The new East pecking order is about the same as the old East pecking order

Boston reigns. Philly, New York and Milwaukee chase. Cleveland and Orlando are right there. Miami is a mystery.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

---

Hanging Clothes in the Sun; Angelo Morbelli; ca. 1900

The biggest takeaway I have just about a week into the NBA offseason is that the Eastern Conference’s pecking order really hasn’t changed.

The Boston Celtics are bringing literally everyone back from their 80-21 ring-capped season. Well, everyone except Charles Lee, the assistant coach scooped up by the Hornets. The Celtics faced some injury issues this season — primarily centered on Kristaps Porzingis, with Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White each missing around a dozen games each — but beyond the Latvian big man don’t have major ongoing concerns with that. The biggest challenge in 2024-25 will be motivation, which always seems difficult for a defending champ to muster up. We’ll see how they approach the season. But they are clearly the class of the conference.

Last season, you had the Bucks and Sixers as the most likely challengers to the Celtics going into Opening Night with the late-resolving Damian Lillard and Holiday trades, and no preseason movement on James Harden save for a training camp appearance and lots of rumors about whether he’d play another game for the Sixers. Milwaukee appears to be out of the megatrade business this summer, though we could still be surprised by a deal involving Bobby Portis or Brook Lopez. One presumes that a healthy Giannis Antetokounmpo, a full normal offseason for Damian Lillard and a real training camp for Doc Rivers will make a big difference for the Bucks.

Meanwhile, as has been well-documented, the Sixers remade their team behind Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, adding Paul George, Andre Drummond and Eric Gordon. I find it also worth noting that the Sixers might have been the second best team in the East — better than the Bucks, Knicks or Cavaliers — when Embiid began falling apart around the holidays. A healthy Embiid-Maxey attack was killin’. That’s worth keeping in mind when assessing how good the Sixers can be.

The Knicks were the actual No. 2 seed above the Bucks and Sixers last season, and look to be better having brought in Mikal Bridges to solidify the starting defense and give the team another reliable playmaker and shooter.