Way-Too-Soon 2024-25 NBA Power Rankings, Post NBA Finals

The Boston Celtics secured their 18th NBA championship on Monday. We’re mere hours from them being crowned, but it’s never too early to think about next season.

A lot can change between now and then. We have the draft, free agency and trades to get through. Rosters will look a lot different in October.

But we can still sort through the 2024-25 season with a gut feel and some anticipation for how the next few months will play out.

Based on those factors and the ones we used throughout the 2023-24 campaign—team and individual numbers, recent performance, championship chances (with an assist from FanDuel Sportsbook) and plenty of subjectivity—this is how all 30 teams stack up for next season.

Fresh off a 15-67 season, the Washington Wizards secured the No. 2 overall pick in what’s been described as one of the worst draft classes the NBA has ever seen.

That could mean more hero ball from Jordan Poole, especially if the Wizards trade Kyle Kuzma this summer. That’ll likely translate to a lot of losses.

Sure, there’s some upside with Bilal Coulibaly, Deni Avdija and whomever the Wizards land in this draft, but these power rankings are solely based on projected success in 2024-25. The Wizards intentionally aren’t focused on that at the moment.

At 14-68, the Detroit Pistons had the worst record in the NBA this season. And at the trade deadline in February, they traded two of their more effective veterans (Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanović).

More minutes for their young players could mean another year with fewer than 20 wins. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Pistons could have north of $60 million in cap space this offseason. If they use it on the right supplementary players to take advantage of Cade Cunningham’s playmaking, they could be in for some incremental improvement.

Steps forward for Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson are potentially in play, too. But even decent improvement from all of their young players probably wouldn’t push the Pistons too far from the bottom of the standings.

The Portland Trail Blazers, who went 21-61 this past season, are currently on track to be a luxury-tax team in 2024-25.

They have plenty of time to get under that line by moving a veteran such as Jerami Grant, Malcolm Brogdon or even Anfernee Simons and Deandre Ayton. However, all of them stayed put this season, which suggests Portland’s front office is comfortable slow-playing this rebuild.

Still, the Blazers will likely find a way to entrust up-and-comers like Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe with more playmaking opportunities. Neither one is beyond their NBA growing pains.

LaMelo Ball’s availability will dictate how close the Charlotte Hornets come to hitting their ceiling. That’s been a problem for the past two years.

Ball played 75 games in his second NBA season, but he’s played only 58 over the past two years combined. Even if his on-off numbers haven’t painted him as a wildly impactful player, his per-game averages of 23.5 points, 8.3 assists and 5.9 rebounds since the start of 2022-23 aren’t easy to replace.

If Ball and Mark Williams each play 70-plus games in 2024-25, Charlotte could have an interesting pick-and-roll combo in the middle of the floor to work off of. Even if those two struggle to stay on the floor and the Hornets pile up a ton of losses again, they’ll still have at least one reason for optimism going forward.

Rookie Brandon Miller, a 6’9″ forward with shades of Paul George to his game, averaged 17.3 points, 2.5 threes and 2.4 assists per game in 2023-24. It’s possible that he has even more upside to unlock than Ball.

The Toronto Raptors probably made the right call trading OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam this past season. They weren’t going to compete for a title led by those two, and they have a potential cornerstone talent in Scottie Barnes who needs on-the-job training in that role.

The 6’7″ forward can guard just about any spot on the floor, is a real point forward and just made the All-Star team in his age-22 season.

Although Toronto fans will likely have to exercise some patience through this rebuild, the rebuilt core already showed some signs of life.

When Barnes shared the floor with RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley (both of whom came over in the Anunoby deal), the Raptors were plus-3.8 points per 100 possessions.

It’s hard to know exactly how the Brooklyn Nets will play this offseason.

The current group is terrible. There’s almost no chance Brooklyn will make the playoffs if it runs back the same core, especially if Nic Claxton signs elsewhere. After the All-Star break, the Nets had the eighth-worst net rating in the league.

