Five Teams That Will Define the 2023-24 NBA Season

The NBA preseason is upon us, which means the real thing is right around the corner. Which players, teams, and story lines will drive the title race—and news cycle—over the next six months? This week, The Ringer is doing its best to provide an answer in Five Columns That Will Define the ’23-24 NBA Season. Yesterday, it was the players. Today, it’s the teams.

Throughout this week, our staff here at The Ringer is wrestling with the question of what, or who, defines an NBA season—there are many ways to make a mark and subtly nudge the course of basketball history. Some of those methods can be obvious; you can sure as hell define a season by winning the whole thing, or even just by eliminating enough rivals that aspire to do so. But you can also define it by setting in motion a chain of events that changes everything. A butterfly flaps its wings, and a play-in team topples a contender. A turn of an ankle can prevent a proper challenger from ever fully getting its legs under it. There’s a case for a good many teams to define the 2023-24 season in their own ways, but these are the five teams best positioned to do that—by wins, by moves, or by changing the way we think about the league or merely the way we tell the story of the season.

Denver Nuggets

Where else could we possibly begin? The Nuggets aren’t just the defending champions, but also the favorites until further notice, anchored by the world’s best basketball player and a perfectly calibrated starting lineup without a single member past their prime. Their title win was the culmination of both the larger Nuggets project, to be sure, and the seven seasons that Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and Michael Malone have spent together, in particular. But it was also the start of something—a run at the top of the Western Conference without a challenger quite on their level.

The Suns, Lakers, and Warriors will all make their cases, but that’s just it: The burden of proof rests with them. We know who the Nuggets are. We know what they can do and how dominant they can be. And, frankly, the Lakers and Suns know this better than most, having tried and failed to stop Jokic, contain Murray, or find any exploitable point of weakness in Denver at all.

Against that backdrop, it’s fascinating that the West’s class of challengers did so little this offseason to better match up with the Nuggets. After getting swept by Denver, the Lakers added the sorts of lean, lanky bigs that Jokic (who already averaged a 28-15-12 triple-double against the best defenders L.A. had to offer) can easily throw over his shoulder. Phoenix has one vaguely starting-level center on its roster (Jusuf Nurkic), and he’s been available for fewer than half of his team’s games over the past four seasons. Golden State might be as small as it’s ever been in the Steph Curry era—which won’t be a problem against a lot of teams but just might be when Jokic is walking his way into any basket he wants.

Five Columns That Will Define the 2023-24 NBA Season

• Five Players
• Five Teams
• Five Rivalries
• Five Trade Candidates
• Five Questions

Maybe the only way to really contend with the Nuggets is to resign yourself to the fact that no matter what you do with your roster, Jokic will get the shots he wants. But will no one sign an extra backup big just in case? Will there be no real effort to challenge the Nuggets at the core of what they do best? Denver has a few quirks in its rotation to sort out after losing Bruce Brown in free agency, but the fact that Christian Braun, Reggie Jackson, and Peyton Watson are figures of league-altering intrigue speaks to the Nuggets’ defining power in the league landscape. We live in a world where Denver is the front-runner for the NBA title from the opening day of the season. Soon, we’ll see how the entire league—including a Nuggets team new to the psychology of setting the pace—reckons with that fact.

Memphis Grizzlies

The Grizzlies have been one of the most dependable regular-season performers in recent years despite the prolonged absences of some of their best players, and they’re the only team in the West to finish with a top-two seed in each of the past two seasons. The 2023-24 campaign will be quite a challenge to that premise—seeing as Ja Morant’s 25-game suspension will put a hard cap on how often we’ll see the best version of the Grizzlies.

It seems like we’re headed one of two ways with Memphis: Either the Grizzlies will endure Ja’s absence, as they often have, and hold on to one of the top seeds in the West, displacing another would-be contender in the process, or they’ll slip enough to allow another team to claim home-court advantage, shaking up the standings and complicating their own path to a breakthrough season. The former would probably be more significant, mostly for what it would tell us about the Grizz. If things are going well in Memphis by the time Morant gets back, it would suggest a season of expansion for Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane, a clean fit for newcomer Marcus Smart, and maybe even the healthy return of Steven Adams. In all, it could announce a version of the Grizzlies that would have to be taken seriously.

Maybe this is the season Memphis will finally grow into its aspirations. It’s fun to be the brash upstart challenging the established order of the conference, but the Grizzlies have been running headfirst into their own limitations for years now. During that time, Bane has improved dramatically—but Memphis needs more. Jackson leveled up his defense to win the top individual honor on that end of the floor—but Memphis needs more. That’s a lot to ask, but competing at the highest levels of the sport always requires something extra. The Grizzlies are too young and too talented for this to be a make-or-break season, but it’ll certainly be a telling one for a core with a lot to prove, a younger flank that hasn’t really stabilized, and an organization that may have to face some hard questions sooner rather than later.

