Our NBA Tuesday entry today turns to look at the league en toto, far beyond the local/regional scope of recent columns. We’re not going out on any limbs right now coming out of the All-Star break, with barely 60 games or so played, but it is time to look at some of the sabermetric realities for teams at this point of the season. We will break this down conference by conference, of course, as the Eastern Conference remains tight—and the Western Conference is tighter than expected.

The East

The Detroit Pistons are once again the best team in the Eastern Conference—which sounds funny since this hasn’t been the case in years. In fact, it was Spring 2008 the last time the Pistons finished in first place. They have a 5.5-game lead on the next best team in the East (Boston), but sabermetrically, the gap is really only a point or so on a neutral court. Keep that in mind when the postseason comes; yes, home-court advantage is huge, but it masks the mathematical realities.

There is a clear upper echelon in the conference, too, with Detroit, Boston, New York, and Cleveland separating themselves from the other teams in record and in sabermetric strength. In a perfect world, these four teams would be hosting first-round playoff matchups and advancing to a fun conference semifinal round. Whether or not that happens come May is another question, of course, as it seems that every team has injuries up and down their rosters right now.

Most underrated team(s)? Miami and Charlotte (despite its losing record). Both teams rate higher on the sabermetric scales than Toronto, Orlando, and Philadelphia—teams currently ahead of them in the standings. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out with the play-in tournament silliness, although it’s pretty clear that the bottom-five teams in the conference, based on win-loss records, really are the bottom-five teams. They should start planning for the offseason now.

The West

Once again, the Oklahoma City Thunder are dominating the conference, although not by as much as last year when they went on to win a hard-earned NBA championship. Right now, OKC rates out as at least a four-point favorite over every other team out West. What is just as interesting, though, is that the San Antonio Spurs are the clear-cut No. 2 team in the conference, with their own 1.5-point edge on the other teams not named “Oklahoma City Thunder” … it’s been long time.

Houston, Denver, and Minnesota are solidly entrenched in the second echelon of teams in the conference hierarchy. After that, though, it’s a bit of a crapshoot with the Los Angeles Lakers being very overrated (sixth in wins, ninth in sabermetric rating). The Top 10 seem rather set, though, in terms of the play-in situation, so the bottom five are out on this side of the league, too, and they should focus on a plan for rebuilding in 2026-2027 while this season winds down.

Like the Eastern Conference, the possibilities below the top tier are intriguing, and with 20-plus games to go, there is still plenty of time for maneuvering here for a lot of teams. Avoiding the play-in games is the goal for many teams outside the aforementioned Top 5. It will be interesting to see if the Lakers can hold down that six spot, and we haven’t even discussed the TV-ratings element of that monster. Phoenix is two games behind L.A., but the Suns are a much better team.

Conclusions

This is the NBA, so anything goes depending on what the TV ratings look like heading into the postseason. Like last year when it was OKC and Cleveland looking strong atop each conference, we all but guaranteed there would not be that matchup in the Finals. What about OKC-Detroit this year? Well, the Pistons play in the No. 14 market, which is better than Cleveland (19). But the Thunder are stuck in the No. 47 market, and unlike last year, the charm has worn off there.

We don’t see OKC repeating, in truth, both due to significantly less sabermetric dominance than last year, in addition to the fact the team isn’t going to be the media darling it was in 2025 as a curiosity and newbie to the NBA title scene. San Antonio is the No. 31 market, and maybe the added European dynamic of their big star (Victor Wembanyama) will help them reach the NBA Finals, by hook or by crook. That has worked in the past for teams like the Spurs or even Milwaukee.

Houston could be a sleeper in the Western Conference with its solid sabermetric profile (third) and TV market size (sixth). Likewise, Boston (second, ninth) and New York (third, first) have comparable numbers, so maybe we can look into this a little bit more, but those might be our best “early” predictions here: some combination of San Antonio or Houston versus Boston or New York. However, this is just preliminary conjecture at this point. We will check back next month with this.