However, the Houston Rockets have control over all of the Nets’ own first-round picks through 2027, which makes it hard for them to tank. That means Brooklyn can justify win-now moves this offseason. And the East is weak enough for the Nets to jump a tier or two, especially if they swung a deal for someone like Donovan Mitchell to pair with Mikal Bridges.

The star-chasing path has yet to work out for Brooklyn, though. The more prudent path may be trading Bridges for long-term assets and then being patient for a few years.

For the second year in a row, the post-Rudy Gobert-and-Donovan Mitchell Utah Jazz were better than expected in the early months of the season before eventually falling out of the playoff mix. Beyond some temporary good vibes, all those decent starts got them was worse position in back-to-back NBA draft lotteries.

With Cooper Flagg and Ace Bailey likely entering the NBA draft in 2025, Utah ideally would be even worse next season. But a beginning-to-end tank job might not be possible with Lauri Markkanen on the roster.

Unfortunately, the Jazz are in a dilemma faced by plenty of small- to mid-market teams. They’re likely never going to be a major free-agency destination. Stars have to come through the draft or trades.

Markkanen came via the latter, and if the Jazz trade him for more picks, there’s no guarantee they’ll quickly get another talent like him. So, unfortunately for Utah fans clamoring for better draft odds, we could be looking at a similar campaign in 2024-25.

A full-scale rebuild is long overdue for the Chicago Bulls. The DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević core has not worked.

Now, it may be too late to even get anything for DeRozan. He’s a free agent this offseason, and re-signing him almost certainly wouldn’t prevent another year of mediocrity.

It’s time to let him go (or sign-and-trade him, in a perfect world) and trade LaVine, Vučević and Alex Caruso—who probably has more value than the others—for whatever they can get.

Let Coby White and whomever the Bulls select with the No. 11 pick in this year’s draft have the run of the place for a while. Go into asset-accumulation mode and don’t come out until there’s a young, bona fide cornerstone-level talent in the Windy City.

The basketball gods smiled down on the Atlanta Hawks in May, when they jumped a whopping nine spots in the draft lottery to snag the first overall pick.

In most years, that’d feel like a massive win. Even in this one, when the incoming class isn’t celebrated like most, it’s still better than staying at No. 10.

The Hawks have the first crack at finding a star in this draft, and he should be surrounded by more veteran talent than most No. 1 overall picks.

Even if Atlanta trades one Dejounte Murray or Trae Young (and it should), the other star guard, Jalen Johnson and Onyeka Okongwu will all be around to presumably keep the Hawks competitive.

The San Antonio Spurs had only 22 wins and the NBA’s sixth-worst net rating this season, but there are plenty of reasons to think they could jump into play-in contention in 2024-25.

The biggest one, of course, is Victor Wembanyama. As a 20-year-old rookie, he had a legitimate All-NBA case with eye-popping averages of 21.4 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 3.6 blocks, 1.8 threes and 1.2 steals.

When he played with an actual point guard—as opposed to the Point Jeremy Sochan experiment—and just one solid wing, San Antonio performed like a playoff team. When Wembanyama, Tre Jones and Devin Vassell were all on the floor, the Spurs were plus-10.2 points per 100 possessions (93rd percentile leaguewide).

If that trio plays more and San Antonio adds a solid veteran or another hit in the draft (it has the Nos. 4 and 8 overall picks), this placement might feel conservative in hindsight.

It’d be nice to pair one of the top-flight prospects from the 2025 draft class with Wemby, but he might be too good to allow that to happen.

Oddsmakers are high on Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat. Only nine teams currently have shorter title odds.

Butler has made two Finals in his half-decade with the Heat, so it isn’t hard to understand where that number comes from. However, that may not be giving enough credit to this summer’s Butler trade rumors, the fact that he turns 35 before the season starts and his average of 58.2 games per year since he arrived in Miami.

Bam Adebayo is a star in his prime. There should be some internal development for Jaime Jaquez Jr., Nikola Jović and even Tyler Herro, but none of them figure to be All-Star level in 2024-25.

There are enough concerns here to suggest that Miami will finish in the same range standings-wise that it did last season.

The last two regular seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers have gone in the opposite direction of the Utah Jazz. The Lakers have meandered through the first few months of their campaigns before eventually finding a rhythm, closing strong and securing a playoff spot.

