The NBA season is here, and a lot is going on in the Eastern Conference, where the Philadelphia 76ers reside. Here is a power ranking of all 15 teams in the East as the season begins.
The Nets very well may have the worst roster in the entire league. It is hard to believe that at the beginning of the decade, they employed Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden.
Now they have the ultimate me-guy tandem in the league in Cam Thomas and Michael Porter Jr., and we are looking at an ugly mess.
Objectively, Tre Johnson will be an exciting player to watch this season, and he has a legitimate chance to win Rookie of the Year. Nothing else about the Wizards is overly exciting.
Khris Middleton and CJ McCollum will be good mentors to the young guys next year. Maybe enough to move them up a spot or two on this list next year.
What is the plan here?
The Raptors have a roster with an excess of wings, not enough ball-handling, and no perceivable identity. That has been the story of every Raptors team since Kawhi Leonard left six years ago.
Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes are both good players. They have some talent. None of it fits and makes sense.
The Hornets have the clearest path to success going forward of anyone in this tier, provided their core players can all reach their peaks simultaneously.
Can LaMelo be a consistent winning basketball player? Can Brandon Miller make the individual leap? How good and connected will Kon Knueppel be right away? We shall see.
The Heat have a very interesting roster, but not in a good way. We have seen their act for a while now, and the basketball product is worse without Jimmy Butler, even if the headache is gone.
Tyler Herro being out for at least the first month of the season is a real bummer. The Heat is going to struggle mightily to score without him. They have some good defensive pieces, though, and the best coach in the league, so you always have to watch out for them.
Another year, another Bulls team that will hover around 35-40 wins and lose in the play-in.
Maybe this will be the year they do not make the play-in and force the front office to make major changes! (Major changes with the goal of just getting back to the play-in.)
The Celtics will be without their best player, Jayson Tatum, for most, if not the entire season. They still have enough talent to find themselves in the playoffs come April.
When the Celtics lost last year, it was usually because the entire team went ice cold shooting from deep. Those losses are going to be really ugly this year and more frequent.
The Pacers will be without their best player, Tyrese Haliburton, for most, if not the entire season. Their style of play, team cohesion, and coaching should be enough for them to still make the play-in, and who knows after that.
Pascal Siakam has arguably become the most underrated and underappreciated star in the NBA. Andrew Nembhard is a popular Most Improved Player pick. This team was in the NBA Finals four months ago; they are going to fight like hell to reach their ceiling again.
The Pistons roster is not the most impressive collection of talent, but Cade Cunningham might be special, and that should be enough to carry them in the weaker Eastern Conference.
The Pistons arrived on the scene last year, but they did not do enough to put more pieces around Cunningham. If the Pistons want to rise to the top of the East, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren need to leap.
The 76ers find themselves as one of the healthier teams in the East going into the season, which is hard to believe. Will it stay that way? History says no, but maybe this is the year!
The roster has a lot of talent that genuinely fits together on the court. If Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Paul George are all playing effectively, they are going to be a tough team to beat.
The Bucks still have the best player in the East, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and they have not won any less than 46 games in the regular season since 2018-19. In fact, the year they won 46 was the post-COVID shortened season, and they won the NBA Championship.
Assuming health, they are basically guaranteed to be in the playoffs. It has not always been pretty for the Bucks once they get there, but they will definitely get there.
The Hawks arguably had the best offseason of any team in the NBA, and it has set them up beautifully for this upcoming season.
Trae Young has a variety of pick-and-roll partners at his disposal with enough shooting around him to maximize his offensive skillset. The Hawks also now have a really impressive array of defenders on the perimeter, and really all over the roster, to mask Young's weaknesses.
Watch for Jalen Johnson to take the next step into stardom, and they could be a real scare for anyone. It should be a really fun, exciting, explosive team.
The Magic already have one of the best defenses in the league to hang their hat on, and their offseason addition of Desmond Bane should open up the world on the offensive end.
Paolo Banchero continues to get better and eventually should be a top-10 player in the NBA. Franz Wagner is a great number two option. And now with Bane's elite shooting to stretch out opposing defenses, they should finally have an offense that is at least above average.
They could find themselves as the East's version of the Minnesota Timberwolves- a team that has been to consecutive Western Conference Finals.
The Knicks finally broke back through to the Eastern Conference Finals last season, and they come into this season with a renowned offensive philosophy and a deeper bench.
New head coach, Mike Brown, will not run these Knicks into the ground the way Tom Thibodeau did. They should be a fresher and more cohesive basketball team when the playoffs roll around in April.
Anything can happen in the NBA Playoffs when the talent margins prove to be thinner than we expect going in, but there is a good chance only one team in the East is challenging the Knicks this year for the right to play in the NBA Finals.
The Cavaliers were the best team in the East all of last season before they met the injury bug and the Indiana Pacers, who have proven to be a matchup nightmare for almost anyone they have played, in the NBA Playoffs.
With health on their side, there is no reason to think they should not be even better in year two under head coach Kenny Atkinson. If Evan Mobley can take the next step into superstardom, they will be unassailable championship contenders.
The Cavs were 4-0 against the Knicks last season, never scoring less than 108 points; the Knicks never scored more than 105. It is also worth noting that the only team in the East that beat the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder last year was the Cavaliers (until those pesky Pacers almost took them down in the NBA Finals).
