NBA GMs Pick Spurs Over Thunder for 2027 Title

Half of the NBA's general managers picked the San Antonio Spurs to win the 2027 championship, and 43 percent picked the Oklahoma City Thunder. The 25th annual NBA GM Survey, released October 15, 2026, runs 48 questions, and on the championship question it put 93 percent of the league's executives behind one of those two teams. The Knicks are the reigning champions, they beat the Spurs 4 to 1 in June, and they are not the pick.

93 Percent Chose Two Western Teams

The 2026 to 2027 survey gave the Spurs 50 percent and the Thunder 43 percent of the championship vote, with the Knicks and the 76ers collecting a few votes behind them. Per RealGM, 93 percent of GMs picked the Spurs or the Thunder, which leaves seven percent of the league's front offices for every other team in basketball.

San Antonio lost the 2026 Finals, and the executives who vote in this survey are choosing the team that lost to the Knicks over the team that beat it. The Knicks won that series 4 to 1 to end a 53 year drought, and the Spurs vote is a Victor Wembanyama vote, as the player numbers below show.

Last October It Was the Thunder at 80 Percent

A year ago, 80 percent of GMs picked the Thunder to win the 2026 title, with the Cavaliers and the Nuggets at seven percent each. The Thunder were the defending champions then, which is why the survey was asked to pick a repeat, and four of every five executives said yes. The Thunder did not win it. The Knicks did, and the 80 percent share did not survive June.

The survey's track record is thin. NBC Sports noted that the GMs have picked the eventual champion once in the last seven seasons, the 2024 Celtics. The 2026 to 2027 numbers describe what the league's front offices believe going in, and the champion tends to arrive from somewhere else.

The Knicks Took 60 Percent of the East

The East is the one conference where the survey picked the reigning champion. The Knicks got 60 percent of first place votes, and the 76ers came second at 23 percent.

Philadelphia's number has a cause. The 76ers signed LeBron James at the veteran minimum in July, and they traded for Jaylen Brown on July 1 in a deal that sent Paul George and four draft picks to Boston. A team that adds a 24th year veteran and a five time All Star in one month gets 23 percent of an East vote. The Knicks still get 60, with Jalen Brunson, the Finals MVP at 32.6 points a game, coming back.

Wembanyama: 93 Percent and 77 Percent, Both Records

Victor Wembanyama set two survey records. He drew 93 percent of the vote as the player a GM would start a franchise with, up from 83 percent a year ago and the highest share the survey has recorded. He also drew 77 percent of the MVP vote, another record, with Nikola Jokic second at 10 percent and Anthony Edwards third at seven.

Wembanyama led eight categories in all, and the survey is the league's executives voting on the league's players, not fans. He took best defensive player and best interior defender at 97 percent each. Jokic held the one category where the two overlap, best center, 63 percent to 37 percent. A year ago Jokic was the clear MVP pick at 67 percent. This October he has 10.

That follows the business. Nike retired Wembanyama's alien logo on July 31 and introduced a monogram of a V over a W alongside a reported signature shoe extension, the Nike Wemby 1. The league's executives and its shoe company reached the same conclusion about who the franchise is.

Betting Odds Disagree by a Whisker

The sportsbooks are closer than the GMs. The betting odds cited alongside the survey have the Thunder at +250 to win the title and the Spurs at +280, which makes Oklahoma City the slight market favorite even as San Antonio wins the executive vote 50 to 43. The two lists agree on the other thing: nobody else is close.

The Knicks are the reigning champions, led by Brunson at 32.6 points a game in the Finals, and they trail both the Spurs and the Thunder on the survey's title board.