Eight teams are still alive. Three Game 7s, two stunning upsets, and one record-breaking individual performance later, the 2026 NBA Playoffs second round has arrived with the kind of chaos that makes a clear power ranking almost impossible. Almost. We have built our NBA second round rankings of all eight remaining teams from worst-positioned to most likely champion, and the numbers, the matchups, and the injury reports tell a clearer story than the seedings ever could.
- The Oklahoma City Thunder are the championship favourite based on health, depth, and defensive rating.
- San Antonio with Victor Wembanyama remain the most terrifying team to face on a single night.
- The 76ers are the most overrated of the eight survivors and will likely lose to the Knicks in six.
8. Philadelphia 76ers (East 7-seed)
The 76ers earned this. Down 3-1 to the Boston Celtics in round one, they rallied behind a heroic Joel Embiid shift and a vintage Tyrese Maxey scoring run to take the series in seven. The reward is a second-round meeting with the New York Knicks who just hung 137 points on them in Game 1, the third consecutive Philadelphia playoff loss by 25 or more.
Our view at Unicorn Blogger is that the 76ers are punching above their weight and the Knicks know it. Embiid played 28 minutes in Game 1 and looked physically diminished. Paul George shot 4-of-12 from the field. The bench produced 19 points combined. Against a Knicks team that has finally figured out how to play defence at a championship level, the 76ers do not have enough firepower or enough healthy bodies to win four out of six. Mike Brown’s defensive scheme is built to deny Embiid post touches and force Maxey into mid-range jumpers, and the early evidence is that the scheme is working.
The pick: Knicks in 6. The 76ers stole one in this series only because Embiid had a vintage night in Game 4. The rest of the time, the talent gap is too wide. Philadelphia’s championship odds at this point have collapsed to roughly 60-to-1 according to consensus betting markets, the lowest of any remaining team for a reason.
7. Los Angeles Lakers (West 4-seed)
LeBron James turned 41 in late December. He is averaging 38.2 minutes per game in this postseason, the highest figure of any player his age in NBA history. He played all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter in three of the six first-round games against Houston. The Lakers won that series 4-2 because Luka Doncic is out with a calf strain, Kevin Durant did not play for Houston, and the Rockets simply did not have enough offensive creation in the half-court. None of those advantages carry into the second round.
Now they face the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, who are 8-0 in this postseason and just swept Devin Booker’s Phoenix Suns. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 31.6 points per game in the playoffs on 53 percent shooting. Chet Holmgren is shooting 42 percent from three on five attempts per game. Jalen Williams is the third best player in the series and that should worry anyone wearing purple and gold.
The bench gap is the killer. OKC’s reserve unit outscored Phoenix’s reserve unit by 21 points per game in the first round. The Lakers are starting Rui Hachimura, Austin Reaves, Dorian Finney-Smith, and a rotating cast of role players around LeBron. None of them are stopping Holmgren in space. None of them are scoring 20 points if LeBron has an off night. The arithmetic does not work.
The pick: Thunder in 5. LeBron will produce one signature 35-point performance to steal a home game. The other four are not close.
6. Minnesota Timberwolves (West 6-seed)
The Timberwolves stole Game 1 in San Antonio on Monday night, a 104-102 thriller in which Anthony Edwards was questionable until tip-off and Donte DiVincenzo was ruled out for the rest of the series with a calf injury. Jaden McDaniels scored 28 points on 11 shots. Rudy Gobert had 14 rebounds and held Wembanyama to 4-of-15 from the field for the entirety of the second half. It was a beautiful, intelligent road win.
It is also probably the high-water mark of their playoff run. Minnesota are the deepest of the West contenders behind OKC, but they need Edwards to be a top-five offensive engine in the league to have any chance of beating San Antonio four times. He looked diminished by the calf issue in Game 1. He scored 18 points on 7-of-19 shooting. He had three turnovers in the fourth quarter. If that version of Edwards shows up for six more games, the Wolves are going home.
