilgeous-Alexander bags his second straight NBA Finals MVP award averaging 30 points, three rebounds, seven assists and two steals per game while shooting 59% from the floor, 26% from the 3-point line and 95% at the charity stripe. <\/p>\n
Jokic gets back on top of the NBA world with his fourth MVP honor, only Gilgeous-Alexander made the All-Star team for Oklahoma City in this simulation and it is stunning to see Morant be tabbed as the most clutch player while playing for the 29 win Grizzlies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder are hoping to repeat as NBA champions. While that is always a challenging task,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-114044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}