Meaningful NBA action is almost back. Almost as soon as the immensely entertaining WNBA Finals reach their climax, the men will return to center stage, as the defending champion Boston Celtics host the first regular-season game of the 2024-25 campaign next Tuesday.

With a week left before the season begins, let’s take a broad survey of the league by—as is tradition here—analyzing one key number that helps explain all 30 teams’ situations, for better or for worse. Teams are listed in order of their over/under win totals from FanDuel.

Boston Celtics: 126.3

The most important NBA trend in the middle of last season was the sudden change to the league’s scoring environment, as a more permissive whistle slowed offenses after an explosion of high-scoring games.

But somebody forgot to tell the champs. The Celtics weren’t just unaffected by the changes; they thrived despite them. Boston had the best offensive rating in the NBA, per Cleaning the Glass, both before and after the All-Star break—but its advantage over the rest of the league more than doubled in the second half. Other offenses were hampered by more physical defenses, but the Celtics’ five-out, 3-point-heavy approach continued to torch all comers.

The Celtics might experience a decline in the 2024-25 regular season, due to a title hangover and Kristaps Porzingis’s injury. But they were head and shoulders above the rest of the NBA last year; they have enough cushion to get a bit worse and still hold court as the best in the league.

Oklahoma City Thunder: 23.4

It’s easy to understand why the Thunder are projected to win the West this season. They already won the West’s no. 1 seed last year, despite so much youth across the roster that 25-year-old Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was their oldest rotation player in the postseason.

With an average age of just 23.4 years last season, the Thunder were only the fourth team in NBA history to reach the playoffs with an average age below 24, per an analysis of Basketball Reference data. And as I wrote last postseason, they were far better in the regular season than any of their three playoff predecessors:

The 2023-24 Thunder won 57 games with a plus-7.4 point differential. The second-best under-24 team in NBA history was the 2010-11 Thunder, who won 55 games with a plus-3.8 point differential. The records are close, but the current Thunder team has a point differential that is essentially double that of the previous edition.

It’s only natural to expect more steps forward in 2024-25, both because the team filled its biggest holes with the additions of veterans Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein and because the Thunder already experienced unprecedented success given their demographic.

New York Knicks: One-Sixth

Let’s rewind all the way back to … two seasons ago, when the Knicks returned to the playoffs thanks to a breakout season from free agent signee Jalen Brunson. The top six Knicks in total points that season were, in order: Julius Randle, Brunson, RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, and Obi Toppin. What else do they have in common? Other than Brunson, they’re all gone from Madison Square Garden now.

Randle has been replaced by Karl-Anthony Towns. Barrett and Quickley departed in the OG Anunoby deal. And Grimes was part of last season’s trade for Bojan Bogdanovic, which didn’t yield much benefit in the 2023-24 playoffs but proved helpful in the offseason, when Bogdanovic served as a salary match as the Knicks brought Mikal Bridges to Manhattan. (Toppin left separately, not in a blockbuster, as he’d lost his spot in the Knicks’ rotation but found a friendlier home in Indiana.)

All of that turnover amounts to a striking consolidation of talent, as New York added three top-50 players next to Brunson in the span of a few months, seeking to maximize the window opened by the point guard’s unexpected leap into superstardom. Now, at the cost of copious long-term draft capital and salary flexibility, the Knicks have the East’s best core outside Boston.

Philadelphia 76ers: 50.7

The 76ers might have won the offseason, thanks to the Paul George signing, but they’re still looking for more wins where they count the most. Since 2017-18, when the 76ers returned to the playoffs after the Process teardown, they’ve gone just 34-33 in playoff games. That’s good for a 50.7 percent win rate—the closest to a .500 record for any team in that span.

The Process was designed to lift a team that hadn’t reached the conference finals since 2001 out of the murky middle—but after a litany of injuries and playoff disappointments, the 76ers remain stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity. Various costars next to Joel Embiid—Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris—couldn’t lift the 76ers to the conference finals. Perhaps George and further development from Tyrese Maxey will make the difference this season.

