Feb. 19, 2026, 7:02 a.m. ET
Don’t let the conversations of rampant tanking and competitive apathy fool you.
This has been an incredible season of NBA basketball. More than most years, it feels like the pool of championship-caliber teams is bigger than ever. There might still be an outright, clear favorite, but they don’t nearly feel as inevitable when the rest of the entire field has this much collective power. If there were ever a year for a new outlier team to reside outside the traditional championship winner benchmarks, it would be this one.
As the league comes back from the All-Star break, here’s my list of the nine NBA teams I could see realistically being the last team standing as league champions this June. With all due respect to anyone who didn’t make the cut, whoever will be the 2026 NBA champion will very likely come from the group below. If you don’t see your team (looking at you Los Angeles Lakers fans), well … maybe next year!
Let’s unpack everyone’s title bona fides below, as well as why they could fall short.
The Houston Rockets entered this season with reasonable aspirations of winning their third title in franchise history. For good reason. How could a team featuring a sharpshooter Kevin Durant, a savvy point center in Alperen Şengün, and a dynamic two-way young gun in Amen Thompson be anything but? The Rockets were loaded with physicality and willing defensive role players who could do all the little things around Houston’s stars. This is what NBA champions are made of. But it’s evident the Rockets have desperately missed the presence of starting and steadying point guard Fred VanVleet, who is out for the year with a torn ACL. And recent chemistry issues have bubbled to the surface amid a troubling 7-5 stretch before the All-Star break.
I do think the Rockets still have enough, on paper, to win it all. This remains a great roster. Count out Durant at your own risk. But they’re going to have to figure out their team disconnect, stop making mountains out of mole hills, and perhaps find someone more comfortable with regularly handing the ball. Maybe that’s easier said than done.
If you’re a serious person, you can never doubt the Celtics’ program. Ever. Without perennial All-NBA star Jayson Tatum, on a roster stripped down for what was supposed to be a transitional season, the Celtics have the NBA’s fourth-best record and the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed. Tatum’s running mate, Jaylen Brown, has been a revelation as an MVP candidate. Role players Derrick White and Payton Pritchard have been brilliant. And head coach Joe Mazzulla continues to push all the right buttons. Is part of the Celtics’ success related to their place in a weak, top-heavy East? Probably. They still deserve credit for resembling a surefire championship contender amid everything they’ve endured.
The elephant in the room here is that Boston probably can’t win its second title in three seasons without a healthy Tatum, who may or may not return to the court by the end of the year. But if Tatum does come back and gets enough of an on-ramp to get back into tip-top game shape before the postseason, then all bets should be off. These feel like the same old Celtics we all know and love (or hate).
At one point this year, the Cavaliers were barely hovering above .500 at 24-20. You could understand how jarring this was for a team that captured last year’s top seed in the East with 64 wins. Injuries played a role, to be sure — the now-jettisoned Darius Garland was not nearly as available as much as Cleveland needed — but it was also apparent the Cavaliers lacked an edge. After getting bullied out of last year’s playoffs, bestowing a “soft” label on this group didn’t feel outlandish. There’s a huge difference between regular-season basketball and playoff basketball, as there is for every sport. Cleveland couldn’t thread that needle.
The Cavaliers seem to finally have the wind at their back. Dating back to late January, they’ve won 10 of their last 11 games. Now, they have James Harden in the fold, a more experienced and capable offensive initiator, to play alongside Donovan Mitchell. Second-year guard Jaylon Tyson is a nice young player. When healthy, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley still comprise one of the NBA’s premier frontcourts. The pieces are in place, and Cleveland is getting hot at the right time. Perhaps this time it’ll carry that momentum into a title run.
On some level, I wonder if I’m disrespecting the Pistons by putting them this low. They will, after all, be one of the only teams this year to attain the mythical, all-important 40-wins-before-20-losses title contender benchmark. That matters. They play a physical brand of basketball that tends to translate over to the crucible of the postseason. That sort of physicality and hard-nosed defense tends to give you a high floor in a best-of-seven series. That matters. They have a real court-tilting superstar in Cade Cunningham and the perfect complementary running mate in All-Star rim-protector and rim-runner, Jalen Duren. That matters.
