{"id":71984,"date":"2026-04-17T05:57:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T10:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/nba-playoff-predictions-2026-the-winner-key-players-and-dark-horses\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T05:57:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T10:57:58","slug":"nba-playoff-predictions-2026-the-winner-key-players-and-dark-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/nba-playoff-predictions-2026-the-winner-key-players-and-dark-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA playoff predictions 2026: the winner, key players and dark horses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Will an Oklahoma City repeat end an NBA-record run of seven different champions in seven years? Our writers make their picks ahead of Saturday\u2019s postseason tip-off<\/p>\n<p>Wemby will no doubt be the answer to this question at some point in the (perhaps not-too-distant) future. But for now, I defer to those with at least <em>some<\/em> playoff experience. For my money, <strong>Joki\u0107<\/strong> still reigns supreme as the best player alive, and for that reason, he\u2019s my pick. <strong>CDL<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/apr\/17\/nba-playoffs-2026-predictions\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will an Oklahoma City repeat end an NBA-record run of seven different champions in seven years? Our writers make their picks ahead of Saturday\u2019s postseason tip-off Wemby will no doubt be the answer to this question at some point in the (perhaps not-too-distant) future. But for now, I defer to those with at least some &#8230; <a title=\"NBA playoff predictions 2026: the winner, key players and dark horses\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/nba-playoff-predictions-2026-the-winner-key-players-and-dark-horses\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about NBA playoff predictions 2026: the winner, key players and dark horses\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}