{"id":183281,"date":"2025-08-28T23:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183281\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:04:10","slug":"espn-summer-forecast-rockets-fourth-among-2026-nba-title-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183281\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN summer forecast: Rockets fourth among 2026 NBA title predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a new-look roster headlined by perennial All-Star and future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant, the 2025-26 Houston Rockets<\/a> are expected to be among the NBA\u2019s championship contenders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But how far up the list are the Rockets?<\/p>\n

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ESPN\u2019s\u00a0\u201csummer forecast\u201d panel \u2014 voted on by its NBA reporters, editors, and analysts \u2014 currently has Houston with the third-best title odds in the Western Conference and the fourth-best, overall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two of the three teams ahead of the Rockets are Oklahoma City and Cleveland, and it\u2019s easy to understand why. The Thunder went 68-14 last season and went on to win the 2025 NBA Finals, while the Cavaliers were 64-18 and No. 1 in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

Both were more than 10 games better than the 2024-25 Rockets (52-30), which represents a significant gap. Even with Durant, the thinking is understandable.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting is that ESPN\u2019s panel also has Denver slightly ahead of Houston. While the Nuggets (50-32) finished below the Rockets in the 2024-25 regular season, they did advance an additional round in the playoffs, and they pushed the eventual champions to the brink of elimination before falling in Game 7 of that second-round series.<\/p>\n

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Between that experience, the presence of perennial Most Valuable Player (MVP) frontrunner Nikola Jokic, and pedigree from a team that won the NBA\u2019s 2023 title, it seems ESPN\u2019s panel is slightly more bullish on Denver in a playoff setting \u2014 even though they have Houston a game ahead in their regular-season projections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Rockets and Nuggets will meet for the first time this season on Friday, Nov. 21<\/a>, in an Emirates NBA Cup 2025 group-stage game from Houston.<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>ESPN projects Rockets to finish 54-28 next season, No. 2 in Western Conference<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Rockets Wire: ESPN summer forecast: Rockets fourth among 2026 NBA title predictions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a new-look roster headlined by perennial All-Star and future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant, the 2025-26 Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":183282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[13593,8605,5723,3136,3359,1260,3578,3369,7198,6949,62,14863,67,132,68,7184],"class_list":{"0":"post-183281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-cleveland","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-espn","11":"tag-houston-rockets","12":"tag-kevin-durant","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-finals","15":"tag-nikola-jokic","16":"tag-nuggets","17":"tag-oklahoma-city","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-the-nba","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-western-conference"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115108896601483738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}