Minnesota Timberwolves: 19

Minnesota’s largest short-term challenge will be incorporating Julius Randle into the rotation, because he’s a very different player than the man he replaces, Karl-Anthony Towns. Towns is an elite 3-point shooter; Randle is not. Towns also worked mostly within the flow of the Timberwolves offense, taking quick jumpers when Anthony Edwards or Mike Conley Jr. set him up for an open shot; Randle likes to hold the ball and pump-fake, jab-step, and otherwise prod the defense before creating a look of his own.

Last season, Towns held the ball for 1.9 minutes per game; Randle handled it for twice as long, or 3.8 minutes per contest. And while only 4 percent of Towns’s shot attempts came with a touch time of at least six seconds, a whopping 19 percent of Randle’s shot attempts came after at least six seconds of individual possession—a figure higher than the average for every one of Edwards’s teammates. It’s possible that Edwards and Randle will learn to mesh their offensive styles, but the latter won’t be a simple plug-and-play substitution for Towns. Given that Randle hasn’t played yet in the preseason as he recovers from shoulder surgery, it might take a while, even though the team wants to win now.

Photo by Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images

Denver Nuggets: 31.2

The Nuggets attempted only 31.2 3-pointers per game last season, the league’s lowest total. Because of Nikola Jokic’s brilliance, that relative lack of 3s wasn’t a huge impediment to Denver’s scoring; the team finished fifth in the regular season in offensive rating, per CtG. (Denver also ranked fifth in its championship season.)

But it could mushroom into a greater issue in 2024-25, after the Nuggets lost Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (who ranked third on the team in 3-point attempts last season) and Reggie Jackson (who ranked fourth) while adding Russell Westbrook (the worst high-volume 3-point shooter in NBA history). Meanwhile, Jokic’s 3-point shot quietly abandoned him in high-stakes games over the summer, as he made just 26 percent of his 3s in the playoffs (versus 41 percent in his previous playoff career) and 17 percent of his 3s at the Olympics (including a brutal 1-for-12 showing in two games against Team USA).

The Nuggets are counting on youngsters like Christian Braun and Julian Strawther, generally to backfill the holes left by Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown and more specifically to add spacing to a relatively cramped offensive system.

Milwaukee Bucks: 1

The Bucks are at the opposite end of the age range from the Thunder; their average team age last season was 30.2 years, behind only the Clippers (30.4). Brook Lopez (36), Damian Lillard (34), and Khris Middleton (33) are all past their primes, injury-prone, or both, and even Giannis Antetokounmpo turns 30 in December. Key reserves Pat Connaughton, Delon Wright, Taurean Prince, and Bobby Portis will all be in their 30s by springtime, as well. Guard Gary Trent Jr. is the only player on the first two rows of Milwaukee’s depth chart who will still be in his 20s by the postseason.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that dynamic—older teams win more games than younger teams—but it emphasizes how rapidly the Bucks’ championship window is closing. Coach Doc Rivers isn’t exactly known for trusting younger players, and AJ Johnson, Milwaukee’s 2024 first-round pick, looks like a long-term project more than a win-now infusion of talent. Other than better chemistry among their 30-something veterans, it’s difficult to see where the Bucks can improve after a disappointing first season with Lillard on the roster.

Dallas Mavericks: 5

Luka Doncic has made first-team All-NBA in each of the last five seasons. Here’s every other player in NBA history with at least five first-team nods within their first six years:

It’s clear from this set of comps that Luka is tracking as a top-20 player all time, at a minimum; even more impressive is that the only other players on this chart since the 1960s are Bird and Duncan, two of the top-10 players ever.

Of course, Doncic will need to build on last season’s run to the Finals to join them on their lofty historical perches—Bird and Duncan won a combined eight titles—but he’s on an impeccable trajectory thus far. Since the 1960s, only one player every 20 years has accomplished so much individually, so early in his career.

