ESPN's Basketball Power Index has done the thing computers do before the season actually starts: it looked at the defending champion and said, yeah, probably them again. The Oklahoma City Thunder sit atop the outlet's preseason rankings, with the New York Knicks, San Antonio Spurs and Philadelphia 76ers rounding out the top four. The reaction out of the fan base has reportedly been mixed surprise, which tells you something about how fast people forget a parade.
They shouldn't forget this one. Oklahoma City is the Oklahoma City Thunder news story of the preseason precisely because this isn't a cold take, it's a confirmation. The Thunder won the franchise's first championship since relocating from Seattle, and a model built to weight talent, continuity and recent results doesn't need much convincing to run it back.
Why the model still likes Oklahoma City
A power index like BPI isn't reading tea leaves, it's reading rosters and recent outcomes, and a team that just won it all with a young core intact is going to grade out near the top almost by default. That's not a knock on the Thunder, it's just how these models work: continuity is the easiest variable to measure, and Oklahoma City has it in spades. The harder question, the one these indices are always worse at, is fatigue and target-on-the-back dynamics. Nobody circles a date on the calendar for the team that finished tenth. Everybody circles it for the champs.
Where the Knicks, Spurs and 76ers fit
The order behind Oklahoma City is where this gets interesting. New York's presence at number two tracks with a real on-court story: the Knicks' run to the Eastern Conference finals, their deepest trip in a quarter century, wasn't a fluke dressed up as a breakthrough. San Antonio's inclusion leans hard on the Victor Wembanyama arc, a player whose ceiling alone can move a model even through a season complicated by health concerns. And Philadelphia landing in the top four is the classic 76ers bet: the roster talent is real, the question has always been whether the engine, Joel Embiid's health, lasts deep enough into spring to cash the ticket this model is writing in October.
| Rank | Team | Why BPI likes them |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma City Thunder | Defending champions, young core returns |
| 2 | New York Knicks | 2025 conference finals breakthrough |
| 3 | San Antonio Spurs | Wembanyama's ceiling |
| 4 | Philadelphia 76ers | Talent, if health cooperates |
What comes next
None of this gets tested until teams actually take the floor. The Thunder open their title defense this week, the Knicks host Toronto Thursday night, and the real version of this conversation starts the moment somebody's star sits out a back-to-back in November. Preseason power indices are a snapshot of a roster on paper. The season is what happens when that paper meets an 82-game schedule, a few hamstrings, and whatever young team nobody ranked decides to be a problem by January.
checked the almanac: the thunder beat the pacers in seven games last june to end oklahoma city's championship drought as a relocated franchise, and the computers already like them to do it again before anyone's dribbled a real possession. some things take longer than a trophy to fade.