How Often NBA Teams Win With Starters Out: Three Seasons of Injury Reports
3,408 regular-season games from 2023-24 to 2025-26, each matched to the official NBA injury report issued before tip-off. How often does a team win with one, two or three usual starters ruled out, and how much does it matter what the other team is missing?
Published November 2026 · 5 min read
1. The Short Answer: 33% With Three or More Out
Teams with three or more usual starters listed Out won 33.2% of 579 team-games. Teams with none out won 56.3%. Each game counts twice here, once for each team, so the four rows add up to 6,816 team-games:
| Starters Out | Team-games | Won | Elo said |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | 2,611 | 56.3% | 53.1% |
| 1 | 2,402 | 50.5% | 49.6% |
| 2 | 1,224 | 43.4% | 47.4% |
| 3+ | 579 | 33.2% | 43.1% |
“Elo said” is the average win probability our NBA Elo rating gave those teams. The rating is built from game results only and never reads the injury report, so the gap between the two columns is roughly what the absences cost beyond what the rating already knew.
Part of the drop is already in the rating: teams that lose starters for weeks tend to lose games, and their rating falls with them, which is why the Elo column also slides from 53% to 43%. The rest is the night itself. With three or more out, teams won about ten points less than their rating said, and it held in each season:
| Season, 3+ Out | Team-games | Won | Elo said |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 144 | 29.9% | 40.5% |
| 2024-25 | 200 | 35.5% | 44.1% |
| 2025-26 | 235 | 33.2% | 43.9% |
Against the rating, one or none out barely moves anything: those teams won within about three points of what it said. On average a team had one usual starter listed Out per game, so missing one starter is the normal state of an NBA night, not news.
2. The Gap Between the Two Teams
Three starters out against a team missing three of its own is a very different game from three against none. Counting each team's usual starters Out against its opponent's (“2 more” means two more usual starters Out than the other team):
| Out vs the opponent | Team-games | Won | Elo said |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3+ more | 240 | 26.2% | 39.2% |
| 2 more | 590 | 33.1% | 43.7% |
| 1 more | 1,491 | 44.2% | 47.1% |
| Same | 2,174 | 50.0% | 50.0% |
| 1 fewer | 1,491 | 55.8% | 52.9% |
| 2 fewer | 590 | 66.9% | 56.3% |
| 3+ fewer | 240 | 73.8% | 60.8% |
A team with two more usual starters Out than its opponent won 33.1%; with three or more extra, 26.2%. Each step in the gap moved the result further than the rating did, in both directions. Season by season, a team with two or more extra Out won 33.1%, 30.9% and 29.7% of those games, against 42% to 43% stated each year.
3. Big Favorites With Three Starters Out
Strong teams absorb one or two absences well. Favorites our Elo rated 70% or higher, by their own usual starters Out:
| Favorite's Out | Games | Won | Elo said |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | 530 | 80.8% | 78.4% |
| 1 | 453 | 84.1% | 78.6% |
| 2 | 208 | 78.4% | 78.7% |
| 3+ | 80 | 67.5% | 79.0% |
Up to two out, big favorites won about as often as stated or more. At three or more they won 67.5% against 79.0% stated. That is only 80 games, and seven of them are one team (the 2025-26 Thunder), so the true rate is probably somewhere between 57% and 77%.
4. Close Games: Five Seasons
In games our Elo rated close (the favorite at 50% to 60%), we checked five seasons, 2021-22 to 2025-26:
- When the favorite had two or more extra usual starters Out, it won 41.8% of 194 games, against 54.9% stated.
- When the underdog had two or more extra Out, the favorite won 70.7% of 263 games, against 55.1% stated.
Both went the same way in all five seasons. When the close-game favorite was the side two starters short, the underdog won most of those games.
5. How We Counted
- Usual starter: a player with three or more starts for the team this season who started at least half the games he played, and has not been out more than ten games in a row. A player out for months stops counting, because the team has already adjusted.
- Out: listed Out on the official NBA injury report issued 30 minutes or more before tip-off (the median was exactly 30). Doubtful and Questionable are not counted.
- Coverage: 91.7% of the usual starters who did not play were already listed Out on that report. The rest were late scratches and rest days announced closer to tip.
- Games: regular season only. Each team's first five games are skipped, since no one is a usual starter yet, and 44 games had no usable report.
- What the count ignores: who is out. A missing All-Star and a missing fifth starter count the same, so read every row as an average over both.
Tonight's injury list for any team is on its page, from the NBA injury report.
6. What It Means for Betting
Less than the tables suggest. Every number here compares results with a rating that ignores injuries. Sportsbooks don't ignore them: they read the same report and adjust the line when a starter is ruled out, so by tip-off much of what these tables show is likely already in the price. We have not measured how much, and we make no claim that betting on these counts wins.
Our own NBA win probabilities come from the same Elo rating and do not change with injuries. Members see both teams' usual starters Out next to the pick on NBA game pages, with how favorites at that rating have done by the favorite's own count (the game page counts who actually sat in past games, so its numbers differ a little from these), so the two can be read side by side. For how the rating itself works, see how our NBA moneyline works.
7. Frequently Asked Questions
How often do NBA teams win when missing starters?
Over three regular seasons, teams with three or more usual starters listed Out on the official injury report won 33.2% of the time across 579 team-games. With none out they won 56.3%. Our Elo rating, which never reads the injury report, rated the 3+ group 43.1%, so the absences cost about ten points beyond what the rating already knew.
Does it matter if the other team is missing starters too?
Yes. Three starters out against a team missing three of its own is a different game from three against none. A team with two more usual starters Out than its opponent won 33.1% of 590 games, and with three or more extra Out, 26.2% of 240, about ten and thirteen points under its rating.
Do big NBA favorites still win with three starters out?
Less often than their rating says. Favorites our Elo rated 70% or higher won 67.5% of 80 games when three or more usual starters were listed Out, against 79.0% stated. With one or none out, they did as well as stated or better. Eighty games is a small sample, so read it loosely.
When is the NBA injury report released?
Teams file injury designations by 5 p.m. local time the day before a game, or 1 p.m. on the second night of a back-to-back, and the league posts updated reports through game day. This page uses the latest report issued 30 minutes or more before tip-off, so every count was public well before the game.
Can you bet on teams missing starters and win?
Not on this alone. Sportsbooks read the same injury report and adjust their lines when starters are ruled out. These numbers show how much absences matter against a rating that ignores them, not against the betting line, and we make no profit claim from them.
Tonight's starters out, next to the NBA picks
Elo win probabilities for every game, each team's usual starters on the official report, and every market's record graded in public the next morning.
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