Ranking the East: Which Teams Should the Sixers Be Worried About?

Kawhi to Toronto, Giannis to Miami, a reigning champ in New York — Beckett breaks down an East that armed itself all summer and ranks who the Sixers should fear most.

The Sixers have made some of the most dynamic and surprising moves of the offseason thanks to Mike “Big Yeah” Gansey, flipping the script on their title window in a single summer. But the Sixers aren’t the only Eastern Conference team to make moves this summer, with many fringe contenders pushing their chips in to make a run. We may not know how they all stack up until the trade deadline or even the playoffs, but some are more concerning than others to the Sixers’ newfound championship aspirations.

As I approached ranking these teams, I was not trying to predict the end-of-season standings, but more so who I would want to face least in the playoffs. The biggest conclusion I’ve reached from this exercise is that the East is going to be super-fun to watch this year, because it is really hard to separate some of these teams. The top four teams from last year’s standings all either stood relatively pat (Detroit, New York, Cleveland) or lost talent (Boston) while several teams below them are receiving superstar additions to their rosters since last season (Toronto, Philly, Miami, Indiana). It’s crazy to think that two of those eight teams will be in the Play-In this year.

How does one figure out which of those moves actually pushed the teams up the rankings? Lucky for you, I provide the exact correct, inarguable ranking below.

Best of the Best

1. New York Knicks: Until proven otherwise, the reigning champion New York Knicks (man do I hate writing that out) deserve the benefit of the doubt as the clear best team in the East. They have the fewest questions with a dominant starting five that has proven playoff production and depth that can contribute when the intensity ratchets up. The loss of Mitchell Robinson and replacing him with only Andre Drummond should have some impact, but otherwise they resigned all their major contributors. But all it comes down to is: They just did the thing, winning the championship while only losing two games on the way against Eastern Conference teams. They may not put forward the effort needed to be the 1-seed in the East at the end of the season, but until they are beaten in the playoffs or experience a legendary regular-season dropoff, they get to wear the crown.

Tangible Threats

2. Toronto Raptors: This ranking is made under the assumption that this Aspiration nonsense sorts out and Toronto adds Kawhi Leonard to a team that already includes Scottie Barnes, Mike favorite Colin Murray-Boyles, and Immanuel Quickley. Kawhi fits beautifully into that core with his defensive capabilities and scoring, and he was surprisingly healthy and incredibly impactful last season: 65 games of 27.9 PPG (on nearly a 50/40/90 line), 6.4 RPG, 3.6 APG, and 1.9 SPG. His arrival shifts Barnes — who was a revelation last season, and should have earned an All-NBA nod — down the pecking order into a proper No. 2 spot and gives the Raptors the alpha they desperately needed. Their frontcourt depth is arguably worse than the Sixers (a high bar), but this has all the makings of a dangerous team that is practically designed to trigger Sixers PTSD post-2019.

3. Indiana Pacers: The Pacers are the team people keep forgetting in the East after a Sixers-Process-level 19-63 season last year. But Tyrese Haliburton is the real deal, and he’s coming back to give this team a spark. Indiana returns most of a team that made the NBA Finals 14 months ago and took the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games, only replacing Myles Turner and Bennedict Mathurin with Ivica Zubac and our very own Kelly Oubre Jr. The Turner to Zubac transition will be the most drastic shift given Zubac’s lack of perimeter shooting, but his screen setting and short-roll playmaking will make him a seamless fit in the Pacers’ scheme once they find their groove, and I trust Rick Carlisle to find a way to make it work. The only thing that could hold this team back in the regular-season is a slow ramp-up for Haliburton after the Achilles injury, though I’m banking on him being back to himself within the first month or two of the season.

4. Boston Celtics: It feels like the Celtics should have gotten worse after trading Jaylen Brown, but it’s easy to forget that they played without Jayson Tatum all last season and were the 2-seed — I trust Joe Mazzulla to have these guys humming in the regular season, especially with the addition of Mitchell Robinson (and unfortunately Paul George will fit well too given his shooting, secondary playmaking, and defense). The playoffs are a bit of a different story though, as the three-point-heavy offensive approach that has cost them in recent series could easily come back to bite them. That said, my fear of jinxing this team into a championship contender (I can think of no worse outcome to this season than losing to the Paul George Celtics in the playoffs *shudder*) prevents me from putting them any lower down the list.

5. Detroit Pistons: The Pistons didn’t make any major moves this offseason like the Sixers, Heat, or Raptors, but this is still the reigning 1-seed from last year’s regular season. The Jalen Duren restricted free-agency situation hangs over everything, after a disappointing playoff run where he averaged an alarming 10.2 PPG and 8.5 RPG on 51.2% shooting from the floor. They’ve also shaken up their roster a good bit, with notable contributors in Tobias Harris and Isaiah Stewart out the door in exchange for the shooting of John Collins and Isaiah Joe, plus the ball-handling of a personal-favorite draft prospect, Ebuka Okorie. All this to say, I really struggled with where to place Detroit in this list: Are they still the tough and talented roster that earned the top seed heading into the playoffs last year? Or will they lose their grit-and-grind identity in the quest to solve their shooting problems? This feels like the right middle ground.

