NBA second-half storylines to watch: Title contenders, awards races and potential star comebacks

With All-Star Weekend in L.A. now concluded, the NBA-watching world’s attention now turns to the league’s annual sprint to the finish line. We’re less than two months away from the end of the 2025-26 NBA regular season, and there’s still plenty to figure out.

Let’s start figuring it out together, highlighting some of the most important things to keep an eye on between now and mid-April, starting with the race for the Larry O’B:

Who’s got the best shot of winning the 2026 NBA championship?

According to multiple public postseason projection systems, that’d be the Oklahoma City Thunder, who hit the stretch run at 42-14, with a three-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs for the top spot in the Western Conference.

That’s not nearly as comfortable a cushion as it seemed like the Thunder would have a couple of months ago, as they were annihilating the league in the midst of a 24-1 start and looking like a bona fide threat to challenge the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors’ all-time record of 73 regular-season wins. But the combination of a soft early-season schedule getting tougher — best exemplified in the arrival of multiple games against the Spurs, a compelling stylistic counterpoint for the defending champs — and a series of ailments that has Oklahoma City sitting third in total games lost to injury has thrown some speed bumps in what had previously been an exceedingly smooth ride. The most notable right now: an abdominal strain for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the favorite to repeat as the league’s Most Valuable Player, that has sidelined him since Feb. 4.

(Jonathan Castro/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

(Jonathan Castro/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

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While the Thunder are no longer on pace to break the all-time wins record, they are still, like, really, really good: owners of the NBA’s No. 4 offense and No. 1 defense, outscoring opponents by a league-leading 12.2 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions. That would be tied with the 2007-08 Celtics for the third-best single-season efficiency differential in Cleaning the Glass’ database, which goes back to 2003, behind only the 2016-17 Warriors and … last year’s Thunder.

Several other metrics — average margin of victory, Simple Rating System score (which accounts for a team’s point differential and strength of schedule), era-adjusted net rating — suggest that we’re still looking at one of the five to 10 best teams of the last several decades here, even with all the injuries … and when they’ve actually had Gilgeous-Alexander, first-time All-Star big man Chet Holmgren and 2024-25 All-NBA selection Jalen Williams on the floor, they’ve blown opponents’ doors off. Provided Mark Daigneault can get his main dudes intact and ambulatory by April and May, they’re still looking like the team to beat.

Who’s got the best shot of making sure that doesn’t happen?

Well, how about the Detroit Pistons, who have spent the last three and a half months hearing from everybody about how the Eastern Conference is wiiiiiiiiiiiide open, in spite of the fact that they’re friggin’ 40-13 — actually a few thousandths of a percentage point ahead of OKC in the race for the NBA’s best record and, with it, home-court advantage throughout the 2026 NBA playoffs — with the NBA’s second-best defense supported by a top-10 offense, led by surefire All-NBA selection Cade Cunningham?

Or maybe the Spurs team that announced itself with authority in December by overwhelming the Thunder three times in a two-week span; that ranks seventh in offensive efficiency and third on the defensive end; that boasts perhaps the league’s best three-headed backcourt monster in De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and rookie Dylan Harper; and that features arguably the sport’s most singular force in 7-foot-forever game-changer Victor Wembanyama?

Detroit and San Antonio have some company in the race to unseat Oklahoma City. The Nuggets, who took the Thunder the distance in the second round of last year’s postseason, still have three-time MVP Nikola Jokić, newly minted All-Star Jamal Murray, the NBA’s best offense and a core that, when healthy, can go toe-to-toe with anybody. (It’s just that the “when healthy” part is proving tough to come by right now.) The Rockets and Timberwolves have had their ups and downs of late, but we discount teams that took OKC to double-OT on opening night and have made the last two Western Conference finals at our own peril.

(I feel pretty OK discounting the Lakers, though. I mean, if LeBron doesn’t think they’re championship-level, then why should we?)