The McDaniels emergence is real. He is averaging 24.1 points per game in the playoffs, up from 12.2 in the regular season. He is the best perimeter defender on either side of this matchup and arguably the most underrated two-way wing in the league. But asking him to keep this up against San Antonio’s switching defence with Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell hounding him is a stretch.
The pick: Spurs in 6. Minnesota take Game 2 if Edwards is closer to 100 percent. They cannot win the other four.
5. Detroit Pistons (East 1-seed)
The top seed in the East ranks fifth in our NBA second round rankings and that says everything you need to know about Cade Cunningham’s situation. The Pistons should not have needed seven games to dispatch the 8-seed Orlando Magic. They did. Cunningham was magnificent in Game 7, dropping 41 points and 13 assists, but the rest of the series exposed every flaw in this roster. Jalen Duren cannot guard a stretch five. Ausar Thompson cannot shoot. Tobias Harris is 33 and looks every bit of it.
Now the reward for surviving Orlando is a second-round meeting with the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are second in the playoffs in three-point rate at 41.8 percent. Detroit allowed 8.3 more three-point attempts per game than Cleveland in their four regular-season meetings. The Cavs averaged 43 percent from deep in those games. The Pistons defence is designed to protect the paint and dare opponents to shoot. Cleveland will gladly accept that bargain. Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Sam Merrill, and Max Strus will collectively launch about 50 threes a game.
Cunningham is the great equaliser. He averaged 30 points and 10 assists in the regular season series with Cleveland. If he plays at that level for six games and Detroit can win the second-chance points battle, the upset is on. But Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen are the best defensive frontcourt in the East and they will live in the paint, daring Detroit’s role players to make jumpers.
The pick: Cavaliers in 6. Cunningham wins one game on his own, but the supporting cast cannot keep up with Cleveland’s spacing.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers (East 4-seed)
The Cavs are the team most likely to come out of the East and lose in the Finals. That is not a backhanded compliment. It is a structural assessment. Their offence is built around two elite shot creators in Mitchell and Garland, two 20-point-per-game frontcourt scorers in Mobley and Allen, and a deep bench of shooters who punish help defence. They scored 121 or more points in seven of their first-round games. They have the highest offensive rating of any team still alive at 124.6.
The defence is the question. Cleveland gave up 122 points per 100 possessions in the regular season against playoff-calibre opponents, a worrying figure. They survived Toronto in five games partly because the Raptors are still figuring out how to score in the half-court. Detroit will not be that generous. If Cunningham gets going, Mitchell will have to match him basket for basket, and that is a recipe for shooting variance to decide the series.
Where Cleveland could absolutely win the East is if they avoid the Knicks entirely. The Knicks are physical, deep, and have specific defensive personnel to bother both Mitchell (Mikal Bridges) and Mobley (Karl-Anthony Towns sliding to the four). The Cavs match up better against either Detroit or, if the Knicks stumble, even an injured 76ers team. The bracket is open.
The pick: Cavs reach the conference finals, lose to the Knicks in seven.
3. New York Knicks (East 3-seed)
The Knicks are the team that nobody wants to face right now. Game 1 against the 76ers was a 137-98 demolition. The Knicks shot 53 percent from the field and 42 percent from three. Jalen Brunson scored 32 points in 28 minutes. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges combined for 13 stops on Maxey and Embiid. Karl-Anthony Towns added 28 points and 14 rebounds. It was a complete performance.
The defensive identity Mike Brown has installed in eight months is the genuine surprise of this season. The Knicks finished sixth in defensive rating during the regular season after ranking 20th the year before. The personnel was always there. The schemes were not. Brown has them switching seamlessly across positions one through four, with Towns playing drop coverage at the rim and the wings closing out hard on shooters. It is the most cohesive Knicks defence since the Tom Thibodeau years and arguably the best version of Thibs-era principles ever assembled.
The path to the Finals is real. Beat the 76ers (probably in 5 or 6), then face whoever survives Detroit-Cleveland. Both potential opponents have flaws the Knicks can exploit. The Cavaliers cannot defend Brunson in pick-and-roll and have no answer for Towns at the four. The Pistons cannot match the Knicks shot-for-shot offensively.
