We Simulated the 2026-27 Season 100 Times on NBA 2K27. Here Are the Results. - Sports Illustrated

I’ve always found the NBA 2K games to be quite fun. It’s not a perfect NBA simulator, but it’s pretty darn close—as close as you can reasonably expect. The ratings for each player are largely fair and how well each team performs is usually in line with real-world expectations. Most importantly, it remains thrilling to take control of Steph Curry to rain down threes from half court or posterize the daylights out of an opposing center with Anthony Edwards.

Normally those are reasons enough to look forward to the annual release of NBA 2K every year, but this year had a special draw. A roller coaster of an NBA offseason saw multiple stars change teams and rosters shuffle across the league. All those moves serve as a foundation for what will be the most interesting season in recent NBA memory. There are questions abound—can LeBron mesh with the 76ers? Will Giannis and Bam work together? Can anyone really threaten Victor Wembanyama for an MVP trophy?—that can only be answered by watching how the games play out on the court.

But with NBA 2K27 releasing on Friday, the thought occurred to the Sports Illustrated NBA team: What if we could get some answers to those questions by asking the video game’s computer?

Thus, I downloaded the new 2K game, fired up my PlayStation and simulated the 2026–27 season. Not once. Not twice. But 100 times.

I wanted to see what the most advanced basketball simulator on the market thought of the new-look Celtics and Timberwolves, how an exciting Rookie of the Year race will play out, and which of the new loaded rosters in the East wind up out of the playoff picture. Above all, I was curious to learn which team would be left standing amid a fairly unpredictable championship landscape. Based on all the quantified skills of every roster in the league, who will raise the Larry O’Brien trophy next June?

Here are the results of those 100 simulations. Some may shock you. Particularly if you are a 76ers fan. I doubt the Philly fan base will be too happy with their new team’s performances.

First, for the sake of clarity, let’s break down the settings used for the 100 simulated seasons.

The game mode is MyNBA (effectively franchise mode), which allowed for a full season’s simulation plus a playoff run. The “standard” preset setting was used, which strikes the middle ground balance between uber-realism and video game-y results. Each team was controlled by a computer, so every season all 30 franchises were free to make trades and lineup adjustments and any other moves. And at the end of every Finals, we restarted the whole thing.

It is important to note, in addition to those settings, that NBA 2K rosters are finalized in mid-July. Which means, for example, that Kawhi Leonard remains on the Clippers for our 100 simulations. It also means that any player who retired after July 15 is still in the game. You’ll understand why that’s important later.

Now let’s get to the fun stuff.

The two teams that won the most championships over our 100 simulations represent our first, and arguably most surprising, data point.

The Spurs and the Magic finished the simulations tied at 19 championships won apiece. That’s right: the Magic. 2K is apparently extremely high on Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner’s potential with new head coach Sean Sweeney in the mix; Orlando regularly finished with a top-three seed in the Eastern Conference with consistent Finals appearances.

San Antonio is ... less of a surprise, you might say. Led by ascending superstar and NBA 2K27 cover athlete Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs never finished below the No. 3 seed in our 100 simulations and were a regular sight in the Finals. As far as the computer believes, Wemby and his young teammates are set to avenge their heart-breaking series defeat to the Knicks in June.

Speaking of, New York tied for the second-most titles in our simulations, with 18 championship runs. Going back-to-back is one of the toughest feats in sports but the Knicks have the video game gods on their side. The other team to win 18 times out of 100? The Timberwolves. The new Anthony Edwards-LaMelo Ball pairing is not only set to entertain but put up literal video game numbers, according to the video game itself. Lastly, two teams were able to slide in with exactly one title: the Cavaliers and Mavericks (a Cooper Flagg Finals MVP in his second season would be quite a sight!).

Of course, we had to track the runner-ups if we were tracking the champions. According to NBA 2K, which fan base should prepare itself for disappointment?

The answer: the Pistons. Despite winning 14 titles out of 100 above, Detroit wound up losing two more than it won, recording 16 Finals losses. That’s tied with the Knicks for the most out of our 100 simulations. The Timberwolves, Magic and Spurs also suffered plenty of championship defeats, which is no surprise given how many wins they racked up above.

The most interesting result of this section is the Trail Blazers finishing with eight Finals losses; combined with their above championships, that means Portland made 11 runs through the Western Conference playoff bracket out of 100 tries. The Blazers’ roster is obviously talented with Damian Lillard and Ja Morant in the backcourt but it’s far from a clean fit. NBA 2K disagrees, however. The team regularly finished with a top-six record in the West and, as you can see, got the job done on a few occasions.

There are also three teams who made it to the Finals exactly once and lost—the Suns, Warriors and Nuggets.

If you read these first two sections closely, you’ll notice a distinct lack of 76ers mentions. We’ll touch on that more later, but know that it’s not a typo. The Sixers did not make a single NBA Finals appearance throughout our 100 simulations. They didn’t even get close.