The three East teams jockeying for position below the Pistons can all talk themselves into their chances, too. The New York Knicks (who knocked off Detroit in last spring’s opening round) have shaken off their post-NBA Cup hangover, winning 10 of their last 12 heading into the All-Star break and sitting tied with San Antonio (whom they beat in the NBA Cup final) for the league’s fourth-best net rating. Just ahead of them: The Boston Celtics, who’ve brilliantly navigated an injury-and-finance-motivated offseason overhaul to generate the NBA’s No. 2 offense and No. 8 defense, with Jaylen Brown getting All-NBA buzz, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard performing brilliantly in larger roles, Joe Mazzulla getting the most out of a shuffled-up rotation … and Jayson Tatum, potentially, getting closer to a return.

And hot on Boston and New York’s tails: The Cleveland Cavaliers, who won 11 of 12 heading into the break, are tied for the NBA’s best record since Jan. 1, and who made the biggest win-now addition of any Eastern team at the trade deadline when they brought in James Harden to pair with Donovan Mitchell in what’s looking in the early going like an awfully potent backcourt:

Whether any of those teams have the goods to outclass Oklahoma City four times in seven games remains to be seen. That more than a handful of teams can harbor realistic hopes of doing so, though, ought to set up a pretty compelling home stretch.

Health obviously matters for everybody … but for whom might it matter most?

It’s not exactly revelatory to say that teams don’t function as well without their best talent, and typically need all hands on deck to win the title. But something doesn’t need to be surprising to be true; which team survives the next seven weeks unscathed will likely go a long way toward determining which of them can survive the postseason gauntlet, too.

Denver jumps out to me. The Nuggets are 17-6 with Aaron Gordon in the lineup, and 18-14 without him. They’ve hammered opponents by a whopping 22.2 points per 100 possessions with Jokić, Murray and Gordon all on the floor — a mark that drops to a still-very-good-but-not-nearly-as-overwhelming 7.4 points-per-100 when Jokić and Murray play without Gordon. Hamstrings are notoriously fickle beasts; Denver’s chances of being able to mount a credible challenge to OKC out West likely rest on whether Gordon’s can hold up come springtime.

I’m keeping an eye on Cleveland in this context, too. Swapping Darius Garland for Harden was a move aimed at limiting injury liability — while Garland’s a decade younger than the Beard, he’s been less durable overall and missed a ton of time this season dealing with multiple toe sprains — but the Cavs also come out of the break with Evan Mobley sidelined by a calf strain.

On one hand, “calf strain” has become perhaps the two scariest words in the NBA, as our Tom Haberstroh covered earlier this season, so nobody wants to rush Mobley’s return. On the other, Kenny Atkinson and his coaching staff would surely love to see the reigning Defensive Player of the Year back on the floor as soon as possible, to increase the number of opportunities he has to get reps with Harden and give Cleveland’s revamped core time to jell. (Also: Max Strus, the starting small forward on last season’s 64-win Cavs team, hasn’t played a second as he recovers from offseason surgery to repair a Jones fracture. Do we see him before the playoffs? If so, how long does it take him to get up to speed, and what does that mean for Cleveland’s wing rotation?)

Over in New York, the Knicks will be waiting with bated breath to find out if reserve guard Miles “Deuce” McBride can return in time for the postseason after undergoing surgery to repair a core muscle injury earlier this month. While the trade-deadline addition of Jose Alvarado has helped steady New York’s rotation in his stead, the health of McBride — the Knicks’ best shooter and point-of-attack defender off the bench, and a player who opens up multiple lineup options for head coach Mike Brown — could go a long way toward determining if the Knicks have enough firepower to advance beyond the Eastern finals this time around. Ditto for oft-injured center Mitchell Robinson, who has been on a load-management plan all season, and whose offensive rebounding and paint protection make him an incredibly important swing piece for New York — despite averaging fewer than 20 minutes per game.

