We’re roughly three weeks out from the conclusion of the NBA regular season and the start of the playoffs. With that, it’s time for another installment of Contender Tiers.
This round will be slightly different than our last edition. Eastern Conference Contender Tiers are featured today, followed by the Western Conference tiers tomorrow.
As always, a note that this is not a power ranking of the entire conference. Only teams that have a chance to make a run in the postseason appear here, though your mileage may vary on who qualifies.
Tier 1: Don’t Call it a Comeback
Boston Celtics
To borrow the rest of the line from the poet LL Cool J, they’ve been here for years. And yet this wasn’t supposed to happen. We were led to believe that this would be a gap year for the Celtics, a season to hit reset on the fly and then compete again moving forward. Jayson Tatum ruptured his Achilles in the postseason. And then during the offseason, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens jettisoned Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet to avoid paying roughly half a billion dollars for an aging roster that was supposed to be without its best player for the entire season. No chance those guys could compete, right?
Wrong. They’ve competed. And then some. Without Tatum, Jaylen Brown stepped forward and is having a career year. Derrick White has remained one of the best and most versatile defenders in the NBA while being asked to do more on the offensive end than ever before. And Joe Mazzulla reached deep into his coaching bag, regularly playing 11 or more of his guys upwards of 15 minutes per night. Go through a Celtics box score on any given evening and you’re as likely to see a big line from Luka Garza or Jordan Walsh as Payton Pritchard or Sam Hauser. (The egalitarian approach has led some of the addled Celtics fans in my life to sweat about playing time for Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman now that Tatum is back.)
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And oh yeah, Tatum is back. After missing just 10 months, he’s averaging close to a 19-point double-double with 3.3 assists and a steal in just under 30 minutes per game since his return. He still needs to knock a little rust off and shoot with better efficiency, but with approximately three weeks left before the postseason, he still has plenty of time to find his form.
There’s a reason the Celtics are the betting favorites to win the conference on FanDuel at +185. They’re second in offensive rating and have climbed to fourth in defense. And — with apologies to newly acquired center Nikola Vučević, who is out several weeks with a broken finger — all their most important pieces are healthy. This is the team no one in the East wants to play in the playoffs.
Tier 2 — Show Some Respect
Detroit Pistons
Despite leading the conference for almost the entire season, the Pistons have only the fourth-best odds to advance to the NBA Finals at +700. Not surprisingly, that number has steadily inched up since Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung. Without him at the controls, it’s hard to imagine the Pistons generating enough offense to do damage in the postseason. And even with Cunningham, some cracks were beginning to show for the Pistons.
But to their credit, they’ve won all four games without their All-NBA lead guard, including a home victory over the red-hot Los Angeles Lakers on Monday night that snapped LA’s nine-game win streak. That victory increased the Pistons’ lead over the Celtics to five games for the top slot in the East. They also have the second-best point differential in the league; only the Oklahoma City Thunder have been better.
The question for the playoffs is, how soon will they get Cunningham back and what condition will he be in? Jalen Duren has taken the leap and is headed for a handsome payday this offseason, but he’s obviously at his best when Cunningham guides the way for him and everyone else. J.B. Bickerstaff has done a masterful job getting his guys to buy in, especially on the defensive end — but will that be enough for them to white-knuckle their way to the finals?
For all their flaws on offense — a shortage of 3-point shooters and a glaring need for consistent playmakers and shot creators beyond Cunningham — the Pistons are still ninth in offensive rating. They leverage their great positional size to dominate down low, where they’re first in points in the paint and third in opponents’ points in the paint. It’s not always pretty, but there’s something to be said for remaining atop the standings this long.
Tier 3 — The Other Two
New York Knicks
The Knicks are higher in the standings but have longer betting odds to win the conference. New York is just barely ahead of the Pistons at +390, while the Cavs are listed at +270. Some of that price might be a reflection of how inconsistent the Knicks have been at times this season.
After winning the NBA Cup, the Knicks hit a bit of a skid, only to snap out of it and go 15-7 in January, their best record in any month this season. Since the New Year, they’re ninth in offensive rating, while their previously suspect defense has figured it out and climbed to fourth. The big question is whether the defense holds up during the playoffs.
Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are once again posting big offensive numbers — though KAT’s 55.0 eFG% is the worst of his career — but it’s hard not to forget that those two were ruthlessly hunted on defense during last year’s playoffs. The other concern for the Knicks is that they’re just 20-19 against teams .500 or better. (Spoiler: they’re gonna face some of those in the postseason.) The Pistons have been a particularly bad matchup for the Knicks to date. Detroit is 3-0 against New York and has outscored the Knicks by a total of 84 points in those meetings.
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavs got off to a slow start. Cleveland was just three games over .500 through December. But like the Knicks, they’ve played much better basketball since the New Year, going 25-11 with the second-best offensive rating. The Cavs took a big swing at the trade deadline, swapping 26-year-old Darius Garland for 36-year-old James Harden. They also rightly realized that depth was an issue and bolstered their bench by adding Dennis Schröder and Keon Ellis.
On paper, all those moves make sense for Cleveland, but they also increase the pressure for this to work. The Cavs crashed out of last year’s playoffs in the second round after leading the conference for much of the season. That was a deeply disappointing result. Anything short of the conference finals this time around would represent a similar failure. To that end, which version of Harden will the Cavs see in the playoffs — the one who acclimated immediately and seamlessly when paired with Donovan Mitchell, or the one who disappeared during critical postseason moments in previous stops with the Clippers, 76ers and Rockets?
Tier 4 — The Longshots
Everyone else
This is a four-team race. It would be hugely surprising if anyone other than the four listed above wins the East, but for academic purposes, let’s run through some dark-horse candidates.
The Atlanta Hawks are one of the hottest teams in the NBA. They’ve won 13 of their last 14 games and climbed into sixth place in the East. Alas, Jalen Johnson has missed the last two games with shoulder soreness. As causes for concern go, his health is at the top of the list.
You know who has the best net rating and the fourth-best record since Jan. 1? The Charlotte Hornets. I’m still not convinced that a team that plays LaMelo Ball heavy minutes can be taken seriously, and the Hornets remain the No. 10 seed at the moment. That’s a long way to go, but they have played well of late.
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The Orlando Magic have lost five in a row, including an inexcusable two-point home loss to the Indiana Pacers on Monday. That snapped a 16-game losing streak for Indiana. The Magic have also been without Franz Wagner for much of the season due to injury. He remains without a timeline to return. It’s hard to believe in the Magic given all that.
As for the Philadelphia 76ers, Paul George returns from his 25-game suspension on Wednesday, and Tyrese Maxey was diagnosed with a tendon injury in his right pinky finger and may or may not return in time for the playoffs. Meanwhile, do you know Joel Embiid’s health status? That was rhetorical. Of course you don’t. No one ever does.
It’s difficult to imagine any of these teams winning a first-round matchup against Detroit, Boston, New York or Cleveland.