Cleveland Cavaliers: 2.2

In 2022-23, when the Cavaliers reached the playoffs in their first season with Donovan Mitchell but disappointed in the first round, their Big Four—Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen—played well together. The problem was the fifth spot in the lineup, where the likes of Isaac Okoro couldn’t threaten an opposing defense.

The good news is that new Cavalier Max Strus solved that issue on the wing last season, but the bad news is that a combination of injuries and stalled development meant the Big Four no longer meshed so neatly. The quartet had outscored opponents by 8.8 points per 100 possessions in 2022-23, per NBA Advanced Stats, but that margin dropped to just 2.2 points per 100 in 2023-24—barely above average even though, by definition, Cleveland’s best players were all on the floor.

If the Big Four suffer similar struggles this season, the writing will be on the wall: At some point, Cavs management will need to decide which lead guard to keep and which of Mitchell and Garland to trade, as well as whether Allen needs to go so Mobley can maximize his skill set at center. Thus far, the core has held, but with new coach Kenny Atkinson in town and the team’s salary payments starting to rise, it’s unlikely Cleveland will remain patient much longer.

Photo by Ronald Cortes/Getty Images

Orlando Magic: 2012

Here are the first two sentences I wrote about the Magic in the 2022 edition of this exercise, when 2012 was also their defining number:

This number is important for the Magic because 2012 is the last time their offense ranked in the top half of the league in efficiency. That summer, of course, the Magic traded Dwight Howard, and in the decade since, their offensive rating each year has ranked, per CtG: 27th, 29th, 27th, 17th, 28th, 25th, 22nd, 21st, 29th, 30th.

Since that writing, the Magic have finished 26th and 22nd in offense—meaning they’re now going on a dozen years without a top-half offensive finish. New starter Caldwell-Pope should help a roster that can bull-rush the basket (Orlando led the league in rim attempts last season) but falters from distance (Orlando ranked last in made 3s), but the Magic still lack a creative playmaker at the point guard position. Barring simultaneous leaps from Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner in the frontcourt, Orlando will likely struggle to score once again.

Memphis Grizzlies: 577

There are so many different ways to illustrate Memphis’s unprecedentedly awful run of health last season. For instance, the Grizzlies set the records for the most players used by a team in a season (33) and the most different starting lineups (51).

Here’s another way: Twenty different Grizzlies were injured at some point last season, according to Spotrac’s tracker, and they missed a combined 577 games. That’s an outrageous total. In second place were the Trail Blazers, at 370 games missed—more than 200 behind Memphis.

Spotrac estimates that the Grizzlies allocated about $74 million of their salary payments to players during their injuries. For comparison, the league median for this measure was about $26 million—meaning Memphis essentially paid three times as much to injured players as the average team.

A key reason the Grizzlies profile as a dark horse contender in the West is that they can’t help but experience better health, and more luck, in 2024-25.

Indiana Pacers: 5

The Pacers are on the upswing, with a dynamic new face of the franchise, an entertaining team identity, and a new conference finals banner to unfurl in Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Yet in each of the last five seasons, a conference finals loser failed to make it past the first round the following year:

Out of the 2023-24 conference finalists, Indiana is the most obvious candidate to fall short in the playoffs this season, as Boston remains a juggernaut, Dallas and Minnesota boast stronger top-to-bottom rosters, and Indiana benefited from a fair bit of injury luck en route to the third round last spring. The Pacers should still celebrate their achievement, of course, and they might well continue on their positive path this season—but they might also take one step back after so many steps forward in 2023-24.

Some of the teams in that chart, like the Trail Blazers, Hawks, and Clippers, never made another deep playoff run before their core started coming apart. But for others—the Celtics and Mavericks—that season-after disappointment was a mere precursor to further success later on.

Phoenix Suns: Minus-11.6

The Suns were a very good team for three-quarters of every game last season. Not so much in the fourth:

Quarter-by-quarter splits can be subject to lots of sample size variance, but this particular case is too extreme to ignore. The second-worst fourth-quarter team was the Heat, who had a net rating of negative-5.5—meaning Phoenix was more than twice as bad. How is it possible that an offense with all the Suns’ firepower finished 30th in offensive rating in the fourth quarter and only 23rd in clutch offense?

