5 Bold Predictions Ahead of the 2025 NBA Playoffs

This weekend, the NBA playoffs officially begin. After 82 games, the in-season tournament and the play-in games, it’s been a long trek to get here. But the reward is a rollicking couple of months of top-notch competition between some of the best athletes in the world. Incredibly, though, the field is as wide open this year as its ever been.

Even though there are two teams squarely at the top of the standings—the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers, both of which won 60-plus games this season—trying to predict how the postseason will play out is almost impossible. But that’s the beauty of the modern NBA—parity. Winners can come from anywhere.

In recent years, plenty of lower seeds have made deep runs, including the Miami Heat in 2023, which survived the play-in tournament to advance all the way to the NBA Finals. Will that happen again? Maybe!

Here below, we wanted to share five bold predictions for the 2025 postseason. Will they all come true? Perhaps! But either way, they’re fun talk about.

1. The East is Chalk But the West is a Mess

In the first round of the playoffs, we predict that the east’s top four seeds will all advance. The Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers all have a talent and health advantage over their opponents. As a result, they should all win in the opening round. But we also believe that the second and third rounds in the east, will all play out by seeding, too, with Cleveland and Boston meeting in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Out west, however, it’s messy. Even though the Thunder have the best record by far, they are still a young, unproven team. And in the NBA, experience matters. Will their supporting cast uplift presumptive MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? Or will the Thunder find they maxed out on talent and they don’t have another gear to get to? We predict the opening round in the west will see series wins by the Thunder, the Golden State Warriors (in an upset over Houston), the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers (in an upset over Denver).

2. The Top MVP Candidates Are Gone

For the 2024-25 season, the top two MVP candidates are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and three-time winner Nikola Jokić. But we believe that both will be gone by the end of the second round. The Clippers are coming on strong and they have the right blend of defense and star power to oust Jokić’s hobbling Denver Nuggets, who just fired their head coach a week ago.

And while we think Shai and company will win in their opening round, we believe those same Clippers with star Kawhi “John Wick” Leonard will shock the NBA and beat the Thunder in round two. That could make for an awkward MVP trophy presentation later this summer.

3. It’s an All-Los Angeles Western Conference Finals

As noted, we believe the Clippers will upset both Denver and Oklahoma City in the first two rounds. We also believe their Los Angeles counterparts, the Lakers, will beat Minnesota in round one and outlast the Warriors in round two. That sets up an all-L.A. Western Conference Finals.

Longtime NBA fans will remember that during the 2020 season, the L.A. teams were both considered the top contenders for the title. And while the Lakers won the trophy in the strange pandemic-shortened “Bubble” season over Miami, we will now get a chance to see five years later what we wanted to witness in 2020.

4. The NBA Finals Will be the Lebron Bowl

We swear we’re not LeBron homers. In fact, this pick (and the ones above) have little to do with the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. It has much more to do with his new running mate, Luka Dončić, who the Lakers acquired this year in perhaps the most shocking and most idiotic trade in league history.

Why Dallas traded away their generational superstar for an aging Anthony Davis and a bag of beans is beyond anyone, even months after it went down. But Luka and his proven playoff chops—combined with James’ experience and third-banana Austin Reeves’ stellar scoring—can easily propel the Lakers to the Finals.

Conversely, out east, while there are many teams that boast a ton of talent, each squad also has major flaws. The Knicks can’t seem to beat any of the top teams. The Pacers can’t defend a chair. And most importantly, the Celtics’ second-best player Jaylen Brown has been receiving pain-killing shots to his knee over the past few days. If Brown isn’t at his best, Boston will have an extremely tough time repeating as champ this year. Enter: Cleveland, with its well-rounded roster of stars like Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.

Can you imagine the media hype if the Lakers and Cavs met in the Finals? The Ohio-born LeBron is the only player in history to lead Cleveland to an NBA title, which he did in 2016, and now he’d be facing them for the whole enchilada? It’s a Hollywood ending no one could have written.

5. Nico Harrison Is Gone

If the Lakers end up in the Finals and if they actually win the whole thing, which is very possible, then that will make Dallas look even worse for giving up on Luka just months after he took them to the Finals in 2024. Indeed, if Slovenian wins his first title in purple and gold the same season the Mavericks sent him packing, it might cause Twitter (X) to meltdown. And if it does happen, then the man responsible for the trade, Dallas Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison, has to get fired.

A team can’t come back from that. A GM can’t come back from that. Losing Luka is like losing your entire franchise (just ask the Dallas fans)—he’s that good. Then to watch him go win a ring elsewhere—someone would need to pay dearly for that. And Nico is his name-o.