NBA predictions: A surprise team could challenge Celtics, Knicks, Sixers atop the East

-The Eastern Conference is the home of the NBA’s reigning champions … and also the home to a lot of teams that are straining to chase them.

The Boston Celtics blew through the competition last season while hardly breaking a sweat and have now won eight of their last nine playoff series against East foes. Anything can happen in a short series, of course, but at the very least, Boston has to be the odds-on favorite to finish with the conference’s best record after finishing a whopping 14 games ahead of the second-place New York Knicks a year ago.

That said, the competition didn’t stand pat. New York and Philadelphia took big swings to try to catch Boston in the talent department. The Orlando Magic, Indiana Pacers and Cleveland Cavaliers are coming on, and the Milwaukee Bucks still have Giannis Antetokounmpo. Whether any of them can actually threaten the Celtics remains to be seen, but the chase for spots No. 2 through No. 8 should be thrilling, just as it was a season ago when only four games separated those seven places in the final standings.
 
Here’s how the East playoff teams look to me this season, along with their projected records:

Are the Heat stuck in the middle?

Yes, there is an underlying presumption that, one way or another, Miami will eventually figure things out. No matter how crappy or disjoined the Heat might look in the opening weeks, there’s a sense that we’ll look at the standings in mid-January and say, “Oh, Miami just won seven straight.”

This season may test those assumptions. Miami low-key wasn’t all that good a year ago, ranking 18th in scoring margin, but the automatic wins in the wastelands of the East (15-1 against the five worst teams) helped boost the Heat to a respectable mid-40s win total. Boston then cleaned Miami’s clocks in the first round, with four defeats by an average of 22 points surrounding Miami’s lone win.

Health was a factor, with Jimmy Butler out for his usual 22 games and Tyler Herro and Terry Rozier missing significant time, but Miami’s depth was a strength. The bigger issue was the lack of plus-starter talent at the top of the lineup. After Butler and defensive ace Bam Adebayo, Miami’s third-best player was … Herro? I guess? He’s fine, but he’s topped out as more of a volume guy as he enters Year 6 — a minus defender with a 55.8 career true shooting percentage — and he’s owed $93 million over the next three years.

That takes us to the financial decisions that cloud Miami’s future. The Heat can’t trade a first-round pick until 2029, are deep into the luxury tax this year and are facing Butler’s possible free agency after the season. Paying him isn’t an easy decision — not when he’s already 35 and misses a guaranteed 20 games every year (he hasn’t played more than 65 since he was a Bull), and not when last season’s Heat seemed miles from contending even with him.

One wonders if the Heat might pivot to build around Adebayo and some promising youngsters — the last two first-round picks (Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Kel’El Ware) look like keepers. But Butler would be the first domino, and trading him for value with his age, injury history and lack of 3-point game is tricky. Duncan Robinson’s half-guaranteed season in 2026-27 makes his contract a likely salary match in any deal, but for what? And how far out do you want to go surrendering draft picks for this roster?

Miami has the league’s best coach and a proven pipeline for turning two-ways into real contributors. The Heat lost one in free agency in Caleb Martin but may develop another in summer-league find Josh Christopher. Haywood Highsmith is back on a value deal, Kevin Love can still play, and maybe Nikola Jović can be something. Depth alone should keep them bouncing along somewhere near .500. But the issue here is a top five that isn’t scaring anybody, even when they’re all in the lineup. The sad-trombones bottom of the East might be the only thing still propping up Miami in the top eight.

7. Indiana Pacers (44-38)

This may seem a bit low for last year’s conference finalists; the Pacers won 47 a year ago with half a season of Pascal Siakam and half a season of the peak version of Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton, in particular, is an elite shooter, shot creator and pace-pusher who was the top reason the Pacers finished with the league’s second-best offense in 2023-24.

Historically, however, “Hangover year after a surprise conference finals run” is kind of a thing: The 2023 Lakers, 2022 Mavericks, 2021 Hawks and Clippers, 2020 Nuggets, 2019 Blazers and my own 2013 Grizzlies (I was vice president of basketball operations at the time) combined to win (checks notes) one playoff series the following season. Dallas and the Clippers missed the playoffs entirely, the Mavericks and Trail Blazers had losing records, and all but the Lakers had a worse record in the season after.

