With the East predictions done, let’s move on to the West. For a long stretch, the West was a genuine free-for-all, with more than ten teams realistically competing for a playoff spot. But with the Mavericks, Warriors, Clippers and others rebuilding one after another, the competitive picture out West is actually fairly clear right now — basically two teams out front, with seven sides that project as solid playoff locks. This piece breaks the West down the same way as the East: through squad depth, injury risk, and chemistry/fit. Same caveat as always: preseason rankings are just for fun, take it lightly.
Top Six: the settled playoff tier
The six teams I expect to lock down a playoff spot without needing the play-in, in order:
- Thunder
- Spurs
- Rockets
- Nuggets
- Lakers
- Timberwolves (Trail Blazers)
Compared to the East, the top six out West is actually fairly clear-cut — the top four are all stable, consistently strong teams in the regular season.
Chemistry and fit is the key to ordering the Timberwolves, Trail Blazers, and Lakers: given their different roster overhauls and how far along each is in gelling, this ordering is less a judgment on star power than on fit — Dončić has played alongside all kinds of stars and adapts extremely well, so I like him to deliver a stable season. And I trust the fit between Edwards and LaMelo a bit more than the pairing of Ja Morant and Damian Lillard, neither of whom played together last season — which is why I have the Lakers and Timberwolves ahead of the Trail Blazers. That’s also worth noting as a read on chemistry: whether a star pairing has actually been tested together on the floor before carries more weight than simply stacking their individual talent.
7-10: the play-in tier
- Trail Blazers
- Suns
- Mavericks
- Clippers
No need to repeat the Trail Blazers case. Squad depth plus a core star is the read for the Suns: the roster looks a bit oddly shaped, but with Booker as the floor and the addition of All-Star-caliber forward Miles Bridges, a team that already sat in the play-in range last season shouldn’t slip much further even if they can’t climb higher. Young-player development plus injury returns is the variable for the Mavericks: I like Flagg’s continued development, plus the returns of Irving and Lively, to give them a real shot at brushing up against the playoff picture — but just like Haliburton in the East piece, “returning from injury” is always the lowest-confidence part of a preseason read.
The Clippers are really just the best of a bad bunch — nearly every other team left is tanking: the Pelicans still have a relatively intact roster, but last season already proved that roster doesn’t work; the Warriors have Curry, but they’re down two key rotation pieces and their real focus is 2027; the Jazz’s roster is decent enough too, but they had a track record last season of resting stars for meaningful games — what these teams have in common is that the front office’s actual goal this season may not be wins at all, and when that’s the case, reading them through squad depth or chemistry tends to miss the mark, because the team itself isn’t going all-in on the record either way. The real competition out West is concentrated in the top six — the gap in the tier below that is fairly wide, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see any of these teams end up there.
Beyond 10th: no ranking given
I’m not ranking the tank/rebuild tier beyond 10th — these teams tend to sit out games for various “mysterious” reasons and lose on purpose, which makes preseason predictions for that group pretty meaningless anyway.
The line between “tanking” and “rebuilding” was never clean to begin with
The Trail Blazers-through-Clippers stretch is honestly the shakiest part of this piece — not because the analysis angles are lacking, but because there’s genuinely no way for an outsider to tell whether the Pelicans, Warriors, or Jazz front offices actually intend to compete this season. The line between “focused on 2027” and “will go for it if the games are winnable” usually doesn’t become clear until midseason — there’s no way to guess it in preseason. That’s exactly why I weighted fit fairly heavily in this read: at least a roster’s on-court combination doesn’t change just because the front office changes its mind. If you weight coaching/tactical style more heavily than I do, your ordering could end up completely different, and that’s perfectly normal. All of the above are personal predictions for reference only. Please gamble responsibly.