Ranking the Top 10 NBA Teams For the 2024-2025 Season

Last year was a lost season for the Memphis Grizzlies, who got under 80 games from Ja Morant, Marcus Smart, and Desmond Bane combined. That’s not sustainable, and they should take a massive leap forward as all of their key pieces from their contention years are intact. We also saw some standout young players get some valuable playing time with all of these injuries, such as Vince Williams Jr. and Scotty Pippen Jr. look like excellent role players who could complement the returning stars.

Jaren Jackson Jr. and Marcus Smart are two of the best defensive players in the NBA while Ja Morant is a superstar with excellent scoring abilities. Memphis went 6-3 in the nine games he played and have the spacing and defense around their star guard to compete with anybody in the Western Conference. Zach Edey, who has dominated the collegiate scene for the past few years, joins Memphis as well and could be their starting center right away.

The Milwaukee Bucks looked poised to contend with the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals until they made an abrupt coaching change and hired Doc Rivers. What ensued was a disastrous stretch of hoops which ended with a first-round exit at the hands of the Indiana Pacers, but they were very banged up for that series. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s late-season injuries have hurt the Bucks in each of their last three playoff runs, so preserving his body should be a priority.

An immediate hurdle they’ll have to overcome is trying to improve a roster that was downright brutal defensively, and while Gary Trent Jr. adds to their scoring, he isn’t a particularly brilliant defender. The Bucks are relying on Brook Lopez to be a rim protector and excellent defender despite his old age, and Giannis will be asked to do a lot of the work on the defensive side of the ball as well. Khris Middleton enjoyed a strong year but he’s 33 and has injury concerns as well.

The Cleveland Cavaliers should be happy with how they performed last season, they got past the first round and were able to look somewhat competitive against a historically dominant Boston Celtics’ team. The problem? As other Eastern Conference teams got stronger, it felt like Cleveland remained stagnant, and they didn’t prove to be much better than teams like the 76ers or Knicks as they finished with fewer wins than New York and only finished above Philadelphia due to the Joel Embiid injury.

Here’s what I do know: Donovan Mitchell is absolutely that dude. He’s one of the best players in the league and almost looks better in Cleveland than he did in Utah. This is a true force at the guard position and has good supporting pieces around him, but they need to finally perform at a level where they can firmly consider themselves the biggest threat to Boston before I push them higher on this list, although I don’t believe the gap between teams up until the top 4-5 are really notable.

Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Paul George are one of the most fearsome trios we’ve seen in the last few years, so why aren’t the 76ers on the top half of this list? Depth is important when it comes to the postseason, and they have Caleb Martin as their starting power forward, so we’re not off to a particularly great start when it comes to roster strength outside of their main three guys. Retaining Kelly Oubre is great for that lineup but he also isn’t a particularly elite role player, just a strong one.

The bench leaves a lot to be desired, and this team will likely struggle without Joel Embiid on the court, but not nearly as much as it did in the postseason. Joel Embiid was a +58 in terms of Net Rating. Think about that; a 58 points per 100 possession difference when he was on and off the court. Paul George should greatly improve those minutes, and considering how close each game was against the Knicks in the first-round, they’ve covered up the sole reason they were eliminated so early pretty well.

Last year was a breaking out party for the Minnesota Timberwolves who knocked out the defending NBA Champions before falling short in the Western Conference Finals. They’ve just traded Karl-Anthony Towns away to the New York Knicks, getting Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to try and bolster a roster led by superstar guard Anthony Edwards. Rudy Gobert remains one of the best defensive players in the game still, and role players like Mike Conley and Naz Reid should remain excellent contributors as well.

This team led all of basketball in Adjusted Defensive Rating (108.9) by a margin larger than the gap between 2nd and 10th. They are a historically dominant team on that side of the basketball, but they’ll have to find ways to improve their perimeter play as they finished in the bottom 10 in three-point attempts despite making a high-percentage of their shots. Dallas killed them thanks to their perimeter-oriented offense, and that’s the kind of offense you can expect for any top contender outside of the Denver Nuggets.