The good news here for Indiana is that it’s easy to see the Pacers winning at least half their games because of the injury resilience up and down the roster.

Indy’s subs were nearly as good as its starters in 2023-24, with a career year from 31-year-old T.J. McConnell fueling a frenetic, running, pressing unit. With Obi Toppin re-signed, McConnell extended and Bennedict Mathurin back from injury, that part figures to continue. On the sideline, Rick Carlisle’s mad-scientist tricks a year ago showed his X’s and O’s still have zing at 64.

At the top end, however, this roster pales next to the conference’s big four. Haliburton-Siakam is a solid nucleus, but the Pacers are a star short of their rivals. Myles Turner is the other key player to watch; he’s a free agent after the season, and his contract can’t be extended. The Pacers may be in a pickle after paying Toppin and McConnell and signing an extension with Andrew Nembhard that changed his salary from $2 million to $18 million in 2025-26. As a result, any realistic salary for Turner will put the historically tax-averse Pacers well beyond the tax threshold. Is this the one time they finally pay?

One can fairly wonder if there is a trade pathway here to a more small-market-friendly 2025 payroll, whether or not it involves Turner. The Pacers have other tradeable salaries up and down the roster and can also trade future first-round picks in 2029 and 2031 after surrendering multiple picks to get Siakam in February. Their 2023 lottery pick, Jarace Walker, is another trade candidate. He seems crowded out of the rotation unless he can play small forward, which his limited shooting ability would seem to rule out. I’m more bullish on 2024 second-rounder Johnny Furphy, but he may be a year or two away.

Siakam is 30, and while he played well after the trade, the only surprises he’ll be delivering from here are on the downside. The best bet for an upside surprise would be Mathurin, an athletic foul magnet whose struggles with defense and dribble blindness were nudging him out of the mix last season before his season-ending shoulder injury.

Last season’s conference finals run was a tremendous proof of concept for this group, even if it was wind-aided by a plague of injuries to their opponents. If everyone is at full strength, however, the Pacers probably need one more player on Siakam’s level to push into the East’s upper crust.

6. Milwaukee Bucks (46-36)

It seems like an appropriate time to start worrying about the Bucks, at least as far as their continued residence in the penthouse of contenders is concerned.

Last season’s move to bring in Damian Lillard didn’t exactly backfire — he was good! But it didn’t advance the ball either, as the Bucks landed at 49 wins before they were wiped out by injuries in a first-round playoff loss. With age and salary-cap restrictions placing an ever-increasing drag on Antetokounmpo’s brilliance, it’s fair to question whether the Bucks can still hang with the elites. And if they can’t, what does that portend for the next dominoes?

Let’s back up, though. Milwaukee went through a bumpy few months under Adrian Griffin, hired Doc Rivers at midseason and never totally got the chemistry rolling between Lillard and Antetokounmpo. It didn’t help that several veterans either fell off a cliff (Jae Crowder, Pat Connaughton) or were recovering from injuries (Khris Middleton); the Bucks’ bench units in particular were often inadequate.

That latter part is the one area you could argue for Milwaukee to be improved in 2024-25. The minimum-contract additions of Delon Wright, Gary Trent Jr. and Taurean Prince should add reliable shooting and guard play around the Bucks’ stars and offset the departures of Patrick Beverley and Malik Beasley. However, any search for young talent on this roster yields only tumbleweeds, with 2024 first-rounder A.J. Johnson feeling like another MarJon Beauchamp-esque reach on draft night. The one possible exception is 2023 second-rounder Andre Jackson Jr., a smart, athletic hustler who has rotation upside if he can ever score a basket.

Nonetheless, the more salient story is that the four most important players on the roster all are on the downslope of their careers. Brook Lopez is 36, and his scoring tailed off last season. Middleton is 33 and, though he looked great in the playoffs, had offseason surgery on both ankles. Lillard is 34, and his numbers also tailed off last year, although the Bucks might have survived Indiana if he’d been available for all six games (33.1 points on 64 percent true shooting in the four games he played that series).