The team believes the lack of a true point guard was an issue, so it made a pair of shrewd offseason signings for assist-to-turnover leaders Tyus Jones and Monté Morris. Perhaps a steady hand to set up the offense—and getting Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal the ball in favorable spots—will alleviate those late-game issues. But perhaps the utter lack of perimeter stoppers in such a group will mean the Suns give back all their offensive gains on the other end and end up in a similar spot in the standings as before.

Sacramento Kings: 341

Over the past two seasons, De’Aaron Fox has ranked second among all players in total clutch scoring, with 316 points in the last five minutes of close games. Who’s the only player ahead of him?

Why, it’s Fox’s new All-Star teammate, DeMar DeRozan, up at 341. (Third place is Steph Curry, at 289; no other player has more than 245.) The Kings project as a top League Pass team this season, if only because every close game will let viewers watch two of the league’s clutch masters—heck, make it three with Malik Monk—go to work. And that stacking of overlapping talent might help Sacramento overperform in the standings, too, because every clutch bucket counts in a conference as crowded as this year’s West.

Photo by Eric Espada/NBAE via Getty Images

New Orleans Pelicans: 93

After losing Jonas Valanciunas in free agency, the Pelicans enter the season without a single strong center on the roster. The current best options in the middle are Daniel Theis, who’s at best a decent backup at this stage of his career, and Yves Missi, the no. 21 pick in the 2024 draft—or, most intriguingly, Zion Williamson.

Due to defensive limitations and his 6-foot-6 frame, Zion hasn’t spent much time at center in his NBA career. Per CtG, 14 percent of his possessions came at the position last season, which was a career high. But the Pelicans excelled in that relatively small sample, outscoring opponents by 10 points per 100 possessions, a margin that ranked in the 93rd percentile of all lineups.

Theis started at center in the Pelicans’ first preseason game, but if Zion can stick at center for longer, thereby allowing Willie Green to embrace small-ball units, the Pelicans could soar. (Green says that Zion isn’t a 5, but even if Herb Jones might be the nominal center in small-ball lineups, Zion’s size will be crucial against larger opponents regardless of his positional label.) After Williamson, the team’s five best players are all guards or wings (in some order, Jones, Brandon Ingram, Dejounte Murray, CJ McCollum, and Trey Murphy III) and backup guards Jose Alvarado and Jordan Hawkins are no slouches, either. Lineups with some combination of those players would offer perimeter defense, playmaking, and shooting, all with Zion as a powerful scoring anchor in the paint. That’s the dream, anyway, if the notoriously injury-prone player can remain healthy all year.

Miami Heat: 14

Far too often in recent seasons, Miami’s offense has gotten bogged down in the mud. I just lamented the state of Orlando’s offense, and Miami’s was almost as dour last year, as the two teams finished just 0.5 points per 100 possessions apart, per CtG. The Heat have a rugged defense and schematic flexibility, but they continually tumble down the regular-season standings because not enough of Erik Spoelstra’s players can shoot and create for others.

Fresh off signing a contract extension, Bam Adebayo is hoping to change that dynamic, and he exhibited meaningful progress at the end of the 2023-24 campaign. Over his final 17 games last season, Adebayo shot 14-for-28 on 3-pointers, with 13 makes coming from above the break; in his entire career before then, he’d made only nine total 3s.

That newfound 3-point urgency carried into the playoffs, where Adebayo went 2-for-10 from distance in five games. The accuracy wasn’t great, but the volume was; in 69 playoff games prior to last season, Adebayo had gone just 0-for-6 from distance. Then Adebayo attempted nine more 3s at the Olympics (making three), albeit with a shorter line.

Miami’s center is already a perennial All-Star because of his diverse skill set, but his lack of 3-point range has always dropped him to a level below the NBA’s top centers. If his late-season flirtation with the arc blossoms into a full relationship, both he and his team could take a leap.

