An NBA Fan Is Using Astrology to Predict Teams’ Chemistry and Compatibility

When the Los Angeles Clippers had a rough start after signing James Harden in the fall, The Zodiac GM still saw a bright future. He’s since been proven right.

By Kylie Cheung  |  February 14, 2024 | 1:55pm
Photo: Shutterstock/Twitter In Depth
An NBA Fan Is Using Astrology to Predict Teams’ Chemistry and Compatibility

Last week saw the NBA’s trade deadline and a frantic reshuffling just two months out from the playoffs. As I tried to wrap my head around some of the bigger moves and what they could mean for the rest of the season, one voice cut through the noise: The Zodiac GM, a seemingly omniscient fixture in NBA Twitter whose appraisals of team chemistry and players’ destinies have frequently played out in reality. He predicted, for example, that my favorite player, James Harden (Virgo sun, Cancer moon), would leave the Philadelphia 76ers shortly after they hired Nick Nurse (Leo sun) as head coach. The Zodiac GM also predicted the Sixers’ new additions would play together with “A+” synergy and… their first few games together have proved him right so far!

Since it’s Valentine’s Day and we’re one week away from the NBA All-Star break (which is when serious teams *chart* their path to the playoffs), I spoke with The Zodiac GM. And I had to wean my list of well over 100 questions down to slightly fewer than 100 questions for the hour-long conversation, which wasn’t easy. As he observed about me (Taurus sun, Capricorn moon, Capricorn rising), I have a “thirst for the facts,” which is a gentle way to say I’m nosy. But it’s hard not to have questions for someone who’s combined two seemingly gendered, disparate interests to create a new and surprisingly intuitive lens to assess NBA teams’ chemistry and even their futures. 

My first question was obvious: Between all my league favorites, Harden, Devin Booker (Scorpio sun), Ben Simmons (Cancer sun, Virgo moon), and Jaylen Brown (Scorpio sun), who am I the most compatible with? Of course, I was asking about romantic compatibility, but when The Zodiac GM took my question as one of basketball compatibility, I didn’t correct him—I actually love the idea that maybe I’m the missing piece Harden needs to finally win a championship ring. Alas, you’ll be happy to learn that my Taurus sun is very compatible with all of the above—but I am “by far most compatible with” Simmons, a Cancer, because as a Taurus, I would “stabilize the volatility of his emotions.” (Or, in other words, I would have saved his run with the Sixers if I’d been on the team amid their explosive falling-out in 2021.) As an Earth sign, my “grounded” energy would also pair well with Scorpios Booker (who’s already received multiple love letters from me) and Brown. Luckily, I’d also be compatible with Harden. But the Zodiac GM warned me that Harden’s Virgo “nitpickiness” might bother me as a stubborn Taurus—to which I had to explain that nothing Harden could ever do would even remotely bother me.

The Zodiac GM, who prefers to stay a mystery to his spellbound followers, says he came to love astrology while bonding with his brother who has autism, as it helped them make sense of communicating with and understanding each other. He then wound up studying it for over 30 years. “It’s not just for romantic relationships,” he told Jezebel. Astrology is a “science.” With each team, he looks at the signs of their head coach and general manager, their starting five, and their bench; then he organizes the signs by their elements and modalities—there are cardinal signs (the “bold initiators,” per WikiHow), fixed signs (“enduring followers”), and mutable signs (“dynamic changemakers”). Each team needs the right balance of all of those. The Los Angeles Clippers are a perfect example of a team with “excellent synergy,” flush with earth and water signs, whose modalities align and combine both bold leadership and stability. Even when the Clippers had a rough start after signing Harden in the fall, and had most of the sports world betting against them, The Zodiac GM still saw a bright future—and given their stellar record over the last two months, he’s been vindicated.

