Every NBA team takes thousands of shots over 82 games, and we know, with pretty good precision, what each of those shots should be worth based on where they were taken. The gap between what a team's shot location distribution should have produced in effective field goal percentage and what actually went in is one of the cleanest luck signals in basketball. A positive delta means the ball refused to cooperate. A negative one means geometry was feeling generous.
This is a season-long retrospective of that gap for 2025-26, now that the regular season is in the books. The numbers below aren't about who took good shots or bad ones. They're about who got what they deserved and who didn't.
Most Cursed by Shot-Quality Luck
1. Denver Nuggets (eFG% delta: +3.1) - The largest gap in the league, and it isn't particularly close. Denver's shot profile suggested a top-ten offense by location alone, but they underperformed their expected eFG% by 3.1 points. That is an enormous amount of basketball to leave on the rim.
2. Los Angeles Lakers (eFG% delta: +2.7) - The Lakers generated quality looks all season and watched a disproportionate number of them rattle out. A 2.7-point miss relative to expectation translates to roughly three or four swings in the win column over a full season, depending on game context.
3. Milwaukee Bucks (eFG% delta: +2.0) - Milwaukee's delta of 2.0 is less dramatic but still meaningful for a team whose margin for error in a loaded conference was already thin. The Bucks did their job getting to their spots. The makes just didn't follow.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers (eFG% delta: +1.6) - At 1.6 points below expectation, Cleveland's shortfall is moderate but notable. For a team built around efficiency, even modest underperformance compounds across 82 games.
5. Oklahoma City Thunder (eFG% delta: +1.5) - The Thunder round out the cursed five at 1.5. Their shot quality was elite by location. Their shot results were merely good.
Five playoff-caliber teams. The rim does not care about your seeding.
Most Blessed by Shot-Quality Luck
1. Brooklyn Nets (eFG% delta: -2.5) - Brooklyn outshot their expected eFG% by 2.5 points, the largest positive variance in the league. Their shot chart suggested a middling offense. The scoreboard was kinder.
2. Sacramento Kings (eFG% delta: -2.2) - A 2.2-point overperformance propped up Sacramento's offensive numbers all year. Whether that was hidden shooting talent or plain fortune is the question regression will answer.
3. Philadelphia 76ers (eFG% delta: -1.6) - Philly's -1.6 delta means they consistently converted at a rate their shot locations didn't quite justify. Not the largest windfall, but steady across a full season.
4. Charlotte Hornets (eFG% delta: -1.6) - Tied with Philadelphia at -1.6, Charlotte benefited from the same quiet tailwind. For a rebuilding roster, it padded some otherwise lean offensive nights.
5. Orlando Magic (eFG% delta: -1.5) - Orlando's -1.5 overperformance is modest but real. It sits right at the threshold where analysts start asking whether something structural is hiding inside the noise.
What This Tells Us
The total spread from Denver's +3.1 to Brooklyn's -2.5 is 5.6 points of effective field goal percentage, all of it disconnected from shot selection quality. Historically, eFG% delta is one of the most mean-reverting signals in basketball. Teams that underperform their shot profile by more than two points almost always bounce back the following season, and overperformers tend to slide back toward expectation at a similar rate.
For the playoff teams on the cursed list, that's quietly good news. Denver and the Lakers in particular generated the shots their systems were designed to produce. The conversions just didn't come. If those shots start falling at expected rates in the postseason, the teams on this list may look very different than their regular-season records suggest.
Regression doesn't knock. It just walks in.