These Pistons are a wagon. Good luck beating them in the East playoffs when they have homecourt advantage throughout. I should really like them more than I do.
But the Pistons are not without flaws. Last year’s Oklahoma City championship run aside, young teams like this don’t typically go all the way in just their second playoff run. Take a look at the rapsheet of most champions in NBA league history, and they all suffered a good measure of heartbreak before they finally won a trophy. You’re supposed to learn valuable lessons from losing, and I don’t know if the Pistons have learned enough yet. On top of that glaring inexperience, I’m not confident the Pistons can score enough in the half-court when defenses will, predictably, tighten up in the playoffs. There isn’t a legit second perimeter scorer on this roster. You can, in fact, wall off the paint from Duren. As such, opposing teams will sell out on Cunningham, forcing him to get the ball out of his hands. You know, the way every other superstar is treated.
Will Cunningham’s Pistons teammates make enough shots when that inevitably happens? I have my doubts.
Like the Pistons, the Spurs fit the general profile of a title contender. They will probably reach 40-before-20. With Victor Wembanyama, they are led by an elite talisman who changes the game for his team as few other guys can. Between Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell, and Keldon Johnson, they have a glut of dynamic guards and wings that I consider the envy of the NBA. They’re deep. They’re well-coached. They play hard. On paper, they have the right mix for a title. This team is a force that is only just getting started in a fresh era of Spurs excellence. We’ll be seeing them in this title conversation for years to come.
But like the Pistons, are the Spurs experienced enough to win it all this year? If anything, compared to Detroit (which actually had a 2025 playoff run), none of the Spurs’ top players in their rotation have ever experienced the atmosphere and intensity of the postseason. That includes Wembanyama. The Spurs’ regular-season success is commendable. They do all the right things. They’re in that stage of their ascent where they still treat every night and every game like it’s life and death. But until you experience being deadlocked in a playoff series, nothing can simulate that feeling. It can be overwhelming until you do.
How will you respond when shots aren’t falling? What happens when the other team is using throw-the-book-at-you adjustments that are only saved for the playoffs? The Spurs could be a matchup problem for everyone else in the West. I’m just not sure they understand themselves enough yet to take full advantage.
I’m probably a bigger Knicks believer than most. I have to be missing something … right?
Their two best players, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, remain one of the NBA’s most potent offensive duos. O.G. Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart comprise a perfectly cromulent core of role players. I love the addition of pest guard Jose Alvarado to a bench featuring Jordan Clarkson and Mitchell Robinson. They’re No. 2 in offense. They’re a top-10 defense. On paper, this is a strong, battle-tested group that already came up just short of appearing in last year’s NBA Finals.
They should be ready to go for it … right?
At a certain point, Brunson’s and Towns’ respective defensive deficiencies will come back into the spotlight. The Knicks generally do a fantastic job of hiding them and letting them do their thing as scorers and playmakers, but there’s only so much you can do the moment both guys start playing around 40 minutes in April through June. They get schemed against. They get attacked. They become outright liabilities even though they’re the only truly reliable Knicks offensive players on the court. The Knicks seem to have figured this problem out for now. They wouldn’t have won 10 of 12 games heading into the break if they hadn’t.
But this Brunson and Towns defensive issue will rear its ugly head in the postseason. The Knicks need to be prepared to mitigate it if they want to win their first championship in over half a century.
Speaking of experience, almost no one on this list is as seasoned as the Timberwolves.
Having been to the last two Western Conference Finals, Anthony Edwards and Co. have experienced the prerequisite heartbreak. Edwards is a certified bucket, one of the best players alive. Rudy Gobert remains arguably the best rim protector in the league. Julius Randle has proven himself as a playoff-caliber, bully-ball power forward. And the trade-deadline addition of two-way guard Ayo Dosunmu should bolster a bench already featuring former Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid. The Timberwolves defend like hell, have just enough scoring to scare teams, and already know what it takes to win in postseason basketball. They have every bit the profile of a title contender.
