One of the most important questions in the NBA has always been:

“Can they finally do it?”

Because it’s basketball less susceptible to coincidences as other leaguesit’s easier to create meaningful stories about the rise and fall of NBA franchises. Michael Jordan had to overcome the Bird/Magic era and the Detroit Pistons before finally ascending to the championship. The Portland Trail Blazers, Phoenix Suns, Seattle SuperSonics and Utah Jazz had to beat Jordan – or Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets while MJ was playing baseball – if they wanted to make their own breakthrough.

The same was true for the next generation of potential contenders, who had to prevail over the Lakers, Spurs, Heat, Cavs and Warriors. (LeBron alone left a wasteland of Eastern Conference teams and locked them out of the Finals eight consecutive seasons.) Throughout the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s and most of the 2010s, the common thread was the tension between the teams that monopolized the championships and the many challengers that tried – and mostly failed – to break that hegemony.

For the latter group: “Can they finally do it?” was the narrative force that brought her season to a close. But like the 2024-25 NBA season Tips tonightthis typical frame feels a bit strange. The unprecedented parity The success of the last six years – with six different champions in six seasons – has left us with fewer veteran teams to ask that familiar question about.

Check out the eight teams that have at least a 3 percent chance of winning the NBA title according to my 2024-25 forecast model:

Three of this year’s top contenders – the Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets and Milwaukee Bucks – have already won with their current cores, which is more than the typical number at the start of an NBA season. (This list doesn’t even include the Lakers and Warriors, who have also already won and are between 1 and 2 percent of the title chance.)

For three others, the collaboration with their core players is still relatively early. The OKC Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves combined had a .500 record as recently as 2022-23, and both teams’ stars are still relatively young – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be 26 this year and Anthony Edwards will be 23. And as much as it feels like they’ve had him for a while, the Knicks just acquired Jalen Brunson in summer 2022. Nobody was there long enough to make any significant development possible “Can they finally do it?” Story still.

(The Indiana Pacers could also fit into this group – they only have a 2.1 percent chance of winning the title at the start of the season, but they’re coming off a big break with Tyrese Haliburton as their star. It’s still early for them, too.)

That actually leaves only the Dallas Mavericks and Philadelphia 76ers as the teams whose main stars – Luka Dončić and Joel Embiid, respectively – haven’t won a ring in more than five seasons. These are yours “Can they finally do it?” teams. I am I’m not sure they canbut every NBA fan knows this Missions surrounding the question. And we’re just asking it less at the moment.

However, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

The 2024-25 campaign could be a transitional season – perhaps one of the one-time winners of the last six years will win again, sparking a new cycle of hegemon-versus-challenger battles like we saw in the 2010s with the Thunder, Clippers and Rockets trying to dethrone the Warriors, or in the late ’90s when the Jazz, Sonics, Spurs, Heat and Knicks all took aim at MJ’s Bulls.

The basketball connoisseurs certainly have their eyes on the defending champion Celtics with a certain invincibilityif not inevitable, and this is backed up by the odds mentioned above. Boston is the only team over 15 percent in the model, and they are So about it. If any team can break the streak of one-time champions, it’s probably the Celtics – even if they do may not be able to hold things together long enough for a run at a dynasty.

But it may well be that we end up playing seven against seven against individual winners. Look at the odds below Boston, and the next three teams (OKC, Minnesota and Dallas, which together account for nearly 30 percent of the title chances) are either fully fledged or on the rise “Can they finally do it?” teams. This also applies to seven of the next nine teams on the list, which includes the Knicks, Sixers and Pacers as well as the Suns, Heat, Magic and Cavs.

That’s the beauty of a league like the NBA. His story is predominantly dynasticwhich typically lends itself to the storyline of a large group of teams looking for a breakthrough against a single dominant power. But in rare cases, like today, there is still much to fear.

We can still question whether Philly or Dallas will get their long-awaited title. We can wait for the emerging younger teams to either achieve their goal or overcome years of adversity. We can see whether the Celtics or the Nuggets become a hegemon or are overtaken by the rise of someone else.

Whatever happens, no one really foresaw this six-year streak of uncharacteristic NBA parity, and – aside from the dawn of the Magic/Bird era – the stretch ended where In the 1970s, no team won two titles in a row – We also don’t really have a blueprint for how this era will end. That means it’s going to be a fascinating season for the league, even if we have to change some of the usual narratives we create around the championship race.

Filed under: N.B.A