NBA contenders tiers: Sizing up top 10 candidates as we head into the stretch run

A LONELY STRETCH OF HIGHWAY IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION — I went to Detroit and Cleveland in February so you wouldn’t have to.

No, seriously, it was fine, even if my soft Atlanta self struggled with the concept of temperatures in the teens. Being unable to feel my thumbs was a small sacrifice for watching elite, playoff-caliber basketball three nights in a row, and I topped it off with a trip to Denver to see the Wolves and Nuggets in another huge battle.

(Also: Detroit is lovely. Seriously. Media who haven’t been there in a while are gonna be shocked when they go for the playoffs this spring.)

The whole point of my journey was to see contender-level teams playing contender-level opponents, and start thinking about what it might mean for the postseason.

So let’s start with a scene from Detroit at the beginning of my week, one that sets the stage for the final sprint to the regular-season finish line: This absolutely ridiculous block on Detroit’s Cade Cunningham by San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama.

Watch this play develop. Cunningham knows Wembanyama is lurking as he drives to the cup, but slows his tempo to a near-total stop so Victor has to choose between committing to Cunningham or retreating to Jalen Duren under the basket. Once Victor seems to retreat, Cunningham steps into a shot that has him extended well away from the hoop, a difficult finish (especially after stopping his momentum) but one he’s capable of pulling off.

Unfortunately, he tried it against the one player on earth capable of blocking the shot. Wembanyama not only had the absurd length to reach Cunningham’s high-arcing attempt, but he also, amazingly, recovered from his recovery to Duren so quickly that he was there to smash it off the glass. Wembanyama’s rude spike was one of five second-half rejections he had as the Spurs pulled away from Detroit for a win.

I bring up that play because it reinforced the singular nature of winning the championship. Merely being good doesn’t cut it; the title race is about emerging as the best in a field loaded with potential contenders.

Look at that block again: One of the 10 best players in the league made an extremely difficult move that normally results in a bucket, except that he was trying it against the best defensive player on the planet. Once you get into the second round of the playoffs, that type of matchup becomes almost common. Every opponent has an All-NBA centerpiece and All-Star level talent around him.

We’re getting to a serious moment for the league’s contending hopefuls, of which I would count eight teams as truly serious and two others (Houston and the Lakers) on the periphery.

Fortunately, I had the great privilege of seeing seven of those eight teams play this week, with the schedule delivering us a veritable round-robin tournament of contender vs. contender matchups just in time to rescue us from the Great Tanking Debacle.

In the last eight days, we’ve had Spurs vs. Pistons, Knicks vs. Cavs, Pistons vs. Thunder, Celtics vs. Nuggets, Cavs vs. Pistons, Nuggets vs. Thunder, Spurs vs. Knicks and Wolves vs. Nuggets.

And it continues tonight with a Cavs-Pistons rematch, Wednesday with Knicks-Thunder, Thursday with a Spurs-Pistons rematch, Friday with Knicks-Nuggets. Get yer popcorn.

So, having checked in on these teams in person my travels last week … how do things stand right now?

Let’s start by saying I don’t want to overreact to one single game on this journey. The Spurs, for example, looked great when I saw them in Detroit and not so good in New York on Sunday, while the Knicks (who I saw in a blah loss to Cleveland) were the opposite.

That’s especially true as injuries will continue to define the second half of the season. The Nuggets still miss Aaron Gordon, the Thunder have been hemorrhaging guards, and a potential Jayson Tatum return hangs over the Celtics’ playoff picture.

Nonetheless, I would broadly tier out the championship picture something like this:

Tier 1: The Thunder

Look, as much as we want to talk about the race being wide open, a fully loaded Thunder team is still going to be awfully tough to beat. I get that both Denver and Indiana showed some of their weaknesses in a playoff environment, that they haven’t been able to keep Jalen Williams healthy and that teams may have figured out some ways to attack their handsy, helping defense and beat them from the 3-point line.

That said, they began the year 24-1, are still on track for one of the best scoring margins in league annals and are considered vulnerable largely because of a stretch where they’ve “only” gone 23-14 with half their team injured. Watching a subset of the Thunder still make Detroit sweat for three and a half quarters last week was a good reminder of how many different options and styles this team can turn to in a playoff series.

Tier 2: The Unproven — San Antonio, Detroit

Nobody seems to believe in Detroit in the postseason yet, which is partly a result of the Pistons not having won a playoff series since (checks notes) … (blinks and checks notes a second time) … 2008, and partly a result of legitimate questions about their iffy perimeter shooting.

That said, Detroit is in a pretty powerful position historically; the Pistons certainly will be the conference’s top seed, they have the best scoring margin in the East and their starting five (plus-13.7 points per 100) is rolling people.

Similarly, San Antonio will go into the postseason as a second seed despite multiple injuries that have made continuity difficult (no five-man lineup has played more than 17 games, and the only one that has played 17 features four bench players) while bringing along younger players like Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant.

