Since we last experienced NBA basketball games that count, we have seen:
Six newly hired head coaches get to work, including JJ Redick taking stewardship of LeBron James’ Lakers and Mike Budenholzer trying to turn the Kevin Durant-Devin Booker-Bradley Beal Suns into a supernova;
31 trades involving 70 players — including All-Stars Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Karl-Anthony Towns, Julius Randle, Russell Westbrook and Dejounte Murray — and a flotilla of future draft picks;
An estimated $2.85 billion in contracts signed in free agency;
31 extensions of existing contracts totaling nearly $5.9 billion, headlined by Celtics star Jayson Tatum’s five-year, $314 million deal — which stands, for now, as the richest pact in the history of the sport.
That’s a ton of business to sift through as we start the 2024-25 NBA season, and try to do some back-of-the-envelope math on which teams expect to find themselves in championship contention come June. So, as we do at the outset of each season, with high hopes for the eventual outcomes of all those deals still unscuffed by reality: let’s bust out those envelopes.
According to BetMGM, eight teams enter the season with championship odds of 15-to-1 (+1500) or better. Those teams feature seven of the 15 members of last season’s All-NBA teams … and they also feature major questions that must be answered between now and the postseason.
Let’s get reacclimated with the NBA’s expected upper echelon by considering the cases for and against those top eight teams. We begin where last season ended:
The case for: OK, good, starting off with an easy one: The Celtics just won the NBA championship, and might be even better this year.
Boston blitzed the league with a style of play that felt a lot like the solution to modern basketball — a means of wringing every ounce of value out of every possession without conceding a single damned thing. Head coach/contemporary philosopher Joe Mazzulla seems intent on pushing the team’s schematic embrace of creating math problems even further this time around. After taking a league-high 47.1% of their shots from 3-point land last season, 55.1% of Boston’s field-goal attempts this preseason came from beyond the arc; that share spiked to a whopping 64.2% on Opening Night, as the Celtics drilled an NBA-record-tying 29 triples in a ring-night annihilation of the Knicks.
Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford remain the NBA’s best top six. Reserves Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman Sr. all made real contributions to the championship run. And they’re all back: Boston returns every player who logged at least 700 regular-season minutes for one of the most dominant teams ever last season, and every player to clock at least 60 minutes during a 16-3 playoff run.
All that talent comes at an exorbitant cost — an estimated $262 million in salary and luxury tax payments this season, with nearly half-a-billion in total outlay on the books for 2025-26. That’s why the franchise is for sale, and why the rotation as currently constructed will likely look quite different next year. But those are tomorrow’s problems; for right now, Boston is everyone else’s burden to bear.
The case against: It starts with historical precedent, which hasn’t been especially kind to defending champions of late. (My bad, Joe: “attacking” champions.)
Only three titlists in the last 20 seasons have successfully run it back: the Kobe-Pau Lakers (2009, 2010), the Big Three Heat (2012, 2013), and the KD Warriors (2017, 2018). It’s tough to survive consecutive 100-plus-game seasons without things going haywire … like, for example, your 7-foot-3 skeleton key missing the first couple of months rehabbing a rare ankle injury.
Maybe losing Porziņģis for an extended period stretches Horford too thin, and the weight of nearly 41,000 NBA minutes across 18 seasons finally starts to show. Maybe a somewhat shaky center rotation of a diminished Horford, Tillman, Kornet and Neemias Queta keeps the C’s from running away from the rest of the East again.
Maybe that puts more strain on Tatum, Brown and Co., forcing them to carry a large enough regular-season load that they get gassed and stumble late, as they did during the 2022 Finals and early in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals. Maybe leaden legs lead to misfiring jumpers, bringing back old concerns about the fitness of Boston’s crunch-time offense. And maybe that’s enough to allow someone — whether from a healthier slate of opponents in a stronger East, or whichever monster comes out of the West — to send the Celtics tumbling back down the mountain.
The case for: The Thunder trailed only the Celtics last season in regular-season wins and net rating, and joined Boston as the only other team to finish top-five in offensive and defensive efficiency. They fell to the eventual Western Conference champs in the second round of the playoffs thanks partly to two structural holes: a non-shooter/shaky defender in the starting lineup and insufficient beef on the glass. Then they turned Josh Giddey into Alex Caruso, a two-time All-Defensive selection who just shot 41% from 3-point range, and signed Isaiah Hartenstein, a 7-footer who’s finished in the top 20 in rebounding percentage two years running.