Houston Rockets: 24.5

Jalen Green must be a fan of leap years. In 58 games before February 29, 2024, Green’s third season wasn’t going exactly as planned. His scoring had dropped to 17.6 points per game, and his 52 percent true shooting mark ranked among the worst in the league. But he scored 34 against the Suns on leap day, added 34 more in the Rockets’ next game, and remained scorching through the rest of the schedule.

Over his final 24 games, Green averaged 24.5 points per game—a top-20 mark in that span—with much better efficiency (58 percent true shooting). Over six weeks, Green looked every bit the player who went no. 2 in a loaded 2021 draft. Whether he can sustain that performance across a full season remains to be seen—plenty of late-season surges are flukish by-products of opponent tanking—but the Rockets need to figure out what level of player Green is soon, not least because he’s up for a contract extension. Houston has oodles of exciting young players, but Alperen Sengun is the only one who’s broken out on a star trajectory thus far. If Green can get there as well, the Rockets might, er, leap this year, too.

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Golden State Warriors: 7.6

It’s hard to fathom that the Warriors could lead the NBA in 3-point attempts after losing Klay Thompson, the second-greatest 3-point shooter in league history. But Golden State ranks second in preseason 3-point attempt rate, and the team’s personnel might be ready to fill the Thompson-sized hole in the rotation with even more 3s.

That surrogate production starts with Buddy Hield, perhaps the best one-to-one replacement in the league, at least when it comes to long-range proficiency. Thompson is a career 41 percent 3-point shooter on 7.6 attempts per game; Hield, who joined Golden State in a summer sign-and-trade, is at 40 percent on 7.6 attempts.

Free agent signee De’Anthony Melton is also a willing and capable shooter (37 percent for his career, with more than five attempts per game three seasons in a row). Sophomore Brandin Podziemski is ready to take another offensive step forward after shooting 38.5 percent from distance as a rookie (and 44 percent in his final college season). And even the more paint-oriented Jonathan Kuminga appears to be embracing the arc to a much greater degree; last season, 19 percent of Kuminga’s shot attempts were 3-pointers, but that ratio is 48 percent through three preseason games.

Los Angeles Lakers: 147

The Lakers’ two stars were aberrantly healthy last season: LeBron James’s 71 games played were his most since 2017-18 (his last season in Cleveland), while Anthony Davis’s 76 represented a new career high. Add up those two numbers, and the All-NBA duo combined for 147 games played.

For comparison, here’s how many games LeBron and Davis combined for in the three prior seasons:

2023: 111
2022: 96
2021: 81 (in a shortened season, but they still would’ve maxed out at 101 if the schedule had been 82 games long)

Or, put another way, here’s the combined percentage of games that LeBron and Davis have missed:

2024: 10 percent
2023: 32 percent
2022: 41 percent
2021: 44 percent

And yet, despite that incredible health from a pair of 30-something veterans, the Lakers still managed to land only the no. 7 seed for the second season in a row. The franchise is betting that roster continuity and new coach JJ Redick will yield improvements in 2024-25—but what might happen in a hyper-competitive landscape if LeBron and Davis miss their typical share of games?

Los Angeles Clippers: 51

With Paul George gone and Kawhi Leonard still injured, the most interesting aspect of this Clippers season is the team’s new arena. And the Intuit Dome’s most exciting feature—with the possible exception of all of Steve Ballmer’s toilets—is the Wall, advertised as a “thundering tower of Clipper fandom, 51 rows high, 4,500 seats deep. … where opposing team gear is absolutely not allowed.” Will the Wall actually provide the Clippers with a meaningful home-court advantage? Will it look imposing on TV? It’s not clear yet, but it at least offers a reason to tune into Clippers games whether Leonard takes the court or not.

