Eastern Conference Predictions for November 2026
This conference is going to be nuts.
Now that the season has started properly, let’s look at some of the predictions I made last month, and see what has changed.
It is worth noting that I am super amateur at basketball analytics and this is entirely for fun.
| Seed | Team | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philadelphia 76ers | ↑1 |
| 2 | Detroit Pistons | ↑6 |
| 3 | New York Knicks | ↓2 |
| 4 | Boston Celtics | ↑1 |
| 5 | Indiana Pacers | ↓3 |
| 6 | Cleveland Cavaliers | ↓2 |
| 7 | Toronto Raptors | ↑3 |
| 8 | Washington Wizards | ↓1 |
| 9 | Atlanta Hawks | — |
| 10 | Charlotte Hornets | ↑1 |
| 11 | Miami Heat | ↓5 |
| 12 | Orlando Magic | — |
| 13 | Chicago Bulls | ↑1 |
| 14 | Milwaukee Bucks | ↓1 |
| 15 | Brooklyn Nets | — |
New York Knicks: The Knicks go 3-0 to start their season, and I couldn’t be happier. I expect that they’ll bounce back, but it’s likely that another team will catch up before they work out their issues and start winning later on in the season.
Detroit Pistons: I was expecting that the loss of Isaiah Stewart was going to mean a shift away from the defensive focus the team kept last season. What I didn’t expect was that this Pistons team would be shooting the lights out 24/7. I felt strange putting the 1 seed from the 2026 season at 8, but wasn’t super convinced until I saw them play.
Miami Heat: This is exactly what I knew was going to go down. I moved the Heat up a little bit from my initial prediction (before my first post) because everyone was raving about how good they were going to be. But Miami has proven to be Milwaukee-with-palm-trees for Giannis.
Toronto Raptors: The team with Kawhi is impressing me more than I thought it would. The defense is staggering, and surprisingly, the team is winning more games than I thought they would. We’ll see if the others can hold it down while Kawhi is out.
My team to keep an eye on this month: The Toronto Raptors.
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