Welcome to the 2024-25 Efficiency Landscape, a visual summary of trends around the NBA. All 30 teams are placed according to their offensive (x-axis) and defensive (y-axis) ratings. Bad offenses own the left side of the graphic, and good offenses appear on the right. Strong defenses appear near the top and bad ones at the bottom.
With this season’s status bar around the 25 percent mark, let’s use this exercise to check in on some noteworthy trends around the Association.
The Best Team Right Now
The best team in the NBA right now is not the Celtics or the Thunder. It’s not the Cavs, either. The greatest team in the NBA this season is whoever is playing against the Wizards. Washington’s opponents have the best record and the best statistical markers, and it’s not even close. Their offense is nearly as good as the Celtics’; their defense is up there with the Thunder’s.
The Wizards’ net rating is currently minus-14.1, meaning opponents are torching them by an average of over 14 points every 100 trips down the floor. For context, Boston is leading the league with a net rating of plus-10.2, which is dandy, but folks, with all due respect to Brad Stevens’s impressive roster, those fellas can’t hold a candle to the outright domination of an average Wizards opponent.
Through 19 games, Washington’s adversaries are 17-2, and their key markers compare favorably to some of the all-time-great squads in NBA history. When the Warriors won 73 games in 2015-16, their net rating was plus-10.6. The 1995-96 Bulls that won 72 games had a net rating of plus-13.4. Those are impressive numbers, but this year’s Washington opponents are simply more dominant. I don’t want to jinx anything, but Wizards opponents could win 74 games this season. It might be time to start talking about the 2024-25 Wizards opponents as one of the best teams of the 2020s. They haven’t lost since before Halloween, and, friends, it’s now December.
What Western Domination Looks Like
The West is better than the East. This has been true for years, but this season the competency divide in the league seems particularly skewed. Ten Western Conference squads are over .500. Only five Eastern Conference teams can say the same, and in a league where intraconference matchups are more common than interconference ones, this disparity is downright impressive. Make no mistake, the top of the East is legit (especially on offense), but it’s beginning to look like the lower seeds in the Eastern Conference playoff bracket will be stinkers, while even the Western Conference play-in will include some good squads. The 9-13 Pacers are the current 10-seed in the East, while the 11-10 Spurs are 10th in the West. That same record would put them all the way up in sixth in the East.
The East’s Three-Headed Offensive Monster
Only two offenses in league history have ever averaged more than 120 points per 100 possessions. This season, three teams are on pace to do so, all near the top of the Eastern standings. The Celtics, Cavs, and Knicks are clearly the three best offenses in the NBA right now, but each team has its own keys to scoring so efficiently.
Boston is on pace to shatter a variety of NBA 3-point records. The Celtics are taking over half of their shots from beyond the arc; they are hoisting nearly 51 triples per game and are scoring over 57 points per contest on made 3s alone, by far the most in NBA history. Stevens has built the deepest group of shooters in the league, and Joe Mazzulla has designed an offense that looks like a 2012 Sloan paper IRL.
Cleveland, by contrast, is feasting at the rim—its bigs, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, blend volume and efficiency near the hoop better than any other frontcourt duo in the league. New head coach Kenny Atkinson’s motion offense is fueling clean looks for that duo, while Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell are destroying opponents in transition—Cleveland is averaging 1.38 points per possession in transition, according to Cleaning the Glass, the best such mark in the Association.
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the Knickerbockers are one of the slowest teams, but who needs speed when you can reliably put the ball in the basket against set defenses? The Knicks own one of the best half-court offenses in the league, and it’s no surprise that Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson are thriving within New York’s slow-motion offense. Just imagine if Mikal Bridges gets going.
If current trends hold, the race for the top seed in the East will come down to which of these three teams can complement its great offense with the most competent defense. Right now, that’s the Celtics.
Thunderstruck
The NBA is a young man’s game, especially on defense. In the pace-and-space era, great defensive play requires the kind of quickness, strength, endurance, and resilience that tends to disappear with age.
Enter the youngsters in OKC, the league’s new best defense.
While Mazzulla decorates Boston’s offense with shooters, OKC head coach Mark Daigneault decorates his defense with thieves. Steals and deflected passes are the signature elements of the league’s top-ranked defense. Thunder opponents are turning the ball over on 19 percent of their possessions, which is staggering and largely explained by the simple fact that OKC’s rotation includes three of the NBA’s top 10 steals leaders: Cason Wallace, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jalen Williams. Oh, and the team now has Alex Caruso coming off its bench; you know you’re loaded with ball hawks when Lu Dort ranks fifth on your team in steals per game.
No point guard leaguewide wants to play these dudes. Just ask Trae Young, whose homecoming game on October 27 devolved into a nightmare as he turned the ball over 10 times in Atlanta’s 24-point loss. Or ask Chris Paul and the Spurs, who went into Paycom Center three nights later only to have the Thunder thieves steal the ball 18 times in 48 minutes.
One more wild layer: OKC has put up the best defensive numbers in the NBA thus far despite not playing with a full deck in its frontcourt. Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein are two of the team’s most impactful defenders, but thanks to injuries, they have yet to even play together, and the team has been playing smaller than intended for almost all of this season. It’s a testament to OKC’s depth and the resourcefulness of its defense; no matter who is playing, this Thunder team will force turnovers and defend as well as any team in the league.
And here’s the scary part: When Holmgren returns, the best defense in the NBA will only get more versatile.
Philly’s Misery
The Sixers have managed to turn their new Big Three into the 28th-ranked offense and the 26th-ranked point differential. For context, last season the team ranked 14th and ninth in these respective categories. Yes, Joel Embiid and Paul George have both missed time, but it’s still staggering to see their red, white, and blue logo among the Flagg chasers on the southwest part of this plot.
The brutal reality of Philly’s first 19 games was somehow worse than even the lowest preseason expectations. But you are what the Efficiency Landscape says you are, and this banged-up mess simply can’t score enough to win. Through 19 games, the Sixers own the fourth-worst record in the league, which is noteworthy because they traded their 2025 first-rounder to Oklahoma City. That pick is top-six protected, meaning it will convey to OKC only if the pick ends up being outside the top six. If things don’t turn around this month, it might be time to trust the process once more.
Stats are current through Monday’s games.