San Antonio Spurs: 77

NBA.com published its annual general manager survey last week, and Victor Wembanyama was the overwhelming winner of two different questions. He won a plurality 40 percent of the vote when GMs were asked for the NBA’s best defensive player. (Second place was all the way down at 10 percent.) And he won a majority 77 percent of the vote when GMs were asked, “If you were starting a franchise today and could sign any player in the NBA, who would it be?” (Second place, again, was all the way down at 10 percent.)

If that seems like a gigantic margin for a player just entering his second season, well, it is. Here is every other player in the survey’s history (dating back to 2002) who reached 50 percent or higher in the latter question:

• Shaquille O’Neal, 2002 (age 30)
• Tim Duncan, 2003 (age 27)
• LeBron James, 2006-09 and 2012-14 (ages 22-25 and 28-30)
• Kevin Durant, 2010 (22)
• Anthony Davis, 2015 (22)
• Giannis Antetokounmpo, 2019 and 2022 (ages 25 and 28)

Wembanyama is entering his age-21 season, so he’s a year younger than LeBron, Durant, and Davis were when they first received this recognition. The bigger question now is how many years in a row Wemby will be GMs’ top choice to build a team around.

Atlanta Hawks: 2028

At the end of the 2023-24 season, the Hawks might have seemed like a decent candidate to blow up an ill-fitting roster and rebuild. They hadn’t won a playoff series in three years, Trae Young and Dejounte Murray hadn’t jelled, and, most of all, they’d just won the draft lottery for the no. 1 pick. And yet, Atlanta settled for trading Murray, keeping Young, drafting Zaccharie Risacher, and at least theoretically attempting to contend in the short term.

Why? Because the Hawks don’t control their own first-round pick until 2028; because of the first Murray trade, the Spurs control all the Hawks’ firsts until then, receiving them either outright (in 2025 and 2027) or via swap rights (in 2026). So even though Atlanta’s roster still doesn’t make much sense, nor does it have many building blocks beyond Young, Risacher, and rising star Jalen Johnson, don’t expect the Hawks to tank anytime soon.

Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Charlotte Hornets: 42

LaMelo Ball’s five-year max contract extension goes into effect this season. This would have seemed like a fantastic development after the 2020-21 season, when Ball cruised to a comfortable Rookie of the Year victory (over second-place Anthony Edwards and third-place Tyrese Haliburton) and looked like a budding NBA star.

But it looks a lot more precarious now that Ball’s development has plateaued and his health has faltered. After he appeared in just 22 games last season, he’s now missed 42 percent of Hornets games since he was drafted. That’s a major concern for his future availability because past injuries tend to predict future ones. Moreover, Ball’s absences have also cost him valuable development time—especially because he entered the NBA with so little high-level amateur experience.

Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner have played 1,500 more career minutes than LaMelo—and they were drafted a year after the young Hornet. Paolo Banchero has played almost as many career minutes as LaMelo—and he was drafted two years after.

The Hornets need Ball to stay on the floor, and they need him to flash brighter developmental signs than he has in the last couple of injury-marred seasons. If he can’t, they might choose to build around Brandon Miller as their primary long-term cornerstone instead.

Toronto Raptors: 62

Few fans south of the U.S.-Canada border noticed, but while OG Anunoby was dazzling Madison Square Garden crowds toward the end of last season, RJ Barrett was phenomenal after being traded to his home country. In 32 games as a Raptor, Barrett averaged 21.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game (all would’ve been career highs over a full season), with a 62 percent true shooting mark (his previous career high was only 54 percent). Numerous advanced stats affirm it as the best stretch of his career.

Barrett followed up that stretch with a strong Olympic showing, as he averaged 19.8 points per game on 58/44/84 shooting splits. He won’t play for the rest of the preseason after injuring his shoulder in a game last week, but the Raptors hope that his personal momentum carries over from the spring and summer into next season as they retool around a younger core.

Utah Jazz: 27

The past two Utah seasons have followed a similar pattern: The Jazz start off unexpectedly competitive before fading or tanking down the stretch. In 2022-23, a 29-31 record at the All-Star break gave way to an 8-14 mark thereafter; in 2023-24, a 26-30 pre-All-Star record served as prologue to a 5-21 collapse. Added together, the Jazz have a 47 percent win rate before the All-Star break in Will Hardy’s two seasons and a mere 27 percent win rate after.

