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The NBA comes at you fast. One moment the Knicks are riding high off their first championship in 53 years, the next they're off to a sluggish start and scrambling to recover from losing their first three games. The Thunder went into the season rightly hailed as one of the deepest teams in the NBA — then had that assumption tested in harsh fashion after sustaining injuries to three of their five starters, with Jalen Williams (ankle and fibula) and Cason Wallace (shoulder) expected to miss most, if not all, of the season, and Chet Holmgren (knee) out at least two months.
While OKC suffered the most brutal blows on the injury front, the Thunder are hardly alone there. Several big name stars have already gone down and missed multiple games, among them Anthony Edwards (knee), Kawhi Leonard (knee), Tyrese Haliburton (hamstring), Jalen Duren (hamstring), Paolo Banchero (ankle), Jaren Jackson Jr (knee) and Ja Morant (hamstring).
The net effect is that an NBA season that was already expected to be competitive and wide open — particularly in the East, where the conference is as deep as it's been in recent memory — has been thrown into flux. While the Spurs and Thunder remain the betting favorites to win it all, the Sixers, Knicks, Celtics, Rockets, Raptors and Timberwolves are bunched up right behind them, with the Nuggets, Pistons, Cavaliers, Lakers and Blazers not far behind.
In the actual standings, the new-look Sixers have won seven of their first eight and are perched atop the Eastern Conference, while the surprising Memphis Grizzlies got out to a hot start in the West and were the last team in the league to lose their first game after getting upended by the Pelicans in overtime at home on Monday night. Meanwhile, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Heat are under .500 and still trying to figure it out, while the Wolves and Warriors are just two teams out of several trying to stay afloat until key members of their respective teams return to the floor.
Various prediction models have differing opinions on what all this means in the long run. Those forecasts vary wildly, with one favoring the Raptors to come out of the East and another giving four other teams a better shot to win the conference than Toronto.
Predicting how all this will shake out in the end is difficult at best and folly at worst — so naturally that's exactly what we'll try to do over the course of the season.
This is our first installment of semi-regular NBA seeding predictions -- the NBA version of Bracketology -- where we'll give our best guess on where teams will be slotted once the playoffs roll around. The methodology is super scientific: watch a lot of basketball, consult with the mountain of stats and data available, and then eyeball it. Your mileage may vary.
Projected 2027 NBA playoff field: Nov. 3
Despite Duren playing all of 38 minutes this season, the Pistons have reminded everyone why they were the top seed in the East last season and have designs on something similar again this year. Detroit has proven to be a quality regular-season team, but the Pistons are still in desperate need of more shot creators and scoring to help ease the burden on Cade Cunningham. Their front office has work to do to level up the roster and avoid another disappointing postseason.
After what could charitably be called a tumultuous offseason, the Celtics once again look like a competitive, competent organization (apart from their struggles in Houston on Monday in the second night of a back-to-back) that figures to be a tough out in the East. Jayson Tatum is playing well enough to openly wonder "why not me?" when it comes to the MVP conversation, while Paul George's numbers to start the season look a lot more like the PG we saw in his final campaign with the Clippers rather than (mercifully for him and Boston) the lackluster version who was only intermittently available during his time in Philadelphia.
There were questions about the new-look Sixers going into the season, mainly how four big-name stars in the starting lineup would co-exist. The answer to date is that they've figured out ways to win when things have sometimes looked bleak. The Sixers lead the league in clutch victories, with six of their seven wins coming in games decided by five points or fewer with under five minutes to go. More surprising: they're top five in defensive rating and have allowed the second fewest points per game.
On paper, the Knicks have the best starting five in the NBA. That hasn't changed. Even though they didn't start the season looking like the dominant version of themselves that ripped through the playoffs en route to a title, the talent in New York remains undeniable.
The Raptors were a good defensive team last year and figure to be so again, but how far Toronto goes this season will be directly tied to Kawhi's availability — something that has been largely unknowable for much of the last decade of Leonard's career. As for the Cavaliers, their starting five is among the best in the league. After that, the roster gets thin and the questions begin to mount for Kenny Atkinson and the analytics team.