With that said, the Minnesota bench does get awfully thin after Reid and Dosunmu. In the playoffs, you tend to play your best players more anyway. No one’s leaning on heavy minutes for their eighth or ninth man with a championship on the line. But it’s still smart to save the energy of your top players in earlier rounds, so as not to burn your entire rotation out before mid-May. Top-notch depth isn’t the biggest deal per se, but it does matter to help you survive the full, necessary two-month journey en route to a title. I’m not sure the Timberwolves have enough bodies to do so.
How the Timberwolves manage their minutes in the stretch run and playoffs will be the biggest determining factor in whether they can break through and reach the NBA Finals for the first time ever.
Outside of first-time All-Star Jamal Murray, essentially every meaningful player in the Nuggets’ rotation has suffered an extended injury recovery period this season. That includes three-time MVP Nikola Jokić and valuable Swiss Army Knife forward Aaron Gordon. That includes breakout sixth man Peyton Watson and connecting wing Cam Johnson. That includes backup center Jonas Valančiūnas and two-way transition demon Christian Braun. Woof.
Uh, yeah, it’s been a rough go of it.
To be sure, the Nuggets aren’t the only team to deal with rampant injury issues this season. It would be reductive to say otherwise. Still, it’s undoubtedly the main reason they don’t have a better record right now, with a roster that is likely the best and deepest of the Jokić era. This team was 12-3 when everyone was available, coming off a campaign in which they pushed the league’s reigning champion to seven games in the playoffs with just six capable players. The Nuggets have won a championship within the last three years and, with Jokić, are led by the best player in men’s basketball. They have the horses (no pun intended). If they can get a stronger spray for their injury bug to this stage, the Nuggets might become a lot of people’s chic (justifiable) pick to win it all come April.
We know what the Nuggets are capable of at their peak. They are, in fact, that good. Special, even.
But do the Nuggets have enough on defense? Can this team, currently ranked an atrocious 24th in defensive rating, string together just enough stops to ensure that Jokić and Murray’s sledgehammer offense bludgeons the opposition without much resistance? The Nuggets were also mediocre on defense during their 2023 title run. However, that team ranked in the top five in clutch defensive rating, meaning they got the stops in close matchups when they had to. This version of the Nuggets has yet to show such defensive capacity with the game on the line (which is both related to their injuries disrupting team chemistry and Jokić and Murray being liabilities on that end of the floor).
Unless the Nuggets show more defensive mettle over the next few months, the best team of the Jokić era to date might be left grasping at straws in the postseason.
There hasn’t been a repeat NBA champion since the 2017-2018 Golden State Warriors. In an era of relative parity, it’s the longest such stretch without a repeat title winner in league history. But make no mistake: the reigning champion Thunder, led by reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, is the most serious threat to that lingering dichotomy this decade.
The Thunder have the depth. They have the experience. They’ve been there and done that. Even while being ravaged by injuries themselves, they still have enough capable rotation players to throttle and hammer most NBA teams. Oklahoma City both possesses the NBA’s finest roster and its healthiest internal culture, focused on teamwork and winning in everything they do (which can shockingly be a novel concept). That’s a lethal combination. It’s one that’s challenging to topple in the biggest games of the season come spring.
With that said, the Thunder’s injury issues are just as concerning as those of their arch-rivals in Denver. Gilgeous-Alexander’s top running mate, All-NBA and All-Defense-caliber wing Jalen Williams, is the chief worry. Hamstring, hip, and wrist issues have limited Williams to just 26 of 56 games played so far. When he has played, Williams hasn’t looked nearly as explosive or comfortable as we’re accustomed to seeing. He’s been a shell of himself. The Thunder are well-equipped to survive Williams’ absence/drop-off in the regular season. That is not nearly the case in the playoffs. He is integral to Oklahoma City’s core identity. Williams not being himself makes Gilgeous-Alexander that much easier to hem in. Because if you even let him have his shots, it’s hard to see anyone else on the Thunder roster beating you. It’s like taking away Scottie Pippen from Michael Jordan, who never won an NBA title without his stellar, all-around defensive sidekick.
Oklahoma City has to do everything possible to ensure Williams is as healthy and close to himself as possible before they try to defend their title in a couple of months. This is the sort of individual star injury problem that opens the door to the Thunder falling short of a repeat. It’s the kind that would have them going back to the drawing board this offseason.