Oklahoma City has an MVP-caliber No. 1 option in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, flanked by two more rising talents — Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren — who could make All-Star debuts. It has the deepest collection of point-of-attack menaces outside of Boston, with Caruso joining Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace, SGA and J-Dub.
When healthy, Hartenstein and Holmgren give OKC 48 minutes of top-shelf rim protection, allowing reigning Coach of the Year Mark Daigneault to go double-big for rebounding purposes without sacrificing floor-spacing and playmaking. And if any new holes crop up between now and February’s trade deadline, the Thunder control 17 first-round picks to dangle in deals to fortify the roster for what everyone expects to be a longer postseason run. Maybe one that lasts until June.
The case against: While Oklahoma City did get its first proper postseason experience, youth is rarely served in the NBA, and this remains the league’s youngest roster. I have no trouble buying Gilgeous-Alexander being the best player on the floor in just about any series OKC plays; it wouldn’t shock me, though, if Williams, Holmgren and the rest of the Thunder’s young contributors still need some time before they’re ready to shine on the brightest stage.
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There’s also the matter of some injury-luck regression. The Thunder were by far the NBA’s healthiest team last season, losing just 61 player games due to injury. This season, they are already going to be without Hartenstein for at least a month due to a broken bone in his left hand, could be without frontcourt reserves Kenrich Williams (knee surgery) and Jaylin Williams (hamstring strain) for the start of the season, and had to shut down Jalen Williams for the end of preseason with a sprained ankle.
More missed time for key contributors — especially offseason acquisition Hartenstein, who was just beginning to develop chemistry with his new teammates — would make it harder for the Thunder to roll up the kind of sterling record many project them to have. And every little edge — in seeding, in home-court advantage, in getting to strategically rest players late in the season, etc. — could wind up mattering in what promises to be a brutal West.
The case for: After coming within one win of the Eastern Conference finals despite losing six rotation players to injury by the end of Round 2, the Knicks decided to damn the torpedoes. First: a half-decade’s worth of draft capital for Mikal Bridges; then, on the eve of training camp, Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Towns.
Combined with paying through the nose to retain OG Anunoby, that’s a pair of home-run swings aimed at giving superstar Jalen Brunson the kind of optimized infrastructure and complementary three-level-scoring oomph that can overwhelm regular-season opponents and match buckets with Boston in May.
The big idea: The Brunson-Towns two-man game, and a broader capacity to field lineups with enough shooters/playmakers for five-out floor-spacing, transforms a Knicks attack that just finished seventh in offensive efficiency into the NBA’s best offense. Deploying perimeter game-wreckers Anunoby and Bridges (as well as chaos agent Josh Hart) on the wing mitigates Towns’ shortcomings as a rim protector, allowing New York to also improve on a 10th-place defensive finish.
Sprinkle in more growth from reserves Deuce McBride and Precious Achiuwa, plus a healthy return from center Mitchell Robinson, and the Knicks could have enough depth, versatility and talent to push for the franchise’s first Finals appearance since 1999.
The case against: For one thing? Health. Towns and Anunoby have missed a combined 213 games over the past four seasons. Robinson has missed 81 games over the last two, and won’t be ready for at least a couple of months. Achiuwa, expected to log major minutes as the primary frontcourt backup, will miss the next several weeks with a strained hamstring.
A roster so heavily reliant on its top six or seven players can’t afford many injuries. One forced to lean even harder on its stars runs the risk of seeing them run out of steam when the games matter most.
For another? Defense. The good news: Most other teams the Knicks face won’t have the personnel to jack up 15 3-pointers a quarter, make half of them, and score an obscene 1.65 points per possession before garbage time. (Which Cleaning the Glass defines as coming at the 6:04 mark of the fourth quarter; considering Boston led by 32 at that point, they probably could’ve started the meter a bit earlier.)
The bad news, though: Other opponents will see the bullseye on Towns, whom the Celtics targeted early, voraciously and extremely successfully, getting a good-to-great look virtually every time they ran action at him or made him make decisions in space.
I don’t have access to the Second Spectrum numbers, but I’m guessing the Celtics scored, like, infinity points per play whenever they put Karl-Anthony Towns in action. Torched NYK in the drop, when he was up near the level, when they sent a second defender, whatever. Demolition. pic.twitter.com/D87ju0czrI
— Dan Devine (@YourManDevine) October 23, 2024
Some of those coverage busts are the natural outgrowth of a lineup that had played zero minutes together before preseason starting to get acclimated to one another; the Knicks will look better defensively when Bridges, Anunoby, Hart, Brunson and Towns learn how to communicate with each other and what to expect from one another. Some of it, though, might be endemic to life with KAT, whose Wolves teams never defended well with him as the primary 5, which could pose a thorny problem for Thibodeau to solve.