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It’s sad, he says, that avid, predominantly male sports betters tend to be astrology skeptics who don’t realize how much money it could help them win. “I have a friend who also loves astrology and basketball,” The Zodiac GM said. “And all the time, we would just see—we knew what was going to happen. It got to a point where it happened too often, where some of our predictions weren’t always 100% but the majority came true in some form.” Astrology has been alleged to be something of a sought-after business tool: John Pierpont Morgan (the founder of J.P. Morgan) reportedly had a personal astrologer and is rumored to have said that “millionaires don’t need astrologers, but billionaires do.” I choose to see astrology as more of a tool for personal exploration rather than financial enrichment, but all of this is to say: The Zodiac GM might be right that the most cynical of sports betters could be missing out on something big.

Sure, astrology doesn’t predict everything—there’s also talent. But talent also doesn’t predict everything. There’s no shortage of it in the NBA; but synergy, chemistry, and the ability to function as a cohesive unit is what wins championships—and The Zodiac GM is convinced astrological compatibility and the right combination of modalities are the key to that. After all, Harden was once on the same team as 14-time All-Star Kevin Durant (Libra, duh) and eight-time All-Star Kyrie Irving (Aries), who, as two cardinals signs, were compatible together but naturally clashed with Harden’s mutable Virgo sign. “So, that didn’t work out,” The Zodiac GM said, though he also cites the Brooklyn Nets’ head coaches’ (Steve Nash, an Aquarius, and Jacque Vaughn, also an Aquarius) incompatibilities with Harden.

And when it comes to Harden’s contentious departure from the Sixers over the summer, which mostly came about due to something of a Shakespearean father-son showdown between him and Sixers GM Daryl Morey (Virgo sun, Sagittarius moon), The Zodiac GM says it’s something we all should have foreseen: As two Virgos, things between them were always going to “end with some commotion.”

Harden and Morey’s central conflict reportedly centered around Morey’s 2022 verbal promise that he’d offer Harden a super-max contract in 2023…which he did not. But, according to the stars, that’s not the real reason for the bitter fallout. The real reason is simply that that’s the way it tends to be with Virgos, whose great need for control and tendencies toward “nitpickiness, perfectionism” can be explosive. Harden and Morey’s matching Virgo energy made for blessed “synergy” for years, Mr. Zodiac GM explained to Jezebel, but “just because they’re compatible doesn’t always mean it’s going to be 100% happiness.” Ain’t that the truth…

After all, Kendall Jenner (Scorpio) should have been compatible with her all-water roster of Simmons, Booker, Blake Griffin (Pisces), and D’Angelo Russell (Pisces) on paper. But sometimes things simply don’t pan out. That, and all that water means heightened emotions and sensitivities. Case in point: Let’s zoom in on Simmons, for a moment, whose chart The Zodiac GM has studied closely to try to explain the turbulence and emotions of his NBA trajectory. Simmons—again, a Cancer sun and Virgo moon—was destined to clash with the Sixers’ former head coach Doc Rivers, a Libra, who will “speak his mind, say and do anything” (anyone remember, “Don’t play with your meat”???) and, as a Libra, holds more traditional masculine energy. “Simmons is more sensitive, the Cancer energy more traditionally feminine, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but I knew he wasn’t going to be able to move forward from [Rivers’] comments about him,” The Zodiac GM said of Rivers’ 2021 criticisms of Simmons’ playoff performance, which essentially threw him under the bus for the Sixers’ second-round exit. “[Simmons] needs more positive encouragement—that would absorb better, for him, for Harden, too.”

Going into All-Star weekend, The Zodiac GM thinks the Clippers and Denver Nuggets might be the teams to watch in the playoffs. They have “the compatibility,” they have “the talent”—but their fates depend on staying healthy, which, sadly, astrology can’t quite predict. 

The Zodiac GM knows he has skeptics, who either don’t believe in astrology or don’t see its applicability to basketball. “To them, I say: These are not robots. NBA players are not robots,” he said. “They have to have connection, a good work environment, the right people around them. Astrology is about understanding humanity and connection.” So, to the fans, the gamblers, and even the franchise general managers: Mix your water signs, balance cardinal and fixed, and pair a Virgo GM with a Virgo star at your own peril…

Photo: Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard (a Cancer), left, head coach Tyronn Lue (a Taurus), center, and James Harden (a Virgo).

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