With All-Star Weekend in the Bay now behind us, the NBA-watching world’s attention now turns to the league’s annual sprint to the finish line.
While the break technically ended on Wednesday, with the Hornets upsetting the Lakers in a game rescheduled due to last month’s Los Angeles wildfires, Thursday represents the full-fledged resumption of pleasantries, with more than half of the league taking its first steps on the stretch run to springtime. We’re just over seven weeks away from the end of the 2024-25 NBA regular season, and there’s still plenty to figure out.
Let’s start figuring it out together, highlighting some of the most important things to keep an eye on between now and mid-April, starting with the most important question there is:
So Luka Dončić is really a Laker, huh? That actually happened?
It did — although the fact that L.A. is now 1-2 since adding Dončić to the lineup, with dispiriting losses to the cellar-dwelling Jazz and Hornets and with Luka missing nearly two-thirds of his shots as he shakes off the rust that accumulated while recovering from a calf strain, helps make his arrival seem less like the stuff of mind-boggling, reality-rending science fiction and more like … y’know … a midseason trade that everybody’s going to need some time to get used to.
Yes, it’s basically the loudest and most seismic possible version of that pretty normal thing. But the tectonic activity emanating from it might not actually shake up the title picture in the present tense, which — for now, at least — is actually the most important question there is:
Who’s got the best shot of winning the 2025 NBA championship?
According to multiple projection systems, that’d be the Oklahoma City Thunder, who hit the stretch run at 44-10, with an eight-game cushion atop the Western Conference — and a chance to go down as one of the most dominant regular-season teams we’ve ever seen.
Led by the league-topping scoring stylings of superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, do-it-all second All-Star Jalen Williams, and a meat-grinder defense that has essentially lapped the field in points allowed per possession — the gap in defensive efficiency between them and the second-place Clippers is the same as the gap between L.A. and the 10th-place Miami Heat — the Thunder exploded off the starting line, winning 30 of their first 35 games. They have just three double-digit losses all season: one to the Warriors, when they lost rising star big man Chet Holmgren to a fractured hip in the first quarter; one to the Timberwolves in the get-away game before the All-Star break; and one to the Bucks in the NBA Cup championship game (which, for the purposes of evaluating the regular season, the league office has decided does not count, because of, um, reasons?).
Oklahoma City has outscored opponents by a monstrous 14.1 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass — not only the best net rating in the NBA this season, but on pace for comfortably the highest single-season differential in CtG’s database, which stretches back to 2003. It’s on pace for the highest average margin of victory and Simple Rating System score (which accounts for a team’s point differential and strength of schedule) ever.
The Thunder do have issues; they’re not a great rebounding team, they foul too much, and outside of SGA’s relentless driving, nobody else pressures the rim very much. (It bears mentioning, though, that those issues have basically evaporated in the still-too-small-a-sample-to-judge minutes that Holmgren and fellow 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein have played together.) But don’t let those minor flaws distract you from what looks like an exceedingly rare diamond: According to Jared Dubin’s adjusted efficiency metrics, which measure how much better or worse a team is the league’s average unit in a given season, this year’s Thunder profile as the strongest team the NBA has seen since the 1996 Bulls. They’re the team to beat.
Who’s got the best shot of making sure that doesn’t happen?
Well, for starters: How about the NBA’s other 44-10 team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who also profile as one of the best regular-season teams in NBA history, who lead the East by 5.5 games, who own one of the best offenses of the last 50 years, who split their season series with Oklahoma City last month, and who have added De’Andre Hunter and Javonte Green to beef up their depth on the wing in anticipation of facing championship-level challenges on the perimeter?
Or, for that matter, a team that could pose those championship-level challenges to Cleveland before the Finals. The defending champion Celtics weathered a weeks-long shooting slump to win 10 of 13 heading into the All-Star break. They still have arguably the NBA’s premier top seven, led by perennial All-NBA First Teamer Jayson Tatum and four-time All-Star Jaylen Brown. They’re the only team besides Oklahoma City in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency, and they’re 11-5 against opponents with top-10 point differentials — including a 2-1 mark against Cleveland. The Cavs have a better record and net rating, but the oddsmakers still see Boston as the favorite to represent the East in the Finals.
OKC, Cleveland and Boston have been the top three pretty much all season long. If you’re interested in some dark-horse discussion, though, Tom Haberstroh and I talked through the championship chances of some of the longer shots on this week’s episode of The Big Number:
Health obviously matters for everybody … but who might it matter for most?
It’s not exactly revelatory to say that teams don’t function as well without their best talent, and typically need all hands on deck to win the title. But something doesn’t need to be surprising to be true; which team survives the next seven weeks unscathed will likely go a long way toward determining which of them can survive the postseason gauntlet, too.