And then there are, for lack of a better term, the vibes. The Knicks rose back to relevance on the strength of a bruising, physical, possession-dominating style — an approach embodied, in varying ways, by Randle’s hard-charging drives, DiVincenzo’s “what are you gonna do about it?” sneer, and the pulverizing rebounding of Hartenstein and Robinson. New York may well gain something by reorienting everything to fit in Towns and Bridges; it’s worth wondering, though, what it might lose in the bargain.
The case for: Shy of plucking Hall of Famers out of history at the peak of their powers and plopping them into the present day, it’s hard to conjure a better fit between Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey than George, one of the league’s most adaptable talents and all-around best wings.
Need someone to spot up opposite an Embiid-Maxey two-man action? There’s George, who’s shot 40% or better on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers in seven of the last eight seasons. Need someone to handle some ball-handling duties and run the show for a bit? There’s George, who averaged a shade under five assists per 36 minutes over five seasons with the Clippers.
Need someone to just go get some buckets? There’s George, who has averaged 20-plus points per game for nine straight seasons, is one of the league’s most efficient high-usage scorers, and has posted the best interior finishing numbers of his career in the last two seasons. Need someone capable of matching size, quickness and wits with an opponent’s best big wing? There’s George — 6-foot-9 with a 6-foot-11 wingspan, tons of experience guarding across the positional spectrum, a consistently elite steal rate, top-10 in deflections per game in each of the last three years.
When Nick Nurse has his full roster, George becomes the league’s most dangerous and overqualified third option. When Embiid needs to miss time, planned or not, he slides comfortably into the No. 2 spot. When Maxey needs a breather, George can guest-star.
With that new Big Three, plus holdovers Kelly Oubre Jr. and Kyle Lowry, and newcomers Caleb Martin and Andre Drummond, Philadelphia has flexibility, firepower and the ability to make game-changing plays on both ends of the floor. With the possible exception of the Jimmy Butler half-season, this looks like the best roster of the Embiid era, and the version with the best chance of getting past the second round … provided the big fella’s healthy once they get there.
The case against: … the big fella’s almost never “healthy once they get there.”
Embiid has missed 204 regular-season games across eight seasons, and that doesn’t count the two full years he missed at the start of his career. His list of postseason maladies includes a broken orbital bone, gastroenteritis, an upper respiratory infection, left knee tendinitis, a torn meniscus, another orbital fracture, a torn thumb ligament on his shooting hand, a right knee sprain, another torn meniscus, and Bell’s palsy.
“Every single year, you start asking yourself questions,” Embiid told reporters back in April. “Like, ‘Why?’ Every single year?”
The plan to minimize the risk of it happening again this season and maximize the Sixers’ chances of finally breaking through reportedly includes Embiid shedding 25 to 30 pounds during the offseason, keeping him in bubble wrap for the preseason, and reducing (if not eliminating) the number of back-to-backs that both Embiid and the 34-year-old George play in. That sort of load management makes a ton of sense; it might also result in fewer regular-season wins, resulting in another tough first-round matchup without home-court advantage, and perhaps with less chemistry than you’d have had everyone played a full slate.
The Sixers are working under the theory that none of that really matters, so long as their main guys are as close to 100% as possible once Round 1 starts. They may well be right. It’s possible, though, that a rockier road and a still-shaky supporting cast — it’s anyone’s guess how much Philly will be able to rely on Guerschon Yabusele, Eric Gordon, Reggie Jackson and rookie Jared McCain in big games — result in this new set of best-laid plans coming up as short as all the others.
The case for: “The guy who’s won three of the last four Most Valuable Player awards” seems like a good start.
Dating back to 2016-17, when Nikola Jokić became Denver’s full-time starting center — and a merry early Jokmas to all those who celebrate — the Nuggets have the NBA’s third-best record and the fourth-most playoff wins. In that span, with Jokić on the floor, Denver has outscored opponents by 3,526 points — the third-highest plus-minus of any player, behind only Stephen Curry and Jayson Tatum.
All of which is to say: So long as the Nuggets have Jokić, they have a chance. And if they have a healthy Jamal Murray, too, they have a really damn good one.
The Nuggets went 51-19 last season when Jokić and Murray both played, outscoring opponents by 11.5 points per 100 possessions — on par with the Celtics’ league-best full-season mark. They’re a sparkling 185-90 when Jokić and Murray play together since 2019-20, a 55-win pace over five years.
