Sichuan went 0-42 last season. It already has two wins

The Sichuan Blue Whales lost all 42 of their games in the 2025-26 CBA regular season. They scored 72.9 points a game and allowed 100.3, a margin of -27.4. Eight games into 2026-27 they are 2-6, scoring 79.8 and allowing 93.9, a margin of -14.1.

That is a 13.3-point improvement, and it is only the fifth largest move in the league. The CBA's early table does not look much like last season's.

The figures come from the published standings and team statistics for the full 2025-26 regular season, 420 games with 42 for each club, and for the first 80 games of 2026-27, eight for each club, through November 3, 2026. Both seasons agree with a second, independent list of results. For 2025-26 it matches all 20 clubs one by one. For 2026-27 that list counts the two Beijing clubs as one, and its combined figures match.

How much carries over

One way to ask whether last year predicts this year is a correlation across the 20 clubs, where 1.0 would mean last season's order repeats exactly and 0 would mean no relationship.

Last season's winning percentage and this season's start have a correlation of 0.55. For scoring margin the figure is 0.39. Last season's margin and this season's winning percentage come out at 0.51.

Those are moderate numbers. Last season explains some of the table and leaves a lot unexplained. The league as a whole did not change much: teams averaged 89.3 points in 2025-26 and 90.1 so far in 2026-27, and effective field goal percentage went from 53.7% to 52.6%. The swings are happening club by club.

The biggest moves

Of the 20 clubs, 10 have a better margin than last season and 10 have a worse one. Fourteen have moved by five points or more, and six by 10 or more. Eight have gone from a positive margin to a negative one, or the reverse.

Club	2025-26 record	2025-26 margin	2026-27 record	2026-27 margin	Change in margin
Ningbo Rockets	21-21	+1.5	0-8	-19.2	-20.7
Beijing Royal Fighters	18-24	-4.2	6-2	+16.1	+20.3
Shenzhen New Century Liebao Club	30-12	+5.1	4-4	-15.1	-20.2
Beijing Ducks	29-13	+8.1	8-0	+27.8	+19.7
Sichuan Blue Whales	0-42	-27.4	2-6	-14.1	+13.3
Zhejiang Lions	33-9	+9.3	5-3	-3.3	-12.6

Ningbo went 21-21 last season and is 0-8. Shenzhen was 30-12 and has a margin of -15.1, which is the second-worst in the league. The Beijing pair moved the other way: the Royal Fighters from a losing club to 6-2, and the Ducks from a +8.1 margin to +27.8.

Shanghai, last season's best club at 38-4 with a margin of +16.6, is 7-1 at +9.7. Shanghai is still near the top, but it is now third in margin, behind both Beijing clubs.

Records and margins disagree

Eight games are few enough for records to run ahead of margins. Shenzhen is 4-4 with a margin of -15.1. At that margin its expected record is about one win in eight, using the standard points-based formula with powers of 10 and 14, so it has won roughly three more than expected. The Zhejiang Lions are 5-3 at -3.3, about two wins ahead. Ningbo's 0-8 is in line with a margin of -19.2, which predicts under one win.

Sichuan's two wins are about one more than its margin predicts, at 0.7 to 1.3 expected.

What the numbers show, and what we read into them

The numbers show a league that is stable overall and volatile club by club, and a table whose order after eight games is only partly last season's. Sichuan improved by 13.3 points of margin. Ningbo and Shenzhen each fell by more than 20, and the two Beijing clubs each rose by close to 20.

What it means is our reading. Eight games is under a fifth of a season, and a correlation of 0.55 on 20 clubs is not tight. We do not know why individual clubs moved, because rosters, injuries and imports are outside these tables. What we can say is that strong margins last season did not carry over for several clubs, Shenzhen and the Zhejiang Lions among them, and that a winless club is no longer winless.

The test is cheap. Recompute the correlation at 20 games. If it climbs toward 0.8, last season matters more than the first eight games suggested. If it stays near 0.5, early results carry about as much information as last season's table does.