And then there’s Antetokounmpo. He’s the youngest of the bunch at 29 but also the most dependent on athletic gifts rather than skill. His missing the playoffs due to a calf strain was an unfortunate break after playing 73 games — his most since 2017-18. Yet the toll of nagging lower-body injuries on both his availability and performance could be another drag.

Roster-wise, the Bucks are what they are at this point; they have essentially no escape hatches. They can’t trade a first-round pick until 2031 and have only a 2031 second available for smaller fry. Additionally, the collective bargaining agreement’s second-apron rules block most semi-plausible trade scenarios.

Surely that core is still good enough to make the playoffs in a soft East, and nobody will be excited about facing them in the first round if they’re at full strength. As a title contender, however, they may be a spent force. That reality, in turn, could heavily impact the payroll and roster decisions that come after this season, when Lopez, Middleton and Bobby Portis can all be free agents.

5. Orlando Magic (47-35)

I thought the Magic would kind of suck last year. They … did not. Orlando struggled with shooting as much as I expected, finishing 25th in 3-point frequency, 24th in accuracy and dead last in made 3s per game. The twist was that the Magic were so good on defense, and generated so many free throws on offense, that it overcame their key deficiency most nights.

In particular, Orlando’s second-ranked showing on the defensive end was a shocking outcome for such a young team, one for which coach Jamahl Mosley likely hasn’t received enough credit. Jalen Suggs broke out as a stopper in his second season, a healthy Jonathan Isaac(!) gave them monstrous minutes off the bench and scrap-heap find Goga Bitadze kept the party going with 33 midseason starts during Wendell Carter Jr.’s injury absence.

Meanwhile, Orlando’s two giant forwards, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, barreled to the rim over and over and over again, resulting in the league’s best free-throw rate and enough paint points and offensive boards to offset the glaring lack of shooting.

Orlando won that much even with 33 charity starts for ineffective lottery pick Anthony Black; I was bullish on him in the 2023 draft, but he wasn’t ready yet. The departure of Markelle Fultz may open more pathways for Black to get time with the second unit in a role that is perhaps better suited to his current skill set.

More notably, it’s not really an Orlando offseason until it adds a former Nuggets shooting guard, and this year, the Magic’s one big move was signing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency. Orlando might have had chances to swing bigger, but Caldwell-Pope is a much-needed 3-and-D guy to round out the wing rotation, and his contract is very manageable. His arrival likely pushes fellow Denver refugee Gary Harris into a more appropriate role with the second group and adds one more shooter to a team desperate for spacing.

Caldwell-Pope was a big get, but Orlando mostly is running it back. Particularly on the wing, internal candidates will get a shot to replace the departed Joe Ingles. Jett Howard will get another chance to show something after the 2023 lottery pick had a positive Las Vegas Summer League; he only played 67 NBA minutes in his rookie season and didn’t exactly tear up the G League in his 35 assignment games. I was down on their 2024 first-round pick, Tristan da Silva, but he had a tremendous summer league and could fill in the shooting and secondary passing gaps that previous draft stabs (Howard, Caleb Houstan) have failed to fix in the current rotation.

The Magic have a chance to move up in the East if the defense can hold up, but is last year repeatable? Can they really have the league’s second-best defense again and generate enough rim buckets to offset the shooting issues? Maybe so. With size everywhere and players like Suggs and Isaac, the defense seems legit, and there’s more shooting than a year ago. The key players are all in their early 20s and should only get better too.

Fair questions can be asked about the Magic’s long-term ceiling, which is mostly tied to Banchero improving his shooting and efficiency well beyond his current level and Wagner making a 3 at some point. Going all-in on extending Wagner on a max deal wasn’t fatal, but it did feel premature; he’s not yet that caliber of player, and Orlando likely could have played its hand more forcefully to get better terms.

A team with Wagner and Banchero on max deals starting in 2026 won’t have much flexibility left over, especially assuming Suggs gets a payday too. On the other hand, using their excess cap space to renegotiate-and-extend Isaac’s deal could pay off massively if he can stay even remotely healthy, as the next four years after this one are locked in at a value rate. The Magic also extended Carter at a fair number, and they’ve maintained flexibility by having an amazing 11 players with either team options or non-guaranteed years.