The full-season numbers weren’t glamorous for the Dallas Mavericks, who were 14th in Net Rating, but they dramatically improved their roster at the deadline. One of the areas they wanted to improve was from beyond the arc, which made sense as their role players shot unsustainably high percentages that peetered out once they faced a premier perimeter defense like Boston’s. Klay Thompson should help on that front, but he won’t provide the same defensive value he did during the Warriors’ dominant run in the 2010s.

Luka Doncic is one of the best players in the league, Kyrie Irving was a remarkable co-star, and their interior play greatly improved with Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively in the fold. I don’t view the Mavericks as the best team in the Western Conference heading into the season, but they’ve certainly found a recipe for success that could help them win a title for the first time since 2011. Their starting lineup has great synergy and their bench has some interesting pieces, their front office deserves tons of credit for what they’ve assembled.

New York was active this offseason, trading for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns while locking up Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby for the next few years. They finished fifth in Net Rating last year and saw a massive improvement after they swapped out RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for OG Anunoby. Losing Isaiah Hartenstein is a tough blow, but adding Karl-Anthony Towns in his place should allow for Jalen Brunson to have more space to operate in the paint.

The addition of Bridges allows for the Knicks to run three defensive wings with positional versatility and shooting abilities around their new star duo, and their starting five should be one of the best in the game. If Mitchell Robinson recovers for the second-half, their bench gets even stronger and they can mix-match their lineup to get bigger if needed, since KAT can play the four when needed. Miles McBride will lead a bench with some question marks, but their flurry of vet minimum additions could provide some scoring.

The Denver Nuggets have three-time NBA MVP and best player on the planet Nikola Jokic leading their squad, so I automatically view them very favorably. It doesn’t hurt that Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon enjoyed brilliant seasons last year and project to remain excellent, and it definitely helps that Michael Porter Jr. played a career-high 81 games while remaining a great floor spacer. For all of the good here, there are some serious risks that they’ve had to take.

Losing KCP stings, and Christian Braun will have to take a pretty sizable leap in year three in order to make up for that production. They’ve also chosen to add Russell Westbrook, who doesn’t help their lack of spacing but does help their bench depth. The former MVP was excellent for Los Angeles Clippers as a sixth man, serving as a great glue guy for that team and doing a great job of providing a high-intensity player whenever the lineup needs it. Denver is strong, but they have some stiff competition ahead of them as well.

If you were to declare winner of the offseason, it would be hard for me to argue against the Oklahoma City Thunder and what they accomplished. First, they traded Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso, a hilariously unbalanced trade in terms of value that swaps out a negative player for one of the best defensive players in the NBA. Then, they acquired Isaiah Hartenstein in free agency, who was arguably the New York Knicks’ most impactful player outside of Jalen Brunson last year.

Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren are star-caliber players, Isaiah Joe is one of the best shooters in the NBA, Lu Dort is a great bench player, and Cason Wallace could take a leap this season. Oh yea, and they have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has become a top-5 player in the game. They are the best team in the Western Conference, and their elimination in the second-round of the playoffs could have served as the valuable experience this young group needed to become a dominant force. With shades of last year’s Boston Celtics, OKC is perfectly crafted for the modern NBA.

Was this really a question? Not only did they win the NBA Finals last year, but they kept all of their best players as well. This team was historically dominant; do not let anyone convince you that this team is anything like the previous four champions before them. They were tied with the 2017 Warriors for the third-best Net Rating of all time (11.6), a team who dogwalked a strong 2017 Cavaliers team led by LeBron James. It’s one of the best rosters I have ever seen in my lifetime, and I’m not sure what to really say about them.

Jayson Tatum is a top-10 player surrounded by excellent players, but he’s fully taken advantage of that this season. This team is dominant, no one closed the gap they’ve created, and they should be the favorites to go back-to-back this year and win the NBA Finals. Unless we see some historically bad injury luck, I am penciling them in to go to at least make a trip to the Eastern Conference Final.