The Brooklyn Nets finished the 2025-26 regular season 5.80 points per game worse than their underlying metrics suggested they should have been. That is not a rounding error. That is a team the standings lied about for six months.
Now that the NBA and NHL regular seasons are in the books, we can stop hedging with sample-size caveats. These gaps are final. And for bettors scanning playoff lines and early MLB markets, the residue of regular-season luck - good and bad - is still baked into how the public perceives these teams.
Due a Correction
Brooklyn Nets (NBA) - Luck Index: -64, xPoints gap: -5.80
Brooklyn's season-long Luck Index of -64 was the most extreme negative reading across the NBA. A gap of -5.80 expected points means the Nets consistently produced the kind of shot quality, rebounding differentials, and turnover margins that should have translated to roughly six more points per game in the win column. They didn't get them. Close-game variance, fourth-quarter shooting entropy, and an unusually hostile whistle rate in clutch minutes all contributed. The Nets are out of the playoff picture, but the number lingers as context. If this core returns largely intact, opening lines next October will almost certainly undervalue them relative to the underlying production.
Washington Wizards (NBA) - Luck Index: -55, xPoints gap: -6.10
Washington actually posted the largest raw xPoints gap in the league at -6.10, even exceeding Brooklyn's. The Luck Index came in slightly less extreme at -55 because the model weights schedule strength and garbage-time filtering, but the message is the same. The Wizards were meaningfully better than their record. Markets pricing Washington as a basement team next season are working off a record that overstated their problems.
Utah Jazz (NBA) - Luck Index: -50, xPoints gap: -5.60
Utah rounds out a trio of NBA teams whose final records were at least 5.6 expected points worse than their process warranted. A -50 Luck Index across 82 games is not noise. It is a full season of coin flips landing tails. The Jazz's underlying metrics suggested a team that belonged in the play-in conversation, not the lottery.
Three NBA teams. All underwater by at least 5.6 xPoints. The league has not seen a cluster like that in recent memory.
Living on Borrowed Luck
Buffalo Sabres (NHL) - Luck Index: 66, xPoints gap: +0.40
Buffalo's Luck Index of 66 was the highest in hockey this season, though the xPoints gap was a modest +0.40. The disconnect tells you most of the luck showed up in game-state-sensitive situations: overtime results, empty-net sequences, save percentage spikes at critical moments. The Sabres squeezed value from variance without dramatically outpacing their expected point total. Bookmakers building playoff series prices off Buffalo's final standing may be working with a slightly inflated baseline.
Montréal Canadiens (NHL) - Luck Index: 65, xPoints gap: +4.40
Montréal's +4.40 xPoints gap is the real headline on the hockey side. That is a team that rode PDO, power-play timing, and goaltending heaters to a standing they did not structurally earn. A 65 Luck Index over a full 82-game season is the kind of number that tends to autocorrect brutally in a seven-game playoff series.
Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA) - Luck Index: 57, xPoints gap: +5.90
OKC's final record included nearly six expected points per game of house money. The Thunder are genuinely talented, which makes this reading tricky. But a +5.90 gap means the market may be pricing their playoff seed as a purer signal of quality than it actually was. Variance like this typically regresses, and in a playoff context, it only takes one series for the correction to arrive.
The Regression Window
In the NBA and NHL playoffs, regression does not politely spread itself over 10 or 15 games. It can compress into a single series, sometimes a single game. A team that overperformed by six expected points all season can look pedestrian in a four-game sweep. A team that underperformed by the same margin never gets the chance to prove it.
The data is the data. What anyone does with it is their business.