It’s also worth monitoring a pair of potential returns. If Tatum’s able to get back on the court from his Achilles rupture before the postseason, it could dramatically shift the title chances of a Celtics team that could certainly use his shot creation, shooting, rebounding and size on the perimeter. And while there’s only “small hope” that Fred VanVleet can return to the floor before season’s end after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee back in September, that’s not no hope. Adding an experienced, decorated veteran point guard could do wonders for a Rockets offense that ranks 24th in half-court scoring efficiency and 24th in points scored per possession overall since Jan. 18 — the last game that offensive rebounding machine Steven Adams played before suffering a season-ending ankle injury.

We haven’t mentioned them yet, so we’ll take a moment here to consider the Philadelphia 76ers — 30-24, in sixth place in the East, equidistant from the Nos. 2 and 10 seeds — and note the eternal quandary that is The Health of Joel Embiid.

Since a rocky and rickety start to the season as he worked his way into form and rhythm after being limited to 19 games last season by recurring knee issues, the big fella has looked … well, kinda-sorta like the big fella! Embiid has averaged 30 points, 8.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists in 33.8 minutes per game over the last two months, shooting 55.5% inside the arc, 37.5% beyond it and 86% at the free-throw line while taking nearly 10 freebies a night. The Sixers are 19-12 with Embiid in the lineup, and 11-12 without him; they have outscored opponents by 5.5 points-per-100 with him on the floor, and been outscored by 3.4 points-per-100 with him off it.

Philly has undergone a sea change this season, becoming oriented primarily around the backcourt of All-NBA point guard Tyrese Maxey and rookie thunderbolt VJ Edgecombe. Even so: The best version of the Sixers is the one with the 7-foot, 280-pound behemoth out there dominating from the block and the nail, and making opponents think twice about venturing into the paint … which is why it arched an eyebrow that Embiid missed the Sixers’ last two games before the All-Star break with right knee soreness, and that the team plans to re-evaluate that knee after the break.

One last quick note on the champs: While I think Daigneault’s pretty comfortable with just about whatever configuration he needs to throw out there, you’d imagine he’d like the starting five from last year’s title team — Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams, Holmgren, center Isaiah Hartenstein and guard Luguentz Dort — to log significantly more than 41 shared minutes over the final couple of months. And if SGA’s abdominal strain and J-Dub’s ongoing right hamstring issue persist … well, things could get awfully interesting in the title picture.

Did the trade deadline meaningfully impact the playoff race?

Maybe — if the Garland-for-Harden swap elevates the Cavs as much as Vegas and several projection models seem to think it might, and if Ayo Dosunmu can give the Timberwolves the extra snarl and bite they’d been missing in their backcourt.

For the most part, though, the biggest swings at the 2026 NBA trade deadline — Anthony Davis joining Trae Young in Washington, Jaren Jackson Jr. joining Lauri Markkanen in Utah, Ivica Zubac landing in Indiana — were more about impacting the playoff picture next season than this one.

(And if you’re interested in reading an awful lot about this year’s trade deadline, by all means, please dig into my Winners and Losers column. It’s not gross old food. It’s tasty leftovers!)

How’s the MVP race shaping up?

Um … kind of weird, thanks to the collision of multiple first-half injuries and the 65-game threshold for postseason award eligibility.

Gilgeous-Alexander’s case to go back-to-back is already strong on the merits. He’s been even better this season than he was last year, carrying the Thunder through the aforementioned raft of injuries back to the top of the West. Best player on the NBA’s best team, first or second in damn near every advanced stat, on pace for the most efficient 30-point season in NBA history, a positive contributor to the NBA’s best defense, the league’s top clutch performer — SGA’s earned his spot in pole position in the race. The gap’s widened, though, because so many of his peers missed time early.