Overall, then, this season probably looks a lot like the last one. The Magic aren’t challenging the East’s elite just yet, but they’re a young, tough playoff-caliber team with a bright future.

4. Philadelphia 76ers (50-32)

Three All-Stars: One in the backcourt, one in the frontcourt, one on the wing. That’s the magic formula every NBA franchise seeks, and the Sixers have it. Landing Paul George on a max contract was a jackpot outcome for the Sixers’ high-risk, high-reward offseason plan of going with cap space and hoping for the best, and it makes the Sixers a legitimate threat to make a deep postseason run if everyone stays healthy.

Um, about that last part…

The fact Joel Embiid played 39 games last year and has a career high of 68, and that he’s missed at least one postseason game in five of the last seven seasons, doesn’t really bode well for the prospects of riding him through June. Embiid was present for all six playoff games against New York in 2024 but was clearly limited by a late-season injury and didn’t look a whole lot better at the Olympics.

One reason to bet on Philly finishing closer to the middle of the East pack is that he’ll likely need to be managed pretty heavily through the season to assure he’s at his best come May. Reading the preseason tea leaves, it seems the Sixers are very aware of this and won’t be hustling to get him to the 65-game threshold for postseason awards.

As for Embiid’s offseason contract extension, I’m not sure what else either side was supposed to do. The Sixers’ title odds hinge on Embiid’s health either way, but he’s a top-three player in the league (at least) at full strength. The Sixers essentially added two years to his deal while removing the threat of him pushing his way out ahead of a 2026 walk year.

George, however, should be a big help on the non-Embiid nights. He’s the league’s perfect third banana, a knockdown shooter off the ball but one who can ramp up his usage to pick up the slack for a missing star … something he’s all too familiar with after half a decade next to Kawhi Leonard. George is 34 and has had some injury woes of his own — he hadn’t played more than 56 games as a Clipper until last year’s 74 and sustained a left knee injury in Monday’s preseason game worth monitoring — but the biggest risk on his contact is the out years on a four-year max deal that pays him through age 37.

The thing that makes this all possible, though, is Tyrese Maxey’s emergence as an All-Star after the Sixers selected him with the 21st pick in 2020. While he could still improve as a distributor, his blazing speed instantly breaks down defenses, and his short-range finishing craft helps him avoid the need to get all the way to the cup against bigger players. It’s possible his game can still go up another level.

With three max players, building the rest of the roster was a challenge, but the Sixers’ creativity with the salary cap helped them, er, max out their possibilities. Yes, there’s the typical assortment of veterans nearing the end of the line here (Kyle Lowry, Reggie Jackson, Eric Gordon), but Philly also unexpectedly snagged Martin from Miami with a small chunk of leftover cap room, brought back Kelly Oubre with the room exception and found a solid backup center in Andre Drummond, who was low-key tremendous in Chicago last season.

Other possibilities lie around the roster’s edges: First-round pick Jared McCain can shoot it, converted two-way Ricky Council IV is an athletic defender with stopper upside and re-imported stretch big Guerschon Yabusele is a better (and slimmer) player than he was with the Celtics. He could help, in particular, with the glaring lack of a true power forward on the roster.

The Sixers also kept Kenyon Martin Jr.’s cap hold on the books and then paid him to be a walking trade exception, one who can match $8 million in returning salary or more if aggregated. (As an aside, the Sixers now have two 6-6 guys named Martin who play the same position and make almost the same salary but aren’t related and are basically polar opposites of each other as players.)

I have the Sixers finishing with the fourth-best record in the East, but in a playoff series, they should be a daunting opponent if Embiid is at full strength. Those ifs, of course, are an annual trick-or-treat that haunts every Sixers postseason, and even at his best, Embiid’s playoff output hasn’t matched his regular-season dominance. But if a seer gazed into the future and told me Boston didn’t win the East in 2025, I’d assume it was because Philly did.

3. New York Knicks (51-31)

Tom Thibodeau and a short bench. What can go wrong?

The way last season ended is perhaps not a great omen on that front, but the good news in New York is that the offseason moves did raise the Knicks’ ceiling. Blockbuster trades for Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges cost them five first-round picks and left them scrambling to fill out the bench pieces, but a strong argument can be made that the Knicks’ best five-man lineup in the fourth quarter of a playoff game is significantly better than a season ago.

