The Best (and Worst) of the Rest

Let's go through the rest of my seeding predictions for the '24-25 NBA season.

Good morning! Time to put some words on paper that certainly won’t come back to bite me in the ass by April…

The Best (and Worst) of the Rest

In case you missed it, yesterday I made my predictions for the top four seeds in each conference, landing on the Celtics, Knicks, Bucks and Cavs in the East and the Thunder, Wolves, Grizzlies and Suns out West. Today, I’ll take a stab at the rest of the league.

To get us started, here’s a question from frequent commenter Martin Melamed:

Who’s your dark horse? What team do you see making a real playoff run out of nowhere? In the alternative, which “tanking” team abandons the Cooper Flag dream and nudges into the play-in tourney? Has there ever been a more competitive NBA? A great time for basketball fans.

A tough question to answer solely, mostly because of the disparity between the two conferences at the moment.

In the West, a dozen teams are unequivocally going for it, with a 13th team - the Spurs - existing in purgatory (too good to tank, but no urgency to win). As of now, they’re leaning into their upside potential with the signing of Chris Paul and the acquisition of Harrison Barnes, but that could change as the season moves along¹.

In the East, we have eight teams with aspirations of a deep playoff run. After those eight, we have the Hawks (who are mediocre but don’t own their draft pick and thus have little incentive to tank), and then after Atlanta, six teams who could decide to lag for Flagg. Several of these teams are more highly incentivized to lose based on draft pick protections

• Charlotte’s first rounder in 2025 is top-14 protected

• Detroit’s first rounder in 2025 is top-13

• Chicago’s and Washington’s firsts are protected for the top 10.

Among the teams not considered consensus contenders, I already staked my claim to Memphis and Phoenix, either of which I could see ending up in the conference finals. The West feels pretty open outside of OKC, and the Grizzlies in particular seem ripe for a trade². I’ll reveal my surprise play-in team in a little bit.