In every postseason in which a healthy Murray has suited up alongside Jokić, Denver has won at least one series, with one championship and two trips to the conference finals, and just came within one blown 20-point second-half lead of a third. That’s why the Nuggets ponied up to extend Murray, even after a rough 2024 postseason and an even rougher Olympics: Jokić, Murray, the also-just-extended Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. remains the core of a consistent 50-plus-win team with a top-five offense and a top-10ish defense. That’s a résumé that can get you to mid-May — and once you’re there, Jokić is the sort of immortal who can take you the rest of the way.
The case against: We saw it in the playoffs: As great as the Nuggets looked in the regular season, if Murray is limited, then they just don’t have the backcourt shot creation and playmaking to win four series. Swapping out Reggie Jackson for Russell Westbrook might help in some respects, like improving the NBA’s least productive transition offense; leaning too heavily on a career 30% 3-point shooter, though, might hamper Denver in others.
The Nuggets also can’t necessarily rely on the same fastball they’ve gotten so comfortable throwing. After losing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency, head coach Michael Malone has to reformat the starting five that was the NBA’s third-most-used lineup two seasons ago and by far its most-used last season. The first crack at filling KCP’s slot will go to Christian Braun … and while preseason only means so much, the fact that he just shot 2-for-15 from 3-point land across five games doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence. (That, combined with the need to increase the NBA’s lowest 3-point-attempt rate, could lead to more minutes for 2023 first-rounder Julian Strawther, who made 22 of 48 3s in Summer League and preseason.)
The Nuggets will lean hardest on their stars when it matters most. But with KCP, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green all gone from the 2023 champs, they’re still searching for the support system those stars need to survive a marathon season. They need Braun, Strawther, Peyton Watson and the rest of their youth movement to take a step forward; without it, they could take a major step back.
The case for: They just made the Finals behind stellar performances by MVP favorite Luka Dončić, second star Kyrie Irving, and a huge, physical defense that ranked among the NBA’s best over the final three months. And after running aground in the Finals thanks to persistent misfiring — Dallas made just 9.6 3-pointers per game at a 31.6% clip in the Finals, both of which would’ve finished dead last in the league during the regular season — the Mavs added Klay Thompson to ensure that the next team who loads up to stop Luka and Kyrie will pay for it.
The bet is that by replacing Derrick Jones Jr., Josh Green and Tim Hardaway Jr. with Thompson, Naji Marshall and Quentin Grimes, the Mavericks have improved their overall shot-making enough to compensate for any defensive slippage. With Dončić, Irving and Thompson fueling the offense and second-year center Dereck Lively II taking command of the defense, Dallas could have the “top-5 on one end, top-10 on the other” formula that establishes a 50-win floor, and enough options for head coach Jason Kidd to mix-and-match his way to a title.
The case against: Those offseason shifts — specifically from DJJ to Klay in the starting five — could disrupt the balance the Mavs found late last season, especially if PJ Washington isn’t equal to the task of suddenly operating as a No. 1 perimeter defender. If Thompson struggles to get his shot online and tries to just fire his way through it, as he often did (sometimes to great consternation) in Golden State, the drop-offs on both ends could bump Dallas back from elite to merely above-average.
And that’s with Luka and Kyrie staying mostly healthy; Irving has played 60 games just once in the last five seasons, and Dončić’s physical offensive style often leaves him bruised and battered by season’s end. (The Mavericks held him out of preseason to rest a calf contusion.) If one or both of them miss an extended period, Dallas could again drop back toward the middle of the Western pack — not an impossible spot from which to mount a Finals run, but a more difficult one than they’d probably hope for.
The case for: Defense travels. The Timberwolves got stops at a historic level last season, propelling them to the second-best record in franchise history and Minnesota’s first playoff victories in two decades. The spine of that smothering defense returns, with Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert patrolling the back line and Jaden McDaniels leading the charge up top. And with Anthony Edwards riding the wave of his first All-NBA selection and Olympic gold, Minnesota has reason to believe it has a recipe for sustained postseason success … even after dealing Towns, its second-leading scorer last season.
While Towns’ accurate quick-trigger 3-point shooting helped make the Wolves’ half-court spacing tenable, the deal allows head coach Chris Finch to enter this season with — pardon the pun — more ways to skin the proverbial cat.