In 2022-23, the Lakers went from the play-in tournament to the Western Conference Finals. This spring, their playoff run ended in the first round.

With LeBron James turning 40 this season and Anthony Davis inching toward the end of his prime, it’s hard to imagine a dramatically different outcome for the Lakers in 2024-25 unless they swing a trade for a superstar. However, they might have such a trade in them.

The Lakers have three future first-round picks to trade, an intriguing young(ish) guard in Austin Reaves and some salary-matching fodder to bring in a big name. That might leave L.A. vulnerable on the depth front, but its most postseason run suggests it needs more talent at the top of the roster.

If the Houston Rockets weren’t in the perpetually loaded Western Conference, it would be tempting to forecast a much bigger leap for them.

They soared past their over-under this season by nine wins, and Alperen Şengün, Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Cam Whitmore and Amen Thompson are all under the age of 23.

In terms of young cores, this team is balanced, explosive and loaded with talent. It may still take a few years of development for everything to come together, but we’ve already seen the Rockets make conservative expectations look foolish.

One year after ending a nearly two-decade playoff drought in 2022-23, the Sacramento Kings failed to escape the play-in tournament this past season. But that doesn’t mean they took some dramatic step back.

The Kings still went 46-36 this year. They just happen to be in the Western Conference, where being 10 games over .500 guarantees nothing. And this offseason, they face the dilemma of potentially losing sixth man Malik Monk in free agency.

Without Monk’s heat-check scoring and playmaking—he essentially functioned as Sacramento’s backup point guard this past season—the Kings could struggle to recreate the offensive magic that’s fueled their breakout.

Still, they’ll have Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox and a developing Keegan Murray. With a trade to shore up their fourth or fifth option, they could get back to the playoffs in 2025.

It feels weird to have the Golden State Warriors outside the top half of the league, but it’s merited.

The Warriors couldn’t even escape the play-in tournament this past season. Stephen Curry, who turned 36 in mid-March, is finally starting to show signs of his age. Klay Thompson is no lock to return next season, as he’ll be a free agent this summer.

It’s also impossible to know whether Draymond Green will be able to avoid suspensions (yes, multiple) going forward. Given his track record—including two extended absences for choking Rudy Gobert and smacking Jusuf Nurkić this past season—any slip-ups will likely be met with harsh punishments from the league.

Still, Golden State was 11th in total plus-minus in 2023-24. Trayce Jackson-Davis and Brandin Podziemski should both be better next season. And after the Warriors missed the playoffs in 2021, they came back and won the title in 2022.

The Cleveland Cavaliers finished fourth in the East in 2023-24, but their placement in these rankings is baking in the possibility of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland or Jarrett Allen being traded this offseason.

The latest reporting on that front suggests the core will stick together, but these situations are often fluid. If Mitchell doesn’t sign an extension this summer and some team throws a massive offer for him at the Cavs, they might have to take the deal.

If they do keep most of this group together—Garland, Mitchell, Allen and Evan Mobley are all under contract for 2024-25—they’ll either have to figure out a more effective way to stagger everyone or finally get some reliable jump shooting from Mobley.

The your-turn-my-turn dynamic between Mitchell and Garland can make the offense predictable, and that backcourt is undersized defensively. The Mobley-Allen pairing also makes things too cramped inside as long as neither player can stretch the floor.

Changes could be in store for the New Orleans Pelicans, too. Executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin came right out and said as much after the season.

If the Pelicans don’t trade Zion Williamson, they’ll have to be mindful of his injury concerns for another season as well.

But if Williamson stays healthy and the Pelicans trade Brandon Ingram for the right pieces, they could be dangerous in 2024-25.

Zion is an offensive superstar, and New Orelans has tons of depth, length and switchability on its roster with Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones, Dyson Daniels and Larry Nance Jr.

This probably seems disrespectful to the Indiana Pacers, who just made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. But it’s hard to ignore that Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the entirety of the Milwaukee Bucks’ first-round series against Indiana, and the New York Knicks were seemingly losing players every other game through the second round.