The Spurs also have won four of their five meetings against Oklahoma City, an important consideration in a conference where going through the Thunder seems mandatory, Remember that block by Wembanyama? Oklahoma City’s dribble-driving, attacking game is perhaps not optimally suited to go against that.

That said, the Spurs — like Detroit — have never done it in April and May. Wembanyama is likely to face unprecedented physicality in the postseason, and perhaps some novel schemes as well. How he responds will be one of the thrills of the playoffs.

Tier 3: The Past Champions — Boston, Denver

Boston has been shockingly successful in Tatum’s absence, and now may have him back for the end of the regular season and a playoff run. The Celtics, even without him, are pushing Detroit for the conference’s top scoring margin. They’ve been good enough, in fact, that there is some concern that reincorporating Tatum’s high-usage, dribble-heavy style might have the plot twist of messing them up. The Celtics also play the league’s slowest pace, and we’ve all seen them get stuck in the playoff mud hunting the perfect six-pass sequence for a 3-point shot.

The Nuggets have the league’s best offense and quite possibly its best player, but it’s hard to imagine Denver’s defense keeping up with good teams unless Gordon is back in the mix; the Nuggets were 21st on that side of the ball as of Monday, with Gordon having played only 20 games. On the other hand, they took the Thunder to seven games a year ago despite similar regular-season defensive woes, they have much more reliable depth than a year ago and the full-strength starting five remains fearsome.

Tier 4: The Dangerous — Cleveland, Minnesota, New York

Minnesota and New York went to the conference finals last year and Cleveland won 64 games. The Cavs just increased their playoff upside by turning Darius Garland into James Harden, the Knicks have won 14 of 18 and just routed San Antonio on Sunday, and Minnesota has won 11 of 15 while shoring up a gaping hole on the bench with the addition of Ayo Dosunmu.

Cleveland or New York could win the East, although both profile less as a title winner. New York’s starting five hasn’t been dominant and the back-end depth remains shaky. Meanwhile, Cleveland might be the East’s best team on paper, but the Cavs had trouble staying healthy. Moreover, of Cleveland’s four stars, only Donovan Mitchell has a history of delivering at the same level in the playoffs.

Similarly, nobody would be shocked if Minnesota made a third straight visit to the conference finals. Going beyond that? Yep, that might still be a reach. Minnesota’s playoff superpower has been that in a short-rotation series, its top eight is better than yours and can wear you out. That certainly bore out on my trip to Denver on Sunday, when the Wolves’ bench unit pantsed the Nuggets’ subs. But that hits its limits in later rounds when the Wolves are riding one offensive star against elite defenses.

Tier 5: Everyone else

I’ll specifically note the Rockets and the Lakers here, since both teams have at least puncher’s-chance odds of winning a round or two with their top-end talent. The Rockets would warrant a more serious mention here if Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams were on their active roster and their decision to punt on the trade deadline spoke volumes. The Lakers, meanwhile, still don’t seem to have nearly enough defense or depth to back up their three electric stars.

But enough about what I think. Let’s also look at what history says.

I bring that up because we have an important game-within-the-game this spring: The race to be taken seriously as a contender. The Pistons and Thunder have graduated from this as presumed top seeds in their conferences, while San Antonio seems highly likely to have the league’s third-best record.

For the others, it’s more of a fight. The reason is that, historically, you want to be a top-three seed to win a championship. Only two teams seeded fourth or lower have won a title, and none in the last 29 years. Yes, Indiana came close last season (as did Boston in 2010), but the facts are the facts.

Similarly, you want at least 52 wins. In the last 30 years, we’ve had 29 teams who won 51 games or fewer but were still top-three seeds in their conference. (Hilariously, 24 of them were in the East and just five in the West.) Those 29 teams have combined to win zero championships and a total of two NBA Finals games — in 2003, when the Nets emerged as the champion of an Eastern Conference in which no team won 52 games. (They’ve also accounted for a disproportionate number of early upsets — such as the Kings and Grizzlies in 2023 or the Bucks in 2024 — although that’s beyond the scope of what we’re analyzing here.)

Look at the standings and the win totals, and you can see how these last few weeks can get interesting. In the East, the Knicks, Cavs and Celtics are in a tight race for the second, third and fourth seeds, with history saying the team that lands fourth has slim odds of winning a title. Similarly, the West has a chase for the third seed between the Wolves, Rockets and Nuggets that could go down to the last day of the season.

Both those races also involve teams that may or may not hit our 52-win threshold. Particularly in the West, it’s possible the winner of the Rockets-Nuggets-Wolves race still lands short of 52.

Either way, however, my list of eight serious contenders above will find itself whittled down to six by the end of the regular season, and possibly five — or even four — if enough clubs fall short of 52 wins.

Thus, with six weeks and 20-ish games to sort this out, it’s a fun time to watch the NBA’s Relatively Serious 10 (my own term, which I came up with after an extended brainstorming session while going through airport security) sort themselves out and prepare for the playoff crucible. And maybe, just maybe, it’s enough fun to distract you from all the tanking.