The Eastern Conference doesn’t have a clear favorite right now, but the top five teams are who most NBA watchers expected them to be.
Now that LeBron James has moved to the NBA’s other conference, the East was expected to have five teams that could all be considered as contenders to win the conference: the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers.
While the Raptors and Bucks seem to be the consensus top two, and Boston started off slowly, those five teams now make up the first through fifth seeds in the East. The Celtics have the worst record in the group, and Boston is on a six-game winning streak that’s brought the Celtics to six games over .500.
The team following Boston in the standings, the Detroit Pistons, has lost five straight and now sit just one game over .500. The Charlotte Hornets are seventh and have needed two straight wins to get to 13-13 on the season. Nobody else in the East is better than .500 this year.
The fun part about all this is that even though the Eastern Conference is behaving as expected, it’s still really interesting to watch this season. All of the top teams have some sort of question mark around them or some key issue that needs solving.
As much as the Raptors don’t want to worry about it during the season, this year is very much an opportunity to convince Kawhi Leonard to stay in Toronto. That brings pressure. Also, Kyle Lowry’s play this year hasn’t really been up to his usual standards, which could be problematic for the Raps going forward.
Khris Middleton has been benched for a game in Milwaukee, and no longer seems like the Bucks’ second-best player behind Giannis Antetokounmpo thanks to the great start to the year Eric Bledsoe is having. Also, the Bucks cleared a lot of cap with their George Hill trade — what is Milwaukee planning?
Boston somehow plays better with half of its roster injured, and still doesn’t seem to know how to play when everybody is healthy. It’s a first-world problem, but one the Celtics need to solve before the postseason rolls around. Al Horford’s aging could pose a problem too.
The Sixers are dealing with fit issues of their own after adding Jimmy Butler. Butler can shoot, but he, Ben Simmons, and Joel Embiid all do their best work around the basket. Embiid seems less than thrilled about spending a lot of time outside of the paint, and I don’t really blame him for that one. Plus there’s the whole Markelle Fultz thing that’s happening in Philly.
Finally, Indiana has no second star next to Victor Oladipo. Can the Pacers reach a high enough level to win the East without giving Oladipo some additional help, or will internal growth supply the parts needed to make it through the conference? Here’s a bonus question: can Indiana be efficient enough offensively despite its love of the mid-range jumper?
The NBA can be interesting and predictable all at once, and that’s certainly true of the Eastern Conference this season as well. Those playoffs are going to be a blast, even if whoever wins out runs into the buzzsaw in Golden State.
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