Randle slots in as a higher-volume and lower-turnover playmaker at the 4 — one particularly adept at setting teammates up for 3-pointers — who can serve as an offensive hub in the second unit or play off of floor-spacing Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid. DiVincenzo has developed into a premier gunner — one of just six NBA players to hoist at least a dozen 3-pointers per 100 possessions over the last two seasons, and make at least 40% of them — and can also credibly run point behind Mike Conley, giving Finch plenty of potential perimeter permutations.
If first-round pick Rob Dillingham pops, then a Wolves team that struggled whenever anybody but Ant had to make something happen will suddenly feature a handful of capable off-the-bounce creators — exactly what you need to find answers to the complex questions that postseason defenses can pose.
The case against: It’s a good thing Finch is a lot smarter than me, because I’m having a hard time seeing how a starting lineup featuring Gobert, Randle (32.6% from 3-point range over the last three seasons) and McDaniels (just 35.2% outside the paint last season) will be able to successfully generate enough space in the half-court to allow Edwards, one of the league’s most frequent and successful drivers, to consistently get downhill.
If that group stagnates — as it did on opening night, posting a dismal 63.2 offensive rating against the Lakers — then who goes to the bench? What downstream effects might that have on a team whose vibes seemed pretty immaculate last season?
If there’s any decline from a unit that finished last season 16th in points scored per possession and 12th in half-court offensive efficiency, does that ultimately put too much strain on the defense to replicate last year’s results? Can that group get back there with Randle — a physical on-ball defender who sometimes leaves a lot to be desired off the ball — in a major role?
Combine those questions with depth concerns — if Joe Ingles doesn’t have much left and Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s shot doesn’t bounce all the way back (though it looked good on opening night), the Wolves might suddenly need a lot from Dillingham and Terrence Shannon Jr. — and there’s some cause for worry about the Wolves being equipped for another deep playoff run … unless, of course, this is the year Ant’s angle of ascent climbs from All-NBA to all-time.
The case for: As disappointing and chaotic as last season was, Milwaukee still won 49 games, finished just outside the top five in offensive efficiency, and outscored opponents by 10.2 points-per-100 when Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard shared the floor. Decent starting point!
The Bucks went 44-21 when Giannis and Dame suited up, a 56-win pace, despite Antetokounmpo dealing with knee, Achilles and hamstring injuries throughout the second half, and despite Lillard struggling to get acclimated to a new system, new teammates and a new environment amid off-court difficulties.
Lillard sounds more at peace entering his second season in Wisconsin. Antetokounmpo is healthy after a strong summer leading Greece back to the Olympics. Brook Lopez remains one of the league’s best 3-and-D big men; while the Bucks finished the season 19th in points allowed per possession, they clamped down at a top-10 clip with Lopez manning the middle.
New arrivals Gary Trent Jr., Delon Wright and Taurean Prince add size, shooting and versatility, providing head coach Doc Rivers — now with the benefit of a full training camp with his roster — with more options. The Bucks feature one of the league’s most potent sixth men in Bobby Portis; they’ll hope that Pat Connaughton, coming off a strong preseason, can bounce back from a down year to give them enviable depth.
Combine better chemistry in the Giannis-Dame two-man game with a more stabilized defense in Year 2 under Rivers, more juice on the perimeter and a mostly healthy campaign for third-option wild-card Khris Middleton, and the Bucks could elbow the revamped Knicks and Sixers aside, reminding us that they were supposed to be the Celtics’ rival for Eastern supremacy.
The case against: As awesome as the Bucks were in the minutes when they had their core four on the floor — plus-16.3 points-per-100 in Giannis/Dame/Lopez/Middleton time! — there were only 677 of them across 88 regular- and postseason games. They won’t start racking them up this year just yet, either.
Middleton, who underwent surgery on both of his ankles during the offseason, didn’t play in the preseason and will miss Milwaukee’s season opener. Moreover, he reportedly still hasn’t been cleared to participate in 5-on-5 scrimmages, inviting questions over when exactly the three-time All-Star might actually return.
That’s the rub for Milwaukee: A team built around six rotation players on the wrong side of 30, and two more who’ll get there during the season, is more likely to suffer from injuries and declining athleticism than younger opponents. Barring a significant infusion of fresh blood — while guys like A.J. Green, Andre Jackson Jr. and MarJon Beauchamp have had their moments, they’ve yet to look like game-breakers — the Bucks will go as far as their decorated vets can take them.
If everyone’s ambulatory come April, that could be awfully far — maybe even all the way. If one or more of those main pieces starts to wobble near the regular season’s finish line, though, it might only be a third straight first-round exit … with some exceedingly uncomfortable questions waiting afterward.
