Lamelo Ball’s injury has strengthened Charlotte’s bid for projected French No.1 pick Victor Wembanyama. Image: Bally Sports.
We’re into the home stretch of the NBA regular season and in a season where so much has changed though the course of the campaign, it seems prudent to gauge where each and every team stands in the race for the championship.
Every NBA team has somewhere between 20 and 25 games left to complete on its schedule at the time of writing and usually by this stage of a season we’ve seen a select group of clubs separate themselves from the bunch … at both ends of the standings.
Whilst that is the case at the bottom of the table as teams form a disorderly queue for giant French prodigy Victor Wembanyama, the top contains a glut of teams. A few of those will quite rightly consider themselves genuine title chances, whilst some may think they’re amongst the favourites but perhaps sit just outside that elite circle. Others – not going to name the Sacramento Kings, here – are just happy to be in the conversation.
Rather than ranking teams 1-30, I’ve decided to place teams into tiers (teams within each tier are listed alphabetically) starting with the race to the bottom.
Wemby!
Charlotte Hornets
Let’s start with a positive: the Hornets play hard.
That’s about it, though. They’re a truly awful team who only got worse at the trade deadline.
Now, they’ve lost their only genuine star in LaMelo Ball with a fractured ankle, right at the point where the team was probably considering shutting him down in any case.
Quite literally, a tough break for Charlotte.
Detroit Pistons
Losing Cade Cunningham only 12 games into the season clearly sharpened the Pistons’ focus: give the ball to the kids; lose a whole lot of basketball games.
Detroit certainly has pieces: Cunningham is a stud; rookies Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren are ever so tantalising; Isaiah Stewart is solid; and even Killian Hayes has shown something.
General manager Troy Weaver continues to feverishly test the ‘second draft’ market with some successes (Marvin Bagley, perhaps James Wiseman) as well as the odd failure (Kevin Knox, Hamadou Diallo).
The Pistons will, though, want to start putting together some sort of winning team in the near future.
Houston Rockets
The Circus is in town!
It’s so unfair on Rockets fans that a team that only a few years ago was a Chris Paul hamstring strain away from the Finals – and perhaps a championship – is now a glorified creche for talented but wayward young basketballers.
There is a part of me that doesn’t want Wembanyama to end up in Houston, for fear of that shitshow corrupting the best prospect we’ve seen in 20 years.
San Antonio Spurs
Even when the Spurs tank, they do it right.
They’re giving minutes to young players, have traded veterans for picks and/or prospects and currently hold the league’s longest losing streak of 16 games.
In fact, they’ve lost 21 of their last 22 ‘contests’. Since the turn of the year San Antonio is a sparkling 2-23.
The tank is rumbling along the Riverwalk and the good people of San Antonio couldn’t be happier.
Lottery bound … but on the right path
Indiana Pacers
With Tyrese Haliburton making his first All-Star team, Myles Turner playing career-best basketball (with much gratitude to his point guard) and rookie Bennedict Mathurin lighting it up, the Pacers looked like a potential playoff gate crasher for a long time.
But Haliburton’s injury put a stop to all of that.
Nonetheless, Indiana is well positioned for a potential playoff push next season with very good young players and a draft pick that is getting better by the week.
Oklahoma City Thunder
With the Lakers looking to make a push and Portland being dragged kicking and screaming by Damian Lillard towards a play-in berth, it looks like the Thunder are lottery bound.
That’s no bad thing. Even with OKC likely falling outside of the top four picks, there are outstanding prospects littered throughout the top 10 of this year’s draft.
Throw in the eventual addition of current second overall pick Chet Holmgren and the continued development of this exciting young core and you have a team ready to rocket up the standings in 2024.
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Orlando Magic
Putting aside their woeful 5-20 start, the Magic have actually won games at a clip that would see them sitting sixth in the Eastern Conference at the time of writing. Alas, all 82 games count and the Magic are on the outside looking in.
Of course, another lottery pick – with Chicago’s potentially on the way, also – will only bolster a roster chockful of young talent that has already welcomed back Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac this season.
Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson, Amen (or Ausar) Thompson and Nick Smith would all conceivably fit on this roster.
The Magic are in great shape.
Play-in or bust
Chicago Bulls
The Bulls are likely to miss the play-in and are a dead certainty to miss the playoffs.
That means their first-round pick this year will be heading to Orlando unless the Bulls get some incredible lottery luck.
It shouldn’t be this way.
A squad with DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Alex Caruso and a smattering of young talent should not be sitting five games below .500. Lonzo Ball isn’t that important, is he?
Los Angeles Lakers
Lakers GM Rob Pelinka did a good job re-tooling at the trade deadline, giving the Lakers a chance to be that stereotypical nightmare lower seed match-up.
What he didn’t need was an injury to either of his tentpole stars.
Whilst you would have bet the farm on Anthony Davis being the man to go down, instead it’s LeBron James who is out indefinitely with a foot concern. Without LeBron, the Lakers are toast.
The best they can hope for is a resurgence in Davis’ offensive game and some star turns from D’Angelo Russell every third or fourth appearance. The supporting cast will have to stand up, too.
Even then, it probably only earns the Lakers the right to play get walloped by the Warriors in the play-in.
Minnesota Timberwolves
It’s taken a major mid-season trade to correct (some of) the sins of their major off-season trade but the Wolves are finally looking like a functional basketball team.
Anthony Edwards has ascended to stardom and still has significant room to grow, Rudy Gobert is looking something like his old self and, not coincidentally, Mike Conley has fitted in perfectly.
This is a team that could give a top seed a mild headache in the playoffs.
There is only one, teeny-tiny problem: reintegrating Karl-Anthony Towns.
Portland Trailblazers
Damian Lillard might literally die trying to drag his team into the playoffs. There is nothing more that he can do.
He practically singlehandedly has the Blazers’ attack humming at fourth in the NBA in offensive rating.
Defensively, though, they’re 27th with the only teams below them all nakedly tanking.
Sure, Dame can’t be entirely absolved of blame for the Blazers’ woes at that end, though he’s surely earned the benefit of the doubt.
Washington Wizards
The very definition of ‘play-in or bust’.
First-round cannon fodder
Brooklyn Nets
After a ridiculously tumultuous off-season, bleeding into Kyrie Irving going scorched flat-Earth shortly after the season began, it’s a minor miracle that the Nets were able to find themselves just adjacent to the elite of the East before the Nets finally tired of the soap opera that they had become.
Whilst their trades of Irving and Kevin Durant have set them up for a potentially bright future, they’re really not all that good in the present.
Their pre-trade deadline should get them into the play-in at the very least. Once there, they’ll be summarily chewed up and spat out.
Utah Jazz
Like the Nets, Utah’s early season form might carry them into a play-in position despite their shedding of assets at the trade deadline.
Considering the Jazz traded Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt and Mike Conley to a pair of teams that they’re competing against (the Jazz for draft picks, the Lakers and Wolves for seedings, to be fair), expect the Jazz medical staff to discover a slight niggle in Lauri Markkanen’s thigh at some point in the next fortnight.
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