NBA Wins Pool for 2026-27 — free for friends
A wins pool is the lowest-maintenance way to follow a whole NBA season with friends: draft your teams once, then root for them to win as often as possible for six months. It opens on Sportpoolz for the 2027-28 season — a wins pool starts with a preseason draft, so it cannot begin halfway through this one.
Free forever — no credit card, no money changing hands.
How an NBA wins pool works
Before the season tips off, your group divides the league's thirty teams between its members in a draft. After that there are no weekly picks at all. Every regular-season win by one of your teams adds to your total, and whoever's teams have won the most games when the regular season ends takes the pool.
The draft is where the pool is decided. A team everyone expects to contend goes first, but a young team that wins twelve more games than last year is worth just as much, and those are the picks people remember.
What it asks of your group
- One sitting before the season: the draft.
- Nothing weekly: no deadlines, no missed picks, no reminders to chase.
- Groups of five, six, ten or fifteen split the thirty teams evenly.
- No money: like every pool on Sportpoolz, it plays for the standings.
Key dates
Wins pools open for the 2027-28 preseason, ahead of the draft. For this season, the NBA pools page lists the formats you can start, and each one can begin with any week.
- Opening night: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
- Regular season ends: Sunday, April 11, 2027
A sample wins pool
Six friends draft five teams each before the season.
- Your first pick is a favorite that wins 58 games.
- Your second and third are steady playoff teams at 48 and 45.
- Your fourth is a rebuilding team that surprises everyone with 41.
- Your last pick, taken because nobody else would, wins 22.
- That is 214 wins — and the friend who took two contenders but no depth can easily finish behind you.
Common questions
Why can't an NBA wins pool start mid-season?
The draft is the whole format, and drafting after a few weeks of results turns it into picking whoever has started well. A wins pool is fairest when nobody knows yet which teams will surprise.
Do playoff wins count in a wins pool?
No. Only regular-season wins count, so the pool is settled on the last day of the regular season, before the playoffs begin.
Be ready the day it opens
Sportpoolz is free. Create your account now, and starting your pool takes a couple of minutes once it opens.