The pick: Knicks reach the NBA Finals out of the East. The favourable bracket plus the defensive transformation makes them the odds-on favourite to face the West winner.
2. San Antonio Spurs (West 2-seed)
Victor Wembanyama just had a 12-block playoff game. That is not a typo. Twelve. The previous record was 10, set by Mark Eaton in 1985. Wembanyama did it in Game 1 of the second round, against a Minnesota team that targeted him for switches and lobs. He blocked everything. He still lost the game.
That contradiction defines our NBA second round rankings of the Spurs’ season in microcosm. They are the most talented young team since the early-2010s Thunder. They have the best defensive player in the league. They have the deepest bench of any contender outside Oklahoma City. And they keep finding ways to lose close games because the offence still funnels too much through Wembanyama in isolation. He is shooting 38 percent from three this postseason, which is excellent for a centre, but he is also taking 6.4 of those threes per game, which limits his interior gravity.
For more on Wembanyama’s defensive impact, our analysis of his record-breaking 12-block performance ranks it among the greatest defensive playoff games ever. The numbers are astonishing.
The Spurs will probably get past Minnesota. The Edwards injury and the DiVincenzo absence make it likely. The bigger test is the conference finals matchup with Oklahoma City. The Thunder have specific personnel built to neutralise Wembanyama: Holmgren is the only big man in the league with the size and mobility to bother him in space. Lu Dort and Cason Wallace can switch onto Castle and Vassell. The series will come down to whether Wemby can dominate the offensive glass enough to give San Antonio extra possessions.
The pick: Spurs make the Western Conference Finals, lose to OKC in 6 games.
1. Oklahoma City Thunder (West 1-seed)
The defending champions are the favourites for a reason. They swept Phoenix 4-0 in the first round. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 31.6 points and 7.4 assists. Holmgren is averaging 19 points and 11 rebounds. The bench depth is suffocating. The defensive rating of 105.2 is the best of any team this postseason. They have rest. They have health. They have home-court advantage all the way through to the Finals.
The Thunder’s championship probability sits at roughly 38 percent according to consensus models, the highest of any remaining team. Their potential road through the Lakers (extreme talent gap), the Spurs or Wolves in the conference final, and whoever emerges from the East is the most navigable of any contender. They have already beaten everyone they will face this postseason in the regular season. They have answers for every problem the league can throw at them.
The single biggest threat to OKC is Holmgren’s foot. He missed 32 games early in the season with a hairline fracture and the team played him conservatively in the first round. If that injury flares up against a more physical second-round opponent, the championship math changes. But he looked perfectly healthy in the Phoenix sweep, scoring 18, 22, 24, and 26 points across four games, and the medical staff has cleared him for a full minutes load.
The pick: Thunder repeat as champions, beat the Knicks in 6 in the Finals.
The Final Bracket Prediction
East: Knicks beat 76ers 4-2, Cavaliers beat Pistons 4-2, Knicks beat Cavaliers 4-3.
West: Thunder beat Lakers 4-1, Spurs beat Wolves 4-2, Thunder beat Spurs 4-2.
NBA Finals: Thunder beat Knicks 4-2.
That is the most likely outcome but not the only one worth tracking. Three potential upset paths could break the bracket open: a healthy Anthony Edwards turning the Wolves into a real threat to the Spurs, a Cleveland three-point barrage drowning Detroit in five games, or a 76ers Embiid eruption stealing a Knicks home game and shifting the East series momentum. Each of those is roughly a 25 percent probability event. Stack them together and you get the kind of postseason chaos that makes the NBA’s second round the most fun three weeks of the basketball calendar.
For more on the Thunder’s road to the title, see our OKC vs Timberwolves rivalry breakdown and our deeper analysis of why top seeds have dominated round one. The full official second-round schedule and game times are available at NBA.com, and ESPN’s playoff hub has the latest injury updates and series previews.
Eight teams remain in our NBA second round rankings. Sixteen games minimum until a champion is crowned. The arithmetic favours OKC. The drama favours everyone else.
