The NBA season is back! We rank all 30 teams by tier -- from inner-circle championship contenders to teams in rebuild mode.
It's time for our 14th annual Tiers of the NBA -- my alternative to preseason power rankings. Grouping teams by where they are today and where they might go tomorrow is a useful way to step back and take broader stock of the league.* The loose definition here: It will be at least a mild surprise if the 2023-24 NBA champion does not come from this group. These are the four best teams -- the defending champions and three rivals who went all-in to catch them.
But this team is deep in two-way talent and makes structural sense. You can build a lot of great lineups around the LeBron/trio. The Lakers have enough shooting to reinvigorate the LeBron-Davis pick-and-roll, which could in turn reinvigorate a half-court offense that was quietly pretty bad in both the regular-season and playoffs. Davis -- my pick for Defensive Player of the Year -- can lift these guys to a top-10 defense provided decent resistance along the perimeter.
* Betting on things going right in Minnesota -- or merely as expected -- has been a losing proposition for the better part of 20 years. If Conley maintains his level of play and McDaniels makes even a mini-leap, the sheer talent here is pretty strong.Sabonis floundered on offense in the Kings' seven-game first-round loss against the Warriors. His limitations as a rim protector present challenges in building the kind of defense that adapts to any postseason opponent.
New York seems sturdiest, with depth, continuity and a top-down commitment to prioritizing the regular season. Even if their bizarre offense -- elite at scoring, bad at shooting! -- slips, their defense should tighten some.round out a solid starting five if Harden is benched or away. But Melton's promotion stresses a so-so bench. One injury could teeter the whole enterprise.With Harden, the Sixers vault up at least one tier and maybe into the inner sanctum.
The Raptors have some incentive to chase wins, given they owe a top-6 protected first-round pick to the Spurs via the Jakob Poeltl deal. Their on-again, off-again pursuit of Lillard indicates some appetite to win.in the lineup. They have a lot of fun wings and project as a good to great defense, but not enough north-south oomph on offense. The re-actualized version ofcould provide that. We'll see.
, but that misses the mark a little. If you read between the lines, it seems the Sixers want one of two packages for Harden -- who was an All-NBA-level player when available last season: both tradable LA first-round picks in one version that may not have to include Mann, or one of those picks plus Mann -- and more stuff, including a first-round pick swap, per league sources and previous reporting from ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
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