The NBA was the grown-up of the major leagues, the one where the better team usually won the seven-game argument. Lately the league has misplaced that memo. Calling a series now carries the suspense of a Color Prediction Game, where you lock in your pick and the wheel does whatever it pleases.
This spring the seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers climbed out of a 3-1 hole to bury the second-seeded Boston Celtics, the fifth-biggest playoff shock in forty years. The top-seeded Detroit Pistons needed an escape of their own to shake off the eighth-seeded Orlando Magic. Favorites are not safe anymore, and crowds clearly love the mess. The 2026 postseason pulled the biggest television audience the league has seen in 33 years.
The Math Has Quietly Flipped
Here is where things get strange for anyone who watches the odds. Picture a stubborn soul who backed the long shot in every single playoff series, year after year. For three straight decades that loyalty drained the wallet. Then the 2020s showed up and the same lazy habit started paying rent.
| Decade | Underdog series wins | Backing every underdog ($100) |
| 1990s | 23% | Down $3,415 |
| 2000s | 21% | Down $5,530 |
| 2010s | 21% | Down $4,290 |
| 2020s | 33% | Up $1,650 |
Numbers via Covers.com. The Indiana Pacers stretched that logic to its breaking point, sitting at +15000 to win it all during one gloomy stretch of 2025 before nearly running off with the title. No team has repeated as champion this decade. None has even repeated as conference champion. The comfortable pick keeps being the wrong one.
Threes Run Hot and Cold
Then there is the shot that rewired everything. Teams now hoist threes by the armful, and a couple of recent champions fired close to half their attempts from out there. The catch with the long ball is that it runs hot and cold on a whim, and across a short seven-game sample one frosty night can sink the better team. That volatility hands a tight series the swing of a colour prediction game turned up to full volume. Boston proved the point against its own interests this spring: when the Celtics topped 35% from deep they won, and when they dipped below it they lost every time. Even Nikola Jokic, a steady 37% shooter across his career, clanked along at 19% in the opening round, which let defenders sag off him and choke the lane. Cold shooting cuts the other way too. Miami caught fire from outside on its way to the 2023 Finals, draining nearly 58% of its wide-open threes in one conference final and shooting a heavily favored Boston straight out of the playoffs.
The Regular Season Lies to You
Part of the trouble is that everyone builds a forecast on regular-season evidence, and regular-season basketball has wandered far from the version played in May. Coaching staffs now take a series apart possession by possession. Any shaky defender gets hunted into the ground. Any non-shooter gets left alone in the corner. The tidy sets that hummed for 82 games get strangled by the second night.
Officiating shifts as well. Whistles that came easy all winter go quiet once the playoffs start, the game turns rougher, and scoring sags with it. Across the league, offenses fell from 115.8 points per 100 possessions in the regular season to 111.1 once this year’s bracket began. That gap is where favorites quietly go to die.
Bodies Give Out by May
Some of this is plain attrition. A deep run asks too much of tired legs, and the biggest names keep snapping at the cruelest moment. For nine seasons running, at least five All-Stars have missed a playoff game, a thing that happened only five times across the previous forty years. This spring the sidelines swallowed Luka Doncic, Kevin Durant, Anthony Edwards, Brandon Ingram and Victor Wembanyama at one point or another.
Pull a superstar out of a series and the whole forecast tilts. Boston walked into a Game 7 without Jayson Tatum and lost at home, a sentence that would have read as a typo a year earlier.
One Bench Guy Can Wreck Everything
The talent has spread out, on top of all that. Roughly a third of the league now arrives from overseas, and a generation raised on shooting drills means almost anyone can erupt for 30 on a forgettable Tuesday. Owning the best player on the floor settles nothing if some reserve decides it is his night.
Ayo Dosunmu came off Minnesota’s bench for 43 points in a single game against Denver. Five days later Terrence Shannon Jr., who averaged under six points all year, poured in 24 to slam the series shut. Go ahead and model that.
Home court, the favorite’s old security blanket, has frayed too. From 1984 through 1994 the home team won twenty straight Game 7s. Since 2017 home and road clubs have split them right down the middle, fourteen each. Philadelphia closed out Boston this spring by stealing Game 7 inside the Celtics’ own building, the exact result the old timers swore was all but impossible.
