29
May
Strength of Schedule
Repeat: Sydney Kings catch break in NBL27
Sydney Kings head coach Brian Goorjian celebrates after the Kings defeated the Adelaide 36ers in Game 5 of the NBL26 Championship Series to secure the club's championship at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney on April 5, 2026. Photo: Sarah Reed/Getty Images
Highlights
Sydney Kings have the easiest NBL27 draw while Brisbane and Cairns face the toughest schedules.
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Legendary Los Angeles Lakers head coach Pat Riley said: "The hardest thing to do in sport is to repeat".
It's the challenge Brian Goorjian and the Sydney Kings face in NBL27 but with an advantage – the softest schedule after an exclusive analysis by basketball.com.au.
Sydney has the softest schedule, with only 14 games against last season’s top five and 19 against the bottom five.
But importantly, this Strength of Schedule (SoS) only identifies which teams have the toughest fixture based on how strong opponents were last season, not which team has has the toughest NBL27 schedule. basketball.com.au will deliver that analysis when all 10 clubs have their rosters locked in later this year.
Welcome back to the NBL, Will Weaver.
The Brisbane Bullets and Cairns Taipans each have the hardest draws because they each face a heavier mix of last season’s top-five teams.
The Bullets and Taipans finished last and second last so naturally it would appear they have a tougher SoS but there is no respite given they face teams that finished in the NBL26 playoffs – the key for this analysis is the amount of games similarly to Sydney's flip of 14 vs 19.
How We Calculated NBL27 Strength of Schedule
The NBL27 SoS rankings were calculated using the final NBL26 regular-season ladder and the full NBL27 fixture.
Each team was assigned its NBL26 winning percentage as a measure of strength. Sydney entered the calculation at 72.7 per cent after finishing first, Adelaide at 69.7 per cent, South East Melbourne at 66.7 per cent, Perth at 63.6 per cent and Melbourne at 60.6 per cent. Tasmania, New Zealand, Illawarra, Cairns and Brisbane rounded out the remaining ratings based on their NBL26 records.
From there, every game in the NBL27 fixture was counted and a complete matchup matrix was built showing how many times each club plays every opponent across the 33-game season. Each opponent's NBL26 winning percentage was then applied to every scheduled matchup.
A team's raw SOS is simply the average winning percentage of all 33 opponents on its schedule. Teams that face Sydney, Adelaide, South East Melbourne, Perth and Melbourne more frequently receive a higher SOS, while teams with more games against Tasmania, New Zealand, Illawarra, Cairns and Brisbane receive a lower SOS.
Home and away SOS figures were calculated separately using the same methodology, allowing us to identify whether stronger opponents are concentrated at home or on the road.
We also counted how many games each club plays against last season's top five teams and bottom five teams. This provides additional context around the fixture balance and helps explain why some clubs rank higher or lower than expected.
It's important to note this is a backward-looking model based solely on NBL26 results. It does not account for roster changes, imports, free agency, injuries, coaching changes, home-court advantage or travel. Instead, it provides a clean measure of fixture difficulty based on how successful opponents were last season.