Milwaukee Bucks

Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard are as seamless a conceptual fit as you’ll find in two superstars. That should be thrilling in its own right—a fascinating riff on the partnership between Steph Curry and Kevin Durant that resulted in two titles, with similar dimensions but far less angst and virtually no assembly required. Neither star will have to be anything other than what they are or do anything other than what they’re best at. A single ball screen from Giannis for Dame is basically as good as an open shot. The only real variable is how opponents will try to contend with the play—an impossible task that could turn the entire regular season into a 29-team think tank.

Boston traded for Jrue Holiday as a direct response to Milwaukee’s landing of Lillard, but in a way, the arms race is only getting started. Most of the accepted strategies for contending with Antetokounmpo or Lillard individually are no longer valid; good luck building a wall against Giannis when you have one of the best long-range shooters hoisting shots over the top of it, and Godspeed in executing your cute little traps against Lillard when the most dominant downhill player in the NBA will be going four-on-three with a full head of steam as a result. Opposing defenses will have to get really creative to have any chance of slowing the Bucks down, and opposing front offices will too.

If a successful outline for countering the Giannis-Dame two-man game even exists, it probably hasn’t been found yet. That positions Milwaukee as a compelling force in the marketplace—a challenge that can actually change the way rivals think about their teams and maybe even force them to change their rosters. Even Boston, which has as stout a top six as you’ll find anywhere, doesn’t have all the answers. You can quibble with Milwaukee’s depth and wonder about how age and injury could hamper the supporting cast. But simply putting Dame and Giannis in the same uniform has seismic potential, with implications that could go beyond who wins the title.

Oklahoma City Thunder

The most exciting young team is also the biggest wild card in the trade market—a combination that sets up the Thunder, who were already plenty competitive last season, for dramatic growth. OKC could improve by leaps and bounds at virtually any time. The organic version of that would be compelling enough, as Jalen Williams and Josh Giddey hit their stride in line with the All-NBA-minted Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Yet if a player who could move the team forward without compromising its future became available, the Thunder could jump to the front of the line given all their stockpiled draft capital. They hold the trump card in any trade sweepstakes. It’s just a matter of waiting for the right player.

And, for that matter, waiting for the right time. There’s no explicit need for Oklahoma City to take any big swings just yet, but the fact that it could means the Thunder are always looming at the edges of the frame, being factored into trade negotiations they aren’t even really a part of. A trade will come eventually; it has to, for the simple fact that the Thunder couldn’t possibly roster as many players as they have future picks. But in the meantime, the stakeholders in the team get to better understand what they have. Where will Giddey’s game go from here, and what is his best means of contributing to a team that already has Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams? Where is Chet Holmgren in his first year as a pro, and what does he project to contribute down the line? Can Cason Wallace fit what the Thunder need, or will he break the mold entirely?

The basketball world is waiting for OKC to make its big, franchise-altering move, but the uncertainty of this moment is part of the fun. Anything seems possible. OKC isn’t just twiddling its thumbs until a deal comes along; there’s so much to play for and to wait for, particularly for a team that could quickly leap up the standings if even a few factors break its way.

Miami Heat

We should really know better by now than to pencil in matchups for the Eastern Conference finals, given that the Heat are sitting right there. Miami just bides its time, waiting to ruin some well-stocked contender’s year. Forget the regular-season precedent. Forget the matchup logic. The Heat just break teams down and find a way, making them the ultimate spoiler in a conference that feels heavily weighted toward the new-and-improved Bucks and Celtics. It’s hard to blame anyone for believing in those sorts of on-paper powerhouses, but the building of consensus seems to just make the Heat stronger. Gloss over them at your own risk; one way or another, Miami will have its say in deciding this season.

Maybe that will manifest as it did in the 2023 playoffs, when the Heat took advantage of a Giannis injury to bounce the Bucks straight out of the first round. Or maybe Miami’s presence will be felt most in attrition—by wearing down the Celtics and, even if they can’t upset them, taking enough of a toll on them to ensure that Boston doesn’t beat anyone else. No one wants to see Miami in a seven-game series because it is the kind of matchup you can never really win. You can advance only at a cost, or you can fail to and pay an even deeper, existential one.

Superteams rise and fall. Players come and go from Miami’s roster. The world around the Heat changes, and yet they always manage to turn up just the kind of roster that can challenge what we think we know about the competitive order of the NBA. This is just the way of things. If you choose not to accept that, then you too will watch, bewildered, as Cole Swider sends some contender packing next May, wondering how it all came to this.