That pattern, while cynical and nakedly geared toward a better draft position, at least makes some sense given Utah’s position in its rebuild. And who knows, maybe the Jazz won’t need to engage in such chicanery this season because they already look much worse than almost every other team in the West!

Chicago Bulls: 138,000,000

DeRozan is gone. Caruso is gone. Zach LaVine should be next as the Bulls retool. But even an athletic, efficient 25-points-per-game scorer hasn’t fetched any compelling offers coming off foot surgery in February, with three years and $138 million left on his contract (including a player option for 2026-27).

It’s clear that a trade would be in the best interest of all involved parties—for LaVine, who wants to play for a contender, and for the Bulls, who want young guards Coby White, Josh Giddey, and Ayo Dosunmu to handle the ball as much as possible. But the stalemate will continue until LaVine can prove he’s worth a spot—and such a large salary slot—on a team with championship ambitions.

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Detroit Pistons: 24

The Pistons lost 28 games in a row last season. They fired Monty Williams—whom they’d signed to the then-largest coach contract in NBA history—after just one season, leaving them on the hook for $65 million more. They last won a playoff game when George W. Bush was president.

And yet, perhaps the most galling statistic about this recent Pistons putrescence is that they’ve won 24 percent of their games over the past five seasons. They have 49 fewer wins (almost 10 a year!) over that span than any other team. And that 24 percent win rate is the worst over a five-season stretch in NBA history other than the Vancouver Grizzlies from the mid-’90s through early 2000s.

That horrible half-decade for the Grizzlies immediately precipitated the franchise’s relocation to Memphis. I’m not saying the Pistons are bound for another city anytime soon, but as the Lions and Tigers rise, the Pistons had better start winning some games soon or else be forgotten in their own city.

Portland Trail Blazers: 334

For a team with the worst win projection in the West, the Trail Blazers are surprisingly stacked with intriguing rotation players. Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Anfernee Simons are all worth watching in the backcourt. Jerami Grant and Deni Avdija are solid swingmen. And the Blazers boast a whopping four quality centers, in Deandre Ayton, Robert Williams III, no. 7 pick Donovan Clingan, and rising sophomore Duop Reath.

The four bigs stand a combined 334 inches tall—that’s 27 feet, 10 inches—and given that Reath is the only one with a jump shot, it’s hard to imagine how they’ll all receive the requisite playing time. In other words, Portland seems ripe for a trade, and with several contenders in need of a center (most obviously New Orleans, and possibly Boston with Porzingis out), it shouldn’t take long to find a match.

Washington Wizards: 15

There’s no need to complicate the Wizards portion of this piece: Washington won 15 games last season, the fewest in franchise history—and that might not have been the team’s rock bottom. It’s highly plausible that the Wizards will be even worse in 2024-25, both because Cooper Flagg offers a much greater incentive to tank than any prospect in the last draft and because the 2023-24 Wizards’ three most valuable players, per VORP, are all gone: Tyus Jones, Daniel Gafford, and Deni Avdija. Replacing those high-quality role players are a whole lot of unproven youngsters. (Malcolm Brogdon, a theoretical addition from the Avdija trade, has already been injured in the preseason.)

Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images

Brooklyn Nets: 33

There aren’t many reasons to watch Nets games this season. The team even re-acquired its own 2025 pick from the Rockets in anticipation of a robust tanking effort. But hey, it could be worth tuning in to see Cam Thomas aim for the scoring title!

Last season, the Nets guard averaged 22.5 points per game with the 15th-highest usage in the league, according to PBP Stats. But when he didn’t share the court with Mikal Bridges, Thomas’s usage rate spiked to 33 percent, which only Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic bested over the full season, per PBP. Now Bridges is gone, leaving a vacancy for the Nets’ primary scorer role that Thomas will happily fulfill.