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· Detroit Pistons · Analysis

Boston, Miami, Philly, the Knicks. It's the 3rd hardest opening in the league and we're still favored in 2 and a half of them

Somebody posted the 2026-27 schedule breakdown on the sub and the top line was that we open with Boston, Miami, Philly and the Knicks. Which, yeah. That's a week. I saw it and immediately went looking for a reason it wasn't as bad as it looked, because that's what you do, and I ended up finding something a little more interesting than that.

First, the complaint checks out. Rate every team's first 4 opponents by what those opponents did last season and Detroit's are the 3rd toughest in the NBA. Mean opponent winning percentage of .601 against a league average of .497. Only the Knicks and Oklahoma City drew worse, and it's really a 3 way tie for 3rd, because Detroit, Philly and Phoenix all land on exactly .601. Their opening opponents won 197 games apiece last year. Nobody planned that.

Opening 4 opponentsMean opp win pct
1. New YorkPHI, at BOS, ORL, DET.628
2. Oklahoma Cityat SA, DEN, LAC, PHX.619
3. DetroitBOS, at MIA, at PHI, at NY.601
4. Philadelphiaat NY, CLE, MIL, DET.601
5. Phoenixat POR, GS, at OKC, DEN.601
league average.497

So the thread's right. That's the hard part of the answer and I don't want to talk anybody out of it.

Here's the other half though, and it's the half that changed how I read the whole thing. "Hard schedule" is a question about who you play. It isn't a question about how many you win. Those come apart, and for us they come apart about as far as they can.

Detroit went 60-22 last year. Best record in the East, 3rd best in the league behind Oklahoma City at 64-18 and San Antonio at 62-20. So take the exact same 4 games, and instead of asking how good the opponents are, ask how many a 60-22 team would be expected to win against those 4 teams, at those 4 buildings. Home teams won 679 of 1,225 games last season, so playing at home is worth something real and it goes in.

2.47 wins out of 4. That's the 9th easiest opening in the NBA. League average is 2.02. Washington opens against a set of opponents nobody would call scary and comes out at 0.95 expected wins, because Washington went 17-65.

Every NBA team's first 4 games of 2026-27. Horizontal axis is the mean 2025-26 winning percentage of the opponents drawn, vertical axis is how many of the 4 the team would be expected to win given its own 2025-26 record and where the games are played. Detroit sits far right at 0.601 and high at 2.47 expected wins, so it drew hard opponents and is still favoured in most of them. Opponent strength against expected wins, first 4 games of 2026-27 Opponents rated by 2025-26 record. Expected wins from the same records, adjusted for home and away .300 .350 .400 .450 .500 .550 .600 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 ATL: opponents 0.588, 1.78 expected wins, 3 on the road BKN: opponents 0.521, 1.07 expected wins, 2 on the road BOS: opponents 0.500, 2.69 expected wins, 1 on the road CHA: opponents 0.384, 2.69 expected wins, 1 on the road CHI: opponents 0.460, 1.64 expected wins, 3 on the road CLE: opponents 0.399, 2.89 expected wins, 1 on the road DAL: opponents 0.537, 1.14 expected wins, 3 on the road DEN: opponents 0.466, 2.66 expected wins, 2 on the road DET: opponents 0.601, 2.47 expected wins, 3 on the road Detroit GS: opponents 0.540, 1.57 expected wins, 3 on the road HOU: opponents 0.549, 2.28 expected wins, 2 on the road IND: opponents 0.317, 1.49 expected wins, 3 on the road LAC: opponents 0.585, 1.71 expected wins, 2 on the road LAL: opponents 0.436, 2.90 expected wins, 1 on the road MEM: opponents 0.314, 1.88 expected wins, 3 on the road MIA: opponents 0.546, 2.00 expected wins, 1 on the road MIL: opponents 0.341, 2.25 expected wins, 2 on the road MIN: opponents 0.567, 2.01 expected wins, 3 on the road NO: opponents 0.454, 1.55 expected wins, 2 on the road NY: opponents 0.628, 2.16 expected wins, 1 on the road OKC: opponents 0.619, 2.77 expected wins, 1 on the road ORL: opponents 0.591, 1.83 expected wins, 2 on the road PHI: opponents 0.601, 1.87 expected wins, 1 on the road PHX: opponents 0.601, 1.79 expected wins, 2 on the road POR: opponents 0.442, 2.28 expected wins, 2 on the road SA: opponents 0.500, 2.97 expected wins, 1 on the road SAC: opponents 0.521, 1.12 expected wins, 2 on the road TOR: opponents 0.433, 2.50 expected wins, 2 on the road UTAH: opponents 0.393, 1.61 expected wins, 1 on the road WSH: opponents 0.466, 0.95 expected wins, 2 on the road Mean opponent 2025-26 winning percentage, harder to the right Expected wins
Opening 4Expected wins
Toughest to survive: WashingtonMIL, TOR, at CHI, at CHA0.95
BrooklynCHA, at CLE, IND, at BOS1.07
Sacramentoat LAC, POR, MEM, at SA1.12
league average2.02
Detroit, 9th easiestBOS, at MIA, at PHI, at NY2.47
San Antonio, easiestOKC, HOU, at DAL, SAC2.97

And then the thing I actually laughed at. Look at who's 1st and 4th on that first table. New York has the hardest opening in the league, and 1 of the 4 reasons is that they play us. Philadelphia's up there for the same reason. There are Knicks fans and Sixers fans right now looking at their own opening week and seeing Detroit on it and posting the exact thread we're posting, except with our name in it. We're not the team that got the hard draw. We're part of somebody else's.

The part that's genuinely annoying

It isn't the opponents. It's the travel.

3 of the first 4 are on the road, and only 8 teams in the league have that many. Nobody has 4. It doesn't stop there either: 5 of the first 10 and 9 of the first 14 are away from Little Caesars. So the way this goes wrong isn't Boston on opening night, it's that we tip off, play 1 game at home, and then spend most of the next 3 weeks in other people's buildings while everybody's still sorting out rotations.

That's the version of the complaint I'd actually make. Not "look who we play," but "look how little of October we spend at home."

What I'd hold this loosely for

Last year's record is the only rating that exists before anybody plays a game, and it's already stale. The summer moved people around, and it'll keep moving them until camp. Miami at 43-39 and Philly at 45-37 are exactly the teams where a rating built out of last April tells you the least.

Something else that changes what you can count: the schedule that's out right now is 80 games for every team, not 82. Detroit's has a 10 day hole from December 3 to December 13, which is the Cup knockout window, and the last 2 games get filled in once that's settled. Every team's missing the same 2, and none of it touches October, so the opening 4 above is the real opening 4.

October 20 against Boston, then Miami, Philly, New York. What's the number you'd actually want out of that week? I'd take 2 and not complain. 3 and I'd start believing 60 wins wasn't the ceiling.

Got a Detroit number you want looked at? Email projectunmuted@proton.me and it gets looked at properly. A stat somebody quoted that smells wrong, a thing you have always assumed about one of these 4 teams and have never seen checked. Every question that arrives is listed with its answer, including the ones where the answer is no.

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