Sports
All NBA predictions refer to the 2024/2025 season that ends June 2025.
- The NBA MVP will once again be Nikola Jokic. (I drafted that a couple weeks ago. SGA is now the favorite, but I’m sticking with Jokic. His stats are better this year than last year, c’mon.)
- The Thunder win the Western Conference. Sorry Nuggets, Rockets, Grizzlies – there is one elite team in the West and it’s the Thunder.
- The Cavaliers or Celtics win the Eastern Conference. Sorry Knicks, Bucks, 76ers – there are two elite teams in the East and it’s these two. I went back and forth on The Celtics – it’s very easy to see how they could win it all, and it’s also easy to see them getting knocked out in the second round (they might meet the Cavs before the conference finals), in the end I’m not predicting anything for them.
- The Oklahoma City Thunder will be in the NBA finals three of the next five years . They are already one of the best teams out there and have a sickening amount of high draft picks and cap space over the next few years. This won’t be settled for a few years of course.
- The Atlanta Hawks will continue to be mediocre or worse. Sorry, I don’t buy the hype. Last year I correctly predicted they would be under 55%, and they ended the calendar year just below that. The prediction is that they will finish the 2024/2025 season at 60% or less. That is, they might improve slightly in the back half of the season, but not much.
- The NBA All Star game will continue to suck. You can play with the format all you want, but the stars still don’t want to play hard.
- Payton Pritchard will win the sixth man award, the stupidest of all NBA awards.
- The New England Patriots win two more games in 2025/26 season than in 2024/25. The Patriots finished 4-13, so I predict them to win 6 or more games next season. This is a combination of Maye getting better, getting a decent coach (please be Vrabel), and regression to the mean. Update: They did hire Vrabel. That’s worth a win or two, and they have a great draft pick, let’s be optimistic and predict 8 wins.
- Bijan Robinson will have over 1,500 yards in 2025/26: (He had over 1,7000 this year so this is not a longshot. But Pennix is passing more and more, they won’t have to relay on Robinson as much.
- Saquon Barkley will have less than 2,000 yards in 2025/26. Regression to the mean again.
The Economy
My hypothesis is the economy under Trump won’t change much. It’s been consistent since 2010 (excluding the pandemic and aftereffects). Trump will change his mind about many ideas, won’t be able to make them happen, or they won’t matter that much.
- Inflation does not increase much in 2025. Although Trump comes to office explicitly planning policies which increase inflation, it won’t happen. The post-pandemic inflation bubble will continue deflating (in the USA as everywhere). Prediction is that the average for 2025 will be between 2.3% and 3.5%. Source.
- The Misery Index will stay below 7 in 2025. The Misery Index is the sum of unemployment and inflation. Despite Trump’s terrible policy ideas, the American economy will continue to hum along. Trump was handed a great economy, he won’t screw it up much.
- Electric car sales finish above 10% in 2025 Q4. Even if all incentives are removed, that won’t happen until 2026. Many consumers will buy now, while the tax credit is in place.
Politics
- The election interference case against Trump in Georgia will not be decided against him in 2025. That weird phrasing is because I think the likeliest outcome is it all falls apart somehow, and the next most likely is that it is delayed past 2025.
- Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration. Why start now?
- There is at least one real threat of government shutdown in 2025. (Holy cow, there was already one before Trump even took office. WTF.)
- No major Democrats are indicted for crimes related to their political activities. That is, while Trump and the FBI may go after his various enemies, none of them will be formally indicted. (If they are indicted for the usual corruption that doesn’t count, only political activities.)
- At least two of these four get confirmed… Trump owns the GOP, they won’t push back. The picks are Pete Hesgeth for Defense, RFK Jr for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI.
Randoms
- One of these three people will die in 2025: Clint Eastwood, Alan Greenspan, Mel Brooks.
- Muttroxia will have a month with four or more posts after January. I’m switching it up! I’ve always taken the under.
See you next year for the scoring!