NBA power rankings 2026-27: Championship Tiers, with Knicks, Spurs Thunder in top three spots

The NBC Sports weekly NBA Power Rankings are back, bigger and better than ever. This preseason edition of the rankings puts teams into championship tiers, broken down this way:

• Title Contenders. This is self-explanatory. These are highly talented teams that don’t need things to go perfectly to win it all.
• Second Circle Contenders. Teams that could make a run to the conference finals or NBA Finals, but need to answer bigger questions and/or have no margin for error.
• Playoff teams. Teams poised to have a good season and make the NBA playoffs but are not a threat to win it all.
• Play-in teams. Teams that could make the playoffs but likely have to come out of the play-in first.
• Zone of Shame. These are the teams trying to avoid the bottom three worst records (and the lottery punishments that now come with them). The NBA calls that bottom three the “Relegation Zone,” which is a terrible name — nobody is getting relegated. The Cleveland Charge and Maine Celtics won’t be promoted from the G League to play in the NBA next season. So I’m borrowing a phrase from the great Tom Ziller of Good Morning Basketball and calling it the Zone of Shame. I’m open to other ideas, that’s just the best one I heard.

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Final note: I know more than 16 teams are listed as playoff teams and more than 20 are at play-in level or above, this ranking is more about potential and expectations than a hard count. That comes much later in the season.

Title Contenders

1. New York Knicks

Last season 53-29
Games in first week: 76ers, at Celtics, Magic

New York has 10 of its top 12 rotation players back from the team that just won 53 games and an NBA title — they are the most complete team in the East, and the one with the fewest questions. The Knicks kicked the Karl-Anthony Towns/Josh Hart contract extension drama down the road, although Towns wasn’t a fan of that move. Knicks management saw it as a distraction, and now it’s been put off. New York was a good regular season team a season ago (+6.4 net rating, fifth-best in the league) that found a magical groove in the playoffs. Don’t be shocked if we get the good team, but…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nba-power-rankings-2026-27-113000094.html

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Publish date : 2026-10-12 11:30:00

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