With the overall results out of the way, we now move towards the individual awards handed out at the end of each regular season. First up? The MVP award.

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise to learn that NBA 2K has Wembanyama as next season’s MVP favorite. He took home the vast majority of the MVP awards during our simulations, finishing with 66% of the MVPs handed out. When he didn’t win for one reason or another it was usually Nikola Jokić winning his fourth MVP trophy. Cade Cunningham brought home double-digit MVPs as well.

The most fun result: Karl-Anthony Towns winning two out of 100 possible MVP awards by averaging 22 points and 10 rebounds for a pair of 70-win Knicks teams. Wemby failing to meet the minimum games played requirement in those two seasons helped.

This is the one that got a little weird.

As noted above, the rosters for this year’s game were finalized in mid-July. But Russell Westbrook announced his retirement in August, so he is not actually retired in video game land. Instead Westbrook is the top free agent available on the market to start every season. Which means he gets signed immediately and, in our simulations, winds up shining off the bench—Westbrook won 25 of our 100 possible 6MOY awards for 10 different teams.

Otherwise, though, it was an interesting set of data points for an award race that doesn’t really have a favorite entering the season. Scoot Henderson brought home the most 6MOY awards with 28 (further hammering home the computer’s inclination towards Portland), while last year’s breakout Thunder star Ajay Mitchell and exciting young Pelicans rookie Jeremiah Fears took home 15 apiece. The most random result: Naji Marshall, who won two 6MOY awards for the Mavericks.

Cameron Boozer largely dominated ROY voting in our 100 NBA 2K simulations. The Grizzlies rookie is well-positioned to rack up solid counting numbers as a top option on a bad team, which is usually a ripe environment for Rookie of the Year candidates to thrive. The other winners—Darius Acuff Jr., Darryn Peterson and Caleb Wilson—weren’t shocking to see, either.

What was a tad shocking was the complete lack of AJ Dybantsa. The heralded Wizards rookie was the top pick of the ‘26 draft above all those guys but didn’t take home a single ROY award in any of the 100 seasons simulated in NBA 2K.

If you feel strongly this is Wembanyama’s award to lose, 2K couldn’t agree with you more. Wemby took home a whopping 93 DPOY awards out of 100 possible opportunities. Not much else to say; the reigning winner is a force of nature as a defender the likes of which we’ve never really seen.

That win percentage makes it all the more impressive that the Pistons’ Ausar Thompson (four) and the Thunder’s Chet Holmgren (three) took any off Wemby.

Defensive Player of the Year wins

Over the course of 100 simulated versions of the upcoming season, it’s inevitable for trends to emerge. There’s a degree of randomness involved, to be sure, but at a basic level this is a math equation executed by the 2K computer. No two seasons are exactly the same but many ended up with shared traits when it was all said and done—trends, in fewer words.

One of those trends? The consistent failure of the 76ers, who added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown to the Tyrese Maxey-Joel Embiid core this offseason. According to NBA 2K, the great Philadelphia experiment will not work. Out of 100 simulations, the Sixers made the playoffs in only three seasons. Three out of 100! And of those three appearances, only one came as a top-six seed; the other two came by way of the play-in tournament, where Philly finished in the 7-10 seed range in the East. They qualified for the play-in six additional times but lost before making it to the final bracket.

Thus, the final numbers on the NBA 2K version of the 76ers: 92 losing seasons, six play-in losses, and three playoff series losses. They failed to make it past the first round at any point. Fortunately, Philadelphia can take solace in the fact that basketball is not played on a computer but instead out on the court.

Other teams the simulation was down on: the Nuggets, Lakers and Heat. Despite the presence of international superstars and historic producers in Jokić, Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the trio’s respective teams rarely qualified for the playoff bracket as a top-six seed. Denver wound up making one run but Los Angeles never got past the West semis, and Miami was unable to record a single Finals appearance.

In terms of awards we didn’t track specifically, the game loves Zaccarie Risacher’s chances of getting a change-of-scenery bump in Dallas. The former No. 1 pick got traded to the Mavericks from the Hawks this offseason and won many Most Improved Player awards in our simulations.

Here are a few more tidbits from 100 seasons of NBA action that I found interesting:

It was a fun experiment. Now we all look forward to the real games.

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Liam McKeone is a senior news writer for the NBA team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in the industry covering the NBA and other sports as a content creator starting in 2017. Prior to joining SI, McKeone worked for NBC Sports Boston and The Big Lead. In addition to his work as a writer, he has hosted the Press Pass Podcast covering sports media and The Big Stream covering pop culture. A graduate of Fordham University, he is always up for a good debate and enjoys loudly arguing about sports, rap music, books and video games. McKeone has been a member of the National Sports Media Association since 2020.