6. Cleveland Cavaliers: No matter how much talent they have — and they have plenty between Donovan Mitchell, James Harden, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen — I just can’t buy this team for some reason. I’m not sure if it’s the continuous lack of playoff success year-over-year or pure biased vibes, but I simply don’t believe in the Cavs. This seems a little crazy to say about a team that went to the Eastern Conference Finals last year (an honor we are of course still hunting ourselves), and I do think they’ll be a quality regular-season team at the end of the day. However, I’d still prefer to play Cleveland over each of the teams above them in this ranking if it came down to it.

7. Miami Heat: They finally did it. The Heat have added a big-ticket superstar in Giannis Antetokounmpo after whining that no one would take their “Andrew Wiggins and one first-round pick for an All-NBA player” mock trades for what seems like a century (in reality just one year since their Jimmy Butler trade to the Golden State Warriors). That said, the depth around Giannis and Bam Adebayo is questionable at best — as proven by Michael Pina’s RTRS-ban-worthy mention of Simone Fontecchio as the 3rd best player on the team. In addition, the fit of the roster could be better, given the lack of perimeter spacing remaining in Miami after trading or losing four of their top seven three-point shooters from last season (Norman Powell, Tyler Herro, Kasparas Jakučionis, and Kel’el Ware). They belong in this category thanks to Giannis’ proven impact, and Erik Spoelstra will have their defense humming, but this team still has a lot to prove.

Joel Must Be Loving This

2021 Atlanta Hawks Trauma

8. Atlanta Hawks: The Hawks don’t deserve to be up in the top group of truly concerning teams, but they’re not a walk-over either. After trading Trae Young for CJ McCollum last season, Atlanta went 28-15 to earn the 6-seed and take two games off the Knicks — which those observant among you will note is more than the rest of the teams the Knicks played in the playoffs won, combined. This feels like a team that makes the 9-seed and at bare minimum puts a scare into the loser of the 7-seed vs 8-seed game, if not knocking them out entirely. The Sixers shouldn’t lose to this team, but as the category states, I have trauma from the 2021 Hawks series.

9. Orlando Magic: The Magic don’t fit into this category quite as cleanly as the other two teams from a narrative perspective, but the vibes feel very similar for an Orlando team that has underachieved their talent level several years in a row. This group still has the talent to make a push if they can figure it out, and maybe new leadership — Sean Sweeney is their new head coach, having been hired away from the Spurs this offseason — can push them in the right direction to capitalize on that talent. As recently as last season after the Desmond Bane trade, people were considering the Magic a major threat in the East. Sometimes it just takes a year and a new set of eyes (though I’m not counting on it, which is why they’re down here).

10. Washington Wizards: Somehow the Wizards might be a cleaner fit into the “2021 Atlanta Hawks Trauma” category than the Atlanta Hawks themselves after their Trae Young acquisition. Contrary to popular belief, Young is still a good NBA player (even if he’s overpaid), and with Anthony Davis (if healthy), No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa (who will be awesome), Alex Sarr, Tre Johnson, and a slew of other capable role players at his side, the Wizards are set to have their first chance at borderline-relevancy since the Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook tandem. I’m not counting on them to make the playoffs this year, but this won’t be the same Washington team we’ve been used to seeing over the last few years.

Relegation Danger Zone

11. Charlotte Hornets: They might end up on the right side of the LaMelo Ball trade at some point, but for the time being, the Hornets are not going to be a playoff team. Naz Reid will be fun to watch cook with more freedom than he had in Minnesota, alongside the shooting of Kon Knueppel, Brandon Miller, and Coby White, but that cooking can only do so much to help the team win.

12. Brooklyn Nets: The Nets traded for Julius Randle over the summer in a salary dump move by Minnesota, and they claim they want to be more competitive (as much as Randle can make you competitive). They also don’t control their own first-round pick in 2027, so they no longer have any driving motive to lose games. Will they be good? No, of course not. That said, it will be interesting to see how their playmaking-only drafting strategy works in practice — six of their seven first-round picks in the last two drafts all rank extremely well in positional playmaking rates — and I am a huge believer in Mikel Brown Jr.

13. Chicago Bulls: After being mediocre for ages, Chicago is going to finally be legitimately terrible, just in time for the updated lottery odds to make that less beneficial — wow, this is a poorly run organization. The roster construction is also depressing, with a ton of on-ball non-shooters on the roster that will make Chicago an early contender for the worst three-point shooting team in the league. At least Bulls fans will get to watch Caleb Wilson attempt to dunk on every player in the league.

14. Milwaukee Bucks: The Bucks’ roster is brutal, and they don’t control their own first-round pick for 2027, so they wo++n’t care if they end up in the relegation zone. Goodness gracious, this team is going to suck. Enough said.

Add it all up, and the East is a glorious, unsortable mess — which is the best problem this conference has had in a long time after years of playing second fiddle to the West. I don’t know exactly how it shakes out, but I know the Sixers belong in the conversation, and probably in the first couple sentences. Get me to October.