I mentioned it earlier, but because of Hartenstein’s season-opening fractured hand and Holmgren’s early-season hip fracture, head coach Mark Daigneault has only been able to experiment with the Thunder’s two-big look for 49 minutes across three games thus far. Keeping those two healthy and enabling them to develop a rhythm together over the next seven weeks is Oklahoma City’s best path to being able to unlock the best version of itself come the postseason.
Boston’s biggest concerns lie in the effectiveness of a pair of aging champions: 38-year-old Al Horford and 34-year-old Jrue Holiday, both of whom have seen their shooting efficiency and overall offensive output decline precipitously since last season’s title run, and both of whom the C’s will need as close to full strength as possible to mount their title defense. In Cleveland, on the other hand, the most significant health question might center on a lower-wattage name.
The Cavaliers are 21-5 with Dean Wade in the starting lineup, and 30-5 overall when he plays, compared to a (still very good) 14-5 without him; the 6-foot-9 combo forward is one of the league’s most underrated perimeter defenders, and could be a hugely important piece in postseason matchups against opponents with elite big wings (like, say, Boston). He’s been out for nearly a month with a bone bruise in his right knee; the Cavs will hope to get him fully operational by mid-April to join Hunter, Green, Max Strus and Isaac Okoro in their revamped wing corps.
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Elsewhere in the East, for the Knicks — in third place at 36-18, fifth in the NBA in net rating — the hope, as ever, remains that Tom Thibodeau’s hardest-charging dudes will remain fully operational despite their comparatively heavy workload.
Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson rank first, second and sixth in total minutes played this season, respectively; OG Anunoby ranks 11th in minutes per game. The starting lineup of those four and All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns has played nearly 300 more minutes than any other five-man unit in the NBA — a trend that has continued even in garbage time, as my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh noted last month. Anunoby missed the last five games before the All-Star break with a foot sprain; Hart’s out for the first game back from the break with a right knee issue; center Mitchell Robinson, who still hasn’t played this season recovering from ankle surgery, has only just been cleared for full 5-on-5 practice. The Knicks took massive swings this offseason in hopes that talent upgrades would help them break through to the conference finals for the first time in a quarter-century. Any chance of getting there begins with getting to the postseason in one piece.
How seriously to take the Bucks — 29-24, fifth in the East, 12th in net rating — as a postseason threat depends almost entirely on whether Giannis Antetokounmpo gets there in one piece.
We’ve seen Giannis do the heaviest lifting in carrying the Bucks to a championship; his 25.61 career playoff Player Efficiency Rating is the eighth-highest of all time, just behind Hakeem Olajuwon. We’ve seen him be arguably the best player in the East this season — second in the NBA in scoring and fifth in rebounding, on pace for his second consecutive season of averaging at least 30-10-5 on 60% shooting, which nobody else in NBA history has ever done — and say what you will about the NBA Cup, but we saw him dominate a winner-take-all competition all of two months ago. What we haven’t seen, though: Giannis turning in a full healthy playoff run at any point in the last three years … which makes the left calf strain that’s cost him most of this month (including the All-Star Game) worth monitoring.
After an up-and-down first season in Milwaukee, Damian Lillard’s been exactly the All-Star running buddy the Bucks bargained for this season, averaging 25.8 points and 7.5 assists per game on .623 true shooting (which factors in 2-point, 3-point and free-throw accuracy). Even so, though, the Bucks have only outpaced opponents by a good-but-not-great 4.7 points-per-100 in Giannis/Dame minutes, and it remains to be seen whether the trade-deadline acquisition of Kyle Kuzma will dramatically improve that margin. Add in the fact that Bobby Portis has reportedly been suspended 25 games for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy, and the Bucks’ chances of making postseason noise depend on Giannis reminding us exactly what kind of war rig he’s historically been in the postseason. It’s tough to do that, though, if you’ve got a flat tire.
In the West, yet again, we find ourselves glancing warily at Kawhi Leonard’s knees. After missing the Clippers’ first 34 games of the season, the two-time Finals MVP returned last month, and while he’s still ramping up to a full workload and knocking the rust off of his shot, his per-minute production is approaching his customary superstar level, L.A. has scored like a top-10 offense with him on the floor, and the new-look starting five — Leonard flanked by Ivica Zubac and Derrick Jones Jr. up front, James Harden and Norman Powell in the backcourt — has annihilated opponents by 90 points in just 163 minutes. Say it with me, gang, and think good thoughts: If Kawhi can just stay healthy, the Clippers could be dangerous.
Ditto for the Nuggets, so long as they keep getting this Jamal Murray. And the Grizzlies, if Ja Morant — who’s missed 22 games with knee, back and shoulder issues — can stay on the ball. And maybe the Mavericks, if a spate of injuries that a more cynical sort might identify as something of a karmic plague abates in time for Round 1.
On that note:
Did the trade deadline meaningfully impact the playoff race?
