Who has the brightest future in the NBA?

Part II of our Future of the Franchise rankings.

Nate Silver: This is Part II of II of our NBA Future of the Franchise rankings. And it’s the fun part — the top half of the league¹ — though we’re still expecting some pushback from area codes such as 617 and 213.

There’s almost 6,000 words of analysis ahead, so I’ll just recap the rules briefly. The sole criterion for these rankings is a team’s expected number of championships over the next 10 NBA seasons (2025-26 through 2034-35). We hope these rankings are well-informed and analytically-minded, but ultimately they’re subjective opinions. The voters are me, Silver Bulletin Assistant Sports Analyst Joseph George, and Jeremias Engelmann, the developer of Real Plus-Minus and a former analyst for the Mavericks and Suns, who writes at the newsletter 5x5.

One more quick note if you’re reading this in email. The fancy headers I used for each team in Part I didn’t render well in most email clients. There wasn’t any text or data missing, but there was a lot of awkward white space. This time, I’ve posted them as images, which should help. If there are still problems, it’s often helpful to click over to the web version.

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Joseph George: The 76ers are in one of the NBA’s more unique situations — they have an abundance of arguably misfit assets in the form of young players (Jared McCain, VJ Edgecombe, Tyrese Maxey), a chronically injured league MVP (Joel Embiid), and a poor contract I can’t exactly blame them for (Paul George). There’s an avenue for them to be consistent Eastern Conference contenders through their core and an Embiid resurgence. Or maybe a Maxey trade can materialize into a wing/forward that would pair better with Edgecombe and McCain (Franz Wagner comes to mind).

The biggest question is about their former league MVP. It’s unlikely Embiid is going to return to that 2024 pre-injury form, when he looked like the best player in the world. But can he simply be consistently positive? I want to say yes, even if he has to sit half the games in the regular season to get there. It’s still possible he can create out of the low block, which combined with McCain’s shotmaking, could be a potent mix as the team tries to climb out of the East next season.

I have Philly lower than say, Orlando or Atlanta, because if George doesn’t rebound next season, and Embiid has (yet) another spate of injuries, there’s just not much flexibility the team has that doesn’t involve dumping most of their assets to shed these contracts. Daryl Morey has pulled rabbits out of his hat before, but it’d be a particularly tricky situation that could hamper the team for years even if Edgecombe and McCain live up to the expectations.

Nate: I thought the Sixers were just about the most difficult team to rank, so I was happy to see the three of us land in the same vicinity. Without the lottery luck and Edgecombe, the situation might have tilted toward the distressed. Now the glass-half-full case is easier to see.

So much comes down to Joel. He’s become so distrusted by NBA nerds that he’s now just #84 on the Ringer’s Top 100 list, even though he was the MVP in 2022-23 and scoring with unprecedented efficiency in 2023-24. I said in February that I thought this was an “overcorrection”.² But last year was a huge setback. Not just his minimal 574 minutes played, but also because Embiid was notably shy around the rim, dunking just five times.

A few years ago, Embiid went from an already good offensive player to a superlative one by adding an effective midrange game. But can he be as effective from the triple threat position or draw as many fouls if his efficiency around the rim is merely good?

Joseph: The Celtics have had an interesting summer, gutting the starting five that took them to the promised land just a year ago. The moves, which look ambiguous on the surface, are strategically positive — as one would expect from Brad Stevens — in that they get the Celtics below the second apron. For now, it looks like the Celtics are entering their name into what should be an epic tankfest next season and then likely looking to make a Jaylen Brown trade.

Nate: I’m bearish on the Celtics this season. Their 43.5 projected win total already feels high for a team that’s down three-and-a-half key rotation pieces — Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford (he’s the half) — and up only Anfernee Simons, whom advanced metrics grade out as a league-average player. And that’s before considering the possibility that they make further offloading moves; they own their own pick, so they have an incentive to tank. I’m not as confident as Joseph that a Brown trade is in the works. But if they could get significant positive assets for a guy who's due to make $65 million a year by the end of his contract but has only made one All-NBA team, that would help their ranking.

Joseph: Their fortunes were upended fairly quickly — all of this feels a little preemptive, even if I’m mostly used to the NBA’s rapid pace at this point. If not for Tatum’s injury they would probably not be doing much retooling right now, nor would they be ranked this low. Unlike the teams that surround them, however, they have a legitimate shot through next year’s draft. If they play their cards right and win on the margins consistently, this team is set up for success long term.

Nate: It did unravel quickly. There is … I’m not going to use the term “denial” because maybe you’re more at peace with the situation if you’re just one year removed from your favorite franchise’s 18th championship. But if you’re a regular listener of the Bill Simmons podcast, for instance, he’s been surprisingly low-key about the turn of misfortune for a team that, in the span of a single series against the Knicks, went from potential back-to-back champions to the messy middle.

Yes, they have outs if the cards break right, and they’re run by a front office that always plays the game well. But there’s no longer nearly so clear a thru-line to their next title. I've always thought of the Stevens-era Celtics as more of an ensemble cast, sort of the 2004 Pistons on steroids, rather than buying into Tatum as a super-duper star. But I'm not sure whether that's bullish or bearish for their future. Various members of the orchestra like Jrue were going to be subject to attrition one way or another through age or the apron; he and Porzingis were ghosts of themselves in the playoffs anyway.

You could even talk yourself into saying that getting a head start on Version 2 or 3 or whatever Stevens build number we’re on — inevitably a more Tatum-centric version, so they’d better hope he eventually gets back to at least 95 percent of full strength — is a blessing in disguise. But they had a lot of championship equity last year and were supposed to have a lot this year, and now that’s been zeroed out.

Nate: Well, I’m a big outlier here relative to Jeremias and Joseph. And the difference is mostly about the long term. As I wrote about in Part I, I’ll put a premium on “brand intangibles” when considering the second half of the 10-year window that FotF covers. In the Player Empowerment Era, having superstars willing to move heaven and earth to play for your franchise is a significant advantage, and no franchise has a better record of attracting superstar talent than the Lakers.

Speaking of which, they already have a young superstar who was the best player on an NBA Finals team just a summer ago. While there’s a bearish case to make on Luka Doncic, especially once his supermax kicks in, the base case is that the Lakers start out with a high floor for the next half-dozen seasons. Getting a superstar in the prime of his career is the hardest thing to do in the league, and by hook or by crook, they’ve done it again. They also have a clean-ish cap sheet to build around Luka.

Oh, and they have LeBron James, who has sort of passive-aggressively made it be known that he’s running out of patience with the situation. I think my ranking is pretty robust to most LeBron scenarios. If they could get a real return for him, that would be good on net for their FotF ranking.

But if he stays … this almost never happens since they’re a notorious favorite of recreational gamblers, but might the Vegas line of 47.5 wins for the Lakers actually be too low?