But another deep playoff run certainly isn’t out of the question for the Pacers.

With a full offseason and preseason for Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam to develop some chemistry (assuming the Pacers re-sign the latter), Indiana could have one of the league’s top duos.

And with Myles Turner holding down his three-and-D role and players like Aaron Nesmith, Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard all one year older and presumably better, the supporting cast should be strong as well.

The Orlando Magic had the second-best defense in the NBA this season. They have two rising, essentially positionless stars in Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, both of whom are under 23. And they have loads of cap space to improve an already versatile roster.

Despite their youth and relative lack of experience, having the Magic 12th here is probably conservative. But cracking the East’s top tier will be tough.

After both losing in the first round of the playoffs this year, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo could put pressure on their respective teams to get better. The Boston Celtics aren’t going anywhere, either.

Like Houston, a huge leap may be another year or two away for the Magic, but they should be in the mix to finish higher than fifth in the East next year.

Outside of their star players, the Los Angeles Clippers are about as asset-poor as any team in the NBA. They could be tens of millions past the second apron if they’re able to re-sign both Paul George and James Harden this summer.

However, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to keep George. They appear to be drawing a line in the sand with their contract offer to him, while other suitors seem ready to offer him a full four-year max deal.

If George leaves L.A., the Clippers wouldn’t have a great way of replacing him. In fact, expecting a finish around this range might be too optimistic.

On the other hand, if George picks up his player option or re-signs and everyone stays healthy through the playoffs, the Clippers should be a legitimate title contender.

Given the amount of draft capital and talent that the Phoenix Suns expended to get to this point, finishing next season as the NBA’s 10th-best team would be a significant failure.

But Phoenix will have a West-heavy schedule. Soon-to-be-36-year-old Kevin Durant and soon-to-be-31-year-old Bradley Beal aren’t likely to get any more durable, and the Suns don’t have many assets left to improve their roster with.

The shrewdest move might be trying to trade KD. However, new owner Mat Ishbia may not be willing to endure that much egg on his face after he pushed for the asset-draining megadeal that brought Durant to Phoenix in the first place.

Instead, the Suns will just have to hope Durant and Beal can stay mostly healthy and Devin Booker can have an MVP-caliber season to return to title contention.

The Memphis Grizzlies finished 13th in the West and had the league’s fifth-worst net rating in 2023-24, but there could be plenty of good to come out of this gap year.

With Steven Adams out due to surgery, Ja Morant missing almost the entire season due to a suspension and shoulder injury and Desmond Bane being limited to 42 games, younger players like GG Jackson and Vince Williams Jr. had a chance to spread their wings. Even Jaren Jackson Jr. had an opportunity to spend more time as a No. 1 option.

With all of the on-court development for the supporting cast, the Grizzlies could be even better in 2024-25 than they were in 2022-23, when they finished second in the West.

That season, Memphis was plus-11.7 points per 100 possessions when Morant, Bane and Jackson were all on the floor.

The Philadelphia 76ers are almost guaranteed to either re-sign Tyrese Maxey or match any offer sheet he signs in restricted free agency. But at the moment, Joel Embiid is the only player whom they have under guaranteed contract for 2024-25.

The Sixers could carve out nearly $65 million in cap space this summer to acquire a star via free agency or a trade, but they aren’t guaranteed to land one. Embiid’s lengthy injury history casts some doubt over the Sixers’ outlook next season, too.

But the healthy version of Embiid has been as dominant a scorer as we’ve ever seen, and the chemistry between he and Maxey is still growing. Even if the Sixers can’t build a Big Three this offseason, the two stars-and-depth model has proven effective in the past.

Including the playoffs, OG Anunoby had 28 games with a positive plus-minus of at least one after being traded to the New York Knicks and only four without one.

Plugging his multipositional defense and floor-spacing ability into the rotation worked like a charm for the Knicks. If they’re able to re-sign him this offseason, they should have a shot at making another deep playoff run.

That has as much to do with Jalen Brunson, who just finished fifth in MVP voting, as anything. His ascendence from steady floor general to bona fide superstar was a franchise- and NBA-altering development.

