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To my mind, there are seven teams with some shot at the NBA title, but I’d also be shocked if a June parade isn’t held in OKC, Denver or on the River Walk in San Antonio (and that last one feels like a longer shot).
Title Contenders
1. Oklahoma City Thunder
(64-18, last week No. 1)
Defending champions. Best defense in the NBA. Best and most clutch player in the NBA who is about to be a two-time MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. However, this team’s real superpower is its ability not to look ahead during the regular season and to build good habits. “You go through the regular season, there’s different opponents every night that present different challenges, but it always starts between you and yourself,” coach Mark Daigneault said.
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2. Denver Nuggets
(54-28, last week No. 2)
Don’t read anything into the Nuggets’ victory over the Spurs on the final day of the season, other than it sets up those two teams for a titanic second-round clash. The real key to that series could be Peyton Watson, who missed the end of the regular season with a strained hamstring but should be good to go for the playoffs (at least the second round). Denver will need his athleticism on both ends of the court to make the conference finals.
3. San Antonio Spurs
(62-20, last week No. 3)
Can the inexperienced Spurs win it all this year? “I mean, why not?” Julian Champagnie told NBC Sports. “I think that we’ve been putting in work all year. Obviously, we had no clue what we were gonna look like at the start of the year, but we always had a goal of going to the playoffs. And I feel like, if you can get there, you have a shot.”
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4. Boston Celtics
(56-26, last week No. 4)
The betting favorite to come out of the East, Boston went 13-3 in the games Jayson Tatum played after returning from a torn Achilles. He returns to a Celtics team that showed surprising depth and had Jaylen Brown stepping up to an MVP-level while Tatum was out. We’ve all got questions about rotations and how players such as Baylor Scheierman and Neemias Queta perform under the bright lights of the playoffs, but Joe Mazzulla’s team has answered every question to this…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/final-nba-power-rankings-2025-233717375.html
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Publish date : 2026-04-13 23:37:00
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