NBA Confirm: NBA contender tiers: The teams that can win the….

With the All-Star Game in the books, it’s time to reset the NBA’s title race heading into the stretch run of the regular season.

The Boston Celtics, preseason championship co-favorites with the Milwaukee Bucks after adding Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, have lived up to that billing by taking a four-game lead over the rest of the league with a balanced combination of offense (No. 1 on a per-possession basis) and defense (No. 3) that augurs well for a deep playoff run.

Out West, the race for the top spot is more competitive. Although the Minnesota Timberwolves have opened up a 1.5-game lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder, the top four teams — including the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets — are separated by just three games.

Meanwhile, three of the teams with the most playoff experience in the field, the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, lurk in play-in range after the Heat and Lakers rose up through the play-in a year ago to reach the conference finals (and, in Miami’s case, the NBA Finals).

Now that rosters are largely set with the trade deadline complete and the buyout market unlikely to yield any other players of note, let’s look at who is most likely to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June by sorting the contenders into tiers based on their chances of winning.

It’s possible we’ll look back in June at an 18th Celtics banner — which would edge them past the Lakers’ total across Minneapolis and Los Angeles — as inevitable. Quietly, Boston is putting together an all-time regular season. The Celtics are threatening to become just the 13th team in NBA history to outscore opponents by at least 10 points per game.

At one time, that all but assured a title. Through the first Warriors trophy in 2015, the only team in the plus-10 club not to win the championship was the 1971-72 Bucks — who happened to run into another member of the group (the Lakers) in the conference finals. Since then, just one of the past four teams to accomplish the feat (the 2016-17 Golden State team that added Kevin Durant) has actually completed the run in the playoffs, with both the 2015-16 Warriors and San Antonio Spurs as well as the 2019-20 Bucks falling victim to upsets.

Despite the recent disconnect between regular-season success and the playoffs, there’s reason to believe in Boston. The Celtics’ offseason moves addressed their biggest postseason shortcoming: mucky late-game offense. Boston’s offensive rating ranks fifth in what NBA Advanced Stats defines as clutch situations (when the score is within five points in the last five minutes of regulation or any overtime) after finishing 11th last season and 26th in 2021-22.

This tier could be defined as the teams in position for home-court advantage in the opening round with a track record of playoff success.

Nobody’s recent results are better than those of the Nuggets, who return the starting five that went 16-4 in the 2023 playoffs. That lineup remains elite, having outscored opponents by 13 points per 100 possessions, which is fourth best among units with at least 250 minutes together this season, according to NBA Advanced Stats, and almost identical to last year’s plus-13.1 net rating.

The question is whether Denver can fill out a rotation as productive as last season, when Christian Braun and Jeff Green joined Bruce Brown to give coach Michael Malone enough postseason options off the bench. Brown and Green left in the offseason, while Braun hasn’t taken the step forward the Nuggets expected in his second NBA season. Additionally, a deeper Western Conference means Denver might not have the benefit of home-court advantage beyond the first round, let alone the entire run like last year, when the Nuggets went 10-1 at altitude in the playoffs.

The Clippers have climbed out of an early 3-7 hole into third in the West, which would be their highest seed since finishing second in the 2019-20 campaign that concluded in the Orlando bubble. With Kawhi Leonard healthy and performing at a top-five level, plus James Harden fitting in, this looks like the Clippers’ best shot at a title since Leonard’s partial ACL tear during the 2021 playoffs.

As uneven as Milwaukee’s season has been, including a midseason coaching change with Doc Rivers taking over, it’s impossible to ignore the Bucks’ talent. In that same ranking of most effective high-minutes lineups this season, Milwaukee’s starting five rates No. 1 with a plus-15.3 net rating — albeit aided by inaccurate opponent 3-point shooting.

This tier is largely represented by newcomers to the contender ranks. If the season ended today, four of the eight teams to host opening-round playoff series would have combined for one series win since 2018 (the Knicks last season). By contrast, of the four teams above these hopefuls in the tiers, every one but the Clippers (three) has won eight series in that span all by themselves.

Given the importance of playoff experience, it’s fair to be wary of this group, though only to a point. This tier boasts three of the top four teams in point differential this season (Cleveland, Minnesota and Oklahoma City), while New York went a league-best 14-2 with a plus-15.4 differential in January before sagging due to injuries. Home-court advantage is still a massive factor in playoff success, and the odds are good that at least one of those four teams will reach the conference finals.

Rounding out this tier are the Sixers and Suns, in very different positions from the rest of the group.

Phoenix started the season as inner-circle contenders in gambling odds, but the Suns now seem unlikely to earn home-court advantage due in large part to injuries and limited depth. The case for the Suns making a run from the bottom of the bracket rests on their top-end ability when healthy: Phoenix’s starting five has a net rating of plus-14.9 that’s right there with the best in the NBA.

In Philadelphia’s case, Joel Embiid’s health is a wild card. If he’s back at an MVP level for the playoffs after knee surgery earlier this month, the Sixers will remain a scary opponent. However, at best, Embiid’s injury and Philly’s fall in the standings mean a more difficult postseason path that would almost certainly require beating three other teams from the top three tiers to get to the Finals.