With more than 20 games missed due to calf, knee, adductor and ankle injuries, Giannis Antetokounmpo is already eliminated from consideration. A hyperextended left knee put Jokić on the shelf for 16 games, putting him a whisper away from ineligibility himself. A calf strain and a knee injury have cost Wembanyama 14; a handful of leg injuries have knocked Luka Dončić out for 12 (and counting). Add it all up, and Gilgeous-Alexander has played several hundred more minutes than all of those would-be contenders; even if they remain eligible, it feels like it’s going to be tough for them to catch him (though his own abdominal-strain-induced absence could help them close the chasm).

Those heavy hitters missing the ballot would aid the candidacies of players like:

Cade Cunningham, who’s averaging 25.3 points, 9.6 assists (second in the NBA, behind Jokić), 5.6 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game, as the straw that stirs the drink for the East-leading Pistons;

Jaylen Brown, efficiently shouldering a Luka-level workload as the No. 1 option for the surprising Celtics;

Anthony Edwards, averaging 29 points per game on 49/40/80 shooting splits while learning how to serve as the Wolves’ ostensible point guard;

Donovan Mitchell, for much of the season the lone constant keeping the Cavs afloat in the race for home-court advantage in the East;

Jalen Brunson, the leading scorer, playmaker and crunch-time orchestrator for the third-seeded Knicks; and

Tyrese Maxey, leading the league in minutes, scoring and assisting at career-high levels, and elevating the Sixers amid the absences of Embiid early in the season and Paul George now.

All this MVP talk has me wondering about the races for the other awards. Who’s in the running for those?

Well, here’s Kevin O’Connor’s take on the state of the awards races as of All-Star, plus our staff awards roundtable at the midway point of the season a couple of weeks back.

The most fun race to monitor is probably Rookie of the Year, where the 2025 NBA Draft’s No. 1 pick, Cooper Flagg of the Dallas Mavericks …

… and his old college roommate, No. 4 overall pick Kon Knueppel of the Charlotte Hornets …

… and No. 3 pick VJ Edgecombe of the Philadelphia 76ers …

… have all been instant-impact, immediate tone-changing starters for their respective teams. It’ll be awesome to watch them try to break through the rookie wall, run through the tape, and try to top each other over the final couple of months.

Speaking of transformational rookies: What’s the State of Our Tanking Union in 2026?

Um … strong, I guess?

By which I mean, there’s definitely a lot of tanking going on, with a number of teams engaging in all manner of roster-management chicanery: “exercising extreme caution” in not getting the stars they just traded for on the floor, sitting starters for entire fourth quarters, selectively resting large chunks of your rotation on the same night, etc. — in pursuit of a plum position at the bottom of the standings. And the NBA has definitely resumed its efforts to try to fine and shame teams out of doing it, with reports circulating that the league’s Board of Governors and competition committee have been talking over prospective fixes. And it was definitely the main topic of conversation heading into All-Star Weekend, which was definitely not what Silver and Co. wanted.

I guess strength isn’t necessarily always positive.

This is what happens when what the NBA says it wants — every team making its best possible effort to compete to win every night — collides with the reality that the NBA continues to conduct its annual player entry draft through a lottery system in which losing more increases your chance of getting a better pick.

NBA teams need talent to win, and the people who run NBA teams — especially those in smaller, non-glamour markets without much history of winning bidding wars for top free agents — understand that their best shot at securing that talent is by finding it in the draft. As long as that’s true, and as long as there are draft classes capable of delivering those franchise-shifting talents — like Wembanyama, like Flagg or, potentially, like AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer or Caleb Wilson in the 2026 class — front offices will use whatever tools and tactics they can to improve their chances of landing one. Unseemly though it may seem.

If the league office wants to levy a six-figure fine for conduct detrimental to the league or flouting the player participation policy … well, that’s the cost of doing business, and, if the odds wind up in your favor on lottery night, a speeding ticket gladly paid, in the grand scheme of things.