That won’t get them through an 82-game slog, however, which is why I’ve set a modest win total here. Beyond that, Thibodeau’s history of overusing his starters makes one wonder if everyone will make it to May intact.

The one part that stands out, however, is how the Knicks have somewhat emulated Boston by adding the best deep-shooting center on the planet and putting him next to a bunch of switchable wings. That’s going to be a pretty dramatic U-turn in terms of spacing; last season, with beast-ball centers playing the minutes, opposing shot-blockers were closer to the rim against New York than versus any other team. Jalen Brunson and friends might be shocked to find out how much easier it is to get to the cup when one of your teammates isn’t already standing there.

On the other hand, the Knicks might have pushed too hard on the Towns deal. Including Donte DiVincenzo in the trade robbed them of a starter-caliber player on a great contract, while putting Julius Randle in the deal puts even more shot-creation pressure on Brunson. Defensively, Thibodeau has always valued mobile rim-protectors, but that isn’t Towns’ game. One wonders if the Knicks will try to acquire another center and move Towns to power forward, just as Minnesota did previously. If Mitchell Robinson were healthy, that would be one option, but it doesn’t sound like he’ll be ready any time soon.

Also, acquiring another big will be … challenging, to say the least. New York is hard-capped at the second-apron level and sits just pennies beneath it, plus it has no true first-round picks left to trade after sending four out for Bridges. Even with one of the league’s most creative front offices when it comes to cap gymnastics, in-season work will be difficult.

And the bench? Egads. Let’s just say a Miles McBride-Landry Shamet-Precious Achiuwa second unit isn’t scaring anyone, and that’s when New York is at full strength. The Knicks have to keep the roster at 14 nearly all season and man the last three roster spots with rookie contracts just to stay below that second-apron cap.

The good news, besides that Brunson-Towns pick-and-pop combo, is that the Knicks are solid up the middle. With Josh Hart, Bridges and OG Anunoby as the other three starters, New York can match up against virtually any opposing perimeter threat and smoke teams in transition.

Where does that all lead? Probably not to dominance, especially in the regular-season grind where bench minutes matter more; my projection tool thought they were better before the trade. The fun part, however, is if all five starters are healthy in May. Much like Philadelphia above, New York’s median outcome might not be that spectacular … but there’s a puncher’s chance the upside scenario hits.

2. Cleveland Cavaliers (56-26)

Cleveland is good. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

I think the Cavs made one possibly important mistake this offseason, which I’ll talk about in a minute, but aside from that, they had themselves a very good summer. Extensions for Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen assure this core group will be together for years, re-signing Isaac Okoro on a reasonable deal locks in the wing stopper who was the one looming weakness on the roster and first-round draft pick Jaylon Tyson could push for minutes right away after an impressive summer league.

Cleveland won 48 games a season ago despite Mitchell missing 27 games, Evan Mobley missing 32 and Darius Garland missing 25. Their “core four” of Mitchell, Garland, Mobley and Allen only played 28 games together and just four of their 12 playoff games. They’ll almost certainly have their best players more often this season.

There’s a case that core four will be better individually too. Garland struggled after an early-season jaw injury and had his worst season since his rookie year, something that untracked the offense in the non-Mitchell minutes. Mitchell made his fifth straight All-Star Game, but sore knees had him running in mud for much of the second half of the season. Mobley is just 23 and entering his fourth season. And if the spacing doesn’t work, Allen is still tradeable despite his offseason extension.

The Cavs also replaced J.B. Bickerstaff with Kenny Atkinson on the sideline; it’s not clear this will materially change things, but it also doesn’t have to. The Cavs were already good, sporting the league’s second-best scoring margin in 2022-23 with something closer to a full-strength season (a fact everyone forgets due to their implosion in the first round of the playoffs).

Going forward, however, Cleveland made one move it might want to have back: a max extension for Mobley a year before he hits restricted free agency. While Mobley is an elite defensive player, it seems questionable whether he will ever have enough offensive impact to warrant a paycheck anywhere near this stratosphere; fourth options don’t get the bag in this league. Bidding against themselves to get a commitment a year early had the benefit of a fifth year with no player option … but do they even want the fifth year at this price (a projected $51 million in 2029-30)? All-NBA language in the deal can also bump it up to 27.5 percent of the max, or by about $4 million a year.