Maybe this is disrespecting the Hawks by lumping them with three teams that hardly inspire confidence, but the East feels like it has a solid six and then a pretty squishy bunch jockeying for play-in positioning. Miami fans won't like being in this group either — even though members of the Heat overreacted to their ugly start just like the rest of us and wondered aloud about the floor spacing and fit between Giannis and Bam Adebayo. Banchero is once again hurt in Orlando, but even when he's healthy, he and Franz Wagner (who is still searching for his elusive 3-point shot) have achieved exactly nothing together. The Wizards have been surprisingly plucky to begin the season, but if you're skeptical about Trae Young and Anthony Davis being on the floor enough to actually influence their record and help them sneak into the play-in, you aren't alone. Feel free to swap out the Hornets for one of these last-chance slots; Charlotte has been without the services of Kon Knueppel (hamstring) thus far and would undoubtedly benefit from his return.
Not pictured: the Pacers, who will be going nowhere fast if Haliburton and Ivica Zubac (ankle) don't get back on the floor sooner than later and stay there.
The Spurs are the biggest beneficiaries of the league-wide injury virus that has yet to infect them. The defending Western Conference champs are healthy, which is more than most teams can say. They still need to figure out the crowded and sometimes clunky backcourt fit between De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, but as long as Victor Wembanyama is available, the West is once again theirs for the taking.
The Rockets were sorely in need of guard play last season after Fred VanVleet missed the season with a knee injury. He's back, and Houston has looked stout at both ends of the floor to begin the season (including Monday evening's comfortable home win over the Celtics). But is FVV's return enough to boost the Rockets and propel them to a deep postseason run, or does Houston need to make a move in a conference that is suddenly up for grabs outside of San Antonio? There will be endless rumors between now and the trade deadline about how the Rockets could use someone like Kyrie Irving — which does not mean the Mavericks will be keen on moving him.
If there's any team that could withstand losing three of its five starters for a significant chunk of the season, it's OKC. Sam Presti has done a masterful job making the Thunder into the deepest team in the league, but this represents the biggest challenge OKC has faced since developing into a perennial contender. How much weight can Shai Gilgeous-Alexander be reasonably expected to carry, and will guys like Ajay Mitchell, Isaiah Hartenstein, Alex Caruso, Jared McCain, and rookies Aday Mara and Bennett Stirtz be able to fill the void created in the absence of Williams, Wallace and Holmgren?
Luka Dončić is off to a scorching start, leads the league in scoring and has played better defense at times (and doesn't mind saying so himself), though even JJ Redick has openly questioned the roster and what the ancillary parts can be reasonably trusted with on a nightly basis. The Nuggets are once again thin after the starting five and are heavily reliant on Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray. And through the first five games, the Blazers boasted the third-best point differential in the league — but also lost Morant to a hamstring injury that will keep him out of the lineup for a while. At least it's Dame Time in Portland again.
There were those of us who doubted the fit with Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball and wondered whether the duo could make the Wolves into contenders — and that was before the team announced that Edwards would undergo an unexpected in-season knee surgery. That's asking Ball to do a lot in his absence. Warriors rookie Yaxel Lendeborg has played well and talked even better, but Golden State is still painfully thin while waiting for Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody to return from knee injuries (to say nothing of Kristaps Porzingis, whose status remains a mystery). Kyrie's name has been unsurprisingly floated in various trade rumors, but the Mavericks just might be competitive enough to entertain keeping him around. After moving on from Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr and Morant, the Grizzlies were supposed to be rebooting the franchise around rookie Cam Boozer. Memphis benefited mightily from a paper-thin schedule to start with wins over the Jazz (twice), Kings (twice), Warriors and Blazers before the Pelicans finally handed them their first L. It only gets harder from here — but even qualifying for the play-in would represent a successful season in Memphis.
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