The new changes floated back in December all feel like half-measures likely to bring their own unintended consequences; more revolutionary proposals like abolishing the draft, The Wheel, tombstone wins or punishing tanking by taking away teams’ ping-pong balls feel too radical for this league office to seriously consider. Which leaves us exactly where we’ve been for more than a decade now: with everybody just kind of yelling at, past and around each other, while executives call the plays they think will give them the best chance of success, coaches grit their teeth and run them, and players get caught in the crossfire.

In any event: The three teams currently in position to have the best odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft are the 12-44 Kings, 14-39 Wizards and the 26-30 Hawks, thanks to the much-discussed deal on the night of the 2025 draft that sent Derik Queen from Atlanta to New Orleans in exchange for control of the 15-41 Pels’ unprotected 2026 first.

Just behind that top three: the 15-40 Pacers and the 15-38 Nets. Fall into the bottom five, and you’ve got at least a 10.5% chance of winning the draft lottery, and at least a 42% chance of a top-four pick.

Some other bottom-of-the-standings things to keep an eye on:

The Wizards owe their 2026 first to the Knicks if it lands outside the top eight picks. If they finish with a bottom-four record, they’ll be guaranteed to keep it; finish with the fifth-worst record or better, and there’s a chance it’ll convey to New York. This is why I wouldn’t anticipate us seeing very much of new additions Trae Young and Anthony Davis over the final two months of the season. (If the pick doesn’t convey, the Knicks will instead get two future second-round picks.)

As part of the deal at last Thursday’s trade deadline that brought them bruising center Ivica Zubac, the Pacers owe the Clippers their 2026 first-round pick — but only if it winds up being fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth. As it stands, Indiana — which entered the All-Star break with consecutive wins over the Knicks and Nets — has about a 48% shot at landing a top-four pick and a 52% chance of giving the pick to L.A., according to Tankathon. There are going to be some folks white-knuckling it in Indianapolis on lottery night. (Oh, and we’re probably not going to be seeing Zubac for a while, either.)

Two other picks currently slated to be in the lottery will be on the move, too. The Spurs have the rights to the Hawks’ 2026 first-round pick from 2022’s Dejounte Murray trade, and the Thunder have the Clippers’ 2026 first from the 2019 blockbuster that sent Paul George to L.A. and SGA to OKC.

Which other parts of the standings should we be keeping a close eye on?

Let’s go with:

The tops of each conference, with just one game separating OKC and Detroit for the league’s best record and home-court advantage throughout the playoffs;
Nos. 2 through 4 in the East, with the Celtics, Knicks and Cavaliers separated by a game and a half; and
The Western fights for both home-court advantage in Round 1 and the right to avoid the play-in, with just three games separating the third-place Nuggets and seventh-place Suns, with the Rockets, Wolves and Lakers all nestled in-between.

Anything else?

Well, for one thing, Kevin Durant needs 431 more points to pass Michael Jordan for fifth place on the all-time scoring list. Considering he’s averaging just under 26 a game, he’s got a good chance of getting there in late March, provided he stays healthy. That’s kind of wild.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on how the final couple of months set the table for some major offseason stories.

Now that Giannis stayed in Milwaukee past the trade deadline, when does he return to the lineup, and what does the state of play look like for the Bucks heading into yet another high-stakes offseason? Will the red-hot Hornets sprint past the largely moribund Magic and Heat in the Eastern play-in picture? If so, might significant changes need to be in the offing in Orlando and Miami?

Can Stephen Curry get healthy enough to rip off a post-ASB heater and make Golden State dangerous in the play-in? What can Ja Morant and the Grizzlies do to rehabilitate his value ahead of a potential offseason trade? Will the Clippers find themselves seriously considering starting life after Kawhi Leonard? (Will the NBA’s findings in the ongoing Aspiration investigation force them to?)

Are we watching the final weeks of LeBron James as a Los Angeles Laker? Hell, are we watching the final weeks of LeBron in the NBA, period?

… maybe not.

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