Making that decision instead of holding a harder line at a lower number is critical because it pushes the Cavs so much closer to the tax and first-apron lines. Even if ownership is willing to spend, CBA rules mean they will start to have a negative drag on team-building after this season. Cleveland is in great shape for this season regardless, but on a team without a top-five player in the league, it needs superior depth and talent across the board to truly contend. Mobley’s deal may end up pricing the Cavs out of building it.

OK, enough of my negativity. Other than “they’re not the Celtics,” there isn’t a whole lot to complain about for 2024-25. The Cavs have shooting, size and defense, and while the backcourt is small, they have multiple wing options with Max Strus, Caris LeVert, Okoro, Tyson and 2023 scrap-heap find Sam Merrill. Backup power forward looms as the biggest issue after Dean Wade and Georges Niang both struggled last year.

Of course, there’s another question with the Cavs: What does this add up to in the playoffs? The Knicks walloped the Cavs in 2023, and they barely outlasted Orlando in last year’s first round, although they did take it to Boston for one glorious afternoon before running out of players. Can they thrive in the playoffs with two non-shooting bigs and two small guards, or is that where they hit their limit and end up playing a desperate game of Mitchell-on-five again this spring?

1. Boston Celtics (62-20)

The Celtics likely have one more exhilarating ride in them before the tax-apron cops burst in and break up the party. While hitting last year’s win total (64) and staggering plus-11.6 net rating required a perfect storm of excellence and fortune that is unlikely to repeat itself, Boston enters this year as a solid favorite to come out of the East and has decent odds of repeating as champs.

If you’re circling reasons Boston might have a more difficult slog this season, focus on the center position. The Celtics were such a unique problem last season because everyone could make a 3, including centers Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford, and nobody was a defensive liability. That might change this year; Porziņģis is likely to miss a big chunk of the season with an unusual ankle injury suffered in June’s NBA Finals, while Horford is 38 and will have to bear a greater load in Porziņģis’ absence.

That said, Porziņģis missed 37 games in 2023-24 between the regular season and the playoffs, and the Celtics won 30 of them. There’s a lot of talent here, and it all fits: Boston’s five-out spacing is a force multiplier that basically broke the game last year, especially since the Celtics do it without compromising their defense.

Jayson Tatum might not be a top-five player, but he’s not far from it and has an awesome contingent around him. Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday could each be featured players on lesser teams, Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser are knockdown shooters off the bench, and each player accentuates the others’ strengths because they can all space the floor and guard their position.

Things on the back end of the roster feel squishier, with the Celtics likely needing to find one more rotation-caliber perimeter player among Jaden Springer, first-round pick Baylor Scheierman and 2023 second-rounder Jordan Walsh. Up front, Xavier Tillman Sr. and Luke Kornet will likely play heavier roles given Porziņģis’ injury and Horford’s age; Neemias Queta also could factor in. (I’d say rostering five centers adequately covered their flank on this.) Also note that Boston faces a withering luxury-tax bill and will likely shed one or two players of this ilk at the trade deadline to lower the hit.

Going forward, the repeater tax will hammer Boston a year from now, and the impending sale of the team could impact how it operates in future seasons. Regardless of who owns the team, Boston will probably have to make some hard choices in the summer of 2025. On the other hand, the Celtics still could trade three firsts on draft night to upgrade the amazing roster they already have, and at the moment, none of their contacts seem toxic.

Brad Stevens hasn’t missed a trick since taking over the front-office reins — including value extensions for Pritchard and Hauser to help keep this thing going. But in the NBA, all that does is ramp up the degree of difficulty, like climbing levels in a video game. The bus will almost drive itself this season; barring injury, the Celtics are heavy favorites to win the East. However, Stevens’ next task will be figuring out how to squeeze 60 wins from less payroll and a suffocating CBA in 2025 and beyond.

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(Illustration by Meech Robinson: The Athletic; photos by Maddie Meyer, Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)