With him, Anunoby, the other Villanova Knicks (Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo) and Mitchell Robinson all under contract and Julius Randle presumably healthy heading into 2024-25, New York is in good shape.

The first year of the Milwaukee Bucks’ Damian Lillard era left much to be desired. They fired first-year coach Adrian Griffin after 43 games (despite going 30-13 under him) due in large part to a terrible defense that was as much the roster’s fault as his.

Over the rest of the regular season, the Bucks went 17-19 under new head coach Doc Rivers. They were then eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the entire series with a calf injury.

Now, they enter 2024-25 with Lillard, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez all a year older. They have almost no cap flexibility or draft picks they can use to get better. But they do have Giannis, who’s still only 29 years old and one of the best players in the world.

Despite losing in the first round in each of the last two seasons and the second round in the one before that, Milwaukee has a chance as long as Giannis is on the roster and healthy.

There’s a real temptation to have the Oklahoma City Thunder ahead of the Dallas Mavericks, despite the way the second round played out.

Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren are both in the early stages of their developmental curves. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander may have another year or two of improvement as well. And OKC has tons of cap flexibility and assets which it can use to improve its roster.

The Thunder will be one of the younger teams in the top tier of title contenders in 2024-25, but they should absolutely remain there.

The Dallas Mavericks are already ahead of schedule.

After missing the playoffs last year, they made it to the NBA Finals this season as a fifth seed. And that was with P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford only having a few months to adjust to their new surroundings.

With those two, Kyrie Irving, Dereck Lively II and Josh Green all under contract for 2024-25, the Mavericks should have a good enough supporting cast to make another deep run next year. But the next step after a Finals appearance depends on Luka Dončić.

Dončić is already a perennial MVP candidate who puts up seemingly impossible numbers. If he focuses more on basketball than missed calls and tightens up his defense next season, Dallas can win it all.

The Denver Nuggets have the second-shortest title odds here, but that’ll be easier to buy if they do a few things between now and the 2024-25 campaign.

The front office’s quest for long-term sustainability through young, developing players on manageable contracts made sense. However, it also may have led head coach Michael Malone to over-rely on his starters.

Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokić should still be one of the best lineups in the league next season, assuming KCP opts in or re-signs. But Denver needs a more reliable backup playmaker and a consistent backup 5.

However, the Nuggets project to be over the second apron, so they won’t have much flexibility to find those things. Getting back to the top of the mountain might depend more on the development of Christian Braun and Peyton Watson than anything the front office does over the next few months.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are likewise poised to be over the second apron in 2024-25. Following a quick exit in the Western Conference Finals at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks, that cap number is concerning, particularly amidst a yet-to-be-resolved ownership situation.

But if whoever foots the bill is willing to pay the luxury tax, Minnesota is returning a star-studded defense, and its best all-around player is just 22 years old.

Anthony Edwards has career playoff averages of 27.8 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 blocks per game, and he’s shot 39.1 percent from deep. He just got plenty of on-the-job training as a creator in the T-Wolves’ run to the conference finals.

With him surrounded by the defense of Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels, as well as the outside shooting of Karl-Anthony Towns (or whatever Minnesota might get in return for him in a trade), the Wolves shouldn’t be done contending yet.

The Boston Celtics were an absolute juggernaut this season. From beginning to end, a juggernaut.

The 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks, 1995-96 Chicago Bulls and 2016-17 Golden State Warriors are the only teams in league history that had higher average point differentials, and those teams are revered.

Now that the Celtics have won this year’s title, they should be as well.

The NBA is as talent-rich as it’s ever been. Being the last team standing is no small feat.

With all their most important players under contract for next season—including Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porziņģis, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White—they should be right back in the mix for a repeat in 2025.

We’ve looked at a bunch of different numbers in this space over the years, and few have ever shown the dominance of a team or player quite like this one.

In the regular season and playoffs combined, Boston was plus-1,083 points in 2023-24. In second place this season, the Oklahoma City Thunder were at plus-671.

When you open up the sample to include all of league history, only those ’71 Bucks, ’96 Bulls and ’17 Warriors are ahead of the Celtics.