NBA Eastern Conference rankings 1-15 for new season

The NBA’s Eastern Conference has been clearly inferior to the Western Conference from the moment Michael Jordan called his second retirement after the 1998 Finals. That might finally flip this year. While the West is still home to the league’s top two title contenders in our preseason poll, the East feels stronger 1-10 entering the season for the first time since MJ won his sixth ring in Chicago.

There’s no doubt that the New York Knicks are the team to beat in the Eastern Conference come playoff time. Will that hold during the regular season? The Knicks won 53 games last year, good for the No. 3 seed in the conference. They didn’t find greatness until the playoffs, then put together one of the most dominant championship runs ever.

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Let’s rank the Eastern Conference for the regular season only heading into the 2026-27 campaign. This was an incredibly difficult exercise. The Knicks might be the only team that feels like a lock to win at least one series in the East entering the season, and the teams ranked 2-10 in our projection truly feel like they could finish in any order. Check out our latest NBA power rankings for a full picture of the league based championship chances entering the season. Now, let’s predict how teams will finish the East this year.

I’ve convinced myself the Jaylen Brown trade was the right move for Boston after initially being lukewarm on it. Brown took a lot of shots and wasn’t super efficient with them, his off-ball defense has never been good, and he turns it over a little too much. The Celtics are basically replacing him with a full season of Jayson Tatum, plus Paul George and Mitchell Robinson. This team is really good in the regular season every year, and I don’t expect that to stop. I really think Derrick White is going to shoot the ball better this year, and I could easily see a big leap for Payton Pritchard with more usage. The Celtics’ formula of chucking threes, crashing the offensive glass, and playing tough defense is hard to beat. I wouldn’t pick them to go to the NBA Finals, but I think they will win a lot of regular season games.

2. New York Knicks

“Knicks or the…

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Publish date : 2026-09-17 12:00:00

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