Well, for one thing, it ensured Dallas wouldn’t get Dončić back, and with Anthony Davis, Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II all likely to miss significant time, it could put the Mavericks — 30-26, eighth in the West, two games out of a top-six spot and three clear of falling out of the play-in entirely — in danger of not factoring into said race at all. (If the Mavs do get their bigs back before mid-April, though, color me optimistic on their chances of being a miserable team to deal with.)
That mega-trade also, y’know, landed Luka alongside LeBron James. The jury is very much still out on how the Lakers — 32-21, fifth in the West, just a game out of fourth and home-court advantage in Round 1 — can mount a credible defense down the stretch, and whether they’ll be able to get enough stops to solidify their postseason positioning. Once they get there, though, they’ll be able to toss the keys to two of the most devastating and productive postseason playmakers of the modern era, a pair of 16-game problem solvers par excellence — a move that figures to make their best shot all the more formidable.
The biggest question on the board might be just how much the addition of Jimmy Butler III moves the needle in Golden State. The Warriors — 28-27, 10th in the West — entered the break with three wins in four tries after swinging a trade for the six-time All-Star; critically, they outscored their opponents by nine points in the 43 minutes when Butler ran the show while Stephen Curry sat, thanks in large part to Jimmy racking up 20 free-throw attempts in those 43 minutes.
If Butler can add new snarl to the starting lineup and help keep the offense afloat in non-Steph minutes, the Dubs’ chances of making it out of the play-in tournament and making some noise increase exponentially. Draymond Green, for his part, seems awfully confident in what they’re bringing to the table down the stretch:
In the East, the Cavs are hoping that the addition of the 27-year-old Hunter — averaging just under 19 points and four rebounds per game on 46/40/86 shooting splits in a career year — provides enough of an injection of size, strength, shooting and versatility on the wing to withstand the toughest matchups they’ll face. The rest of the contending hopefuls, though, mostly stood pat.
How’s the MVP race shaping up?
With apologies to Antetokounmpo, who has already missed a dozen games and is in danger of not cracking the 65-game threshold for postseason award eligibility, we’re likely looking at a two-horse race between Gilgeous-Alexander, who is leading the league in scoring at 32.5 points per game, is tied for second in steals and top-30 in deflections for that elite Thunder defense, and has been the best player on the best team in the NBA …
… and Nikola Jokić, who is averaging 29.8 points, 12.7 rebounds and 10.2 assists per game for the 36-19 Nuggets, putting him on pace to join Westbrook and Oscar Robertson as the only players in NBA history to average a triple-double for a full season, while also effectively breaking a slew of advanced stats in what looks an awful lot like the best statistical individual season ever:
Outside of those two and Antetokounmpo, there’s also Tatum, the constant guarantor of the Celtics’ elite floor, averaging nearly 27 points, nine rebounds and six assists per game for a championship favorite. Down-ballot options include the Cavaliers’ trio of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, the Knicks’ duo of Brunson and Towns, Grizzlies big man Jaren Jackson Jr., and possibly fellow All-Stars Anthony Edwards and (if only for the eye-popping stats) Victor Wembanyama.
Which parts of the standings should we be keeping a close eye on?
The tiers out West.
Just a half-game separates the Grizzlies and Nuggets in the race for second place. Only 2.5 games separate the Rockets, Lakers and Clippers in the hunt for fourth — and, with it, home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Just 3.5 games separate five teams — the Clippers, Wolves, Mavericks, Kings and Warriors — vying for the sixth spot (which would allow them to avoid the play-in tournament) and looking to stay out of 10th (which would require them to go on the road and win two single-elimination games just to make the postseason. And only 1.5 games separate the Kings, Warriors and 11th-place Suns, still raging against the dying of the light even after striking out at the trade deadline and inadvertently kicking off a fresh round of Kevin Durant trade rumors in the process.
OKC has already run away with the top spot, but that’s still an awfully gnarled thicket of teams trying to untangle themselves, break free of the pack and climb the standings in a hurry, without much time to do so.
There’s a similar stratification in the East, but the pitch appears less fevered. Cleveland’s all but locked into first place, 5.5 ahead of the pack. The Knicks are technically still alive for second place, 2.5 games back of Boston, but are overwhelmingly likely to land third. Just two games separate Indiana, Milwaukee and Detroit in fourth through sixth — honestly, the prospect of the now-Portis-less Bucks falling behind the Pistons is kind of blowing my mind at the moment — and a mere half-game separates the Magic, Hawks and Heat in the top three play-in positions.
I’m not sure that you can call whatever is transpiring between the Bulls (who just traded away their best player), Nets (who have parted ways with three opening night starters), 76ers (who appear to have built their season, and perhaps their franchise, on an accursed burial ground) and Raptors (who added Brandon Ingram, because it’s fun to zag on ‘em) down around 10th place a “race.” But it is happening, and don’t you dare look away. We must all bear witness.
